June 2002

From the Inside Out
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By Chris M. Slawecki

Styles in modern music can seem to change as quickly as the calendar pages turn. This month, “FTIO” shines its flickering light on just a few recent releases in the tilt-a-whirling neon world of modern electronic and dance music.

Various Artists: No Categories 5: Electronic Music for Eclectic Minds (Ubiquity)
NC 5 is the one hundredth release for Ubiquity, the independent label born in 1993 from the legendary Groove Merchant record shop in San Francisco that has since grown to encompass three separate imprints: Cu-Bop for Latin and Afro-Cuban, new and re-licensed soul-jazz rarities on Luv N’Haight, and the impossibly eclectic Ubiquity mothership, which helped launch acid-jazz with a prescient vision of modern dance music that has since expanded to include electronic, hip-hop, trip-hop, and club music.

Since 1997, Ubiquity has released annual No Categories collections, compiled by label DJs Andrew Jervis and Vinnie Esparza to sound representative of an awesome party tape full of dance music, modern music, and modern dance music. As a bonus, these NC sets generally consist of previously unreleased tracks, tracks originally available on vinyl only, and Ubiquity tracks remixed by the label’s own master DJs and loopmeisters. (Lay out for the double-vinyl package of NC5, for example, and get two more previously unreleased tracks not on the CD.)

NC 5 lights up the influence of Latin and Brazilian music on modern pop culture the world over. After Brazilian vocals cast cool shade in the opening “Hold You Close” by P’taah, club electronica thumps up against Brazilian percussion and beats in “Trommel Monster (PH Remix)” by Cuica. “Xtradition (Zero dB Mix)” by Interfearance swings on its hinge of cycling two-note keyboard motifs, as Latin percussion swirls from background to foreground and back when again overwhelmed by its thumping club beat.

“Felicidad Nova” by John Beltran suggests both modern club and retro jazz fusion music: It glides smoothly on a straight-ahead club beat as its percussion creates a soft island feeling, its rhythms and vocals webbed together with gossamer Brazilian rhythm guitar -- you know, the kind of Brazilian music that seems to never touch the ground. NC5 also features two jams by Jack “Mr. Bongo” Costanzo, the percussion only “Bongo Jam” (way too short at a minute and a half) and “Calypso Blues,” taut and chewy calypso funk with lyrics that diss a sister and compare/contrast Trinidadian and American food and women.

“White Folding Slowly” by Nobody is for electronic purists, head music like classic Pink Floyd but orbiting in much funkier inner and outer space: Its serpentine bassline wriggles against subtle shifts in the drummed rhythm under the thick cloud cover of seemingly endless, suspended single chords. It is not at all difficult to imagine this track as the instrumental bed for a keyboard solo by Richard Wright.

Club d’Elf: As Above: Live at the Lizard Lounge (Grapeshot / LiveArchive)
Club d’Elf is currently in the midst of a Pennsylvania / New York club tour in support of As Above, live documentation of their rather incredible sound on two CDs.

Club D’elf began in 1998 when the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge (MA) offered to Mike Rivard, a veteran bassist who’s worked with the Story, Shane Colvin, Paula Cole, and the Either/Orchestra, the opportunity to host a floating, freewheeling biweekly “open” night. These nebulous, experimental ensembles grew to include such musicians as guitarist Reeves Gabrels (Tin Machine, David Bowie) and drummers Kenwood Dennard (Jaco Pastorius, Pat Martino, Brand X) and Bob Moses (Pat Metheny, Dave Liebman, Emily Remler) with Rivard serving as composer, bassist, conductor -- and ultimately as the de facto leader of a tripped-out and free-form funky Lizard Lounge houseband that he dubbed Club d’Elf.

The twenty songs and two- and one-half hours of sound and vision on As Above are drawn from six such shows at the Lizard, its shifting personnel including Gabrels and Dennard, Alain Mallet (Paquito D’Rivera, Paul Simon) on keyboards, guitarists Duke Levine and Ian Kennedy, Brahim Fribgane on oud, saxophonists Joe Maneri, Eric Hipp, and Tom Hall, DJ Logic on turntables, and Mat Maneri on violin.

Rivard and company consistently stretch out in rock solid grooves, and then really begin the fun. Toying with their sounds like they were balloons, they constantly poke holes in rhythms and themes, or squeeze the air out of them, and dexterously twist whatever they had been working on into other shapes. Jungle, free jazz, trance, smooth jazz, dub, acid jazz, jazz-rock, trip-hop, ambient, hip-hop…it’s all swirling around in here, often with a Middle Eastern twist. The DJ-heavy songs sort of sound like Medeski Martin & Wood; the guitar heavy songs sort of like King Crimson; the songs with saxophone charts sort of sound like Groove Collective; and almost every song rocks on a fat backbeat. “Club d’Elf pretty directly reflects my stylistic interests,” Rivard allows. “I listen primarily these days to a lot of Moroccan music and free jazz and electronic music.”

Rivard roars like an absolute funk monster in the “left hand of clyde (parts 1, 2 & 3)” suite. The group stalks and then attacks “meet the monster tonight” as snorting, thundering electronic rhinos armed with hard rock guitars; in a similar vein, the bass/guitar unison statements in “get a little turning” crackle with the sharp blue tang of James Ulmer. Yet Rivard’s supple and melodic turns in the island meditation “actual smiles” and in the jungle (complete with chattering monkey sounds) of “intro / bass beatbox” sound more traditional, albeit in exotic and unconventional settings.

It’s good that Rivard documented Club d’Elf on tape, because you’ve almost got to hear As Above to believe it. It sounds like almost nothing except for perhaps Miles’ 1970s free-funk experiments. (No band or song introductions are spoken on As Above, either, which furthers the comparison: Not only can’t you tell what’s going on, you can’t even tell who’s doing the what.) You can easily listen to it that way, by imagining the oud as Wayne Shorter’s soprano saxophone and the turntables and loops as the rhythm guitar. After all, a flat-out murderous funk drumbeat is still a flat-out murderous funk drumbeat, and a bad-ass bass player is still…well, you know.

Club d’Elf will continue their bi-weekly gigs at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge on Thursday June 6 and June 20, with drummer Erik Kerr, guitarist Geoff Scott (Miracle Orchestra), and Mister Rourke (Soulive) on turntables joining Mallet, Rivard, and others. The band is also assembling their next studio album, currently planned to include John Medeski, DJ Logic, and the late Mark Sandman of Morphine.

Asphalt Jungle: Electro Avenue (ROIR-USA)
Over the past decade, countless bands professed to weld the icy-cool funk of big-beat electronica with the scalding metal fury of hot electric guitar rock. Almost every one of these bands have subsequently sparkled and since faded.

If you’ve watched even the slightest bit of music-related television, you’ve most likely heard guitarist Brian Tarquin and keyboardist/programmer Chris Ingram: Their made-for-TV music includes “Tinsel Town” from ABC’s music show “Making the Band,” music for “The X-Files,” even a hit single called “Witchcraft” from MTV’s show “Road Rules.” In the early 1990s, amidst the acid jazz and electronic music revolution in the UK, Tarquin and Ingram were featured on a few jazz, smooth jazz, and acid jazz compilations, one of which, This Is Acid Jazz: The Best Of Acid Jazz Vol. 2 (Instinct), ascended to the Billboard Top Twenty.

Electro Avenue is the first complete album by this dynamic duo under the name Asphalt Jungle. It is a volcanic, in-your-face debut that erupts with block-rockin’ beats and boils over with Tarquin’s liquid metal, mercurial guitar riffs. Tarquin’s level of musicianship is so striking that it is impossible to ignore and, armed to the teeth with it, Ingram’s industrial accompaniment seems to hit just that much harder. “Ulysses’ Revenge” and “Red Dragon” twist and churn on Tarquin’s modern mutations of electric blues, his harshly clipped phrasing and angry tone often sputtering and spattering showers of sparks. He also devours the scenery like a forest fire with his blazing mid-song solo in the opening “Last Crusader,” and sizzles throughout the “Flight of Plato.”

Tarquin lays completely out in the one-note club thumper “Wha Da Ding,” but helps steer “Tinsel Town” down its smooth glide through the neon lights of a big city night. The duo serves “Witchcraft” in two flavors, the original MTV mix and in an eerie and spastic reconstruction remix by DJ Soul Slinger and DJ Wally.

The lean and slinky “Foxxy” sounds most like the single, sharp and smart and bouncing on its big beat. But among the most rewarding moments of Asphalt is perhaps its most unlikely: The soft beat of “Distant Heart,” full of twinkling electronic starlight and beckoning, soft guitars cushioned with that classic “wah-wah” soul sound. Tarquin and Ingram craft the one ballad on this set to be genuinely sensuous, perhaps almost romantic, even while working across two styles not usually known for their tenderness.