The Spanish Donkey - XYX (Northern Spy)

The Spanish Donkey are a prime example of everything that can be wrong with improvisational music. Basically, it’s a lot of self-indulgent racket that goes nowhere, drones on and on for way too long and leaves the listener completely underwhelmed, wondering, “What was the point of all that?”

Imagine a Miles Davis electric group, only the players are novices, not seasoned musicians, and Miles has done so much morphine he’s completely nodded out, leaving the band to try to carry on the performance by themselves. Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?

The truth is, John Coltrane could get extremely noisy, but his music always had direction. Sun Ra‘s Arkestra became a swirling chaos at times, but he was always there at the helm to reign it all in when the time came. Peter Brötzmann‘s early albums were a confrontational assault on the listener, but they were carefully constructed and arranged. The music on XYX is just aimless, emotionless beating on instruments and it’s about as interesting as a plastic fork.

Masturbation, at least, is enjoyable. This is just a drag.