Black Friday with King Crimson

I'm enjoying a lazy day-after-Thanksgiving off from work with the house almost to myself.  I've been on a bit of a King Crimson kick recently, and currently have Heavy ConstruKction from 2000 cranking out here from the computer.

Crimson is an interesting band, to say the least, and I enjoy music from all of their various eras.  Robert Fripp strikes me as someone who would be tremendously interesting to sit and chat with, scary smart and eccentric in a mad scientist sort of way.

My personal favorite Crimson release is 1974's "Red", which turned out to be the final release of the 70's era Crimson.  Dark, intense and heavy, it's a masterpiece of prog rock and probably deserves a post of its own one of the days when I find the time - maybe I'll order the latest re-master that includes the Steven Wilson 5.1 surround mix and then write something up.  The title track still stands as one of the greatest songs ever recorded, and has remained a concert staple for the band.  Also excellent releases from the early incarnation are their debut "Court of the Crimson King", "Larks' Tongues in Aspic", and "In the Wake of Poseidon".  "The Night Watch" captures the '73 band as a live unit exceptionally well.

After dissolving Crimson later in '74, Fripp declared that the band was finished, forever.  Fortunately that turned out to not be the case!

Seven years later the band rose from the ashes, retaining Bill Bruford on drums, and adding bass-virtuoso Tony Levin and Adrian Belew on guitar and vocals.  Originally intended to operate under the band name Discipline, Fripp instead chose to reclaim the mantle of King Crimson.  This quartet released three albums in the early to mid-80s, with 81's "Discipline" being the strongest in my opinion - for sure right up there in my "top 5" Crimson releases.  Belew brought a pop sensibility to the band that helped soften some of the hard edges, but certainly didn't do away with them ("Indiscipline", anyone?).  And "Thela Hun Gingeet" on "Discipline" is a masterpiece of weirdness, I absolutely love that track.

After the mid-80's the band took another hiatus, returning with '95's "Thrak" as a sextet (or as Fripp liked to refer to it, the "Double Trio").  The four member of the 80's band returned, adding Trey Gunn on bass and stick, and Pat Masteletto on drums.  "Thrak" is a heavy album for sure.  But my favorite recording of the double-trio is actually the "Live in Tokyo" video I purchased on VHS back in the day.  I dubbed the music onto CD, and that recording has received a ton of play on my part. Great recording quality and inspired performances, the only songs I really miss from other double trio recordings I've heard are "21st Century Schizoid Man" (which was not played often) and "Neurotica" (an inspired piece of insanity from "Beat").

2000 saw the departure of Levin and Bruford (Bill Bruford has since retired from gigging) and the release as a quartet of "ConstruKction of Light" in 2000 and "Power to Believe" in 2003 as studio releases.  I was pretty disappointed with ConstruKction, but Power is another excellent album that is a fascinating merger of metal and ambient genres.

Crimson resurfaced briefly in 2008 as a quintet.  Fripp, Belew and Mastelotto were joined by the returning Tony Levin and new drummer Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree).   This incarnation played about a dozen concerts in August 2008, but as of yet there has been no new material forthcoming - let's hope that changes in the near future.

Erik Truffaz

French trumpeter Erik Truffaz is another European artist that I first heard when a flurry of concert recordings surfaced on Dime a couple of years ago.  Mixing an ethereal trumpet sound with modern beats and world music rhythms, Truffaz creates soundscapes that are often mesmerizing.

Over the weekend I listened to "Mantis", released in 2002.  There's a nice variety of music on here, with the expected high levels of musicianship exhibited all around.  In addition to to Truffaz's understated trumpet playing, guitarist Manu Codjia makes a particularly strong impression with some very nice guitar work.

1. The Point  [5:35]
2. La Memoire Du Silence  [7:49]
3. Saisir  [6:33]
4. No Fear  [2:14]
5. Nina Valeria  [4:49]
6. Parlophone  [3:57]
7. Magrouni  [3:50]
8. Mantis  [7:46]
9. Yasmina  [4:10]
10. Mare Mosso  [2:43]
11. Tahun Bahu  [10:29]

iTunes Pushed Me Over the Edge

I've long used iTunes, not as a player so much as a transport to get music onto my iPod or iPhone.  It's *always* been a bloated program, and every release seems to get a little worse.  The interface is great for syncing with an iPod though, and that's what kept me using it.  Until this weekend anyway.

Ever since V10 came out this fall with the arrival of the new iPods, the software has been a frustrating mess.  Frequent crashes were bad enough, but I've also started to see other weirdness like album art being corrupted and needing be replaced.  Add the fact that iTunes has never been very good for maintaining multiple libraries (I have a lossless library in ALAC format, and my MP3 library for portable use) and I decided it was time to throw in the towel.

I've used foobar as my player for quite awhile, it's a great program and very customizable in both performance and appearance, with many plug-ins available.  I have two installations of it, one for each of my two libraries.  When listening to music on my computer I almost always listen to the lossless library, even though I'm about 99% sure that I can't tell the difference between a high quality MP3 file (i.e. LAME V0) and a lossless file.

So I spent some time this weekend getting comfortable with the iPod plug in, and creating new playlists for my Classic and my iPhone. I also found some great foobar skins here.  While it may not be quite as intuitive as using iTunes, that minor shortfall is more than offset by not having to deal with the bloat and crashes and artwork problems.

In short, Itunes: goodbye and good riddance!

Coming up is a post about french trumpeter Erik Truffaz...

A Study in Contrasts

I like to tell people I have diverse tastes in music (my wife likes to tell them I have bad taste in music, but that's another story).  When I copy music onto my iPod I try not think about what the previous album in the playlist was as I'm adding the next one.  This can lead to some interesting juxtapositions of musical styles as happened this weekend.

First up was an excellent 2007 concert recording of Carla Bley's "Lost Chords" quintet featuring Paolo Fresu on trumpet.  This great show from Zurich was broadcast on satellite in a couple of pieces, and then wonderfully reconstructed into a single torrent (it appears to be still seeded here).  It features a great band with, in addition to Paolo Fresu, Andy Shepard on sax, Steve Swallow on bass, and Billy Drummond on drums.  Carla is a pianist, composer and perhaps most notably a superb arranger - I was mostly aware of her work with Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra.  This concert features her "Banana Suite" as the core of the program, followed by several other outstanding pieces.

The arrangements are just beautiful, and the playing is top notch.  This is not challenging music from the perspective of requiring effort to digest and enjoy, it just flows nicely and makes for a great evening soundtrack.  This isn't fusion by any stretch of the imagination, just some nice jazz.


Disk 1 (42:34)
------------------
01 Banana Quintet parts 1 & 2 (21:22)
02 Banana Quintet parts 3, 4 & 5 (18:40)
03 Applause > One Banana More > Announcement CB (02:30)

Disk 2 (60:08)
------------------
05 Rut (11:28)
06 Announcement CB (00:45)
07 La Paloma (11:14)
08 Liver of live (10:43)
09 Announcement CB (00:29)
10 Ad Infinitum (16:19)
11 Death of Superman - Dream Sequence No. 1: Flying  (09:04)

As things were laid out on my iPod, next up came Oresund Space Collective's "Inside Your Head". Where Carla Bley's music was highly composed and impeccably arranged. the Collective's music is more of a "let's pick a key, start noodling, and see what happens".  Not to say that's an invalid approach, it's just a polar opposite.

As their website advertises, this is "totally improvised space rock", and  as the "collective" part of the name implies there is a somewhat revolving cast of players involved.  The tunes tend to start out with a somewhat ambient-ish feel, and then develop into a nice groove.  Think Ozric Tentacles, but with a less driving beat.  With lots of odd sounds and side-to-side panning thrown into the mix, this is good headphone music.

The band allows taping of their gigs, so in addition to their official releases there are some good concert recordings on the Live Music Archive.  That makes for a risk-free way to check them out and see if they might be something you'd like to look into further.



01 Substantia nigra (10:23)
02 Optic chiasm (16:35)
03 Fornix (12:53)
04 Aqueduct of Sylvius (9:56)
05 Vermis (20:47)