The Godz, Contact High with the Godz (side A)

Not even Lester Bangs's effusive praise helps to provide a clear context for the Godz when they started in 1966.  Their acoustic music hints at folk, but folk tended to value professionalism and at least a bit of sterility.  The Godz brought the primitivism of punk rock, without the angst and energy.  Contact High with the Godz coincides with the Velvet Underground's earliest work—both groups were in New York but it's hard to know if they were aware of each other.  The Godz at times sang catchy, almost silly songs like "Lay in the Sun" and "Turn On", but these were juxtaposed against more abstract noise freak-outs that still rested on simple major-chord progressions.  By today's standards, this album, down to its lo-fi, if still quite great sounding simplicity, would make sense—in 1966, it must have fit a lot less.  The repeating and rotating cover image feels disorienting to stare at, and gives few hints to how to contextualize Contact High.

Grauzone, Grauzone (side A)

Swiss-German trio Grauzone are of course best remembered for their German club hit, "Eisbaer", which does not appear on their self-titled album.  Stephan Eicher is also remembered in France for his 90s pop albums that cross French cabaret traditions with Matthew Sweet-tinged power-pop.  Grauzone, from 1981, features a similar palette to Eisbaer but less overt melodies.  Some songs are more accessible and at times almost sentimental, while others feature a harshness and aggression that hints at early Cabaret Voltaire.  Everything uses a palette of analog electronics alongside muddy recordings of electric guitar and vocals.  The low-end is nicely defined and the general balances are great.  The distinctive and blurry cover images remain incredibly distinctive even as they reflect their age.

Dennis Duck, Dennis Duck Goes Disco (side C)

Dennis Duck is the stage name of the great drummer Dennis Mehaffey, known for his work with the Dream Syndicate, Human Hands, Airway, and the Doo-Dooettes.  Here, instead of drums, he plays either a single turntable or a pair.  The turntables are mangled to perform actions that bear little, if any, resemblance to how a person would normally listen to a record.  His most frequent trick, which is documented in the liner notes, is to adjust the anti-skating to play backwards or leap incoherently.  Records additionally spin at the wrong speeds, and are sometimes tilted on the turntable.  The resulting tracks are funny, percussive, and surprisingly propulsive (sometimes even rhythmic).  At one level, they're hard to listen to, and at another level they're remarkably friendly, funny, and engaging.  Occasionally the records used as sources can be perceived, with bits of speech peeking out.  Most of the time, the turntable itself takes center stage.  Dennis Duck Goes Disco is a carefully-restored reissue from 2009 of a limited cassette that was originally created in 1977—it sounds incredibly clear for such a brutal construction process, and the gatefold packaging is impressive too.  The bright colors in the blurry cover image leap out—the packaging gives no hint of the music inside, but it's equally as engaging, intriguing, and unreferential.

The Shadow Ring, City Lights (side A)

By the time of 1994's Put the Music in its Coffin, the Shadow Ring's distinctive sound had grown somewhat refined and recognizable.  1993's City Lights dates from a time when the group was still developing its sound, and the results seem a bit less focused as a result.  Simple, plodding guitar lines and beating drums appear in some places, but they feel a bit less structured.  The biggest difference might be the decreased emphasis on narrative vocals, as both a sonic and structural element.  Some songs are pure instrumentals, and one features vocals purely as sound source.  These ideas would re-emerge in a far more extreme form on Lindus and I'm Some Songs, but here they sound more like sketches for the vocal songs that appear alongside them.  While the primitive playing seems purposeful by Wax-Work Echoes, here it still feels incredibly rough.  City Lights is still a remarkable record—it moved in a very different direction from many of its contemporaries, in an era when the Dead C held a huge influence, and it foreshadows the group's many advances that would follow.  The sound is of course purposely rudimentary, and the glued-on black and white drawing of cats and mice at a dinner party fits the contents perfectly.

Units, A History of Units / The Early Years: 1977-1983 (side A)

The album title references a start in 1977, and the notes on the cover discuss ideas from 1978.  By the time the Units released their first single, "High Pressure Days" in 1979, the influence of Devo's debut LP was obvious.  With deadpan vocals, prominent use of ring modulation, and synthetic-sounding drums, the Units' early work captured on The History of The Units owes an obvious debt to Are We Not Men?  The Units were not mere sound-alikes—they have a voice of their own that extends beyond their outspoken rejection of guitars.  The lo-fi sound and heavy use of synthesizers has a bit in common with Philadelphia's Crash Course in Science.  This reissue collects tracks across their singles and Digital Stimulation album before they signed to Epic in 1983 and made the more sterile New Way to Move, with 9 songs on the LP and many more available digitally.  The mastering is generally good, though the extended high-end exaggerates the harsh high end on some recordings.  The chaotic cover collage is full of text providing something of a Units manifesto and history.

Cabaret Voltaire, Mix-Up (side A)

In 1979, when Cabaret Voltaire made their debut album Mix-Up, rock influences were still prominent in their dark, abrasive music.  Most songs were short with structure, and prominent vocals contributed to these structures.  Guitars and bass guitars often appear in the foreground (albeit usually with a lot of effects), and they even covered the Seeds' "No Escape".  While they recorded themselves, the mixes sound surprisingly clean and professional, in part because so many of the sounds are aggressively filtered to very narrow bandwidths.  It's the group's darkest and most offputting work, but the obvious references to rock music make it surprisingly accessible.  The blurry cover image aligns nicely with the cheap simplicity of the album's construction.

Clifford Thornton, Ketchaoua (side A)

1969's Ketchaoua leaps through many styles in a way that reminds me of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and also Archie Shepp in this era—Shepp appears on half of the album.  Side A contains two long tracks that feature large ensembles and a lot of simple, interweaving percussion.  Both tracks gradually evolve into brief periods of recognizable jazz styles before floating back into more abstract terrain.  The opening title track might be the least prominent appearance from drummer Sunny Murray, who blends into the massed percussion.  The two tracks on side B are opposite extremes, though both feature smaller groups.  "Brotherhood" draws from New York energy jazz, with Claude Delcloo's percussion prominent in the mix.  "Speak with Your Echo" ends the album with its sparsest arrangement, featuring only Thornton and two bassists.  The recording quality varies, with the large groups sounding better than "Brotherhood", where the explosive percussion reverberates awkwardly in a boxy room.  The simple packaging includes great photos of Thornton.

Love, Love (side A)

Love's self-titled debut is something of a canonical classic, and it contains their famous version of Bacharach's "My Little Red Book".  In retrospect, Love in 1966 often still sounded like a generic garage band.  The biggest thing that set Love apart was the vocals, with both Arthur Lee's powerful lead and Bryan MacLean's beautiful harmonies seeming to jump out of the speakers—the recording of the voices sounds great too.  The drums sometimes lack power and can be buried under a tambourine, a quirk that's emphasized on my 80s pressing by overly-bright mastering.  The songwriting is a bit incosistent, but originals like "A Message to Pretty" and "Signed D.C." show the talent that would become more manifest on Da Capo and Forever Changes.  The front and back cover photos are beautiful, as are Lee's amazing plaid pants.  the Love logo is obviously of its era, but it still retains its majesty.

Creative Construction Company, Vol. II (side A)

By 1971, few traces of jazz influence remained in Creative Construction Company's output.  The group had grown Anthony Braxton's original Chicago trio when Steve McCall joined in Europe, and they're augmented here by Muhal Richard Abrams and Richard Davis.  CCC Vol. II, which was not released until 1976, consists of one long piece, "No More White Gloves", spread across its two sides.  The dynamics build and fade gradually and drastically, with different musicians moving into the foreground in different sections.  Perhaps the most striking thing is McCall's percussive bursts, which often explode into the room (with lots of echo) in no timing or relationship to anything else happening.  While Washington Square Church has unfortunately been converted to residential spaces, the recording captures the sound of the space nicely and was well mastered.  The front cover painting emulates the classic 60s AACM releases, but lacks their majesty.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Messages (10" EP)

OMD's "Messages" EP reflects three very divergent sides of the group's personality.  The version of "Messages" on side A, which differs from the one on their debut album, features impressively lush and beautiful synthesizer and drum machine sounds.  The vocals are filtered to be a bit too thin, but the bass guitar solo sounds great with so little low-end and so much articulation.  It's followed by a primitive Velvet Underground cover, "Waiting for the Man"—the austerity reminds me as much of Cabaret Voltaire as OMD.  Finally, "Taking Sides Again" is a dub-influenced instrumental take on "Messages", using a line from that song as its title.  It's a bit less sophisticated than XTC's Go + or the Basement 5 In Dub, but it's similar in concept.  The dark, austere packaging matches the two songs on the B-side more than the beautiful recording of "Messages".

The Ex, 6.6 (12" EP)

Through 1991, the Ex released the "6" series of 7"s, but the final release became a 12" EP.  The 12" includes two tracks with drum machine rhythms that vaguely reference some of the commercial industrial/dance music of that era.  The primitive recording, however, continues to reference the Ex's punk aesthetic, not the more commercial style they're loosely emulating.  "Euroconfusion" on side A uses a more plodding drum machine and is very sparse musically, where the beat on side B's "Bird in the Hand" sounds more like an old organ's sidecar and the guitars fill space as is more typical for the Ex.  In some ways "Bird in the Hand" feels like a precursor to the sound of 2011's Catch My Shoe.  When people bought the 6 series, some of the elaborate series packaging was shipped with this 12". 

The Butterfield Blues Band, East—West (side A)

The idea of a racially integrated electric blues band feels perhaps like a cliché, and in the '80s, such groups felt almost impossible to avoid.  In 1966, when the Butterfield Blues Band released their second album East—West, the idea must have been a lot more innovative.  The group feels like they're pushing up against boundaries, which requires a bit of mental role-playing to visualize from a modern perspective.  The highlight of East—West is, unsurprisingly, Mike Bloomfield's guitar playing.  It sounds like it's jumping out of the speakers, in a way that I can't even imagine achieving with only the technological options of 1966.  The front cover photo looks amazing, and the design flatters it perfectly.

Willem Breuker, Twenty minutes in the life of Bill Moons / De Achterlijke Klokkenmaker (side A)

Willem Breuker came to be known for his Kollekteif, which pursued its idiosyncratic take on ensemble jazz and humorous performance for many years.  1973 and 1974, when he made "20 Minutes in the life of Bill Moons" and "De Achterlijke Klokkenmaker", Breuker's work was more conceptual and theatric.  Musical influences including jazz were thrown into the theatrical blender, rather than being foreground elements.  Pictures in the LPs liner notes illustrate the theater piece that "The Simple-Minded Clockmaker" accompanied—at one point, a character even flies above the audience's heads on a simple rope.  The recording also includes speech from the theatrical presentation.  The context of "20 Minutes in the life of Bill Moons" is less clear—it's identified as "a dramatic/musical radio documentary" in the liner notes, and it was made for AVRO radio, who did a great job with the recording.  It's one continuous piece that moves through an obvious series of moods and changes, with some great dramatic synthesizer from Michel Waisvisz.  With only one, open-ended illustration to accompany this piece, the context is harder to discern.

Robert Wyatt, Old Rottenhat (side A)

Musically, 1985's Old Rottenhat contains some of Wyatt's sparsest and most personal work.  Lyrically, it contains some of his most direct and blunt political content.  The contradiction runs until the end, where it's interrupted by a short song with lyrics about poor little Alfie trying to sleep.  The music is built mostly of mid-80s digital keyboard sounds, possibly from a DX-7, with bits of percussion and drum machine patterns underneath.  Wyatt's voice is recorded and mixed plainly but competently, and a clean mastering job holds the album together nicely.  The beautiful cover painting is appropriately minimal, but it hints at a more abstract album than the generally catchy Old Rottenhat.

Chris McGregor / Louis Moholo / Dudu Pukwana, Blue Notes for Johnny (side A)

The Blue Notes were a pioneering, racially integrated, experimental jazz group in South Africa in the early 1960s.  They migrated to London in 1964, and the individual members remained active long after the group splintered.  They're best-known beyond jazz circles for Mongezi Feza's collaboration with Robert Wyatt and Chris McGregor's appearance on a Nick Drake album.  As the 4 surviving members recorded a tribute album on Feza's death in 1976, a similar trio reunion followed Dyani's death.  1987's Blue Notes for Johnny still captures the magic of the group.  Wildly swinging rhythms of African music intertwine freely with jazz syncopation and Pukwana's soulful solos.  Moholo's percussion sometimes drives the rhythm, and others weaves freely around the two melodic instruments—unfortunately, his playing sounds a bit muffled here.  The piano and saxophone, on the other hand, sound a bit too bright and inorganic.  The simple cover photo is tasteful, though it's hard to know if these are Dyani's hands or merely a random image.

Miles Davis, Live Evil (side C)

1971's Live Evil is an obviously canonical record, but I still had a few interesting discoveries on my most recent listen.  First, while I missed Hermeto Pascoal's Lincoln Center concert, it did provide context for his name on reviewing the liner notes.  Live Evil also seems from the title to be entirely a live record, but half of it was recorded in the studio.  Finally, it hints more than I'd previously remembered at the darkness and chaos that would be even more prominent Get Up with It.  My copy is part of a reissue series called "A Columbia Musical Treasury"—the center stickers seem to be intended for a middle school library, and the classic art on the packaging has been replaced by a very simple design.

Gamelan Music of Bali (side A)

1967's Gamelan Music of Bali focuses on the most recognizable elements of gamelan music.  All of the tracks are instrumental.  Everything is a fairly fast tempo, with neither the slower stately court music nor the frenetic kecak monkey chant included.  While recorded in different parts of Bali and representing subtly different styles, all of the tracks emphasize the distinctive tonality and rhythm of gamelan.  The recordings themselves are primitive, and often lack detail and extended frequency range, but they capture amazing performances of this traditional music cleanly and gracefully.  This original LP cover with the images of a dancer is far superior to the ugly CD reissue that is widely reproduced on the Internet.

In Camera, IV Songs (12" EP)

In Camera were an early 80s English band with post-punk and vaguely goth tendencies.  Side A of their 1980 12" IV Songs contains two instrumentals.  The first is built around a heavily processed piano and sparse drumming, and the second introduces the rock band line-up.  The songs on Side B add dead-pan vocals that are stylized and typical of the era.  The drum sound is very tight and clear, and the bass is sometimes high-passed at a surprisingly high frequency, creating a tinny sound and an eerie amount of space at the bottom (even with the repeating kick drum).  The piano instrumental is the most unusual and distinctive track on the EP—it's vaguely comparable to Colin Newman's Provisionally Entitled the Singing Fish.  The stark front cover photo and simple design fit the style of the era as perfectly as the vocal songs do.

The Clean, Vehicle (side A)

Having seen the Clean play so many of the songs from 1989's Vehicle live has changed my impressions of the album.  The careful guitar layering works great, but now that I've heard David Kilgour's rhythm playing in the foreground at their concerts, I'm often left wishing for more of it.  The exaggerated snare drum volume distracts a bit from the fluidity of Hamish Kilgour's drumming.  And I wish Robert Scott's voice preserved more of its natural thickness.  At the same time, many of these songs have stayed in the Clean's live repertoire because they're such amazing pop songs, and the odd mixes never get in the way of the great songwriting.  The simple cover painting ties more closely to the primitive sound of the early Clean singles than the more polished recordings here.