Bitch Prefect, Bird Nerds (side A)

2013's Bird Nerds is the second album from Australian trio Bitch Prefect.  Referentially, they fall somewhere between the splattery mess of Perfect Sound Forever-era Pavement and the concise, strummy pop of the early Television Personalities records.  The songs do not chase TVP's rave-up punk rock energy, and generally sit more at mid-tempo.  While the understated melodies are very well thought out and crafted, the songs float naturally through verses and choruses, without some of the surprises that made their historical antecedents so special.  The lack of attention to the musical performances contributes to Bitch Prefect's charm — the falling-apart quality is casual, and seems like it would be part of every take.  The vocals do seem like they'd benefit from more careful takes, though the first-take quality is charming, with even the flagrant notes feeling natural and unproblematic.  The mixes fit a modern lo-fi aesthetic, with particularly bright and chime-y recordings of guitars unlike anything in early Television Personalities or early Pavement.  The mastering disappoints me a bit, as the kick drum on some songs just leaps out unnaturally, and would benefit from being tamed, especially to match the more conservative mixes.  The museum-like design of the front cover emphasizes Bitch Prefect's levity, with the cover printed on impressively thick reverse-stock paper.

Sparks, Angst in My Pants (side A)

1982's Angst in My Pants falls chronologically between No. 1 in Heaven and In Outer Space, but it's more rock-oriented and bombastic than either.  Sparks remained modern after No. 1 in Heaven, with regimented rhythms (though it sounds like a drummer playing to a click and not a drum machine) and even dynamics with little range.  The renewed emphasis on guitars, when coupled with these tendencies, created a big-sounding album that's probably the duo's most emphatic.  While this approach de-emphasizes Russell Mael's amazing songwriting, Angst in My Pants still features some memorable classics.  Some songs, like "Sherlock Holmes",  retain the subtlety of Mael's early songwriting, while others, like "I Predict", entwine the compositional style closely with this new production approach.  Ron Mael's voice has been thinned and compressed to fit into this modern style, but his takes remain expressive and emotive.  The exaggerated cover image nicely ties Angst in My Pants to earlier Sparks albums, with the Mael brothers once again creating a narrative through one picture.

Colin Newman, A-Z (side A)

With 1980's A-Z, Colin Newman refined the more accessible elements of Wire's then-final studio album 154 to fit his coherent vision.  The songs, while still far from anything commercial, follow more consistent verse-chorus structures than was common for Wire.  Robert Gotobed's drumming remains recognizable here, though it's sonically more uniform and polished than on any Wire album, and the snappy snare is especially prominent.  Mike Thorne retained some familiar studio tricks, like the heavily-chorused bass guitar and the occasional use of looped backing vocals.  Newman's vocal moves a bit further to the foreground here, with a present sound that references commercial records of the time.  While the guitars often play simple, repeating patterns, their distorted timbres introduce A-Z's grittiest sonic element.  They also never provide the rhythmic drive that was common for guitar parts on Wire albums.  Desmond Simmons's involvement here is interesting, as his solo album Alone on Penguin Island featured the other half of Wire, Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis — apparently the members or Wire retained a close social circle even after their collaboration stopped.  The tiny, detailed images on the cover fit the album nicely — they're engaging but not overly friendly, with a pretty subdued palette.

Loudon Wainwright III, Album II (side A)

The first two Loudon Wainwright III albums are grouped together, perhaps because they predate his comedic hits like "Dead Skunk", or maybe even because they're on the same record label.  The first album, which is self-titled but often referred to as "Album I", is the one that I've grown particularly attached to, so I always think of 1971's Album II in comparison.  Sonically, Album II feels a bit brighter and more purposely modern, without the rich mid-range that makes the debut sound so timeless.  The songs here are also often structurally simplified past standard folk conventions, into a style that more resembles punk or indie bands for their sheer primitivism.  For example, the opener "Me and My Friend the Cat" rests on the same chord for the verses and a different single chord for the choruses.  While the sarcasm on the first album was complex and literate, the lyrics here just drip with tangible darkness.  Album II features "Motel Blues", which has come to be one on Wainwright's best-known and most-covered songs.  The portrait photo hints that this is a singer-songwriter album, while the quirkiness of the photo, coupled with the overtly '70s font at the top, indicate how arty and creative the contents are.

Jefferson Airplane, Bless its Pointed Little Head (side A)

Jefferson Airplane had several modes as a band that they navigate between and combine.  They're best remembered for their simple, radio-friendly hits, which are mostly missing from Bless its Pointed Little Head.  The version of "Somebody to Love" that's included here has Grace Slick drifting away from the signature vocal melody, and the instrumental interaction emphasized instead.  My favorite part of the band is their abstract and strangely-constructed psychedelic side, which often combined with pop songs on After Bathing at Baxter's, the album which directly preceded this one.  Here, the extended 11-minute exploration called "Bear Melt", with improvised vocals against a very loose structure, captures perhaps the most extreme example of the band's cerebral, open-ended explorations.  Most of Bless its Pointed Little Head emphasizes Airplane's blues-rock tendencies, which rarely turned up on their studio albums.  Kaukonen, Dryden, and Casady were all incredible players in the genre, who obviously had fun performing together live, and sharing a love of the style.  While this aspect of Airplane feels somewhat dated to me, the talent and enthusiasm always shine through.  The mix of Bless its Pointed Little Head is a bit bass-heavy — as great a player as Casady is, I'd like to hear a bit more of Spencer Dryden's drums.  The amazing textured paper cover changes subtly as ink is applied more in some parts than others, though the punch line of the image is unrelated to the excellent music here.

Dead C, Harsh 70s Reality (side A)

Extended over four sides of a double-album, 1992's Harsh 70s Reality presents an impressively broad, but still unified, insight into the Dead C's distinctive vision, and its widely-recognized distinctiveness and impact has not dulled with time.  The album sides are structurally very diverse — the abstract and extended "Driver U.F.O." fills side A, while side B contains pop songs with vocals, including a take on the oddly-catchy "Sky".  Robbie Yates's drums sometimes propel the music forward as the most central element, and other times are entirely absent — he is also credited with guitar, noise, and vocal in the liner notes.  While the sound is consistently lo-fi and rough, it varies from the narrow mid-range frequency range of "Sea is Violet" to songs that at least fill more of its limited sonic spectrum.  The most impressive part might be how all of the diverse tracks manage to achieve coherence.  The unifying element, across the different compositional approaches, is the playing — it's always chaotically improvised within each structure, with the awkward and distinctive personalities on guitar of Michael Morley and Bruce Russell bringing a consistently familiar sound and feel.  While all three members, and even guest Jean George, contribute vocals, the delivery and recording remains instantly recognizable, and also helps pull the album together as tracks change in style around these performances.  The stark black-and-white pattern on the cover and insert fits the music perfectly — it's both abstract and recognizable, confusing and engaging.

Pelt, Effigy (side C)

Over the nearly 20 years of Pelt's existence, their line-up has evolved, and their sound has grown more consistent and refined.  For 2012's Effigy, founding members Patrick Best and Mike Gangloff are joined by Mikel Dimmick, who first joined for 2005's Untitled, and newest member Nathan Bowles.  Where most early albums could be chaotic and diverse, Effigy varies far less across its four sides.  Each side contains one or two long instrumental tracks, and each track creates a feeling of drone and suspension, through the use of a consistent palette.  Most of the instruments employed produce overt attacks in their performance, so the idea of drone is more conceptual than a simple use of held tones.  The liner notes point out that all of the sounds were created with acoustic instruments.  The palette changes slightly from one track to the next, often with different instrumentation, but the overarching sound of the album remains consistent.  Each track moves through its space without having any obvious structure or logical progress toward an end.  Sonically, the album is slightly thin and bright, with limited low-end and very present treble — this is especially noticeable when the bowed cello is used.  The beautiful paintings on the packaging hint at the vaguely folk-y nature of the contents, but they're far more representative and narrative than Pelt's music.

John Fahey, Requia (side A)

1968's Requia has an oddly divided personality.  Side A closely resembles Fahey's other 1968 albums: The Voice of the Turtle and The Yellow Princess.  On it, he stretches his refined and developed folk playing into more extended structures.  While his guitar playing is careful and precise in defining tempo and structure, it also shifts drastically within a track, from section to section.  Tempos drastically change, and overt melodies will alternate with more droning and vaguely raga-like sections, all within one piece.  Side B, in contrast, departs radically from any of his other work in that era.  Most of the side is filled with a four-part piece, "Requiem for Molly", which is constructed primarily with found recordings.  Tape music does not fall neatly in line with Fahey's reputation or expertise, so the results resemble neither Fahey's other work nor much else in the tape music tradition.  He does play a bit of acoustic guitar to accompany this work, but its role is more accent than foreground.  The music is unusual and original, and it captures parts of Fahey's creative personality rarely heard on record.  The cover image is a portrait, but not a close-up, and Fahey holds a guitar in it — it matches side A nicely, but feels incongruous when coupled with "Requiem for Molly".

Peter Brötzmann, Wolke in Hosen (side A)

1976's Wolke in Hosen appears to be Brötzmann's first solo album — the cover merely states that it is solo, while the title appears on the center sticker of the vinyl.  Most tracks feature a lone reed instrument, but "Piece for Two Clarinets" and "Piece for Two Clarinets II" feature overdubs, as is evident from the titles.  While Brötzmann moves between reed instruments from track to track, the pauses between tracks are so short that the album sides give the feel of a continuous take.  Each track does have an internal logic — some evolve in a linear fashion, while others alternate back-and-forth between ideas.  While most of the concepts are abstract, there are occasionally folk-like melodies, which might be ironic in intent, and even a martial rhythm.  The album ends with a piano bit too, which seems purposely humorous, after so much serious and intense performance.  When clearly audible in a solo setting, Brötzmann's ability to coerce complex harmonic overtones from his saxophone is especially impressive, though sometimes it seems almost overwhelming when placed in such a stark context.  It's easy to forget the physical nature of tape recording in this era, but the empty spaces on this album leave print-through unavoidably audible.  The primitive construction of the cover design emphasizes these elements of Brötzmann's playing over the subtle beauty which is also obviously present.

Califone, Stitches (side A)

While still created under the name Califone, 2013's Stitches feels more like a Tim Rutilli solo album.  The cast of performers varies wildly from song to song, with appearances by familiar names like Ben Massarella, Wil Hendricks, and even Tim Hurley, surrounded by many new collaborators.  Rutilli's songwriting and singing remain strong, and his distinctive personality shines through.  The collaboratively layered rhythms, which often led to chaos on 2003's Quicksand / Cradlesnakes, and which percolated subtly but constantly on 2009's All My Friends are Funeral Singers, now show up infrequently.  Even the most propulsive moments, like the long outro of "Frosted Tips" feel much more controlled and methodical.  Stitches isn't void of weirdness — the song structures still intertwine conventional forms with Rutilli's personal, poetic vision, and synthesizer squiggles bring an element of grit amidst the beauty.  Despite having been recorded across multiple studios in different states, the airy sonic quality barely departs from Funeral Singers, as Rutilli has definitely developed a sonic vision for his songs.  The packaging is impressive, with beautifully blurry, washed-out photographs on both the reverse-stock cover and the printed inner sleeve, but its mysterious quality exceeds that of the more disciplined music.

Natsuhita Hetekata, Ki (side A)

According to the notes on the insert of 1996's Ki, Natsuhita Hetekata are a quintet with names that appear Japanese.  Rumors indicate that the band, who followed this album with the Rei! 10" in 1997, is a concealed side-project of the more-straightforward Finnish rock band Radiopuhelimut.  Ki consists of two side-long tracks which are identified as parts 1 and 2 of the same piece.  The instrumental music typically sits in a steady, repeating groove for a few minutes, and then moves through a brief open section to the next repeating groove.  While there are five names credited, it sounds like a quartet of two guitars, bass, and drums.  One guitar plays through a lot of effects, and seems largely disconnected from the rest of the group.  The core of the music has the other three band members moving in somewhat tight synchronization.  Natsuhita Hetekata are never precise like Circle or Gore, but it's also not as loose or chaotic as Mainliner or the Crawlspace albums of that era.  The recording is lo-fi and murky, which makes it hard to discern the parts played by the psychedelic noise guitar.  The glued-on front cover design is a lot more dizzying and chaotic than the music contained here, but the photocopied quality matches the lo-fi documentation of the performance.

The Cakekitchen, Kangaroos in My Top Paddock (side A)

Graeme Jefferies worked with his brother Peter in the mid-80s to create four remarkable records in the mid-'80s.  They wobble clumsily into and out of traditional song form, with deadpan vocals and primitive recordings emphasizing the group's rough-hewn tendencies.  After Jefferies titled his 1987 solo album Messages from the Cakekitchen, he adopted the shortened Cakekitchen moniker.  These albums gradually emphasized more his melodic tendencies, with an increasingly driving rhythm section.  At some point, though, the Cakekitchen lost much of this drive and volume, and 2009's Kangaroos in My Top Paddock in some ways reverts to the personal qualities of Messages from the Cakekitchen.  Some songs are particularly austere, with focus on Jefferies's blunt vocals — even here, though, his songwriting has matured, and it's noticeable.  Other songs seem to almost call for a more ambitious production, even as it's missing, and these songs often have an odd bossa nova-like beat that reminds me a bit of Mañanas-era Kevin Ayers.  Even with this variety, I find Jefferies's songwriting much more at home in these intimate arrangements and recordings than when he tried to surround it with a full rock band, and this chapter in his work feels to me like a return to form.  The quirky cover photograph and album title feel a bit like a warped take on a rock album, which seems appropriate here.

Günter Christmann, ..off... (side A)

I had been aware of Günter Christmann as an improviser with strong albums on FMP and Po Torch.  Even his first solo album, 1976's Solomusiken für Posaune und Kontrabass finds him playing a series of idiomatic solos — its most unusual quality is his alternation between trombone and bass.  I was thus surprised and amazed to hear 1978's ..off...  While it includes improvisations on both instruments, which are recorded conventionally, these tracks alternate with a series of far odder experiments.  The second track, "armade", is described in the liner notes as "composition for breathquartet and bottle with compressed air", and the breathing is all recorded very closely with added compression.  "po-sau-ne", with its layered renditions of the German word for trombone, reminds me of the sound-text pieces of Nono and Gaburo, more than anything from an improvised tradition — the liner notes here do specify that it's an improvisation.  Crackle box, transistor radio, close-mic'ed and layered mandolin scrapings, typewriter, and tape modulation all show up too.  The result is a crazy and chaotic record that bridges many traditions and does not neatly align with anything else I've heard from Christmann.  The remarkable cover photo, with a shattered image of Christmann alongisde his instruments, gives some hint of the contents, but it's far subtler than the wildly varying contents of ..off...

Basement 5, In Dub (12" EP)

The Basement 5's sole album, 1965-1980, is a fairly idiomatic and very strong post-punk record.  Its most recognizable trait might be vocalist Dennis Morris, who was better known as a photographer and graphic designer — his racial identity is perceptible in his vocal style, in a genre when most singers were white.  1980's In Dub drops Morris's vocals completely, for a set of remixes of songs from 1965-1980, in a style loosely influenced by Jamaican dub.  The remixes here employ heavy use of effects like delay to create a dense, standalone instrumental.  Where traditional dub plates had overwhelming low-end, the bass here is more controlled, with a more conventional rock frequency balance.  The remixes are interesting and engaging, if a lot more polished than might be expected from the dub reference.  The bassline does hold the melodic center of each track, with a lot less processing than on the surrounding instruments.  The bright colored and iconic packaging leaps out nicely, but it does not closely match the smeary and messy remixes inside.

Wire, Turns and Strokes (side C)

In 1996, Wire collected live and demo recordings from the period between 154 and their original break-up, to assemble the archival collection Turns and Strokes.  The earliest concert document was in July, 1979, and the last demo session was in spring, 1980.  Turns and Strokes is equally split between two sides of melodic songs and two sides of more abstract, extended pieces.  Of the songs, only "12XU" was previously released, though its extended instrumental section stretches nearly as long as the entire original recording.  The comparison also brings Lewis's evolving bass sound to the foreground — he's taken on a full and aggressive sound not unlike early Killing Joke.  Several songs initially performed here as a group would turn up, in wildly rewritten versions, on Newman's early solo recordings: "Lorries", "Remove for Improvement", and "Inventory".  It's easy to see Wire's breakup as tied to the two aspects documented here — Newman's first solo album A-Z collects melodic songs, while Gilbert and Lewis created abstract work on Dome 1.  The personalities, though, are somewhat more complex in retrospect, as Newman quickly took a less song-oriented turn with Provisionally Entitled the Singing Fish.  Both the Dome albums and Singing Fish feel more developed and refined than the sketches captured here — these sketches did not fully indicate how much these abstract ideas would grow and mature.  The restoration of the lo-fi live recordings was obviously done with care, but the mastering job, with particularly spiky hi-hats, feels less impressive.  Turns and Strokes tastefully reuses the "Crazy About Love" packaging, as the two tracks on side D originally appeared on that EP.

The Eternals, Heavy International (side C)

I always find double albums tricky to navigate, as an artist's vision can spread in too many directions and become unclear, or can grow repetitive.  At an hour in duration, 2007's Heavy International is short for a double album, which might help to retain its consistency.  The consistency here is in the palette of dubby bass and cheap-sounding keyboards, and the careful mixes successfully glue these disparate elements together.  There's a nice balance of songs with overt vocal melodies and pop song structures, against more abstract forms which are still well-developed to retain attention.  Most songs feature excellent drumming from Tim Mulvenna, who was touring with the duo at the time, but his drums move seamlessly between the foreground (like on the propulsive opener "The Mix is So Bizarre") and the background (on the Ralph Records-like "It's Later Than You Think").  Damon Locks's vocals manage to vary widely in style without creating tension between tracks, possibly because the variation often happens within the same song.  "Crime", which features some of the album's most overt melodies in Locks's high tenor, juxtaposes this delivery with more rhythmic and chant-like sections.  Locks's cover collage captures the album's contrasts perfectly, with energy, beauty, darkness, and a bit of grit.

John Prine, Sweet Revenge (side A)

While he's made albums for 40 years, John Prine will always be most associated with his self-titled debut from 1971, which contains many of his best known songs.  1973's Sweet Revenge, his third album, was a relatively modest departure.  The focus here remains Prine's darkly funny and personal lyrics, delivered in his distinctive deadpan persona.  The song titles reveal the humor ("Often is a Word I Seldom Use") and sometimes its darkness too ("Please Don't Bury Me"), and the liner notes have printed lyrics to follow along.  While Arif Mardin's smeary production values were prominent on the debut, Sweet Revenge has a bright and airy sound, apart from the solo live recording of "Dear Abby", which is acoustically incongruous.  Prine's songs follow relatively conventional song structures, which helps to draw the listener's attention to the lyrics, and the excellent musicianship borrows from country without growing idiomatic.  The funny cover photo captures Prine's rich personality — he's slouching in a convertible, wearing lots of denim, and smoking a cigarette.

Die Bilder, Schwimmen in der See (12" EP)

The diversity of Bill Direen's work feels immediately confusing, even when a record's packaging does not add to the confusion.  Schwimmen in der See appears to be in German, complete with a German-language lyric sheet insert.  The lyrics are in fact all in English, sung with Direen's pronounced New Zealand accent.  By 1982, his group Vacuum, with notable collaborators Stephen Cogle and Peter Stapleton, had split — Vacuum's Allen Meek plays organ here, and Malcolm Grant, later of the Bats, is the drummer.  There's a bit of everything across four songs here, from lilting, sentimental vocal melodies reminiscent of Jacques Brel to flat deadpan vocals over driving rock beats, sometimes all in the same song.  Sometime the very lo-fi mixes are buried in reverb and delay, while other parts are incredibly dry.  And while the songs mostly follow conventional structures, things completely fall apart at times too, with roaring guitar solos or even total abstraction.

Sad Horse, Purple on Purple Makes Purple (12" EP)

After various singles, cassettes, and a CD-R, 2012's Purple on Purple Makes Purple is a sort of debut LP for the Portland duo Sad Horse.  Its 14 songs would fill more than an LP in duration if they reached conventional song form, but only two tracks exceed two minutes.  The closest reference at times is Mudhoney's thick merging of classic rock forms with punk dirtiness, but without the machismo and angst.  The recording also harks back 20+ years — its simplicity is tasteful and competent, not at all slick, but also not purposely lo-fi.  The guitar / drum duo configuration, with boy–girl vocals and purposeful awkwardness loosely recall Kicking Giant, but Sad Horse are louder and less twee.  They even cover Andrew Hill's "Grass Roots" and hint loosely at Sun Ra's Night of the Purple Moon with the design.

Dr. John, Babylon (side A)

Dr. John is usually associated with his overwhelming debut Gris-Gris, or the more commercial turn he took beginning with 1972's Gumbo.  In between, he released two transitional albums that are less well remembered — Babylon is the first of the two.  Babylon quickly followed Gris-Gris, with both obvious similarities and radical differences.  The big similarity between the two albums is their use of simple, repetitive structures.  There are still few references here to pop song structures, verses, or choruses — instead, parts repeat to create slow builds.  The palette, however, is a big departure, with a lighter and treblier set of sounds.  Acoustic instruments create a more spacious atmosphere, and what sounds like a harp even pokes through in places.  The female backing vocals are also used to open space, and Dr. John's vocals have been largely stripped of their darkness.  The lyrics have an interesting poetic element, including the surprisingly pointed "The Patriotic Flag-Waver".  The front cover captures the feel perfectly, with a spacious, psychedelic design full of white and bright colors.

The Fall, Perverted by Language (side A)

It's always hard to describe canonical albums like 1983's Perverted by Language, as so much has already been written about them.  Perverted by Language dates from an odd, interesting point in the Fall's evolution.  The first album with Brix, it hesitantly, and seemingly begrudgingly, begins the group's gradual evolution to a more structured and professional sound.  While songs like "Eat Y'self Fitter" and "Garden" use melodies and purposeful repetition, more than on most early Fall tracks, to draw a listener in, there's still plenty of chaos spread throughout.  Even Brix' vocals, which gradually grew into a more mellifluous element, here sound nearly as strident as Mark E. Smith's.  The studio recording quality remains raw and primitive, with a gritty use of a direct bass sound, and drums that sound a bit distant in the room.  It is surprising how much space is left in a group with a double-rhythm-section — I find it unclear whether everyone plays all of the time.  The front cover, on which a painting is surrounded by a border with text, employs a simpler layout than the cut-up chaos of preceding albums like Hex Enduction Hour and Grotesque.

Grachan Moncur III, New Africa (side A)

As American experimental jazz musicians landed in Europe in the late-60s, their music often grew brash and abstract.  Grachan Moncur III's late-60s albums went in a different direction, as they feel friendlier than his mid-60s US releases.  Where Evolution and Some Other Stuff were often slow and abstract, New Africa's free-spirited energy is more engaging approachable.  Archie Shepp and Roscoe Mitchell avoid abrasive palettes on their saxophones, and Andrew Cyrille's drumming remains fluid and propulsive.  Like Moncur's earlier compositions, the four pieces on 1969's New Africa avoid the head-body structure of jazz standards for a more section based approach that usually begins with Dave Burrell's piano establishing a harmonic content and tempo.  While most pieces involve the players exploring this basic feel, the opening track "New Africa" explores four distinct movements, with changes in tempo and key through the piece.  New Africa never grows as friendly as Moncur's following album, 1970's Aco Dei de Madrugada, with its Brazilian tunes and sidemen. My modern reissue sounds better than the late-60s pressing — the recording quality is simple but competent.  The front photo of Moncur captures his bright outfit, and the remarkable close-up of his face on the back cover captures the energy and vibrancy that he brought this album.

Max Roach featuring Anthony Braxton, Birth and Rebirth (side A)

Max Roach contributed his amazing drumming to albums from seemingly every major jazz figure in the 1950s.  While he continued to record as a leader, his sideman work, and likely his profile, diminished through the 1960s and '70s.  1979's Birth and Rebirth is the first of several prominent collaborations with major avant-garde figures that helped tie Roach's prestige to a younger generation — another collaboration with Braxton, and one with Cecil Taylor, followed soon thereafter.  Birth and Rebirth focuses on Roach, as Braxton seems to purposely maintain a secondary role.  At times, they lock in rhythmically, and at times Braxton's melodic voice comes to the fore.  But most of the time, the star here is clearly Roach.  The drumming borrows from his roots in bop, and it reflects amazing technical precision, but it also feels incredibly contemporary.  The seven pieces, which rely heavily if not entirely on improvisation, move in a linear fashion, without reference to head / body traditions.  Braxton draws emphasis to the jarring quality of Roach's precision, without losing the fluidity and groove that more traditionally rhythmic pieces had emphasized on his early recordings.  There's even some amazing pitch-bending on toms that would be more at home on an FMP release than on a recording by such an early influential legend.  The recording is unfortunately a bit too modern, with each drum placed precisely in a wide stereo field, and not enough picture of the kit as a whole played by one person.  The nondescript cover photo and design fail to illustrate the beautiful cross-generational experiment contained within.

Julius Hemphill, Blue Boyé (side C)

Julius Hemphill might be best-remembered for his work with the World Saxophone Quartet, or perhaps for his classic 1972 LP Dogon A.D.  On 1977's ambitious double-album Blue Boyé, Hemphill plays everything: saxophones, flute, and even a bit of clapping.  Some tracks feature a sole instrumental voice, but most rely on layered overdubs.  A sax melody might sit on a bed of flutes, or multiple saxophones might create contrapuntal interplay which must have been challenging to create using overdubs and not live interaction.  At times, Hemphill's saxophone borrows a bit from Coltrane's propulsive lines, and at others, he creates a harmonic field less referential of jazz traditions.  There are occasional forays into texture and extended technique, but they're used more for punctuation and emphasis than as core elements of the compositions.  Each side contains two long pieces, with each piece maintaining a consistent palette and approach.  Any overdubs that are used to create a piece are kept consistent — while they often drop out and return, they're neither replaced with different instruments nor piled on in layers.  Some instruments are surrounded by room reverb, while others are dry, but it can be hard to tell whether this variety was intentional or coincidental.  The compositions extend for long enough to emphasize their processes and create a lasting environment, to durations that seem to grow less interesting on purpose.  The line drawing and hand written fonts on the cover perfectly capture the music inside, with beauty, simplicity, and slightly chaotic abstraction.

Leroy Jenkins, Mixed Quintet (side A)

The breadth of Leroy Jenkins's violin playing was already obvious as early as Anthony Braxton's 1968 debut Three Compositions of New Jazz — Jenkins adds rapid runs to Braxton's spirited compositions and slower, airier lines to Leo Smith's piece "The Bell".  Jenkins's dexterity and skill grew ever more impressive in both areas, with both increasingly frenetic rhythmic moments and more lyrically complex and beautiful melodic lines growing evident on albums like 1977's Solo Concert.  On 1983's Mixed Quintet, Jenkins focused solely on the quietest, most introspective parts of his playing, and built a drummerless ensemble around them.  The title of the piece filling side A, "Shapes, Textures, Rhythms, Moods of Sound" nicely describes Jenkins's approach here — texture and mood are definitely central elements to his thinking, though I hear more melody and less rhythm than the title might indicate.  Lines (and some extended technique scrapes) from the clarinets, flute, and horn float past each other in space, frequently with some sense of key, but never emphasizing harmony.  The sidemen tend to play simpler lines, while Jenkins develops his more jagged tonal ideas alongside them — while he's not exactly assuming the role of front-man, and he's even panned all the way to the far side, he definitely contributes the richest and most developed lines to the field of sound.  While the piece filling side B is similar in style, it has a much less evocative title, "Quintet #3".  For a brief moment on side A, Jenkins speaks up — while it's nice as a personal touch to feel a bit of his personality, his speech adds little to the structure of the piece.  The recording is a bit bright and modern and sterile, relative to the rich personality of the piece.  The children's drawings bring personality to the cover, even as they don't easily reconcile with either Jenkins's methodical approach to the music or the careful photography and design that surround them.

Hüsker Dü, New Day Rising (side A)

While Hüsker Dü are widely admired for their impact on young rock fans, their albums can also attract negative attention.  While Spot's mixes of their classic albums translate impressively well across stereo systems, they sound a bit dated today.  On 1985's New Day Rising, the drums, in particular, sound a bit disembodied, without the fullness that's common and popular in contemporary mixes.  Offsetting the drum sounds are some really impressive guitar textures that fill the field with both thickness and energy — it can often be hard to tell how this massive roar was created or captured.  These big guitar sounds nicely complement Bob Mould's guitar playing, as its precision and energy is always preserved through the din.  The songwriting of Mould's songs fits nicely with this mix and arrangement approach, but Grant Hart's simpler pop songs sometimes feel oddly juxtaposed.  Hart's anthemic choruses want to stand out from the drone that's in the foreground here.  I was also surprised how much of the angst and energy is drawn from Mould's guitar — it makes sense to feature the guitar in the foreground, as these performances give Hüsker Dü their passionate impact.  While the cover design has little clear relationship with the music, its distinctive and iconic nature fits the band's personality well.

Kemialliset Ystävåt, Alkuhärkä (side A)

Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat, which consists of Jan Anderzén and a rotating cast of frequently unspecified collaborators, fits loosely into the folk-psych idiom that was prevalent in the early 2000's.  By the time of 2004's Alkuhärkä (reissued on vinyl in 2007), Anderzén had developed a recognizably mature style.  The collection of short tracks, often driven by looping pulses of primitive percussion, might owe a debt to Moondog's Prestige albums.  The palette of sounds, which engulfs traditional acoustic instruments in radically synthetic environs, each for the duration of a distinct, short sketch, seems like a descendent of the Tower Recordings' most abstract explorations on Furniture Music for Evening Shuttles.  Where both of these referents are obstinately lo-fi (the Moondog out of necessity, and Tower Recordings more intentionally), Kemialliset Ystävät do not immerse themselves in this lo-fi approach.  While sounds are often unrecognizable, with their source obfuscated as the song's arrangement is built, this result is rarely accomplished by murkiness and blurriness — many sounds seem clear, even as it's hard to identify their origin.  The individual tracks rarely evolve through a compositional arc, but Aderzén exploits their short duration to immediately jump to a different set of sounds and ideas for the next sketch.  Alkuhärä comes beautifully packaged, with a bright image on a semi-gloss cover, but the repeating patterns on the printed inner sleeve more closely tie to the consistent use of repetition in the music's structure.

X, Los Angeles (side A)

For an obviously canonical album, Los Angeles has a lot of unusual qualities and quirks.  Albums often ease their way in, but Los Angeles starts with one of its most aggressive tunes — while there's a bit of a let-down, the sequencing still manages to be a strength.  John Doe is one of the group's focal members as the male voice, but his bass gets mostly lost in the mix.  The lowest frequencies are filled by the kick drum, and his bass ends up fighting with the lower guitar frequencies.  It's hard to tell if this was on purpose because of weak playing, as the bass is just too hard to hear.  The guitar playing and drumming are both really consistent for what seems like an inexperienced band — they keep up their intensity and hold together nicely.  Exene's lead vocals are consistently special, and Ray Manzarek's occasional organ solos show a perfectly jagged and jarring side of his playing beyond anything I can recall on a Doors album.  The recording and mix are pretty lo-fi and hollow and unimpressive, but it accentuates the energy of the band as much as it gets in the way.  The grainy, powerful, and iconic cover photo emphasizes and draws attention to the band's impressive energy.

Wyatt / Atzmon / Stephen, For the Ghosts Within' (side C)

2010's For the Ghosts Within' is an unusual Robert Wyatt album, even within his already-diverse catalog.  Since his early membership in groups like Soft Machine, Wyatt has always taken credit as leader on his albums, where here it's shared with two other musicians, and their input is quite obvious.  In part because of Ros Stephen's arrangements of his Sigamos String Quartet, this might be Wyatt's most consistently pretty album, with less grit than he usually prefers.  And while Wyatt plays bits of percussion and trumpet, he mostly contributes vocals here, and on one song does not perform at all.  There are few Wyatt compositions here, but unlike the diverse content of Nothing Can Stop Us, For Ghosts Within' focuses largely on jazz standards.  Two tunes familiar to Wyatt's fans turn up again, a radically reworked version of his own "Dondestan", now titled "Where Are They Now?", and another surprising reworking of Chic's "At Last I am Free".  The third primary collaborator here is Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli-born clarinetist of Jewish descent, known for his outspoken critiques of Israel.  His playing on Wyatt's pro-Palestine "Dondestan" is a natural fit, though the rap-like vocals that also appear on "Where are They Now?" feel like a less natural fit.  Juxtaposing this track with standars like "What a Wonderful World" and "In a Sentimental Mood" certainly fits Wyatt's fondness for juxtaposing aesthetically jarring choices, and the album manages to hold the content together nicely.  The production style is generally very modern, with compression used to bring the acoustic instruments perceptibly forward, though occasional, stylized hints to more classic sounds peek through.  The three-sided double album is packaged in two layers of impressively thick, matte paper.

Pete Swanson & Rene Hl., Waiting for the Ladies split LP (side A)

Pete Swanson and Rene Hell released this split LP, with each artist filling a side, in 2010, though I have a later pressing from 2012 — from what I can tell they preserved the original packaging design of Waiting for the Ladies.  2010 marks a transitional point for Swanson, who fills side A with one continuous piece.  Yellow Swans had ended in 2008, but his more overtly dance-oriented style had not taken hold.  His piece "Self Help" begins with a noisy and dense section including buried vocals that would fit on a Yellow Swans album.  The piece takes a sharp turn somewhere before its mid-point, and becomes a lot sparser.  The modular analog synthesizer origins of the sounds grow more obvious, as the piece now uses a less dense and less distorted palette.  At times, the sounds have propulsive and rhythmic qualities that hint at the direction Swanson would explore.  Rene Hell's work on side B is split between three tracks that all utilize a similar concept and palette.  There's no clear evolution within or between the pieces.  The analog oscillator tones here are almost pretty, though a rough signal path along the way introduces a tiny bit of harshness.  There are also often sputtering clicking rhythms that move against the tones, creating an odd electronic polyrhyhtm.  The smeary cover image is printed on nice reverse-stock paper, with some digital design elements that don't neatly mesh with the retro-analog content of the music.

Indignant Senility, Consecration of the Whipstain (side C)

Indignant Senility is Portland solo artist Pat Maherr, who also makes hip-hop under the excellent name DJ Yo-Yo Dieting.  2011's Consecration of the Whipstain, his second release under the Indignant Senility moniker, follows the album Plays Wagner, which apparently employs samples of the composer's work.  There's an obvious antecedent in ambient music, as Wolfgang Voigt's GAS project also appropriates excerpts from Wagner.  Where GAS places beats underneath ambient drones, Consecration of the Whipstain consists only of ambient drones.  While most ambient albums today feature loud mastering and an extreme frequency response with de-emphasized midrange, these drones emanate quietly from the speakers, and consist largely of midrange frequencies with an especially absent treble range.  The double-album consists of four side-long tracks.  Modest differences in palette identify each track, and there's no other obvious track structure.  The sounds float by organically until they end, with volume, density, and frequency distribution generally remaining consistent.  Maherr's palette here is beautiful, lush, and engaging, and its beauty is emphasized by the undisciplined structural content.  The abstract cover image, with slight variations in a tan monochrome field, fits the music perfectly, and printing it on reverse-stock paper flatters the image.

Wire, Pink Flag (side A)

In some ways, 1977's Pink Flag feels merely ahead of its time.  Everything from the thin guitar sound to the blunt and ideological lyrics, which felt explosive on its release, is heard constantly on new releases today.  The song structures stretched the boundaries of punk and rock conventions, but current songs that are considered accessible pull in much odder directions.  Even the jarringly short gaps between tracks no longer feel surprising.  While Pink Flag lacks the sheer innovation of the two Wire albums that followed it, the songwriting still surpasses the countless albums that have arisen in its wake.  The balance between standard rock structures and unusual twists always feels perfect — Wire had clearly internalized everything that made the traditional structures work, to an extent that's rare today.  While the jarring lyrics no longer surprise, the content is balanced with an impressive attention to poetic detail.  The simple, iconic image on the album's front cover will also always look modern (though the back cover feels a bit dated).  The slightly-muddy guitar sound might be the only musical element that dates Pink Flag, as there's an obvious frequency hole between the top of the guitar and the cymbals — I doubt that this is an anomaly of my New Zealand pressing.

Blank Realm, Deja What? (side A)

My enjoyment in seeing Blank Realm perform live in 2013 inspired me to buy both albums available at their concert.  I listened first to Go Easy, their then-most-recent album, which was apparently close in content to the live performance that I'd seen, and it left me a bit cold.  I then went back to 2010's Deja What?, and immediately had an enthusiastic reaction that exceeded even the concert.  Deja What? seems to predate their existence as a live band — there are mostly guitars, keyboards, and two voices.  Cymbals occasionally seem to have been played live, but most tracks are built over loops or drum machines, with an approach to construction that loosely references the Tall Dwarfs, including its purposeful approach to lo-fi recording.  The guitars are often heavily processed, using classic effects that reference the 60s and 70s.  Where groups like Luxurious Bags borrowed from this palette to create dark atmospheres, Deja What? uses a similar palette to emphasize Blank Realm's youthful exuberance.  The approach to vocal melodies loosely references rock traditions, but the song structures never rely on simple verse / chorus arrangements.  An analogy might compare Deja What? to Perfect Sound Forever, and Go Easy to Crooked Rain Crooked Rain — the Pavement influence is small but clearly perceptible, though Blank Realm seem to have skipped Slanted in their chronology.  The calligraphy font on the cover resembles a heavy metal album, but the simple collage behind it more closely fits the band's approach.

The Door and the Window, Detailed Twang (side A)

On 1980's Detailed Twang, The Door and the Window display an obvious passion for their work and a real love of music, to an extent that seems almost overwhelming in retrospect.  Their lyrics, both on original songs and their stripped-down cover of Television Personalities' "Part Time Punks", reflect their expectations that artists and fans make a strong commitment to their music and values.  Unlike overtly political bands like Crass, these songs focus entirely on their own artistic community — the intention seems to be community-building and reinforcement, rather than a didactic assault, but it's nonetheless a fairly extreme approach.  The music itself relies heavily on austere primitivism, but well-crafted songs and surprisingly competent performances manage to shine through, in part thanks to a recording style that successfully balances clarity with simplicity.  The Door and the Window exploit a broad range of sonic elements, ranging from the abrasive Wasp synthesizer that was already associated with Whitehouse, to toy pianos and saxophones, with bits of electric guitars and rock drums thrown in too.  The song structures utilize verses and choruses, and they generally fall well within the rock idiom.  Mark Perry from Sniffin' Glue and Alternative TV, who shares much of the group's aesthetic vision, helps out on drums, saxophone, and more.  The cover collage, with appropriated text about music alongside staff notation, fits the album's concept perfectly, as does the hand-lettered declaration "Do Not Pay More Than £3.00" in the lower-left corner.

Joan of Arc, Joan of Arc (side A)

After countless albums spanning 15+ years, Joan of Arc chose a the band's name as the title of this 2012 LP.  The band has zig-zagged in the last few years between albums of songs and more abstract explorations, and Joan of Arc includes one side of each.  Its biggest differentiation within their catalog might be the absence of amplification.  The first side includes six solo songs of Tim Kinsella's vocal and acoustic guitar.  It's bright and airy, but not at all harsh or modern sounding.  As is common in Kinsella's writing, the songs fall somewhere between traditional pop structures and more abstract exploration.  Most songs feature more chords and an emphasis on the acoustic nature of the songwriting — the exception is "Peace Corpse", with angular guitar lines that would not be out of place on the group's electric records.  Side B is filled with a long instrumental called "Chaplinesque", on which layers of acoustic guitars spread across the stereo field, with a simple drum part underpinning them.  It loosely resembles some of Rhys Chatham's work, recast with acoustic instruments and less propulsion.  It's recorded nicely, with less character but more fidelity, than the side of songs.  The excellent cover painting depicts Charlie Chaplin and the elephant man, without any other design elements, on reverse-stock white paper — its only connection to the music is the "Chaplinesque" title of side B.

Sandy Bull, E Pluribus Unum (side A)

The first two Sandy Bull albums from 1963 and 1964, are both fairly diverse in content.  While some material on them is original, covers and interpretations range from Bach and Orff to Chuck Berry and Luiz Bonfa.  Billy Higgins drums on some tracks on both albums, and each album includes a long track plus a series of short ones.  After a five-year hiatus, he returned in 1969 with the more personal and daring E Pluribus Unum.  Each side of the album is a single composition, and Bull plays all of the instruments including any percussion.  The tracks themselves have limited compositional arrangement, emphasizing drone and variation as their underlying structural premises.  Their palettes are both narrow and diverse— within guitars and oud, Bull juxtaposes acoustic and electric instruments, and tremolo provides a defining effect for many of the electric sounds.  Bull's minimal percussion complements his guitar and oud playing to help provide movement, but it's never a foreground element — the tambourine sizzle provides nice brightness to an otherwise slightly-murky mix.  The cover photo of Bull appearing to record his oud playing hints at far less creative and distinctive contents than the open-ended explorations of E Pluribus Unum.

Lou Reed, Transformer (side A)

When mixing a rock album, it's common to focus on the lead vocal and the snare as central elements.  For much 1972's Transformer, Lou Reed's vocal and the drum kit are often murky and buried in the mix.  While the radio hit "Walk on the Wild Side" is a notable exception with a more conventional mix, most of the album focuses on guitar, piano, and strings.  It's a pretty daring sonic footprint for an album now perceived as canonical and timeless.  "Vicious' kicks off in a defining fashion — the vocals sound dark and murky, and they're the quietest element in the mix, with the blown-out guitars in front.  The clicky metal percussion in the right speaker is far louder than the drum kit.  The sequence of the album is full of startling juxtapositions.  Louder songs with heavy guitars nearly alternate with soft piano songs, preventing any obvious congruity or flow.  The most obvious example ends the album, with "I'm So Free" between the oddest songs on the album, "New York Telephone Conversation" and "Goodnight Ladies".  The recognizable cover image does emphasize the iconic nature of the album.  Its obvious references to classic album covers help to draw attention to the classic songwriting on the album, which shines through Transformer's many quirks.

Ted Curson, The New Thing and the Blue Thing (side A)

1965's The New Thing and the Blue Thing is a bit overtly pretty for my taste.  There's very little grit — the compositions and performances are full of consonance and beauty.  Because the execution is so impressive, it's a pretty amazing listen when I'm seeking out simple and pretty.  The engineering was the first thing that caught my ear, with the trumpet's lack of harshness and the piano's rich high-end standing out.  The arrangements are great too, with surprising unison sections reminiscent of Fire Music-era Shepp.  The head of "Ted's Tempo" is split between two instruments, and the excellent musicianship feels like one continuous line.  The perfect attention to detail on the glossy cover image reflects the care in making this record — the fonts and colors are great, and Curson's outfit is styled perfectly in the large portrait.