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As a reader pointed out in a comment on the first part of my look back at 2005, it’s a good year for historical material. So I’m going to focus on some of my fave reissues this time out, specifically the ones that whack you upside the head.
If you’re familiar with brilliant Dutch punks THE EX, the title of Singles. Period: The Vinyl Years 1980-1990 (Touch & Go) pretty much shows what you’re in for here. If you’re not, the band’s notes helpfully explain:
The singles we released were never intended to enter the ugly World of Pop and its pitiful hit parades. On the contrary, we considered them pamphlets, statements, political comments on current situations, with music that mattered, reflecting the times in which we were living. Hit singles for sure, but mainly with the aim to strike and to strike back.
The notes also include a detailed history of the group’s history from 1979 through 1990 and the context of the 11 singles contained here (minus, it appears, duplications of album material). No matter how specifically inspired by a particular point in time, these protest songs remain sadly relevant. But The Ex is nearly easy listening compared to some of my favorites.
The 2005 release guaranteed to rile up the café staff and customers every time I played it (never for long!) is the MELT-BANANA compilation 13 Hedgehogs (MxBx Singles 1994-1999) (A-Zap). The tracks are so concise that there are 56 of them on one CD, but each one manages to fit a powerful dose of brilliant noise into its short span. The average person finds it utterly, obnoxiously annoying; I find it spectacularly stimulating in the same way as DNA (the No Wave group, not the dance group that remixed SUZANNE VEGA’s “Tom’s Diner”).
Speaking of DNA, it’s mind-boggling that, aside from a brief and expensive appearance in Japan, the ground-breaking 1978 album No New York had been unavailable since Island Records’ Antilles division let the original LP go out of print (although some of the bands had their material included on recent compilations). In 2005 it finally reappeared, on CD of course, on a label called Lilith that’s apparently Russian yet easy to find in the U.S. BRIAN ENO produced the LP, getting four of the best No Wave bands in New York to record four songs each. Though from the same scene, the bands were very different from each other musically, but shared a stimulating abrasiveness: CONTORTIONS (JAMES CHANCE Aka JAMES WHITE) played punk-funk with acrid free-jazz sax; TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS set LYDIA LUNCH’s alienated, smart-ass words to dissonant, shattered rock; DNA (ARTO LINDSAY, IKUE MORI, ROBIN CRUTCHFIELD) condensed enigmatic songs into concentrated shards of sound; MARS made cacophony cohere, barely. All short-lived; all but DNA (which had released a single) getting their first exposure on record; all absolutely crucial even now.
The Portland, OR group JACKIE-O MOTHERF***ER, whose name defies radio airplay, also defies genre boundaries on this reissue of Fig. 5 (ATP), a 2000 album that was the band’s first CD after a bunch of vinyl-only small releases. Some tracks sound electronic, some are entirely acoustic (including an imaginative rethinking of “Amazing Grace”). The lengthy guitar-and-drums-powered instrumental “Your Cells Are in Motion” crescendos from spare beginnings to majestic heights, somewhat reminiscent of the more abstract moments of SONIC YOUTH (as is the similarly lengthy and instrumented “Michigan Avenue Social Club”). When HONEY OWENS adds her cool vocals to “Beautiful September,” the resemblance reappears. But other tracks are pure sound explorations without chord progressions or melody, sometimes not even a beat. And yet, this fluid band displays a folk influence at times; here, the old slave song “Go Down, Old Hannah” grows from a hootenanny sing-along to a free-jazz freakout with the addition of squealing, atonal saxes. Nothing is random, but anything can happen. The results are compelling for adventurous listeners, and more stimulating than their mellower new release.
LAST EXIT’s Köln (Atavistic) is another paint-scorcher seeing new life. This supergroup combined much-heralded veteran improvisers: jazz noise guitarist SONNY SHARROCK, hard-blowing German saxophonist PETER BRÖTZMANN; beyond-genre bass virtuoso BILL LASWELL, and RONALD SHANNON JACKSON, a technically and imaginatively awe-inspiring jazz drummer who hit the free-jazz trifecta by recording with ALBERT AYLER, ORNETTE COLEMAN, and CECIL TAYLOR. Reviving the spontaneous spirit of 1960s free jazz, they skipped rehearsals and performed with rarely matched intensity. Recorded in 1986 (in fact, the earliest released Last Exit music, predating the eponymous debut album by four days) and originally released on ITM in 1990, this is an imposing chunk of unapologetically squalling skronk.
