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A few days ago I contributed to the “Why Obama” essay series that Largehearted Boy has been curating. My slightly updated (grammar only) essay follows:

It is important that we judge Barack Obama on his own merits, accomplishments and ideals. Eight years of George W. Bush presidency and the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have obscured our collective vision and may incline many to take a relativist view of the Democratic Presidential nominee. In recent weeks polling gaps have widened in Obama’s favor and many disenfranchised Republicans have jumped ship to endorse his candidacy, but why?

In Obama, a Harvard graduate (Juris Doctor) and constitutional law professor, the country has a rare opportunity to place a scholar and thinker in a position of power. As with Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy before him Barack Obama has displayed a willingness to engage with viewpoints differing from his own. His selection of Sen. Joe Biden as his Vice Presidential candidate is an obvious example. It was Biden who criticized Obama’s lack of experience and knowledge on foreign relations issues before being defeated in the democratic primary. Having chosen someone with differing views one can at least be assured that an internal debate will take place. In fact, Obama’s ability to genuinely empathize may be one of his greatest strengths.

Having long served as a community organizer, civil rights attorney and Illinois state Senator, Barack Obama is uniquely qualified to address the growing inequity in poverty and wealth in America. He has stopped short of promising universal health care with a plan that bridges the gap between idealism and cold, hard reality. We must not forget that Barack Obama is a politician and, as such, is more familiar with the internal trade offs and measured judgments of Washington than most voters; and yet, there is an abiding sense that he will truly promote the general welfare of the United States. Obama’s repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the rich to Clinton-era levels is another marked example: moderation with forward momentum.

With our constitutional rights disappearing and religious fanaticism at a seeming fever pitch, I am hastened by Obama’s balanced, Jeffersonian approach to uphold the separation of church and state. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he is quick to point out that a single religious group cannot take hold of policy and government at the expense of others (differing religious groups and those who practice no religion) who also occupy the same republic. As Thomas Jefferson stated, “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law” and Obama, himself a Christian, has clearly parsed, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which states, in part: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.

Surely the times we live in are perilous. Of course the same can be said for much of our nation’s past. A deep appreciation for history and its lessons are an asset for anyone willing to take up the mantle of President of the United States. In the manner with which he has exhibited forethought- opposition to the invasion of Iraq, his decision to forgo “public funding”, his warnings of the oncoming subprime mortgage crisis, stationing over 10,000 lawyers at the polls on November 4th- Barack Obama has exhibited not only an acumen rarely seen in politics but a nuance in approach that allows both acolytes and dissenters to feel as though their concerns have been addressed.

Within a week’s time the United States will collectively decide who to elect as its 44th president. After examining Barack Obama independent of George W. Bush (or John McCain for that matter) the choice comes more sharply into focus. For all the ownership that the country has taken in the rise of Barack Obama’s political career and presidential campaign, my hope is that after being elected as a man of the people, he will use his discernment and learned sense of justice to govern over a nation that needs a man of his measure and also, a man apart.

Originally published on Largehearted Boy

Originally published in L.A. Record

Opening with a ring-modulated guitar sound reminiscent of his early ‘80s album Smash And Scatteration, Frisell stood almost motionless stage left, a bespectacled cactus. With a thinly strung, light blue semi-hollowbody Telecaster in hand and a small set of pedals at his feet, Frisell asserted himself as the best country-folk accompanist in jazz. He displayed little fire and took fewer chances, fretting through improvisations and back catalogue tunes.

Opposite him, beater Baron whittled away on oversized chopsticks, mallets and overturned cymbals, once going so far as to strike the underside of a drum after wedging his stick between it and the ground. Baron was consistently sensitive and rhythmically dense when not forced into the ‘you play a chord, I’ll play a beat’ dichotomy.

An oblong interpretation of ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ fermented a few genuine surprises, unfortunately the final eight minutes of the set consisted of Frisell playing a repetitive four-chord progression as Baron and the audience were forced to work the rest out for themselves.

Originally published in L.A. Record

By 1998 I had already ingested some of the best of what the East Coast had to offer: Midnight Marauders, Blowout Comb, Illmatic, Do You Want More?!!!??!, et al. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, as Ice Cube recycled every Parliament vamp, Omid Walizadeh (then OD) was sampling Iranian folk music, melodic jazz vibes and “Swelling Itching Brain”-ish keyboard basslines. Having come of age listening to King Crimson, Genesis, Run-DMC and Arrested Development, I found in Beneath the Surface something that both provoked and reassured me.

With his production revered by all MC’s at the legendary open mic spot Goodlife, Omid then participated in the classic hip-hop quid pro quo: you rap for my beat and I’ll produce a beat for your raps. He quickly assembled a diverse cast of hungry and highly experimental lyricists unfettered by hip-hop’s lineage. Absent are the Spoonie Gee or Funky 4+1 name drops indigenous to East Coast raps, the MC’s assembled here are more concerned with meta-African folk-tales (”When The Sun Took A Day Off”) or running together hominid-centric pop culture references as done on Circus’s hilariously brilliant four minute verse which ends stunning “Farmer’s Market of the Beast.”

Like all masterpieces Beneath the Surface is burnished by repeated examination. From the brutal “Night and Day” which samples Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “The Barbarian” to the quintessential L.A. chill-out back beat of “Line Posting In ‘Pedro,” Omid balances melody, avant-garde composition and extrasolar lyricism with seeming familiarity: you think you’ve heard something like this before.

For connoisseurs of underground hip-hop this album also happens to be an underground Rosetta Stone of sorts: Freestyle Fellowship, Awol One, 2Mex, Global Phlowtations (featuring a young Adlib who would later produced Saul Williams under his own name, Thavius Beck), Rakaa Iriscience (of Dilated Peoples) and Radioinactive among many, many others. When confronted with Omid’s powerful production each rapper rises to the occasion; attempting to both complement and out do one another.

Beneath the Surface is a document of the L.A. youth consciousness at the turn of the century. Full of paranoia and community pride, God and the LAPD, rocking shows and self doubt. Interestingly it would prove to be greater than the sum of its parts and many of the MC’s involved would never make kind of lasting impact that they collectively manifest here.

I never did figure out what was wrong with my iPod. My only guess is that, as with me, something Beneath the Surface took over. At any given moment you might recollect a drum break or lyric and then suddenly, as P.E.A.C.E. illuminates, you are in its clutches. Word is bondage indeed.

Originally published on somuchsilence.com

With the odd album opener “Merman” fake keyboard horns and chord vamps dance without inhibition. Jacobs’ voice peeps in happily over the video game din in a whisper-sing delivery, not unlike multi-instrumentalist-savant Stevens. However halfway through the two minute piece cascading live piano mingles with the tinny, low-bit cymbals. Herein lies the context for Max Tundra’s music: sincere juxtaposition. The succeeding track “MBGATE”, itself an acronym for the album title- but fitting in uniformly with all of the album’s other six-letter titles, begins with the sound of some homogenous indie rock band tuning up. Only moments later the sloppy bass mush and spiky electric guitar turn into Daft Punk-inspired glitch-infection. The faux wheeze with which the vocals are given in the beginning of the song now reappear- themselves unaltered- their entire sonic bed changed around them.

Initially, Max Tundra music was entirely instrumental, the two track, 24-minute, Children At Play was released by Warp in 1999 and featured much more rabid drum n’bass production. If listened to with a critical ear one can hear the shape of sounds to come. Wisely the music one Mastered opts for an entirely new challenge with Jacobs acknowledging that the writing of lyrics was, perhaps, more difficult than the writing of the music. Interestingly it is the playfulness of the vocals, also provided with much cheek by sister Becky, that helps to carry the album on to repeated listens. Certainly the interaction of the skittering melodies and thick analog bass of “Lysine”(one of the few tracks with clear artistic influence- Prince!) with Becky’s sincere vocalization of:

I isolate amino acids sometimes
I bottle them and sell them when the sun shines
Cold sores erupt if you don’t keep lysine levels healthy

And later in the same track name dropping Wire writer David Toop:

An obituary by Mr. Toop
Now he’s gone there’s one less laptop-loop

Perhaps because of his recent conversion to lyricism Jacobs seems to approach his words and music with equal amounts of playfulness. The second to last track on the album named after its subject, Michel “Gondry”, is pure supplication. Singing directly to the inventive music video director over a spare electro-stomp, Jacobs coyly asks for his own “Around the World”. Not surprisingly Gondry wrote back and included an outrageous price list (“special effect (my specialty)…$1.00 (on sale)”) for the prospective video, which he jokingly suggested should be his namesake track.

Ben Jacobs is Max Tundra. All the instruments here are his: banjo, strings, electric bass and guitar, drums, keyboards and pianos (in abundance), trumpet and so on. His mastery of the Amiga 500 is evident in the fact that all of the album’s sequencing was done on a 20 year-old computer with a £1 software program. Not content to ride any groove out for fear of repeating it more than once; most tracks end before they seems to begin. On the two-minute “Fuerte” the Spanish lyrics about butterflies are followed with a keyboard solo and chord progression that is best described as a Rick Wakeman remix of the Super Mario Bros. them. Shorter still, “Pocket” combines overdubbed string unison lines, reverb soaked vocals and acoustic guitar Banda rhythms. Somehow these seemingly ridiculous real-time mash-ups come off with scorching enthusiasm: the surefooted beats on “Cabasa” give way after five minutes to a transformation akin to hearing a DJ cross-fading from Squarepusher to Ben Folds Five.

The music is surprisingly self-referential. At two separate times Jacobs discusses the actual song which you are listening to. On “Hilted”, which reverses the live to electronic concept of “MBGATE”, he foreshadows the piano that is to follow his lyric and in the quick jumble of words that comprise “Lights” he discusses that a time-stretch function, used on the vocals presumably, has been just been completed. This makes the process of the music’s construction all the more confusing, prompting “chicken or the egg”-type mystery. With “Lights” Mastered By Guy at The Exchange is at its best. With humor and sheer catchiness the rapid, hyper-melodic vocals deliver anecdotes about the aforementioned Amiga 500, working on his own music (Children At Play) and the infamous LTJ Bukem rejection letter sent in response to an early Max Tundra demo. All wrapped in a Craig David R&B parody and, of course, clocking in at under one minute forty seconds.

Originally published in Sound Collector Audio Review #6

Later in her career Mitchell has had a minor resurgence with her back catalogue, specifically the anti-commercial “Big Yellow Taxi”, which has been covered and sampled, perhaps best by Q-Tip for the pop/rap “Got ‘Til It’s Gone” by Janet Jackson in 1997. Curiously, 22 years earlier Mitchell made a compelling case for herself as rap artist of the year- male or female- with the music and lyrics she presented on Hissing. On “The Jungle Line”, which effectively “samples” the warrior drummers of Burundi, Joni talks of addiction while juxtaposing New York’s underbelly with thick jungle and drug imagery.

The short view of “Edith and the Kingpin” is one of a young girl being taken in to the prostitution trade by an old-school pimp. “Harry’s House- Centerpiece” gets the mash-up treatment by taking the romantic Mandel/Hendricks‘ standard about a couple’s simple love and suffocates it in the tale of an empty house wife unhappy in her marriage but unable to forgo its material trappings. Mitchell’s words throughout are acidic and sad. The music dense and incredibly spare, mixing folk, avant-garde, world and jazz into a new vocabulary.

With screenplay-like detail and oftentimes disturbing views of American life in the 1970’s Joni Mitchell effectively gets a head start on Nas, Tupac and Biggie without even so much as a mic check.

Originally published in Sound Collector Audio Review #5

The free performance brought out almost 70 people and they were witness to some vintage explorations. Old friends Nels Cline and Lynn Johnston were in fine form and the rhythm section of Bert Karl and the aforementioned Anthony Shadduck kept the churn.

The quartet was in consistent peril and the tension was palpable. I was smiling and on the balls of my feet for the entire fifty-minute, three movement improvisation. From clicking be-bop shuffle to stately melodic overtures to upright bass/electric guitar triplet pantomimes, Messrs. Shadduck and Co. rarely rested. The audience, no doubt there to see first hand the mythic fingers of Nels Cline, were witness to that rarest of assemblies: one soaked in honesty. Although the stray cliché slipped into the proceedings the bulk of the performance was a white-knuckle affair.

Lynn Johnston, performing on alto, bass and standard clarinet, bellowed, swooped and curled his notes around the strings of Shadduck’s bass. Cline wrung metallic swirls of sound out of his guitar. He alternated between clusters of notes and thin ribbons of sound looped, reversed and de-tuned. Drummer Karl conjured hi-hat ticks and tom-taps with an economy of movement. He played at times against and along the current of the evening, occasionally providing a flurry of rhythm followed by spare bass drum kicks. The ensemble’s organizing namesake, Anthony Shadduck however, rose to occasion and pulled together all disparate elements creating a conversation that no doubt would be better understood upon repeated listens. His bass lines crackled and crept: from breakneck to Brokeback.

After two extended improvisations Bert Karl tore sharply into a drum solo. Cline, Shadduck and Johnston quickly followed suit and were in and out with vague unison lines rescued from the dust by muscle memory. Restless, the group exchanged ideas and quickly organized itself. Cline scraped. Shadduck stabbed. As the mangled end came near a collective exhale and applause refused to let night fall into silence.

Originally published in L.A. Record