HK's 10 Best CDs of 1996 East Bay Express Looking over my list of of candidates for the best CDs of 1996 I notice that most releases are on difficult-to-find tiny labels. It seems to me that more and more recordings are on such labels each year and less and less exciting music music comes from the larger labels. There does seem to be as much exciting new music as ever within my eclectic ares of interest but it does seem to be getting harder and harder to find. DEREK BAILEY: Aida (Dexter's Cigar) Mr. Bailey is my favorite guitarist. Perhaps the most original and innovative master of the instrument in this century. Derek had a couple of new recordings release this year: Guitar, Drums 'n' Bass (Avant) and Arcana-The Last Wave (DIW). However neither of these can begin to compare with the excellence of this 1980 solo acoustic guitar recording reissued here on CD. This is Bailey at his most virtuoso and also playing more emotionally and spiritually deep than is usual in any sort of guitar music. The perfect CD to begin to explore his music. This is the out-of-print LP that I have used for many years to seduce skeptics into Bailey's magical universe of free improvisation.
NELS CLINE TRIO:Chest (Little Brother) Los Angles-based Cline is one of the best American guitarists extending the limits of jazz and rock experimental playing. This is his best recording. Certainly it's in a compositional and improvisational league with Bill Frisell's very best work. A Finnish guitarist working in a similar vein is RAOUL BJORKENHEIM-KRAKATAU: Ritual (Cuneiform). This reissue recording of 1988-1990 LP recordings sounds brand new today.
ORNETTE COLEMAN: Sound Museum (Harmelodic/Verve) This release consists of two seperately-sold CDs: Hidden Man and Three Women. Pretty much the same set of Ornette's tunes is recorded twice in small jazz quartet instrumentation, but in quite different versions. Two of the many factors that make these the best Coleman recordings in more than twenty years is the great originality of expression and technique displayed by the rhythm section of Ornette's son Denardo on drums and Charnett Moffet on acoustic bass. These recordings are a playground for the true musical and individual freedom of Ornette's harmelodic musical manifesto. Away from the clutter and electric density of Ornette's Prime Time Band there seems to be much more room for the music to grow and surprise. A reissue of great, but impossible-to-find LP that also features wonderfully innovative drumming from Denardo and concise alto sax solos from Ornette is: JAMES BLOOD ULMER: Tales of Captain Black (DIW).
MORTON FELDMAN / IVAR ENSEMBLE: Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello (hat ART) I think that this is my favorite recording of Feldman's music since Rothko Chapel or Piano and String Quartet. This was Feldman's final composition from the year of his death. This is deceptively simple music that seems to transcend the notes on manuscript paper that generate it and from the first few notes transports the listener out of this world to somewhere else.
ALI AKBAR KHAN: Legacy (AMMP/Triloka) The world's greatest living master of North Indian classical instrumental music collaborates here with the enormously successful and popular, even commercial, Indian vocalist Asha Bhosle. This recording of compositions passed down to Ali Akbar Khan by his father is the most special North Indian recording of the decade. It is also one of the most beautifully recorded. You simply won't find anything better than this. Another excellent recording out this year was by Ali Akbar Khan's sarod-playing son: AASHISH KHAN: Sarod, The Sound of Mughal Court (Seven Seas/World Music Library) - this features a gorgeous performance of raga Darbari Kannada. It can be difficult to find the latest new releases of Indian Classical music on the dozens of new labels that have sprung up over the past few years. As a public service, I'd like to mention that the absolute best and most economical place to purchase the above and virtually all other current releases of Indian music is at Shrimati's Ltd., 2011 University Ave., Berkeley, telephone: 548-6220.
EVAN PARKER: Synergetics - Phonomanie III (Leo) To quote Buckminister Fuller: "Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately." This seems to me to be the goal of the best improvised musics of our planet. Here the British soprano and tenor sax master has gathered an unusual grouping of musical colleagues together for collaboration, much as Derek Bailey has done for many years with his Company concerts and recordings. Parker's meeting includes a Korean Komungo zither player, and African percussionist, a Japanese bass player, a Tuvan vocalist, a Sardinian launeddas player, as well as trombone and electronics players. You get well more than your money's worth here as the many players on this 2-CD set create surprising musical episodes that cross and blend drastically different cultures finding strength in both similarity and dissimilarity. Three other fine Evan Parker releases from a a year unusually rich in the same were:EVAN PARKER & PAUL LYTTON: Two Octobers (1972-1975) (Emanem), EVAN PARKER - ANTONELLO SALI - MAURO ORSELLI: Improvvisazioni (ADA) and EVAN PARKER: 50th Birthday Concert (Leo). All of these are about as good as experimental improvised music gets.
PAUL PLIMLEY: Everything in Stages (Songlines) My favorites among the post-Cecil Taylor piano players are Greg Goodman, Marilyn Crispell and Paul Plimley. Vancouver-based Plimley has worked for many years with the, now, San Francisco-based bassist Lisle Ellis. They have several fine recordings together on various labels that well demonstrate Plimley's original voice on the piano. This, his first solo piano CD, seems to me, though, to be the best documentation yet of Plimley's art.
ERNEST RANGLIN: Below The Bassline (Island Jamaica Jazz) 64 year old Ranglin's career spans the entire postwar development of Jamaican popular music. From the big bands thru the reggae era Ranglin has been extremely active and appeared on thousands of recordings. He helped to create and define the reggae guitar style. On this CD he plays a classic set of reggae tunes in a small jazz combo setting accompanied by Monty Alexander on Piano, Idris Muhammad on drums and Ira Coleman on acoustic bass. The music is recorded tightly and dryly with little reverb. Ranglin's guitar soars over the jazzified reggae beats sometime sounding like Charlie Christian and sometime almost like Sonny Sharrock. This is a great recording.
TERRY RILEY: Lisbon Concert (New Albion) Often credited with the creation of Minimalism with his seminal composition In C, Terry Riley is also a fantastic improviser. Several of his solo organ recordings from the 70's are among my favorite LPs. Terry has recorded several CDs of solo piano in exotic just intonation during the last decade. This is his first solo piano recoding in conventional tuning. The CD notes tell us that this live concert recording was of a very special night when the music seemed to come together especially magical and this is quite evident to the listener. Riley's piano playing here is quite eclectic. Imagine Henry Cowell, Bud Powell, Bill Evans and Charles Ives mixed up with Indian raga and you might begin to get an idea of some of the odd stylistic intersections and synergies at work here. This is transcendental music at its very best. It's all surprisingly easily accessible to almost any listener. My favorite CD of the year.
LOBI TRAORE: Segou (Cobalt/Africolor) Mali's young, American blues-influenced Lobi Traore might by thought of as the new Ali Farka Toure. In fact 'Farka' is one of his biggest boosters and supporters at home in Africa. Toure is still fairly obscure here in America and that won't be changed by this, his third CD, as its on a pretty obscure and poorly distributed label. I do urge you to seek it out for it's more rockin' and percussive modernization of traditional Malian song and guitar/percussion music. Reissued this year were Ali Farka Toure's earliest and best recordings. ALI FARKA TOURE: Radio Mali (World Circuit) is far superior to his more recent and commercially successful recordings. Closer to his roots and full of youthful fire, these recordings were originally made just for national radio broadcast in Mali during the 70's. This release also wins my prize for best CD packaging and design for the year. Two other fines 1996 releases of Malian music that should not be missed are: SUPER RAIL BAND: Mansa (Indigo) and OUMOU SANGARE: 'Worotan' (World Circuit).
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