'Theory' cover art by Norman Catherine

Carlo Mombelli is a bit of an odd one out in the context of the South African music scene. I can imagine three quarters of my friends going “sorry, who?” if I mention his name, the other one will extol his virtues far and wide. The portly man with the distinctive bass tone, equal parts gloop and grunt, will never really run the risk of being considered trendy, so his music remains for those who still have the capacity for childlike awe. I’ve only ever seen him with all the Prisoners of Strange live once (then featuring the magnificent Lloyd Martin on drums), and that gig still remains one of the most memorable I’ve experienced: a masterclass in how music can be both cerebral and sensuous, both intricate and fun at the same time.  Justin Badenhorst has since filled in the drummer’s spot, to complete the group with Marcus Wyatt (trumpet) and Siyavuya Makuzeni (vocals, trombone).

Mombelli’s latest album on his own Instinct Africaine imprint, Theory, can more or less be summed up as a textural wonderland – the whole thing is recorded and mixed by Joe Arthur with gorgeous attention to detail, and Carlo really distinguishes himself as something of a timbral alchemist here. While his last album, I Stared Into My Head, was an ambitious chamber-jazz project recorded with a string quartet, Theory limits itself to the core group and does an excellent job of highlighting the individual Prisoners’ remarkable musicianship and talent for oblique improvisation.

The opening track Theory coasts along on a bass riff that I actually know off by heart by now, having heard it live a few times; an arpeggiated diminished chord that rolls along languidly and digresses into droning interludes, eventually resolving into furious stabs of bass, trumpet and voice –  a combination of tones that makes Korn sound like Belle&Sebastian, so visceral is the impact of that  climax. The only thing about the track that I don’t like is purely subjective: I just can’t stand movie dialogue samples in music, and this one is liberally peppered with snippets from the 1980 sci-fi film ‘Saturn 3’.

The sparser second track, I Close My Eyes, foregrounds Makuzeni’s gorgeous vocals – close-miked and heart-rendingly intimate, it’s like listening to a lover confide in you. As the track progresses, Makuzeni’s glottal tics and a ring-modulator-y effect create a very palpable sense of unease over the funereally paced drums and trumpet.

Jo-burg-downpipe-gutter-bows introduces Mombelli’s other quirk; his propensity for percussion instruments, homemade out of springs, pipes and and sundry bits and bobs. There’s a lovely jerrybuilt quality to the way track trundles along on the percussive-yet-tonal sound of the ‘gutter-bows’, quite reminiscent of Madosini’s umrhubhe-playing.

The Hurricane of Silence is some sort of avant-garde cop-show-funk over a loop of bass harmonics. For me, there’s always been something about the way two brass instruments played in unison turn harmony into pure vibration that fondles my little ear-clitoris just the right way. The Prisoners’ take this to next level here, with Wyatt’s trumpet and Makuzeni’s trombone playing otherwordly harmonies with an astonishing sense of tension and release.

At this point I’ve only described the album as an acoustic entity, and hardly even touched on the extent to which sounds are toyed with using effects, or the more abstract sound collages on the album. Theory, and Mombelli’s music in general, displays a remarkable capacity for reconciling seemingly binary opposites; the sublime and the ridiculous, the intellectual and the visceral, the premeditated and the spontaneous. Most importantly, when it’s poignant, it’s heartbreaking, and when it lightens up, it’s as fun as all hell.

Get your grubby paws on this fine album by emailing Carlo at cmombelli@mweb.co.za, tell him who sent you!

Ahleuchatistas – Of The Body Prone
Tzadik, 2009

I first heard of Ahleuchatistas when Ella Buckley wrote me that she had seen them in New York and that i would flip my lid when i heard them. Having finally heard their 2009 album ‘Of the Body Prone’, i say, fair enough! Ahleuchatistas’ music is, for the most part, like a cat-and-mouse chase between the guitar, bass and drums; with brisk yet disjointed time signatures, the songs move in fits and starts and are punctuated by erratic bursts of noise. There’s something simultaneously wonky and menacing about this music, a bit like a hastily patched up scarecrow that nevertheless looks all the more creepy for it.
The album is characterised by Shane Perlowan’s spidery guitar sound, but the drummer is also a big part of it’s appeal for me:  ‘Total Nightmare in a Deep Dive’ pairs a placid spaghetti western riff with a deep bass rumble and the the kind of free noise drumming that i’ve got a permanent hardon for.

Ahleuchatistas – Owls

Ahleuchatistas – Total Nightmare in a Deep Dive

Sajjanu – Pechiku
Tzadik, 2009

Sajjanu are a three piece from Japan, whose deity seems to have decreed ‘Thou shalt not repeat a riff, and if thou must, thou shalt somehow destroy it”. This incredibly perverse music can be daunting to listen to, as it is certainly as close to musical ADD as you can get. Even scarier is how tightly composed these never-repeating pieces are, i don’t know where they get the mental capacity to remember all that! But amazingly, each of the couple hundred riffs that get fired off at you within the space of a track is a gem.  Sajjanu are also more than willing to indulge in some of the more masturbatory aspects of rock’s speckled history and go EPIC on your ass, but it’s all in the name of  being as schizophrenic as possible. These guys are clearly uber-virtuosos, but an overarching sense of humour is the driving force behind this album. Not recommended if you need a groove to hold onto.

Sajjanu – Mechanical Tampopong

Bonus Rave:

Mi Ami – Steal Your Face
Thrill Jockey, 2010

I just thought i’d tack a mention of this album at the end of this post because if you haven’t heard it you are missing out. There seems to be a collective creaming of selves on review sites and even among my friends about this, and with very good reason: Mi Ami’s ‘Steal Your Face’ is one of the most satisfying, off the wall rock albums i’ve heard in ages – if i’m going to find a comparison, think Gang Gang Dance put into a blender along with Ex Models. The second track, ‘Latin Lover’, sounds suspiciously like   The Rapture’s ‘House of Jealous Lovers’ for a while, with yelped vocals and serrated guitar riding atop a disco beat, but only until the guitar part collapses in on itself and idiot-savant analog synth noise swallows the whole thing whole, while ‘Dreamers’ manages to out-Can Can themselves. Do check it out.

Andre van Rensburg – Unfinished Cities

(South of the Border, 2008)

“When he was 6 years old, André van Rensburg strung a guitar string to a plank of wood, attached the other end to his bedroom window bars and yanked the string until it broke. His musical vision has changed little since…”. He has, however, cast a huge shadow in the history of South African leftfield music: his previous projects include the legendary rock trio Supernature (friends of mine from a gig-going generation before me go glassy-eyed when their name is brought up), Ohm (with Brendan Jury), a stint in Battery 9, and the alt-country project Die Menere (with Battery 9 mastermind and One F label boss Paul Riekert). Van Rensburg has since relocated to Taiwan, where he has been pursuing his interest in Eastern melodicism, Derek Bailey’s brittle tone as well as John Zorn’s compositional strategies.

‘Unfinished Cities’ is the second album to contain van Rensburg’s solo compositions, but it features contributions from, among others, violinist Brendan Jury and japanese Koto player Chieko Mori, who mainly provide thin, dissonant backdrops to van Rensburg’s plucky acoustic performances. The opening track ‘Unfinished Cities pt1″ is probably the most seductively melodic piece here, a beautifully winsome composition that nevertheless sets textural tone for the more challenging material that follows.

‘Unfinished Cities’ can be purchased from CDBaby here, and is available in South Africa from One F Music (drop Clair a mail via ‘General Enquiries’).

Andre van Rensburg’s official website is here.

Nels Cline – Coward

(Cryptogramophone, 2009)

Nels Cline is unfortunately best known for being the guitarist of Wilco: a band i’ve just always found too bland to bother with. Yet Cline has a slew of other, less commercially successful projects, in which he explores many other facets of the guitar; such as The Nels Cline Singers.I also remember hearing a track of him playing with saxophonist Paul Flaherty and (my favourite) drummer Chris Corsano, which was just about the most evil, unhinged wall of noise i’ve heard. From what i know, ‘Coward’ is his first solo album, which is quite odd given the length of his career so far but also understandable in the light of his propensity for collaboration.

One of the first things that strike you about ‘Coward’ is the sheer variety of approaches represented on the album: whether this is a good or bad thing depends on whether you are assessing it as a coherent listening experience or whether, like me, you take the breadth of scope to be an almost didactic indication of syntactic possibilities.

Another thing that hits you early on is the fact that Cline has his chops, in the traditional sense. Cline could, if he wanted to, be one of those guys in guitar shops showing off ridiculously complicated licks designed to intimidate prospective young guitarists. The fact that a cluster of later tracks are titled ‘Onan Suite’ might be a wry allusion to this. The lovely acoustic track ‘Prayer Wheel’ centres around a looped motif but plays around it with some impressive, and very effective note runs. The very next track, ‘Thurston County’, however, after cycling through some spidery dissonant arpeggios and glutinous pitch-bent notes, settles into an unabashedly dumbed down two-chord chug that is incredibly ebullient and just so damn good. This is territory that most virtuoso guitarists won’t venture into, but thankfully Cline does. Throughout the rest of the album Cline puts his virtuosity at the service of his compositions, especially on the monumental acoustic piece ‘Rod Poole’s Gradual Ascent to Heaven’, on which sparse motifs evolve slowly into a dissonant frenzy.

Later on in the album, more electronic sound sources and electric guitars come the fore: ‘Onan Suite: Seedcaster’, with it’s lo-fi electronic farts and squawks, sounded so out of character that i thought i’d started listening to a Black Dice album – that alone should be ample testament to how good it is.’Onan Suite: The Liberator’ is another jaunty riff-fest over a straightforward 4/4 drum machine pattern, after which droning closer ‘Cymbidium’ bookends this remarkable album beautifully.

This album is mandatory listening for anyone with an interest in the guitar and its place in future of music.

Read Nels Cline’s notes on ‘Coward’ here.

Brydon Bolton of Benguela circa 2004

Last night, being the first of April of 2009, brought another instance of what a friend of mine jokingly dubbed the ‘Springbok Nude Girls syndrome’; ie the recent tendency of South African bands who had already split up, to play reunion gigs. As an aside, i suspect this is happening for the simple reason that perhaps audiences have become more receptive to what said bands have been doing in the past, and by reuniting now these bands can bask in a popular acceptance they might have been denied previously. For all the lamentations of stagnating creativity that such a phenomenon might bring, what this does demonstrate to me is that there are shifts happening the perceptions of South African audiences. Which is by all means a good thing.

Of course, the reunion gig of the amazing improvising trio Benguela is no mere rehashing of old material, so to call this an example of that syndrome would be short-sighted in the extreme. If anything, it was gratifying to see this group, who had the profoundest impact  on me personally when they were going about 5-6 years ago, perform again. After several years of musical development outside of the group, it was interesting to see whether Ross Campbell, Brydon Bolton and Alex Bozas would find their common ground on stage. The first track they played displayed a certain trepidation, which nevertheless translated as a beautifully atmospheric piece. It didn’t take long for the trio to reestablish the chemistry, however, and before long the band were dazzling in their intensity and inventiveness, particularly in a mindblowing piece in the middle of the set, which put any notion of Benguela being an ‘ambient’ band to rest.

I sincerely hope there are more of Benguela’s gigs to come; if the adage about The Velvet Underground, which said that ‘everyone who saw them started a band’ ever rang true about a South African outfit, it would be them. Well, in my experience at least.

Mp3′s from Benguela available here

Ex Models – Zoo Psychology

Ex-Models’ 2003 album ‘Zoo Psychology’ is an easy album to dislike: the guitars are razor thin and sound like anglegrinders, there’s not a riff in sight, and singer Shahin Motia’s emasculated yelp seems calculated to annoy the fuck out of anyone who doesn’t consider Adam Ant the second coming of Christ.

Yet, there’s something undeniably compelling about the singlemindedness with which they strip songs down to their bare mechanical skeletons, and the way they nail the atonal scrawl of no-wave bands like Mars, DNA, and, particularly, James Chance and the Contortions, into taut, hyperactive math-rock rhythms.

The pervasive theme on the album is an almost desperate will-to-hedonism, born from an apocalyptic reading of post-structural confusion; i can only describe it  as the sound of someone who found out he has 5 hours to live and decides to spend those hours trying to fuck everything in sight. The unlikely pairing of sex and theory is exemplified in the track ‘Hott 4 Discourse’, while the ‘pretty pretty pink noise’ on the track of the same title, ‘will set you on fire’ – as is screeched in a way that implies a very agonizing form of ecstacy.

Zoo Psychology is best consumed in small doses, but the fact that it races through 14 tracks in less than 25 minutes takes care of that for you.

Stream tracks from Zoo Psychology here

Parts & Labor – Stay Afraid

Parts & Labor’s approach is altogether more anthemic: their songs are quite reminiscent of Mission of Burma,  with a subtly Celtic melodic sensibility to it. What’s not so subtle is the blanket of analog bleeps, groans and squeals that propel these already furious songs into the stratosphere. The album is a relentless jolt out of complacency, with the distressed electronics acting as a kind of shorthand for an information age gone haywire.

Stream Tracks from ‘Stay Afraid’ here

As far as these bands’ subsequent fates are concerned: Ex Models have shed members and careened further down the path of noisy abstraction with the Chrome Panthers album, whilst Parts & Labor have added members, and generally become altogether more docile, although the electronic noise is still present on their subsequent albums, and their 2008 album ‘Receivers‘ makes good on the band’s democratic stance by using noise samples submitted by fans.

Disjointed ramblings on other, more recent albums

Gang Gang Dance – Saint Dymphna initially felt like a letdown after the excellent ‘God’s Money‘ – but then, anything would. After repeated assessment on it’s own terms it became apparent that ‘Saint Dymphna’ is probably the boldest, densest, most literate album yet to adopt such a pop production ethic. The result is something like what the top 40 might sound like in a perfect world.
On the topic of former noiseniks who have cleaned up their act and generally inched closer to mainstream acceptance: i have found Animal Collective‘s two albums after Sung Tongs to be rather ignorable, in fact i don’t think i’ve even listened to either of them all the way through. The Panda Bear solo album ‘Person Pitch’, however, seemed to be mining a very interesting vein, and judging by the single ‘My Girls’, and general critical response, it looks like the new album ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion‘ may be not a return to form so much as an ideal synthesis of years of exploration. The track itself is highly addictive.
Why?‘s 2008 album Alopecia also caught me quite recently, despite having been out for a while, and though it teeters dangerously close to capital ‘I’ Indie at times, the savagely observational lyrics reminds me of Pavement in the best possible way: when Yoni Wolf sings about ‘both of our names and an ampersand embroidered proudly on a kitchen tow el”, the line encompasses both the naivete before and the disillusionment after the fact.
On the more abstract front, there’s Fennesz‘s The Black Sea, the first proper album in a long while from perhaps the most distinctive electronic musician around. The new album retains the sprawl of ‘Venice’, but the level of granular detail happening here is an awesome reminder of why this man is as vital as he is.
In a very similar vein, there will be a new Tim Hecker album out soon as well, called An Imaginary Country, if it’s anywhere near as good as the distorted bliss-out of ‘Harmony in Ultraviolet‘, then i’ll be the proverbial pig in shit.

Pretoria, to me at least, generally seems like something of a cultural wasteland, where derivative white man’s 12 bar blues seems to have a particular resonance. Yet, in these seemingly adverse conditions, a small, insular yet wonderfully self-sufficient and inexhaustibly creative group of individuals are creating music, mad collage art and video under the banner of ‘The KRNGY logo’. The label’s output covers a vast range of solo and collaborative projects such as Suicycle, The Vulva Underground, Unicorn Rizla and, um, Immaculate Afterbirth. The label’s ‘flagship’ act, or rather, most active and prominent exponent, is the band Sticky Antlers, consisting of  A. Computer,  Le Muerte, Damon and Amino, who have recently made available their first, self-titled full length, and, damn, it’s like a cattleprod to the nether regions.

I first got to know these amazing individuals through their band ‘If You Are What You  Eat Then I Can Be You By Tomorrow’, a more metal/industrial orientated project (i mean this in the Melvins sense, of course, not in the baggy pants/flawless goatee skate metal sense) which was characterised by a gleeful misanthopy and antagonism. As good as that was, it’s heartening to see that with Sticky Antlers, they are putting a new emphasis on giving it some swing – as if their outsider status is something empowering, something to rub into the nose of their stodgy surroundings rather than sulk about; the track ‘Blind Horse’ is practically disco. Let there be no illusions, there is still blistering noise, deranged screaming and a preoccupation with taboo throughout, but these now become ecstatic signifiers rather than agonized ones.

If you’re in Johannesburg area on the 13th, you can catch them live at the launch of the new Pavement Special CD (which you can see more about here), and i suggest you do, because you can tell, by the long list of obscure influences on their fan page, by the care they put into every aspect of their packaging, and of course by the raw intensity of their music, that they are, in fact, the real thing.

Blind Horse

Sticky Antlers on Facebook

Sticky Antlers on Myspace

It’s always fun to stumble across some strange process that comes about from the interplay of seemingly mundane things, especially things of the electronic variety that occasionally seem to intimate the existence of a very satanic, Ouija board-like dimension ingrained into every circuit board that by now permeates every aspect of our daily lives.

A few nights ago my computer at home was going apeshit, for no easily discernible reason, the cursor just shooting around the screen like some seriously hyperactive gnat. After much confusion as to what the cause could be, it finally transpired that my phone, which i’d put down to charge on top of my Wacom tablet, which was connected but not in use, was responsible for the computer’s convulsive behaviour.

So i did what any self respecting spiritual conduit would do, and opened a drawing program so that these electronic furies could express themselves. And, ummm, this is what they drew.

As automatic drawings, these (esp the one on the left) exhibit a lovely stochastic nature, a chaotic order that befits the legions of dark angels.

Unfortunately, after these two had been done, my phone had finished charging and the furies had returned to the catacombs of hell from whence they came.

A similar thing happened in 2006, when i was doing the no-input mixing desk experiments with modulating sinewaves that would become the ‘Absence of Origin’ body of work: i was gleefully improvising away when suddenly my amp started broadcasting this demonic transmission from the other side.

As honored as i am to have been spoken to by Beelzebub himself, i do find it very difficult to figure out what he was trying to tell me. The most intelligible thing i can decipher is “Have faith, don’t have faith, it’s all the same”.

Bleak! But still, nonsensical, and, worse, nothing at all to do with how to get fabulously wealthy and influential. Gee, thanks, satan. I want my soul back.

Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog – Party Intellectuals

(Pi Recordings, 2008)

Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog (“not a ‘project’; a real band”, their myspace proclaims) occupies a strange place between a sort of vapid insouciance and blistering intensity, but i think this tension is a large part of what makes it work. Any contrived notion of cynical detachment is constantly being usurped by an inadvertent joie de vivre, or moments of intense poignancy. Tracks like ‘Todo El Mundo  Es Kitsch’ live up to their name, but on ‘Pinch’, a by-numbers disco romp gets annihilated by one of the most coruscating guitar solos i’ve heard about two minutes in. ‘Digital Handshake’ rides atop a squarewave synth bassline, collapses into close to three minutes of twiddly noise before it plows back into the original groove with emphatic vigour. The title track is, oddly enough, pretty much guitar free for the first 5 or so minutes; instead a deranged synth groove and a zombie-like rallying cry of ‘PARTYPARTYPARTYPARTY’ makes it closer to a more demented Devo or Brainiac.

Interestingly, it is the more subdued tracks that actually hit harder; ‘When We Were Young And We Were Freaks’ skates on thin ice for a while, with a  token downcast riff and a stoned-sounding spoken-word drawl, but some incredible free drumming and noise guitar, and  an obstinate refusal to ever settle into any form of groove, makes it genuinely soul-crushing, and as unhinged as any of the heavier tracks.

‘Bateau’ has a somber grace to it as well, which is quite rudely punctuated by harsh metallic guitar tones towards the end. “ShShSh” adheres to a similar template, with a stunning guitar piece contending with field recordings that sound like some sort of phantom transmission.

I suppose that this inconsistency, and the apparent contradictions contained on an album like this, could be considered  a weakness, but it is precisely for this reason that i love this album.

When We Were young and We Were Freaks (extract)

Fred Frith – To Sail, To Sail

(Tzadik, 2008)

Fred Frith’s ‘To Sail, To Sail’ is a much more focused affair, dedicated to exploring the textural range of the acoustic guitar, and extending  that range through all manner of preparations. The economy of his means are truly staggering: bowed strings, constantly being tuned up and down, cause overtonal havoc on ‘Weather Gauge’, while the skitter of a crocodile clip against the strings in ‘First Light’ becomes a microrhythmic  centre for the piece. The astonishing ‘Dog Watch’ is grounded by a rhythmic scrape, which gets enveloped by drones (either from e-bowed strings or acoustic feedback, i can’t be too sure) which trace out mournful semi-melodies through downtuning, before the piece culminates in a relentless percussive attack. Elsewhere, a Fahey-ish minimalism, and the dulcimer-like attack of the prepared guitar makes for an album on which the ingenuity of its approach is matched only by it’s lyricism.

Fred Frith – First Light

Fred Frith – Dog Watch

I only ever saw Oslo Oscillator play live twice in Cape Town, but this magnificent self-titled EP, produced by Dirk Hugo, makes me wish i’d done so much more often. Oslo Oscillator is the brainchild of Norwegian guitarist Kaare Ericksen (AKA Jimi), who enlisted several local musicians into creating this swirling, swoony pop gem, which registers somewhere between My Bloody Valentine and Stereolab on some strange thing, not unlike a Richter scale, that i just made up. ‘CT Nomads’ features Cherilyn MacNeill of Harris Tweed on vocals, Ryan Johnson on vocals and bass, and Justinian (of Black India) on drums.

Oslo Oscillator – CT Nomads

You can hear more, and nag them to do more SA shows, on their Myspace page.

It has been my honour recently to be commisioned by Ntone Edjabe, editor of the Chimurenga literary magazine, to design five posters for a series of gigs that ran as part of the Pan African Space Station “30-day music intervention” he set up with Neo Muyanga.

Among the shows I got to see was a beautifully intimate solo show by Madala Kunene (he played in The Slave Church in Long Str, in complete darkness),a welcome Cape Town performance by the ever-brilliant Blk Jks at The Assembly, and a totally jaw-dropping show by Carlo Mombelli & The Prisoners of Strange at the Mowbray Town Hall.

I’ve seen Carlo Mombelli play solo before, at the first On The Edge of Wrong festival, but nothing could prepare me for the absolute brilliance of the full band’s set. The band, which consists of Marcus Wyatt (trumpet), Siyavuya Makuzeni (voice and trombone) and Lloyd Martin (drums), went from introspective soundscapes into full blown ecstatic free-jazz blowouts which had the crowd rocking in their seats and laughing with sheer joy, and for the first time i saw how such challenging music  can also be so much fun to experience live.

Carlo Mombelli & The Prisoners of Strange @ Mowbray Town Hall, 4 Oct 2008

At one point Carlo distributes a collection of cheap toys to his band, and they launch into ‘Animation’, a complex and ridiculously enjoyable call-and-response loop consisting of whistles, squeaks and wails from the toys.

The Prisoners of Strange played for at least two hours straight, but there was so much to absorb and so much sheer mirth coming from the music that i never once felt bored; only, at one point, a bit worried that my head might explode.

Cape Town certainly gets a raw deal by seeing this incredible band so rarely, but there’s talk of Carlo returning for next year’s ‘Edge of Wrong’, with his band in tow…

On the whole, the Pan African Space Station gigs were brilliantly curated, with an interesting agenda of contextualising artists from other African countries within the rest of the world, such as New York-based drummer Cindy Blackman’s quartet  and Paris-based Bibi Tanga’s Professeur Inlassable, but I get a sense of gleeful vindication from the fact that the most mindblowing shows came from three criminally underrated South African acts.