Slippin’ & Slidin’

Adventures in Mutations

By Sandy Carter

This month’s reviews feature artists who make music that
owes little or no loyalty to genre purity. Though their sound may be based in a particular
musical idiom, their creative vision mutates so many musical elements that their style
becomes singular. While this sort of groundbreaking presents endless problems for
marketing, music listeners willing to follow music into new territory will be awakened to
sounds inspired by truly iconoclastic muse.

Tricky, Angels With Dirty Faces (Island)

As a founder of the mongrel sound known as trip-hop, England’s
Tricky (aka Adrian Thaws) set the standard for spooky sonic montages reflecting the dread
and decay of modern urban landscapes. Angels With Dirty Faces, like Maxinquaye
(1995) and Pre-Millennium Tension (1996), offers a dense blend of sounds and
images that are quite disturbing. Deep throbbing beats stutter and stop, studio and
human-made noises rumble and clatter, and Tricky’s gravelly rasp and ghostly whispers
deliver the news. The big difference here is that Tricky now wants to speak directly to
his old neighborhood. Mourning, critiquing, and abandoning the gangsta life, he is intent
on pushing on toward some manner of redemption. Another gem from an urban guerrilla
master.

Ozomatli (Almo Sounds)

LA’s Ozomatli proudly proclaim “no limitations, no
boundaries” on their very inclusive, very unorthodox Afro-Latin groove fusion. The
multiracial, 11-member ensemble takes its name from the Aztec god of dance and
appropriately builds its tunes out of a churning weave of rhythms culled from salsa, funk,
jazz, cumbia, meringue, rock, and hip-hop. The group’s instrumentation includes
everything from turntables, tablas, and sitar to horns and bajo sexto (a Mexican guitar).
Throw in some rhymes about peace and justice, racism and war and you’ve got the
soundtrack to a progressive world dance party for the 21st century.

 

Mekons, Me (Quarterstick/ Touch And Go)

For more than two decades the socialist-minded Mekons have been
playing a rough and woozy mix of punk and C&W as a backdrop to their unrelenting
critique of late 20th century capitalism. Along the way, they’ve made
brilliant records such as Fear And Whiskey (1985), Rock And Roll
(1989) and The Curse Of The Mekons (1991), but their decided lack of pop ambition
insures them status in the margins of the mass market. The Mekons, however, for all their
commercial oneryness, do strive for accessible, populist-oriented sound. Their latest
release is a case in point. Eschewing their familiar honky tonk sound for a more
of-the-moment beat and studio driven ambiance, Me delivers a critical meditation on
sex, love, and consumption that is thoroughly catchy, smart, and empathetic.

The Klezmatics/Chava Alberstein, The Well (Xenophile)

The leftish Jewish-American roots music band The Klezmatics have
moved to the forefront of the current klezmer revival by creating an ingenious mix
of Eastern European Jewish traditions with modern strains of jazz, rock, and world
influences. The result is an expansive, soul-charging sound that ranges through eerie
tormented reflections, frenetic dance grooves, irreverent satire, and tender, melodic
songs of love and hope. Since the band was formed in 1986, four acclaimed albums and
global touring has brought them an international audience and in recent years the group
has collaborated with musicians as varied as Itzhak Perlman, Jane Sieberry, Ben Folds
Five, and John Zorn.

Now, on The Well, The Klezmatics are joined with the
great Israeli singer Chava Alberstein to perform another album of innovative Jewish music
drawing from the poetry of some of the 20th century’s most notable Yiddish poets.
Often called the “The First Lady Of Israeli Song,” Chava Alberstein has recorded
over 40 albums embracing folk and pop sounds from around the world. Inspired by interviews
with Yiddish poets and the Eastern European Jewish literature, drama, and music destroyed
by the Holocaust, the Polish-born Alberstein decided to enlist The Klezmatics in helping
her place Yiddish verse in a program of songs. With producer Ben Mink (known for his work
with k.d. lang) also aboard, the collaboration proves a natural fit. The Klezmatics’
arrangements are, as usual, inventive and diverse. Alberstein, often in wondrous exchanges
with Klezmatics’ vocalist Lorin Sklamberg, renders these tales of love and loneliness
with profound humanity.

Los Super Seven (RCA)

Thanks to the “crossover” success of groups like Los
Lobos and Texas Tornadoes, Mexican music is beginning to sound cool to Anglo ears. With
that in mind a Mexican-American all-star band known as Los Super Seven has come together
to push musical and cultural understanding a bit further. Featuring David Hildalgo and
Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos, Tex-Mex veterans Freddy Fender and Flaco Jimenez, country singer
Rick Trevino, Tejano vocalist Ruben Ramos, and maverick country rocker Joe Ely, Los Super
Seven are out to celebrate and throw some light on the roots of Mexican music. Holding
mostly to traditional Mexican songs, the 13-track set moves through a range of styles and
moods reflecting the sorrows and joys of different generations and cultures. The one
non-Mexican tune, however, Joe Ely’s borderized version of Woody Guthrie’s
“Plane Wreck At Los Gatos (Deportee),” makes it clear that this multicultural
journey has also been filled with conflict and exploitation. These passionate, yearning
sounds are about struggle and resilience in the face of heavy odds.

Emmylou Harris, Spyboy (Eminent)

On her masterful 1996 album, Wrecking Ball, Emmylou
Harris jolted her country neo-traditionalist sound in favor of the stark, murky
atmospheres supplied by producer Daniel Lanois. It was a daring move with a healthy
artistic payoff and, understandably, she is in no hurry to return to the comfortable niche
she carved out in the first two decades of her career. Although her current live album
revisits some better known material from her past, she has assembled a band and a sound
that thoroughly shatters expectations tied to her old style roots country persona. With a
trio of powerhouse players including offbeat country guitarist Buddy Miller, drummer
virtuoso Brian Blade, and Neville Brothers bassist Darryl Johnson weaving extended solos
and polyrhythmic brilliance around her sweet and rough soprano, Harris has discovered a
new hard-edged style that elevates her expressiveness to another level. The delicate
beauty of her voice remains, but anger, toughness, and rebellion have come more to the
fore. A bold and successful stretch for a woman making some of the most exciting music of
her life.

Sun Ra, Space Is The Place (Impulse/GRP)

Although outlandish views and behavior loom large in the life of
keyboardist/composer Sun Ra (1914-1993), his enduring legacy in jazz rests on the strength
of his music. Full of whimsy, otherworldly nonsense, and outrageous silliness, Sun Ra was,
nonetheless, a creator of a remarkable Black American music linked to blues, gospel, early
New Orleans jazz, swing, bop, R&B and all manner of avant-garde. For a good
introductory sampler to Sun Ra’s intergalactic “hits” try out the recently
reissued Space Is The Place, first released in 1973. With gooney Space Ethnic
Voices calling out flight instructions before a big band launch into free space and tunes
such as “We Travel The Spaceways,” “Calling Planet Earth,” and “Rocket
Number Nine,” this one is both great fun and relatively accessible. To those who want
explicit social relevance in their music, this album turns on the theme of Black
exploitation with Sun Ra cast in the role of cosmic liberator. Amazing music from one of
the most influential and maligned innovators of modern jazz.

Rancid, Life Won’t Wait (Epitaph)

Only three years have passed since the release of Rancid’s
breakthrough album “…And Out Come The Wolves,” but conventional music
industry wisdom now seems to have it that punk and hard rock sounds are all but dead.
Evidently, Rancid could care less. Though their latest record, Life Won’t Wait, draws
sounds and inspiration from ska, reggae, and blues, the dirty fury of guitars and drums
leave no doubt that the band is still carrying the torch for punk. For skeptics who fear
the effects of big-time success on ideology, singer/writer/guitar thrashers Tim Armstrong
and Lars Fredriksen lay-out some very clear-headed diatribes against capitalism while
openly proclaiming their mission to “revolutionize the way you think.” Which is
not to say the group is standing still. Recorded in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New
Orleans, and Jamaica, Life Won’t Wait has an adventurous, multicolored,
world-aware sensibility that has few precedents in the fast and lean world of purist punk.
On a more personal level, the band is also showing some changes. Allowing a couple of
soft-hearted love ditties into the set, Rancid gives their fans a glimpse of the
three-dimensional humanity that lays behind the raging anthems and tough street rebel
front. If this sounds a little too Clash-like, not to worry. This is 1998 and Rancid is
finding ways to extend a legacy, not copy it.

Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill
(Ruffhouse/Columbia)

Though the harder side of the hip-hop music world is stuck in a
holding pattern, the fusion of singing and rhyming, beats and melodies, live playing and
sampling heard on groundbreaking recordings by D’Angelo, The Fugees, Erykah Badu,
Mary J. Blige, and Wyclef Jean keeps opening up new areas of musicality and emotionalism.
Without a doubt the most stunning 1998 release in this loosely defined style is Fugees
vocalist Lauryn Hill’s solo debut, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Utilizing
arrangements constructed out of deep-dubbed reggae, visceral hip-hop, funk, and sweet
soul, Hill, as self-producer, provides backdrops that are raw, elegant, and innovative.
But what really raises this release several notches above the field, is Hill’s words
and voice.

Whether she is singing or rhyming, Hill is capable of evoking
soothing tenderness, deep wells of hurt and white heat rage. All these emotions are on
display in Miseducation, as she unloads troubled reflections on the state of the
world, hip-hop mercenaries, pop stardom, love, loss, and motherhood. It’s a lot to
feel and a lot to think about. But Lauryn Hill is out to make music that matters. With
some fresh codes for rule breaking and a very full political/personal agenda, she’s
done just that.
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