Azita, Disturbing the Air (side A)

Azita's musical work took a sharp turn in 2003 when she released Enantiodromia.  After years of creating punk / no-wave chaos with the Scissor Girls and Bride of No-No (plus the dense and harsh solo electronic effort Music for Scattered Brains), she made an album of quiet, contemplative piano / vocal songs.  For nearly a decade, she's consistently maintained this aesthetic.  But, in a way, 2011's Disturbing the Air begins to integrate some of her earlier ideas more recognizably into her new work.  Where her early piano songs tended to follow conventional verse-chorus structures, she's now moved into more open-ended and through-composed compositional structures.  This approach recalls especially Bride of No-No, whose songs also explored more narrative and less tidily repetitive forms.  Azita also relies more heavily on extremes of her vocal range that draw attention to her autodidact background, and that de-emphasize her ability to sound polished.  The arrangements on Disturbing the Air usually rely only on piano and vocals, with an occasional and simple synthesizer overdub adding texture.  The piano here sounds particularly rich, great, and timeless — it seems to surround and engulf Azita's voice.  The beautiful, slightly-blurry cover photo and hand-written font look amazing and reflect the subtle, smeary beauty and hushed intimacy of the album.

OMD, Telegraph (12" single)

The OMD song "Telegraph" appears on their fourth album, 1983's diverse and memorable Dazzle Ships.  The A-side of this 12" single is an extended version of the single.  While "Telegraph" features catchy synthesizer and vocal melodies, the extended version brings emphasis to the percussion loop.  The snare's pop feels exaggerated, either through mix or mastering, and the pattern is allowed more room to breathe in the extended version.  It's unclear whether this 12" was meant as a dance single, but the arrangement pulls lightly in that direction.  The B-side is a particularly odd juxtaposition with this reworking.  "66 and Fading" features no percussion, vocals, or melody.  It's an ambient piece, loosely in the tradition of On Land, with synthesizer notes stretching major chords across time.  The odd thing about "66 and Fading" within that genre, is that it's played using fake string patches, on an old analog string synthesizer.  The timbres would certainly be out of place on an early Eno Ambient album.  "66 and Fading" is also drastically quieter in volume than "Telegraph".  The austere packaging design here is cool and appropriate, if less distinctive than the die-cut gatefold layout of Dazzle Ships.

Tall Dwarfs, Three Songs (12" EP)

1981's Three Songs defines the Tall Dwarfs' model that the duo of Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate sustained for over 20 years.  Song structures are very simple, drawing from classic pop history.  All three songs on this EP proved memorable ones in Tall Dwarfs' catalog, especially the A-side "Nothing's Going to Happen" — their intuitive sensibilities were already fully-formed.  The arrangements' simplicity, however, draws far less from history.  Instead, the duo rely on their own limited resources to define their palette.  Songs are built with tape loops, acoustic and electric guitars, toy keyboards, and vocals, with only some of these elements in each song.  No particular effort was made to flatter any of the sounds, but the mixes fit together intuitively.  This extremely austere approach to home recording defined a prototype for the "lo-fi" sensibility that grew popular more than a decade later.  The treble sounds nice and clean here (on my 1985 reissue pressing), but there's no low-end in the arrangements.  My reissue preserves the funny set of faces drawn on the front cover, but replaced the original back with a much simpler design.

Mission of Burma, Mission of Burma (12" EP)

1988's Mission of Burma EP, which was released during the band's dormant years, collects 5 disparate songs from different points in Burma's career.  The small sample set exaggerates the group's evolution toward slightly more sophisticated songs — the EP includes both the more straightforward pop structure of 1979's "Peking Spring" and the more compositionally inventive "Sing-a-Long".  As early as 1980's "Forget", Peter Prescott has begun his distinctive use of cymbals as drones that sustain against the song's rhythm.  And with 1982's "Sing-a-Long", Martin Swope's tape loops move to the foreground.  The seemingly-arbitrary cross-section of songs on this EP feels even more confusing when a CD release from the same time includes six additional unreleased tracks, but omits "Forget".  Mission of Burma has unimpressive sound quality for a 45 RPM 12", perhaps because of the slightly primitive and dated qualities of the recordings — the bass has the plucky quality of a cheap direct feed, and the drums also reflect the limitations of the inexpensive but popular gear of this era.  The slightly-modified photograph on the front cover nicely captures the band's personality, though it has not grown as iconic as the photograph chosen for the accompanying CD.

Leonard Cohen, Songs of Love and Hate (side A)

1971's Songs of Love and Hate pulls Leonard Cohen's songs in a few extremes, in comparison to the two records that preceded it.  The most surprising extreme might be "Diamonds in the Mine", with a straightforward country-rock arrangement that falls closer to John Prine or Townes Van Zandt than anything usually associated with Cohen.  It also has little in common with the rest of the album, and feels like an afterthought at the end of side A.  Another leap for Cohen is how aggressive the sneer in his voice reaches in parts of the album.  While his music often emphasizes dark emotions, the arrangements never emphasize anger one of these dark sentiments, and his vocal takes on albums usually mesh more closely with the arrangements.  In several points of Songs of Love and Hate, Cohen's sneering anger leaps out in his vocal takes.  While Paul Buckmaster is known for working on lighter pop throughout his career, from Elton John to Taylor Swift, here he contributes dark, foreboding string arrangements that feel heavy even alongside Cohen's lyrical content.  Against these dark arrangements, Cohen's guitar sounds bright and clean and modern, emphasizing the transformations in recording technology in the early-70s.  The front cover's use of a portrait borrows from the vocabulary of a songwriter album, but then buries it under gigantic fonts, and the solid black inner sleeve nicely extends the mood of this cover.

Joan of Arc, Presents Pine Cone (side A)

With 2012's release of Presents Pine Cone, the range of albums under the Joan of Arc moniker continued to expand.  2007's Field Recordings of Dreams found central Joan of Arc figure Tim Kinsella working in a purely abstract realm far from song structure or rock referents, but he released that album under his own name.  Pine Cone feels a bit less indulgent than Field Recordings of Dreams, but still much further from rock music than anything Kinsella had released under the Joan of Arc name.  Perhaps brief contributions from a few regular band associates identify this album as a band endeavor.  Pine Cone moves through a series of short and diverse instrumental ideas, with each cross-fading into the next.  The structure reminds me vaguely of albums like Faust Tapes or Eyeless in Gaza's Pale Hands I Loved so Well.  Like Eyeless in Gaza, Joan of Arc use this experimental side to stay lighter in emotional presentation than on their more structured albums.  The generally airy sound and floaty feel keeps Pine Cone from ever hinting at darkness.  Most of the short sketch sections are electronic, with drones and tones filling space.  Acoustic guitars, a badly-recorded live drummer, and an oddly cut-up drum machine program turn up too.  While concepts occasionally repeat through the album, they always fall far apart, with unrelated parts between them, so it's hard to remember how similar a part is to the last related one that came up.  Sonically, most of Pine Cone has the bright and slightly sterile feel of early Joan of Arc albums like Live in Chicago 1999, but it's contrasted with a couple of very primitive sounds that make brief appearances.  The impressive packaging features multiple layers and inserts, and clearly received a lot of attention — the foldover outer cover is especially beautiful and impressive.

Pharoah Sanders, Thembi (side A)

The cover images of Pharoah Sanders on 1971's Thembi emphasize his Afro-centric identity (and his excellent hat collection), but the album presents a more diverse cross-section of Sanders's vision.  While the individual tracks are consistently strong, Thembi lacks any unifying vision or coherent sequence.  The Afro-centric personality of the cover permeates two introspective horn driven tunes, "Morning Prayer" and the memorable title track, and also the complex percussion layering of "Bailophone Dance", with Sanders on bailophone.  The other three tracks do not fit neatly into this unifying narrative, but also have nothing in common with each other.  "Red, Black & Green" stands out to me — its heavy wailing reminds me in many ways of Peter Brötzmann's records of this time, though Clifford Jarvis's drumming provides a jazzy background pulse rather than leaping into the foreground.  Combining two different sessions, with different drummers and instrumentation, further emphasizes Thembi's disjointedness.  The recording has a modern brightness which flatters the performances and material without sounding illogical or exaggerated.

Archie Shepp, Mama Too Tight (side A)

Among Archie Shepp's vast discography, Mama Too Tight definitely stands out.  Both "A Portrait of Robert Thompson (as a Young Man)", which fills side A, and the long "Basheer" capture so many of the talents that make Shepp special.  Both of these tracks couple the free-blowing spirit of New York's late-60s energy jazz with Shepp's methodical compositon talents.  They weave nicely in and out of chaos, as melodies emerge and disappear and tempos sometimes change abruptly.  "A Portrait of Robert" even manages to incorporate appropriated melodies without interrupting its overarching structure.  The group here is rich in talent and somewhat odd in its configuration — I'm not sure if I'm more surprised by the presence of two trombones (Rudd and Moncur) or a tuba (Howard Johnson).  Beaver Harris's syncopated tendencies seem especially prominent here, perhaps because the ride cymbal leaps out of the mix more than his skins — he's also oddly panned hard-right.  While the group's playing still sounds impressive on the remaining two short tracks, they're a lot simpler structurally and conceptually.  Including two more conventional pieces breaks the magical flow of the album without noticeably expanding the conceptual scope.  The reeds and horns fit together well sonically — the interplay of great musicians is captured with care, and with an emphasis on the rich midrange color that these instruments produce.  The beautiful silhouette photograph of Shepp on the cover is complemented nicely by great fonts, color selection, and layout.

Hi Sheriffs of Blue, Hi Sheriffs of Blue (12" EP)

Mark Dagley is known in the visual art world for his active work as an abstract painter.  In music, his best-remembered project may be the Girls, the late-70s Boston band for whom he played guitar.  In the early-80s, roughly between these two, he moved to New York and fronted the Hi Sheriffs of Blue.  They released two 12" EPs: a collection of their 7" singles, followed by this self-titled 1982 set of four songs.  While no one else from the band's original line-up is a recognizable name, but Elliot Sharp had joined for this EP.  Side A is the more uniform, with two songs combining simplistic structures, reminiscent of the Hi Sheriffs' no wave contemporaries, with fragmented blues riffs that reference garage rock and the earliest Rolling Stones albums.  At times, a slight similarity to MX-80 Sound emerges, but the drums are mixed much louder here, and they fill a more rock-oriented role in creating propulsion.  Side B has two very different tracks. "War Between the States" is built around an acoustic rhythm guitar part, while "12 Gates" features a female backing vocal drenched in reverb for a vaguely goth feel.  Having only heard this EP, it's unclear to me how these four tracks relate to the band's, or perhaps Dagley's, core vision.  The recording is excessively clean and sterile, in a way that had come into fashion by 1982.  The low-budget design on the packaging is more dated than charming, and really doesn't flatter Hi Sheriffs of Blue's relevant contents.

David Kilgour, Here Come the Cars (side A)

Here Come the Cars, Kilgour's 1991 debut solo LP, was reissued on vinyl in 2012.  As on the Clean's Vehicle, which preceded it by a year, the songwriting here pays more attention to its craftsmanship than did the early Clean classics, which were more punk-informed and simple.  Kilgour's performance here is distinctly more laid-back than anything he'd done up until this point — tempos tend to be slower, and many songs are built on an acoustic guitar's rhythm parts.  The opener and title track emphasizes a complex arrangement of subtly layered guitars and piano, with plenty of open space.  Other songs, like "Shivering" and "Spins You Round" are built on a rhythm guitar and vocal melody in a fashion somewhat closer to Kilgour's writing for the Clean.  While Here Come the Cars has always sounded soft and midrange-y, some songs on this reissue nicely emphasize detail in the high frequencies.  The electric guitars on the opening title track, for example, sound impressively spacious.  Some of the sparser tracks sound closer to the original release, as perhaps there was less high-end energy to emphasize — the resulting album feels a bit uneven sonically.  The cover portrait of Kilgour provides an intense close-up, when expanded to fill 12 inches for vinyl.

Ornette Coleman, Friends and Neighbors: Ornette Live at Prince Street (side A)

The most memorable point of 1970's Friends and Neighbors may be its opening track, where a chorus chants a simple melody as the group pulses and squeals behind them — Ornette's violin squeals particularly noticeably.  The rest of the album takes a sharp turn back toward Ornette's earlier years.  In many ways it sounds like an obvious successor to Ornette! and Ornette on Tenor from the early 60s.  The years in between saw Ornette exploring ideas from the austerity of the Golden Circle live records to the overwhelming chaos of Crisis.  Here, he reins in his explorations, and his group sounds like an updated version of the early records that created his reputation.  The configuration is a quartet, with Haden and Blackwell on drums, Dewey Redman on tenor, and Ornette on either alto or trumpet (after his opening shrieks on violin).  By 1970, fashions had caught up with Blackwell's recognizable style, and, especially compared to Denardo's primitive pulse on Ornette's late-60s albums, Blackwell seems like a uniting and grounding force.  My pressing of Friends and Neighbors, which may be a reissue or bootleg (it was new when I bought it) sounds great, without the exaggerated treble that often plagues new pressings.  The 131 Prince Street address in the iconic cover image is now across from a Lacoste boutique.

Steve Lacy, Soprano Sax (side A)

Steve Lacy released his debut Soprano Sax in 1958.  It features his first recording of a Monk tune (the obscurity "Work") and his first collaboration with drummer Denis Charles.  In many other ways, though, Lacy is still constrained here by the idiom of his time.  While Charles was already a forward-thinking drummer, who also worked with Cecil Taylor on Looking Ahead! a year later, here he predominantly provides a swinging ride-cymbal-based beat.  Lacy and Charles's collaboration here fits the style of the times and only hints at the magic that they'd find together years later, on records like NY Capers.  While the Monk tune gives Lacy some room to stretch, the rest of Soprano Sax finds him working in more conventional tonal and structural confines.  Wynton Kelly, while a fine pianist, rarely seems to grasp Lacy's exploratory side.  My vinyl reissue sounds pretty good, but the exaggerated treble on the ride cymbal feels a bit out of place.  The green tint on the cover photo of Lacy nicely captures the character of its era — the conventional portrait illustrates how much Lacy began working within the jazz system of this era.

Leo Smith Creative Orchestra, Budding of a Rose (side A)

Leo Smith's stark creative vision has remained impressively consistent and focused since his piece "The Bell" appeared on Anthony Braxton's 1968 debut.  1979's Budding of a Rose exploits a huge and impressive group to implement it in a fairly extreme form.  While there are three pieces on the album, the musical vocabulary remains narrow.  The two primary syntactical tools in Smith's arsenal here are short lines played by a single instrument, and large ensemble swells.  These two ideas generally alternate.  Different instruments play these short lines, which rarely draw attention to themselves.  While the ensemble includes marquee players like Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, and Marilyn Crispell, their creative personalities are not given room to shine.  The large group swells feel much more the focus of attention, as they vary in arrangement and tonality.  Two big and noticeable swells appear at the beginning of each album side, and they're the two most noticeable times that Smith calls for the listener's attention.  The pieces more often proceed without distinguished movement from their continuing flow.  When Pheeroan AkLaff's drums come in, they employ a degree of swing that references jazz, but they're relatively subtle in the mix, and the drums never anchor the rest of the group.  The frequency balance exaggerates the highs of the cymbals and lows of the kick drum when AkLaff comes in, which is odd as he's not a center of attention.  The simple and factual front cover employs recognizably 70s fonts and colors.