- just time to squeeze out one last triple-triple-deep-distilled metafluid ounce ee({e}) -e - thanks, i needed that - before yet another one-a them pesky new yar thingies... which i always quite enjoy as the ultimate harmless private joke and amusement rather than as any act of self-politicking and/or promoting...
... in the meantime, i say: at the moment alexander hawkins' album of braxton rep is one possible album i (liver-mindedly(*1)) salivate over more than i would even steve lehman's - well, depending on the personnel i suppose and besides, the above is not meant disrespectfully to mr lehman at all, but rather to acknowledge the increasingly-imposing stature of mr hawkins, one of britain's few clear, strictly non-derivative composer-bandleaders alive as far as i am any judge ( [as far = some distance, if greater than most in the allotted time then at least partly thanks to some timely and knowledgable guides, i guess ;-) without them, as you can see by now, i would certainement never have done any of this (or this or this or this... whadadada...] )
- and nudge, nudge i think (and have indeed tonight slipped it into alex's cocoa, so to speak) that young ms-or-is-it-fraulein laubrock might be a good choice of co-explorer for the dense and super-populated pan-tropical jungles of anthony braxton's living-nay-thriving music/(s) - lehman btw has just been mining and refining his own coalfaces for long enough that a similar release from him in 2014 would bear a wholly different configuration of weights and stresses and angles and scents, flavours &c (*2) - i really do think that the young a.h. could knock 'em all flat with his offering if and when he chooses to do it - but in the meantime only he knows how realistic a project like that is in the coming (or indeed any other) year. lotta labels out there, few if any of 'em making any actual money as i understand it... and for that matter, only he knows if he wants to do it. i'm just sayin'... the man collects(-cted) braxton scores and charts (a.o.) and is living the great example in his own way. not for nothing does he play equal partners with the right-hand man after all.
...
and in the meantime meantime, some people really have been doing stuff which is, like, braxton rep upon another plane(t) or somethin', in the best possible way, which is to say that the leader a) knows full well that the influence is right out there for all to hear, and delivers a really convincing understanding of how to write within (what he perceives to be (some of)) braxtonian idioms or sound/mindsets, and b) has gerry hemingway on the traps, and indeed mr hemingway's old dutch master-wingman and longtime co-explorer wolter wierbos on the trombone, demonstrating (a.o.) (some of) what he has learned via george lewis and ray anderson, in particular... bassist dieter manderscheid is hitherto-unknown to me, but acquits himself marvellously well in such fast, fast company and is brave enough to invoke the spirit of mark dresser, right there in the middle of the album (*3) - and confident enough to pull it off with some aplomb. the leader himself, well - that's more than just one album doing this stuff and not the first time i've noticed the blatant braxtonian compositional flavoring - and while i'm aware the saxophonist has more to him than "mere" braxton-homage (
***
yes, so happy new year everybody ***modest lo-budget fireworks***
- and yes there is more on the way, but the promised 23c-athon will have to wait jus' a leetle bit longer... so let's round this year up now and look forward to that, at least ;-)
incidentally my latest meta-playlist consists simply of the eight (so far) ninetet gtm performances, in order (*4). i haven't got round to the actual immersion, not yet... it's on the way though... :- )
hal c.. (x)
* see comments
2 comments:
yeah, ok... this one was drug-assisted.
;-)
- i did 165 days straight though. i regard that as a pretty good total, given my history over the last few years, my historic identification of getting high with creating/maintaining this blog... and the fact that i never technically *gave up* or anything stressful like that. (tell that to mrs c tho, she is not amenable to talking about this betrayal yet. timing and all that... unexpected family drama, upon which theme i shan't elaborate. unfortunately it works pretty well **for me** and works just fine for my daughter, as it turns out - so my heart doesn't much bleed for the older of my girls, , but that said, my missus can have as much of a go at me as she likes, once the immediate *domestic-critical* phase is out of the way...)
1. the "spiritual" or "mental" (and therefore strictly *yang*, i.e. diffuse and intangible) aspects of the liver are usually
summed up by translators into english as "the etheral soul" (as opposed to the "corporeal" soul, under the control of (and
an outward expression of) the lung; it includes the imagination in all its manifold forms - and hence all types of scheming,
planning and systematic targetting (inter alia)
2. lehman is actually, like, only three years older than hawkins. but he has been etablished a loooong time, he learned his
braxton at the direct hands of the maestro, and his early dates as a leader included an album presented not as a one off but as work by a working band, the camouflage trio: at age 24, steve was already leading a band consisting of mark dresser and pheeroan akLaff ffs... completely different entry onto the scene (such as it is).
3. - the board-rending, mass-summoning of the many voices which makes the hairs on the backs of listeners' necks stand up every damn time - when dresser does it. here it doesn't, admittedly, have the same effect (or not on this listener's cynicised endocrine system) - but the german bass player is still able to raise an eyebrow in polite respect both at
brass balls to try such a thing, in front of hemingway of all people; - and at his skillful execution of the result, a considerable achievement, however much one understands right away that it is a quoted device, nay a *passport* for an internationally-famed-and-celebrated player.
4. - if only because for some reason, and for the first time ever, a self-created itunes playlist resists all my attempts to change the running order. i was gonna randomise it of course. what else...
*4* the second and final syllable of this word does not form a half-rhyme with the words *mirage* or even *garage* at its most (educated) british. whilst it is true that the french have a word which is pronounced somewhat close to that - minus the inevitable, ear-mangling twang of clueless anglophone tongues stomping their way through the vineyards of what is, after all, not designated a *romance* language (for nothing (for several things, indeed); - , the french is rendered *hommage*,
and is cognate with, yet utterly separate from, the english word HOMAGE (second and final syllable rhymes with that of "porridge") - which itself has existed for, ooh, let's see, it's gotta be since the twelfth century or whatever - it's so fucking long that i can't even be bothered to put an OED date on it. not new to chaucer, at any rate. stick that in your (exotic, imported hardwood) pipe and smoke it, coffee-table denizens of london and new york* ;-)
* though not (chronologically) in that order - ...
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