Caboladies, Caboladies (side A)

Caboladies' self-titled 2010 LP collects tracks from CD-Rs and cassettes released in 2007 and 2008.  While the group is now a duo, these recordings from their formative years featured a third member, Ben Zoeller.  The album contains 5 pieces.  I assume that they're improvised, as each track explores a fairly uniform palette, without any sense of purposeful movement or evolution.  The synthesizers make a set of sounds until they stop.  While this approach borrows from contemporary groups like Wolf Eyes (whose Robert Beatty provided the cover design), the palette references 80s industrial-tinged analog synth music within Caboladies' more contemporary approach.  All of the sounds are very bright and present with almost no low-end, but fortunately also with little harshness.  Beatty's cover design, which is reproduced on a nice, glossy insert, reminds me of the packaging favored by groups like Lightning Bolt and Wolf Eyes—while it looks great, it does not reflect any of Caboladies' creative differentiation.

The Beatles, Help! (side A)

Canonical albums like 1965's Help! are always the hardest to write about.  By the time of Help!, the Beatles songwriting had moved clearly away from its simple, high-energy roots and into the more subtle and beautiful style of the group's most canonical era.  The ending cover of Larry Williams's "Dizzy Miss Lizzie" may be the Beatles' final early-rock reference.  Many songs go at a slower tempo, and "Yesterday" introduces the use of a string quartet.  While George Harrison's "I Need You" features one of the less-remembered melodies, its odd guitar arrangement presages the careful studio arrangements that would follow in 1966.  While the sound of Help! is already bright and present, my mid-90s vinyl reissue adds a bit of harshness in the treble frequencies and does not quite capture the balances correctly.  The cover image and font remain, of course, timeless.

Terry Riley, A Rainbow in Curved Air (side A)

A lazy mental association with 1971's A Rainbow in Curved Air would emphasize analog synthesizer arpeggios that rise and fall.  Synthesized arpeggios definitely appear frequently, though many of them are set at such a fast pace as to de-emphasize the pattern of notes created and instead sound almost like a chord.  What surprised me, on a fresh listen, was the linear evolution of "A Rainbow in Curved Air", with frequent breaks from this memorable stereotype.  Some parts break down to a more rhythmic and almost noise-oriented palette.  Sounds and parts rise and fall and change.  Side B's "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band" relies more on shifts in simple drones without even the arpeggios that I expected from Riley. 1971 falls just after rock music's obsession with hard-panning, but it's used a lot here, including a delay which causes a sound to alternate speakers in time.  The sound of the album is bright and modern, almost excessively so, but the cover image is distinctly not modern, and instead feels overtly dated.

Evan Parker & Barry Guy, Incision (side A)

Parker and Guy feel permanently bound in my mind from their long-running trio with Paul Lytton.  It's hard to picture a time in 1981 that predates this trio's existence.  Their collaboration on Incision is so intuitive, they feel like they've already been working regularly for a long time.  Within each of the 6 pieces the palette in use evolves, and the two instruments always seem to be drawing from the same textural range without ever overlapping or resorting to imitation.  Even Guy's arco bowing emerges sustaining, slowly-warping calls from Parker's saxophone.  While both players sometimes hint at a jazz vocabulary, the improvisations here consistently explore fluttery textures rather than a more accessible set of referents.  The sound of both instruments is fairly thin and bright—this is especially noticeable with Guy's bass lacking body.  His playing so emphasizes the subtle sounds created by his left hand that this odd sonic choice does mesh with and flatter his style.  The generic cover painting does not reflect the distinctiveness of the music contained here, but it is great to see photos of Parker and Guy at such a young age on the back cover.

Tomutonttu, Tomutonttu (side A)

Tomutonttu is a solo project of Kemialliset Ystävät leader Jan Anderzen, and 2007's Tomutonttu is his second album under this name.  Anderzen layers simplistic loops to create an atmospheric space.  Most tracks have a vague sense of pulse without any drive or rhythm, and the results often remind me of odd 80s music like the two albums from Woo or Jad Fair's Best Wishes.  Where these 80s referents tend to sound murky, Tomutonttu sounds overly bright, with a modern mastering job that emphasizes the slight harshness in the treble.  There are occasional moments of chaos, often with strange mouth and vocal noises interrupting their flow.  Some tracks also move more into a propulsive and vaguely rhythmic direction, with a bit more coherence and drive than is typical here.  The amazing packaging features bright and bold designs on both the cover and the printed inner sleeve.

Tim Hodgkinson / Ken Hyder, Shams (side A)

Hodgkinson is of course the better-known half of this duo, from his work with groups like Henry Cow, the Work, and Konk Pak.  He's joined on 1986's Shams by the less-known Scottish percussionist Ken Hyder.  Hodgkinson works here in two areas typical of his playing—some parts feature clusters of tonally close notes on the clarinet, played in rapid succession.  Other sections find him exploring textures that intersect closely with Hyder's percussion palette.  Hyder uses a fairly conventional set of sounds from his drums, but his playing explores space with little attention to rhythm or meter.  The trashy and primitive live recording can make his kit sound strange at times on the record—it seems to color Hodgkinson's sounds less, perhaps because of the wide dynamics of a drum kit.  The cover image is tasteful and appropriate but not particularly special.