Mudhoney, The Lucky Ones (side A)

In some ways, it feels crazy that Mudhoney have continued to make records, much less relevant ones.  While they did not neatly fit into the Seattle buzz explosion that surrounded them, it also feels difficult to separate their music from its environs.  2008's The Lucky Ones manages to capture the band's classic sound and also to bring just enough modernity to avoid nostalgia or parody.  While early recordings like "Touch Me I'm Sick" magically capture Mudhoney's raw energy, their incredibly primitive technical qualities also tie them to a specific era.  The Lucky Ones does a nice job using a contemporary and very professional recording to emphasize the group's impact and roughness.  The drums sound bigger and the guitars sound rougher, but at the same time, the mixes and mastering sit perfectly.  The performances feel a bit more technically competent, without ever falling into an overly-sterile area that would detract from their energy.  The hardest aspect of Mudhoney to update might be the lyrics.  While Mark Arm has some success at tastefully balancing his mature life experiences with the group's primitive emotional posture, the challenge at times seems too daunting, and the lyrics might be the most fragile element of The Lucky Ones.  While the cover painting and design are nondescript, they're at least appropriate and tasteful.

Essential Logic, Beat Rhythm News (side A)

Because of Lora Logic's connection to X-Ray Spex's straightforward bluntness, Essential Logic will always be loosely associated with the most primitive musical elements of punk rock.  While Essential Logic were capable of duplicating the manic energy of "Oh Bondage! Up Yours!", their songs painted with a broader palette.  Dynamic and tempo shifts were common in their through-composed songs, and overtly catchy sections alternated with subtler melodies.  1979's Beat Rhythm News still fits into the punk era with pulsing energy and often-frantic drums, but the song structures have grown even more fragmented than on some of the group's singles.  Where other arty bands of the punk and post-punk world, especially in England, relied heavily on effects like chorus and delay in their mixes, Essential Logic largely eschewed these timbres for a simpler mix aesthetic.  The simplistic but jarring cover nicely illustrates the musical combination of chaos with an autodictat's approach to musicianship.

Hybrid Kids — A Collection of Classic Mutants (side A)

From reading the liner notes, the Hybrid Kids LP appears to collect 13 different bands from a small midwestern city, as if it were a cousin to Red Snerts.  Unlike Red Snerts, all 13 songs are clearly covers of well-known songs, ranging from the Stranglers to Eurovision winners Brotherhood of Man, with Kate Bush thrown in for good measure.  In fact, all 13 bands featured here consist solely of longtime English session keyboardist Morgan Fisher, who is only credited as producer.  The styles vary some from song to song, but consistent elements include heavily pitch-shifted vocals, drum machines, and distorted rock sounds that I think originate with keyboards.  The slightly lo-fi recording quality is also very consistent between tracks.  Morgan Fisher's performances here are charming and excellent, and I prefer Hybrid Kids to Daniel Miller's similarly-conceived LP as Silicon Teens.  The fake bands also have excellent names, like Combo Satori and  The Incestors!

Herbie Hancock, Sextant (side A)

As Hancock worked with Miles Davis on some of his classic electric records like Live-Evil, On the Corner, and Get Up with It, it's not surprising that Hancock's 1973 album Sextant resembles the albums on which he worked as side-man.  Sextant features other Davis collaborators from this era: drummer Billy Hart and reed player Benny Maupin, and their extended groove-based performances would barely be out of place on an electric Davis album.  Sextant feels a bit less aggressive and harsh than some of Davis's work — there is no distorted electric guitar, and the horns both sound less brash and play a less prominent role.  Hancock's more muted keyboard sounds move to the front, and the timbral space of the music moves with them.  The biggest departure from Davis's work happens at the end of "Rain Dance".  Modular synth squiggles from an ARP 2600 move to the front, and they temporarily displace the grooves that are central to the rest of Sextant.  Patrick Gleeson, who would later work with Devo, is credited as Hancock's ARP guru.  The liner notes here also misspell the Mellotoron (with only one "L"), but it's hard to pick it out among the many keyboards that Hancock employs.  The cover image looks like a cross between a Miles Davis and a Sun Ra album from this era, and those references feel appropriate.  My 90s reissue is overly bright, with a bit of harshness in the hi-hat, and I can't tell if the weird, beater-heavy kick drum sound was also in the original mixes, or if it too is an artifact of the modern mastering job.

Nicolas Collins, Devil's Music (side A)

The back cover notes on 1985's Devil's Music explicitly describe the process used creating it.  "All the material is taken from FM and AM transmissions occurring at the time of the performance."  At one level, listening to the album can be easily tied to this process.  Some sounds reflect their origins, especially when they play for a recognizable duration.  In other ways, the process is irrelevant to the work here.  Long sections of the album, especially side A, are just too jarring and percussive and explosive to give any hint of their origin.  Collins clearly creates a new compositional vocabulary here, one that alternates appropriation, vaguely in the vein of John Oswald, with a more pure noise aesthetic as jarring as that of Merzbow.  The juxtaposition places Devil's Music outside of either tradition, both embracing and rejecting its historical context.  The simple, iconic cover image hints a bit at both elements — the street-sign-like image has some tie to the language of appropriation, while the jarring image inside grapples with the music's ugly harshness.