An hour exploring jazz guitar in combos and solo, from studio albums and live performances and from the 1960s to the present day.
Grant Green
I used to not appreciate jazz guitar; it too often reminded me of fusion and guitarists noodling on the boundary between jazz and rock. Obviously it’s a much broader landscape, and today we get only a small slice of it.
But what a slice! We have Jim Hall, Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, and some lesser known names. Barney Kessel was active from the 1940s to the 1980s, and in addition to a few albums of tasty West Coast jazz like this he also was a member of the Wrecking Crew, appearing as a session musician on hundreds of hit singles from the 1960s. Kenny Burrell has appeared in this blog before; this is from one of his many sessions from the 1950s and 1960s (and from a record credited to him and Coleman Hawkins, though the Hawk doesn’t appear on this track.)
We’ve heard some of Wes Montgomery’s output on the blog before, but the cuts I’ve selected here come from two of the many latter-day live releases that have come out from radio shows and highlight how this man could play. One of the Grant Green cuts here comes from a similar recent release, but there’s a lot more to listen to in his back catalog. And I’ve highlighted a late Charles Mingus track from Three or Four Shades of Blues because the guitar playing from Philip Catherine and Larry Coryell is the definition of legendary.
A few more modern and soulful recordings follow. Parlor Greens is an organ trio, but the guitarist in it is the great Jimmy James, late of Delvon Lamarr’s band, and their cover of “Jolene” is here as a tribute to the late great Dolly Parton. And Grant Green’s “Afro Party” is a fat soul jazz number from the 1972 soundtrack to the film The Final Comedown, which apparently is the first soundtrack released on Blue Note.
There are, somewhat surprisingly, multiple jazz guitar covers of John Coltrane’s “Impressions” to choose from; I chose the one that was the shortest, bowing to the constraints of the hour-long radio show format, from another great Wes Montgomery live recording.
Finally, I ended the set with four acoustic numbers that felt right for a fall day. “Hüttengriffe” apparently means “hut grips,” and Wolfgang Muthspiel named it that because the chords that make up this original composition are the ones that you know by heart even as a budding guitarist, and can pick up a guitar from the wall of a rustic cabin anywhere and play them. (They also sound a lot like the opening to Lady Gaga’s “Shallow,” but I think that’s coincidence.) The great Jim Hall’s composition “Romaine” gets a gemlike solo treatment here, as does Wes Montgomery’s delicate original “Mi Cosa.” Last, we finish with an excerpt from Kenny Burrell’s gorgeous duet with John Coltrane, “Why Was I Born?”
Do not adjust your set. There is nothing wrong.
On Green Dolphin Street – Barney Kessel, Ray Brown, Shelly Manne (The Poll Winners)
Out Of This World – Kenny Burrell with Coleman Hawkins (Bluesy Burrell (Rudy Van Gelder Remaster))
Four on Six (Live) – Wes Montgomery (The NDR Hamburg Studio Recordings (Live))
I Wish You Love – Grant Green (Green: Funk in France – Paris to Antibes)
Goodbye, Pork Pie Hat – Charles Mingus (Three Or Four Shades Of Blues)
Jolene – Parlor Greens (Emeralds)
Afro Party – Grant Green (The Final Comedown (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack))
Impressions – Wes Montgomery (In Paris: The Definitive ORTF Recording)
Hüttengriffe – Wolfgang Muthspiel (Angular Blues)
Romaine – Jim Hall (It’s Nice To Be With You (Jim Hall in Berlin))
Mi Cosa – Wes Montgomery (Maximum Swing: The Unissued 1965 Half Note Recordings)
Why Was I Born? – Kenny Burrell And John Coltrane (Kenny Burrell With John Coltrane)
An hour of early 1980s post punk and its descendants, through the lens of New Order.
The calendar has wrapped around again and it’s time for some more Exfiltration Radio! This time out we fall down a deep well of songs that can trace their DNA to the influence of New Order or its parent band Joy Division. There’s not so much of a thematic connection among the songs this time, though a great many of them are from post-punk bands who released these records in the early 1980s.
Instead, the unifier is the sound: prominent, melodic bass lines, drums that seem to take equal parts from shamanic quests, marching band lines and disco fills, and a whole lot of open fourths and fifths. Often (but not always) the guitar lines are clean and bright above a bed of synths, and all in all there’s that sound of a band shaking off the darkness and finding redemption in motion.
We begin where this mix did, with The Glove’s uncanny “Like an Animal.” My initial listening to this in the late summer had me doing a double take when the vocals came in, because I could swear that the instrumental was a New Order song. In reality it was the brainchild of the Cure’s Robert Smith, collaborating with Steven Severin from Siouxsie and the Banshees; the vocals are courtesy of dancer (and Banshees drummer Budgie’s ex-girlfriend) Jeannette Landry, since Smith was contractually prohibited from singing on records by anyone other than the Cure.
By contrast with The Glove, a less-known group comprised of well-known musicians, very few people seem to remember The Sound. This is surprising to me because the band’s sound feels very much like it belongs alongside New Order, Echo, Psychedelic Furs and other touchstones of the early 1980s. This song, from their 1985 fourth studio album, is the latest of the “original new wave” tracks here and is a pretty spectacular example of the genre. That rolls right into one of the two actual New Order tracks on the mix. “Dreams Never End,” from their first album, shouts back to Ian Curtis lyrics in the song “Insight” (“Guess your dreams always end”) and is one of the few NO tracks sung by bassist Peter Hook.
And Also the Trees are another one of those obscure post-punk groups, this one dating from 1984. This one sits somewhere in between Joy Division and the Cure on the spectrum of influences. Echo & The Bunnymen’s “Broke My Neck,” on the other hand, is about as dark as that group ever got, but listen to that drum part! Sometimes I think you could just listen to all the drum tracks from all these songs one after another and bliss out in the hi-hat.
The Cure, naturally, would like a word, and this brilliant anomaly in their catalog, recorded only with Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst, nevertheless fits right into the intersection of throbbing bass line (here played on a synth) and drums. The Psychedelic Furs’ Forever Now is mostly a rock album, but there are definitely touches of New Order in the bright open chords and especially that killer drum part. And Crispy Ambulance, a band fronted by Alan Hempsall, who once sat in with Joy Division while Ian Curtis was recovering from a suicide attempt (and watched the performance melt down into a riot), sound a whole lot like Joy Division on this song from their first album.
We take a breather for a few tracks with some bits that call forward the melodic side of New Order. There’s Siouxsie and Budgie’s “Miss the Girl” from their 1983 debut, and New York new wave band Tirez Tirez’s 1983 song “Real People” (which owes at least as big a debt to Talking Heads as the Manchester crowd). OMD’s “Souvenir” belies the thought that “If You Leave” was their sole influential single. And “Smiles and Laughter,” from Modern English’s first album, is a beautiful song from a messy first album.
A brace of more modern songs in this strain follow; The Stills’ “Of Montreal,” possibly named after the American indie band, has that early New Order throb about it. And razor-sharp Dum Dum Girls front woman Kristin Gundred (here Dee Dee Penny) nicked large bits from every post-punk band on 2014’s Too True, including a direct lift of that massive drum sound on this almost-title track.
We close out with a pair of tracks that follow the influences of New Order in opposite directions. “All World Cowboy Romance,” from Mission of Burma’s debut EP, is an instrumental that sits on the Joy Division side of the divide, with its open fifths, totemic drumming, and super-melodic bass line. And New Order’s own “Your Silent Face” follows the melodic sense the group always had into a strangely hopeful new future, led by that insistent melodica.
There is nothing wrong. We have taken control as to bring you this special show…
I could dance with you until the cows come home – Groucho Marx (Duck Soup)
Like an Animal – The Glove (Blue Sunshine)
Total Recall – The Sound (Heads & Hearts)
Dreams Never End – New Order (Movement [Collector’s Edition])
Talk without words – And Also The Trees (and also the trees)
Broke My Neck (Long Version) – Echo & The Bunnymen (Heaven Up Here (Deluxe Edition))
The Walk – The Cure (Japanese Whispers)
Run and Run – The Psychedelic Furs (Forever Now)
Bardo Plane – Crispy Ambulance (The Plateau Phase (Remastered))
Miss the Girl – The Creatures (A Bestiary of (Spectrum))
Real People – Tirez Tirez (Story of the Year)
Souvenir – Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark (Architecture & Morality)
Smiles and Laughter – Modern English (Mesh & Lace)
Of Montreal – The Stills (Logic Will Break Your Heart)
Too True To Be Good – Dum Dum Girls (Too True)
All World Cowboy Romance – Mission of Burma (Signals, Calls, And Marches)
Your Silent Face (edit) – New Order (Power, Corruption, and Lies)
How much can the sound of one instrument influence popular music? If the instrument is the Roland TR-808, the answer is: a lot. An hour of electro funk and hip-hop on Exfiltration Radio.
I had an idea to make an Exfiltration Radio show all about the hip-hop/electronic music style called electro. Days later, I feel like I’m deep in the rabbit hole and just starting to scratch the surface of this music.
What to know: electro is rooted in the rhythms and sounds produced by the Roland TR-808, a budget-oriented drum machine that substituted synthesized drum sounds for the fully sampled sounds of its market competitor, the Linn LM-1 (which at the time cost almost 10x more). While the 808 was a market failure, its fully synthesized drum sounds created a ruckus that could be felt across the dance floor, and its distinctive sound created an effect that felt futuristic in 1983.
Combine that with an esthetic borrowed from pioneers like Gary Numan and Roger Troutman of Zapp, with sizzling synthesizer sounds and vocoder-processed vocals, and you had a sound that enjoyed a huge amount of chart karma, picking up momentum from both the aftermath of disco and funk and the rise of hip-hop, and only losing popularity when Prince’s more florid Minneapolis sound elaborated it out of existence. But you can hear electro’s impact in some of Prince’s early material as well as in bands like Flyte Tyme (where Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis got their start).
There are two songs in this mix that are arguably iconic: “Planet Rock” is an early hip-hop classic that is still referenced in unexpected ways, and “Freak-A-Zoids” has become a Tiktok meme. Beyond that, I don’t know if anyone other than certain GenXers remember “Freaks Come Out at Night,” but I certainly do, and “Computer Games” showed that George Clinton had a creative life beyond Parliament/Funkadelic.
As for the rest? Ryuichi Sakamato’s “Riot in Lagos” predates the rest of the material here by at least two years, showing that things really did happen earlier in Japan. Warp 9’s “Nunk (New Wave Funk)” was an early electro track that bubbled up in New York in 1982, as was Man Parrish’s “Hip-Hop, Be Bop (Don’t Stop),” which ran afoul of identity politics when African-American hip-hop influencers found out that Parrish was white and gay. Cybotron’s “Clear” brings a strain of Detroit to the melting pot, courtesy of band member Juan Atkins, now considered a co-founder of the techno sound. Elektrik Funk’s “On a Journey” was a one-off single from the depths of 1982 electro heaven, and Hashim’s “Al-Naafyish” was a 1983 one-off from a New York DJ.
Friends, this could have been a three-hour mix. There are so many threads to follow in this sound. Phil Collins used the TR-808 on No Jacket Required, for heaven’s sake. But we’ll start here, with the famed battle cry: Freak-a-zoids… report to the dance floor!
Track listing:
“Drummers, they kind of get bored…” – Phil Collins (Exfiltration Radio: the bumpers)
riot in Lagos (2019 Remastering) – Ryuichi Sakamoto (B-2 Unit (2019 Remastering))
Planet Rock – Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force (Smithsonian Anthology Of Hip-Hop And Rap)
Nunk (New Wave Funk) – Warp 9 (12 Inch Classics)
Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don’t Stop) – Man Parrish (Hip Hop, Be Bop)
Freak-A-Zoid – Midnight Star (No Parking On the Dance Floor)
Clear – Cybotron (Enter (Deluxe Edition))
On a Journey (I Sing the Funkelectric) – Elektrik Funk (Rare Preludes, Vol. 1)
Freaks Come Out At Night – Whodini (Funky Beat: The Best of Whodini)
Al-Naafyish (The Soul) [Radio Version] – Hashim (Al-Naafyish (The Soul) – EP)
It’s the second Hackathon playlist this week, and the second Prince covers playlist (see: “Wanna be your cover”). This time I went hunting for jazz covers of Prince’s music, and it was surprisingly harder than I thought to find them… but they’re out there and they’re funky.
Austrian pianist David Helbock is new to me, but he was a godsend as his album Purple had a huge number of highly creative Prince covers. “Kiss” is a great example, recognizable but substantially recreated with melody line in the low bass and a combination of regular and prepared piano.
Michael Wolff was the bandleader on the Arsenio Hall show, and “The Wolff & Clark Expedition” has been recording together since 2013. “1999” comes from their 2015 album, and it’s a great version of the song, with Christian McBride on bass, Wallace Roney on trumpet, new-to-me Hailey Niswanger on sax and Daryl Johns on bass, Wolff on piano and Clark on drums.
Guitarist Dave Stryker’s “When Doves Cry” is a classic soul-jazz group lineup with Jared Gold on organ, McClenty Hunter on drums, and Steve Nelson on vibes. It’s a great take on one of Prince’s most covered songs. “The Beautiful Ones” has a very different vibe, with Ethan Iverson’s distinctive piano and improvisational style anchoring his iteration of the Bad Plus on their final record together. Often the Bad Plus can come across as bombastic on record, but this track feels lighter since the band steps back to let Reid Anderson take the lead melody in the verse on bass.
Helen Sung is another new-to-me pianist who’s been recording since 2003. “Alphabet Street” comes from her second album, in the trio format with Lewis Nash on drums and Derrick Hodge on bass. It’s a bop, a real romp through one of Prince’s lightest songs. Compare and contrast to the Jesus & Mary Chain’s version on “Wanna be your cover.”
There were a bunch of jazz covers of “Sexy M.F.”—not surprising, given the thick horn arrangement in the original. A lot of them, indeed, sounded like straight-up instrumental versions of the original chart. Brazil-born Swiss pianist Malcolm Braff’s version reimagines the song through a James Brown inspired lens, with a persistent bass line heartbeat from Reggie Washington and nimble drum work by Lukas Koenig.
“Jailbait” is a little bit of a cheat, as I don’t know if there was ever a Prince recording of this funk/blues composition. But given it comes from Miles Davis’s last live recording from Vienne, and it was specifically written by Prince for Miles, I couldn’t not include it. The last band he toured with featured Kenny Garrett on sax and a really tight rhythm section with Deron Johnson on keys, Richard Patterson and Foley on bass, and Ricky Wellman on drums.
Miles’ old bandmate Herbie Hancock released an album of pop covers in the mid-1990s with a killer band—Michael Brecker, Jack DeJohnette, John Scofield, Dave Holland, and Don Alias! “Thieves in the Temple” has a feel of some of Herbie’s early Blue Note recordings, filtering Prince’s increasingly complex late-1980s songwriting into a distinctive brew.
So many new faces! Marcin Wasilewski records on ECM, and that label’s famed sonic approach is all over “Diamonds and Pearls,” from his second album. This trio recording is what jazz trios are all about; the degree of telepathy with Slawomir Kurkiewicz on bass and Michal Miskiewicz on drums is something to behold, and the arrangement is sparse, unfussy, and beautifully melodic. Wasilewski’s solo (coming at about the 2:30 mark) honors the song while making its own lyric approach, which can be hard to do when dealing with a well known composition. Looking forward to digging into more of his discography.
From the solemnly beautiful to the bonkers, “Controversy” is the second tune from David Helbock’s Purple. I can’t tell what piece of scrap percussion Helbock hammers throughout the piece, but it’s perfectly tuned to an F# and beautifully represents the four-note “Controversy” theme, which Helbock develops throughout the work, veering from a quiet melody to a bluesy stomp to something symphonic and strange.
Joshua Redman’s quartet take on “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore” is a more straightforward bluesy reading of this essential Prince deep cut. The band here—Brad Mehldau on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass, Brian Blade on drums—keeps things just off-kilter enough to make it more than just a superb soul jazz workout, which it of course also is, and most of the interesting bits happen just with Redman and Grenadier or Blade.
We wind out with an excerpt of Aretha Franklin’s big band arrangement of “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Where the arrangement by Jimmy Scott on “Wanna be your cover” is achingly dry, this one is ebulliently Aretha; we fade out her scat solo with deepest regret.
Here’s the track listing:
Kiss – David Helbock (Purple)
1999 (feat. Michael Wolff & Mike Clark) – Wolff & Clark Expedition (Expedition 2 (feat. Michael Wolff & Mike Clark))
When Doves Cry – Dave Stryker (Eight Track II)
The Beautiful Ones – The Bad Plus (It’s Hard)
Alphabet Street – Helen Sung Trio (Helenistique)
Sexy M.F. – Malcolm Braff Trio (The Enja Heritage Collection: Inside (with Reggie Washington & Lukas Koenig))
Jailbait (Live at Vienne Jazz Festival, 1991) – Miles Davis (Merci Miles! Live at Vienne)
Thieves In the Temple – Herbie Hancock (The New Standard)
Diamonds and Pearls – Marcin Wasilewski Trio (January)
Controversy – David Helbock (Purple)
How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore – Joshua Redman (Timeless Tales (for Changing Times))
Nothing Compares 2 U – Aretha Franklin (Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics)
And please enjoy listening to the mix. Kick back, dig…
It’s a Veracode Hackathon time, so it’s time for some Exfiltration Radio! And this time around we are feeling purple! Show notes below.
I was talking about Sheryl Crow for some reason at the office recently, and casually mentioned the Prince cover of “Everyday is a Winding Road,” and they said, What? And I said, “Oh, you have to hear that.”
And so I decided to put together a playlist of songs that Prince covered. Then I realized that there actually weren’t that many songs that Prince covered in his lifetime… though the ones he did were epic. So I broadened the scope to include … unusual covers of Prince songs. Turns out, there are a lot of those out there!
Let’s start with the Information Society’s version of “Controversy,” from Prince’s fourth album. This version puts awkward industrial dance energy into Prince’s electrofunk, with unusual—maybe danceable—results.
Chaka Khan’s version of “I Feel For You” might be more familiar, at least if you were born before 1980. I personally remember people wandering around saying “Chaka Khan? Chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka Khan?” after the famous opening, which (fun fact) was recorded by Melle Mel of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. (Melle Mel’s most famous performance was on “The Message,” which deserves its own themed mix.)
This version of “1999” is by Dump, the pseudonym of James McNew, bassist for Yo La Tengo (and onetime attendant at the Corner Parking Lot, memorialized in The Parking Lot Movie), and comes from a full collection of Prince covers in a variety of … unusual styles. I’m not entirely sure what time signature this cover is in, but I do like listening and floating away with it.
Cyndi Lauper’s “When You Were Mine” comes from the impeccable A side of her debut album and covers a great track from Prince’s Dirty Mind album, itself one of the great albums of the early 1980s. It’s a great example of a cover artist making a song their own. Likewise, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings’ version of “Take Me With U” could almost have come from any Sharon Jones album—which is high praise, considering the uniformly high quality of her soul albums.
“Soul” is not necessarily a word one would use for the Tom Jones/Art of Noise cover of “Kiss,” but there is an incredibly high level of energy in both Jones’s gutsy vocal and the Art of Noise backing track that makes this a fun listen. Also fun: identifying the Easter eggs from Art of Noise’s earlier hits in the outro.
We then take a big ol’ left turn into the Jesus and Mary Chain’s version of “Alphabet Street,” which is two-plus minutes of abrasive guitar feedback that I rescued from a b-side to an obscure 1994 single. It’s noisy fun! So is the Hindu Love Gods’ version of “Raspberry Beret,” a jangly romp through one of Prince’s most lighthearted songs with a pickup band consisting of Warren Zevon and three-quarters of R.E.M. (Bill Berry, Mike Mills and Peter Buck).
“Everyday is a Winding Road” is the first of the two covers by Prince that show up on this playlist. I’ve told the story about how this cover came to be here up above, but I’ll just note that when Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic came out, I was still in a formative phase when it came to understanding funk. The difference in meter and rhythm between the foursquare original by Sheryl Crow and Prince’s version might, in jazz terms, be summed up as swing; the arrangement is pure joy, even to the chant at the end, which puts this cover in the context of Prince’s songs to the divine.
“If I Was Your Girlfriend” is from Prince’s earthier tradition, and this TLC cover might be the definitive version, adding explicit hip-hop beats and a dollop of sensuality to Prince’s original. In a very different way, “The Cross” provides its own definitive version of one of his most explicit pro-Christian songs. The Blind Boys of Alabama had a huge career resurgence from their 2001 album Spirit of the Century, which put a gospel lens on pop and rock music and exposed its listeners to the intensity and depth of the gospel tradition. “The Cross” comes from the follow-up, Higher Ground, and adds even more earthiness and grit to Prince’s religious statement.
“Can’t Make U Love Me” is the second of the two covers by Prince on the album. That he would cover a Bonnie Raitt song is only surprising for casual fans; his love of music was omnivorous, and the song’s depth of insight on relationships is as chilling here as in Raitt’s version. This is one of the times that Prince pulls off a Chaka Khan (or Cyndi Lauper) in reverse; it feels like it’s always been in his catalog, and at the same time adds a greater depth and maturity.
The final track, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” is more covered than almost any other Prince song apart from “Purple Rain.” I agonized about which version to include, but ultimately had to go with the Jimmy Scott version from his Holding Back the Years CD. Scott’s voice, shaped by his Kallman syndrome and by his difficult career, carries the lovely ache of the song better than almost any other, and this version deserves to be better known.
The track listing:
Controversy – Information Society (Essential ’80s Masters)
I Feel for You – Chaka Khan (I Feel for You)
1999 – Dump (That Skinny Motherfucker With The High Voice?)
When You Were Mine – Cyndi Lauper (She’s So Unusual)
Take Me With U – Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings (Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Rendition Was In))
Kiss (7″ Version) – Art of Noise featuring Tom Jones (Kiss (EP))
Alphabet Street – Jesus and Mary Chain (Come On (EP))
Raspberry Beret – Hindu Love Gods (Hindu Love Gods)
Everyday is a Winding Road – Prince (Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic)
If I Was Your Girlfriend – TLC (CrazySexyCool)
The Cross – The Blind Boys Of Alabama (Higher Ground)
Can’t Make U Love Me – Prince (Emancipation)
Nothing Compares 2 U – Jimmy Scott (Holding Back The Years)
Please enjoy listening, and know that Funk not only moves, it can remove, dig?
With great Veracode hackathons come more Exfiltration Radio episodes. This time around, I have a playlist of indie/alternative/etc. rock with female voices that I’ve been building for a few years. Only I didn’t realize it.
The original version of this playlist had basically the same intro as the final version but segued into a hip-hop and funk set halfway through. While it made sense from a musical and beat perspective, something bugged me about it, and that something revealed itself over the past few weeks as the half-forgotten memory of an observation my sister made about some of my mixes twenty years ago: that they were heavy on dudes with guitars, or dudes, period.
I’d say the rethinking of this playlist was worth it, as it made me listen more closely to what the songs had to say. And they aren’t shy. Let’s begin with Caroline Polachek. In her 2020 solo spot on KEXP, she comes across as thoughtful, deep, a little shy. There’s all of that in “Welcome to My Island,” but there’s also a huge self-confidence on display, along with a magnificent set of pipes and what she has called “brattiness,” a.k.a. a well-earned swagger.
I have been listening to Dum Dum Girls for almost ten years—long enough for lead singer Dee Dee (née Kristin Gundred) to release her solo debut in the meantime. I came on board with the Too True album, and it’s a piece of work. It reminds me of William Gibson’s description of AIs battling AIs in Neuromancer, in a passage that seems prescient now: “He … swung the program in a wide circle, seeing the black shark thing through her eyes, a silent ghost hungry against the banks of lowering cloud.” Which is to say, the song is sleek, fast-moving, and ready to take precious things from the unwary.
“Headspins” has been in my playlists for almost as long. Forming in 2012 and breaking up in 2018, the band (formed in London by Australian ex-pats) does a fine job of updating the sound of the Breeders and bringing them into the 21st century.
If you haven’t heard “Chaise Longue” by Wet Leg, you’re welcome. If you’ve heard it a million times, this is your opportunity to revel again in the slyly dadaesque innuendo of the verses, as well as the sheer joy of the guitar work.
It took me a while to get into the latest St. Vincent, a deeply personal work about her father’s release from prison, partly because of her artistic choice to lean into a 1970s-inspired set of styles throughout the record. But there’s nothing wrong about the funk that drives “Pay Your Way in Pain,” to say nothing of the deep discomfort just below the surface of the lyrics.
“So Unreal” is the oldest track on the mix. Post-punk has been a reliable well of inspiration for me, albeit one that gives me no small amount of impostor syndrome. After all, I was alive and listening to music when the Creatures formed their splinter group off of Siouxsie and the Banshees, but wasn’t nearly hip enough to know they existed.
Originally, “Kyoto” was the pivot point of this mix, and a different version of it followed up Phoebe Bridgers’ meditation on jet lag and alienation set to a brass section straight out of an old Beulah record with Thundercat’s “Tokyo” and a general pivot into 21st century funk and electronica. But I decided against taking what was, for me, the easy path; hopefully you’re as glad as I am.
“Silk” has been on this mix since it came up on a random shuffle through my music while I was blowing snow one bright winter day. I dearly love Wolf Alice on the basis of this early album and am almost afraid to listen future iterations of their sound. I might have said the same of Neneh Cherry, having been a huge fan of her first few albums but not closely following her since then. Broken Politics is a pretty darned impressive follow-up, albeit one more closely related to the remixes of “Move With Me” than to the funk of “Buffalo Stance,” and “Black Monday” is a pretty spectacular representation of the album’s pleasures.
Soccer Mommy (aka Sophia Allison) made one of the quintessential albums of the early pandemic years with Color Theory, and a slightly brighter version of the same introspective sound is in her latest release. By contrast, Liz Phair’s Soberish appears to have come and gone without an impact, which is a shame as I think the songwriting on it is as strong as anything since Whitechocolatespaceegg.
And then there’s Sales, whose “Pope is a Rockstar” probably would have languished in limbo were it not for TikTok, where mondegreen readings of the title as “go little rockstar” made the song go viral. But on its own it’s a woozy hybrid between indie pop and, maybe, surf rock? There’s something in those guitars, is what I’m saying.
I fell in love with Laura Marling a few years ago, on her album Once I Was an Eagle, which featured prominently on my 2013 mix “Something Other Than Regret.” Her most recent album, Song for Our Daughter, takes the stark template of that sound and layers on Laurel Canyon harmonies that go on for days, especially on this track.
Lavender Diamond, aka Becky Stark, is another artist who appeared on that 2013 mix, and promptly disappeared until their 2020 album Now is the Time. All the hallmarks of the sound are there — the high vocals, the chord progressions out of an evolved version of the American Songbook — but where their 2012 album Incorruptible Heart dwelt in heartbreak, the new album seems to seek out hope behind horror.
One of the newest tracks on the album, boygenius’s “$20” from their debut LP The Record is a sublime and angry tune about the desperate need to escape the ordinary, with layered and shifting vocals from Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker. It’s stunning. The following tune, from the final Low album before Mimi Parker’s tragic death from cancer last year, underscores and reinforces all the themes with its own harmonies, but the anger is replaced with resignation and sadness. “Always looking for that one sure thing/Oh, you wanted so desperately.”
The final track is something of a lost gem: the final cut from the debut album of Eggplant, released in 1996. While most of the songs on the London trio’s indie rock driven album nod to punk with short run times and brisk beats, the final song, “We Only Wanted to Be Loved,” is a heartbreaker of a ballad. The trio deserved better than the oblivion their records found on initial release; here’s hoping they get a good afterlife via the Bandcamp rerelease of their music.
I hope this show brings you some sounds you haven’t heard before and makes you think—or move your booty, or both. The full track list is below:
Welcome To My Island – Caroline Polachek (Desire, I Want To Turn Into You)
Rimbaud Eyes – Dum Dum Girls (Too True)
Headspins – Splashh (Comfort)
Chaise Longue – Wet Leg (Wet Leg)
Pay Your Way In Pain – st. vincent (Daddy’s Home)
So Unreal – The Creatures (A Bestiary of (Spectrum))
Kyoto – Phoebe Bridgers (Punisher)
Silk – Wolf Alice (My Love Is Cool)
Black Monday – Neneh Cherry (Broken Politics)
Feel It All The Time – soccer mommy (Sometimes, Forever)
In There – Liz Phair (Soberish)
Pope Is a Rockstar – SALES (Sales Lp)
Held Down – Laura Marling (Song For Our Daughter)
This Is How We Rise – Lavender Diamond (Now Is The Time)
$20 – boygenius (the record)
Days Like These – Low (HEY WHAT)
We Only Wanted To Be Loved – EGGPLANT (Catboy/Catgirl)
We have taken control, and we will return it to you as soon as you are exfiltrated.
When Wayne Shorter died on March 2, 2023, it was like the closing of a book that you knew was going to run out of pages soon, but hoped it never would. Shorter had retired from performance in 2018 due to worsening health, but was still composing and releasing new music up until last summer.
Having already put together an Exfiltration Radio episode of Shorter’s music, I debated doing another—I could easily do twelve or thirteen episodes of his works. But I decided to dedicate this episode to his music by highlighting performances of his compositions by others. Most of the recordings here come from the last few years, but there are two from the 1990s and one contemporaneous with Wayne’s most productive period as a composer in the 1960s—albeit with a very different approach.
I considered doing the entire album with covers and performances of “Footprints,” the Shorter classic that was dramatically reimagined by the Miles Davis Quintet on Miles Smiles. In the end I settled for two very different approaches to the standard, starting with Herbie Mann’s 1968 version. Recorded with an unusually star-studded group—Sonny Sharrock on guitar, Roy Ayers on vibes, and a very young Miroslav Vitouš on bass, with drummer Bruno Carr—the recording will surprise those who primarily associate Mann with his notorious early 1970s record Push Push.
David Ashkenazy’s “Chief Crazy Horse” is a 2008 performance compiled on a 2021 tribute album on Posi-Tone Records. Drummer Ashkenazy leads a quartet with Matt Otto on tenor sax, Steve Cotter on guitar, and Roger Shew on drums, playing a version of the closing song from Adam’s Apple that manages to be at once familiar and new, thanks largely to Cotter’s sterling guitar work.
One of my favorite large-band renditions of Shorter’s work, David Weiss’s “Fall” comes from a live tribute to Wayne recorded in 2013 with a group that includes Ravi Coltrane on tenor, Joe Fiedler on trombone, and the great Geri Allen on piano. While the arrangement undoes the innovation of the original Miles recording, in which the horns repeat the theme while the rhythm section improvises underneath, the performance is not to be missed, especially for Weiss’s trumpet solo.
More “Footprints” follow, this time in a duo recording by Dave Liebman and Willy Rodriguez from the 2020 compilation album 2020. The album is credited to Palladium, an effort by Shorter’s social media rep Jesse Markowitz to get his music better known. The performances here run from more traditional to more avant-garde and this one is firmly on the latter side of the spectrum, with Liebman’s soprano sax and Rodriguez’s drums moving things along briskly.
Walter Smith III is having something of a moment, coming off several collaboration albums with Matthew Stevens as In Common, guesting with Connie Han on several of her excellent recent albums, and about to release his Blue Note debut. The performance of “Adam’s Apple” here from his 2018 release Twio foreshadows much of that greatness, including his impeccable taste in sidemen. I’m not sure how the studio didn’t explode with the fury of Eric Harland’s drums on this number, and Harish Ragavan’s bass is nothing to sneeze at either.
The vocalist Clare Foster recorded an entire album of vocal adaptations of Shorter’s work at the beginning of her career, in 1993. While some of the lyrics are flights of fancy only tangentially connected to the work, her “Iris” precisely captures the mood of Shorter’s ballad. This track is followed by the other 1990s performance on the mix, the great Kenny Kirkland’s take on Shorter’s “Ana Maria” from his sole outing as a leader before his untimely death in 1998.
We close with another performance from Shorter Moments, a 2009 performance of Wayne’s phenomenal “Infant Eyes” by Wayne Escoffery on tenor sax with Avi Rothbard on guitar. While Shorter did not only write ballads, there was arguably no one in the second half of the 20th century who was better at writing ballads, and this recording makes a persuasive case in favor of that argument.
Full track listing and link for playback are below. Enjoy!
Footprints – Herbie Mann (Windows Opened)
Chief Crazy Horse – David Ashkenazy (Shorter Moments – Exploring the World of Wayne)
Fall (Live) – David Weiss (Endangered Species: The Music of Wayne Shorter (Live at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola))
Footprints – David Liebman & Willy Rodriguez (2020)
Adam’s Apple (feat. Eric Harland & Harish Ragavan) – Walter Smith III (Twio)
Iris – Clare Foster (Clare Foster sings Wayne Shorter)
Ana Maria – Kenny Kirkland (Kenny Kirkland)
Infant Eyes – Wayne Escoffery (Shorter Moments – Exploring the World of Wayne)
Do not attempt to adjust your radio; there is nothing wrong.
Sometimes my early mixes are what might charitably be described as “all over the place.” (Heck, sometimes my late mixes are too.) This one, which was assembled sometime around May of 1993, definitely fits that description.
There comes a time in every young music head’s life when they discover Tom Waits. For me, that was clearly happening right about the time this mix was made. It was fortuitous that Apollo 18 by They Might Be Giants had come out about six months previously, as the frenetic energy of the opening track plays nicely with “Goin’ Out West.” (Side note: because I bought a lot of my CDs through music clubs at this stage in my life, I was almost always late to the party when a new album was released. If I recall correctly, it could be a few months before a new release was available in the mail order catalog. —And yes, mail order catalog, because this was right before the Internet began to eat that business model.)
Between those two tracks is “Frelon Brun,” from Filles de Kilimanjaro. I had just picked up this CD, having fallen in love with the title track, which appeared on Miles’ The Columbia Years anthology (another box set I snagged at a discount). “Frelon Brun” is probably the most rock-oriented of the performances on that album; for one, it’s the only track that is under 6 minutes long. It’s funky and powerful and fun. On this album it punctuates the ferocious energy of the tracks on either side.
Side 2 opens with Ayub Ogada’s “Obiero,” a track that appears in slightly different forms on both his own En Mana Kuoyo and Peter Gabriel’s Plus from Us anthology; it’s the latter that appears here (and coincidentally helps to date the mix, since Plus from Us was released on May 16, 1993). That’s followed by “Rain” by An Emotional Fish, which was on the Spew 2 promotional compilation (which I’ve since lost), alongside King Missile’s dryly hilarious “Detachable Penis” (which also appears on this mixtape). And then comes “Traditional Irish Folk Song,” from Denis Leary’s comedy album No Cure for Cancer. Like I said, charitably described as all over the place.
This mixtape also memorializes the beginning of my interest in PJ Harvey, having picked up Dry based on word of mouth from the crew in the basement of Peabody Hall, i.e. the publications staffs of the Declaration and The Yellow Journal. I was still digesting the Talking Heads, having picked up the Sand in the Vaseline compilation earlier that year. And, having bought Neneh Cherry’s great Homebrew on a whim earlier that spring, I discovered the seductive pleasures of “Peace in Mind” by blasting the album out my Monroe Hill window one Sunday afternoon as we played an impromptu volleyball game.
Dig My Grave – They Might Be Giants (Apollo 18)
Frelon Brun (Brown Hornet) – Miles Davis (Filles De Kilimanjaro)
Goin’ Out West – Tom Waits (Bone Machine)
Ten Percenter – Frank Black (Frank Black)
The Unbreakable Chain – Daniel Lanois (For The Beauty Of Wynona)
Cain & Abel – Branford Marsalis Trio (The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born)
I Want To Live – Talking Heads (Sand In The Vaseline Popular Favorites 1976-1992)
One of the things that happened when I got to the University of Virginia was that I began to branch out in my musical tastes—or, maybe more precisely, I began to explore each of the branches I had already grown to like. In this case, it was jazz, and while I had made mix tapes containing jazz music before, this was the first to be (almost) entirely devoted to jazz.
I found my way into jazz from Sting, whose band in the mid to late 1980s was made up of jazz musicians; from summer concerts at Fort Monroe; and from my mom’s record collection. She had some Ahmad Jamal and Dave Brubeck and Ramsey Lewis—nothing too outré but enough to convince me that I wanted to listen to more. I also knew, from U2, that I ought to listen to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. I didn’t really know anyone else who listened to jazz, so I had to find my own way in.
Because I liked to read liner notes, I found myself drawn to the Original Jazz Classics reissue series of classic jazz albums on CD when I was at UVA. There was so much context on the back of those albums! You could see who the players were, read reviews, and more without even opening the album. That’s how I started to dig back into some of the great ’50s and ’60s recordings. I also picked up the threads of Sting’s band, listening to Branford, then Wynton, then Wynton’s band and Kenny Kirkland.
Because I have never been able to focus exclusively, a couple of jazz-adjacent tracks snuck onto this mix. Most notably, “Escalay” from the Kronos Quartet Pieces of Africa appears. While this is nominally a classical or world music track, it has enough in common with the works around it—a strong rhythmic foundation, a modal scale, an improvised solo—to fit in nicely. The other, Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain,” was added to provide an anchor point for some of the other explorations of blues through the jazz idiom on Side 2. And I couldn’t figure out how to end the mix, so I dropped some Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo in; it fits better than you’d think because of the vocal improvisation and the general mood.
For the actual jazz tracks, there’s a pretty good range of stuff. Of course we touch on Kind of Blue, but there’s also Coltrane’s Sound and Ellington Indigos. I really like the tracks from Marcus Roberts, the pianist and composer who was the nucleus of Wynton Marsalis’s late-1980s/early-1990s band. And there are a couple of nice sets on the second side, with the early jazz workouts of Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins contrasting with the more abstract work of Branford Marsalis, Ornette Coleman and Kenny Kirkland.
Another Hackathon mix! This one is about finding different states of mind in music from around the world. The mix is heavy on African music from different countries, but there’s a healthy dose of other stuff too. Track notes below.
“Ali’s Here,” Ali Farka Toure (Niafunke). I learned about Ali from his collaboration with Ry Cooder in the 1990s, Talking Timbuktu. But this solo album is grittier and deeply, deeply funky.
“Durgen Chugaa,” Shu-De (Voices from the Distant Steppe). This album of Tuvan throat singing is infamous in my family; I was blasting it in my first post-college apartment when a knock came at my door, and the melodious sounds of throat singing were the first things that Lisa heard when she met me for the first time as she and our mutual friend Shel met me at my door. Reader, she married me anyway.
“Shamas-Ud-Doha, Badar-Ud-Doja,” Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Shahen-Shah). My favorite of Nusrat’s albums for Real World. I began to learn vocal improvisation technique from listening to him on this track.
“Wagane Faye,” Youssou N’Dour (Badou). An early recording of Youssou from the mid-1980s, parts of this song would end up reprised on his Set album from 1990 as “Medina.” This version skips the xylophone-like synths and saxes and just goes full-out as a live band cut, much heavier on the percussion and other dance elements.
“Living Together,” Remmy Ongala & Orchestre Super Matimila (Mambo). I slept on this early-90s Real World album and am sorry I did. Great Tanzanian funk that fits nicely with the Senegalese sound around it.
“Gainde,” Omar Pene & Super Diamono (Direct from Dakar). Late-1990s Senegalese mbalax from the great rival to Youssou N’Dour.
“Na Teef Know De Road of Teef,” Pax Nicholas (Daptone Records’ Rhythm Showcase). A legendary track. Nicholas was a member of Fela Kuti’s band Africa 70 who recorded this solo album in 1973 in Ginger Baker’s well-equipped Nigerian studio with many of Fela’s musicians. Apparently Fela didn’t like the competition, and told him, “Don’t you ever, EVER play it again!” And thus the recording remained underground for more than 30 years.
“Pop Makossa Invasion,” Dream Stars (Pop Makossa – The Invasive Dance Beat of Cameroon). A great song from a great compilation of highly danceable funk from Cameroon, all following the original release of Manu Dibango’s legendary “Soul Makossa.”
“Lonyaka,” Ladysmith Black Mambazo (Classic Tracks). I love the mbube style showcased in this track. There’s a reason that so many people fell in love with this band when they heard it on Graceland.
“On the Street,” The Dmitri Pokrovsky Ensemble (The Wild Field). A completely different singing style from Pokrovsky’s pioneering folk ensemble, this traditional song comes from a region of Russia that adjoins Ukraine, and so has a completely different meaning today than when it was released over 30 years ago.
“San Vicente,” Milton Nascimento (Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical). There was a pretty notorious cartoon that ran in a student magazine when I was an undergrad, picturing Peter Gabriel and David Byrne as carpetbaggers due to their leveraging world music sounds in their pop music. The accusation has a ring of truth to it, but both musicians did their best to provide the musicians with whom they collaborated with a broader platform, Gabriel through his still-vital Real World label, and Byrne through Luaka Bop, a more eclectic group that began with this release. Brazil Classics 1 highlights some of the musicians who worked with Byrne on the Talking Heads release Naked and Byrne’s solo debut Rei Momo, including Nascimento, a dean of Brazilian folk music.
“Voyager,” Kudsi Ergüner & Süleyman Ergüner (Sufi Music of Turkey). A hypnotic album I found in college showcasing the ney flute of Kudsi Ergüner and a very different sound from the Sufi tradition that manifests in the qawwali singing of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
“T’Amo,” Tenores di Bitti (S’amore ’e mama). Lest we think that remarkable vocal styles are a strictly extra-European phenomenon, give this track a listen. The Sardinian ensemble on display here does things with overtones that you normally have to travel to Tuva to hear.
“Svatba,” Bulgarian State Television Female Choir (Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares). Still hair-raising more than 30 years after these recordings hit the United States.
“En Mana Kuoyo,” Ayub Ogada (En Mana Kuoyo). The liner notes for the album describe this song as a “parable suggesting that the person who hurries eats his sesame seeds with sand.” I feel seen.
“Gut pluriarc with one man’s voice” (Instrumental Music of the Kalahari San). This uncredited performance, just a man and a stringed instrument, reminds us that there is still so much to listen to and learn.
It’s a Veracode Hackathon, so it must be time for an Exfiltration Radio playlist! This time, naturally, the musical choices were influenced by all the Miles-related jazz I’ve been writing about over the last few months, as well as an unlikely source: my Apple Music library maintenance.
So, when you source your library from iTunes Store purchases, third-party high-res music providers like HDTracks and Bandcamp, and CD and vinyl rips, you end up with pretty big music files and a lot of music. Too much music to fit on the internal hard drive of most Macs. I’ve been using an external drive for my media for many years now. Mostly it works fine. When it doesn’t, though, it’s disastrous. There is some kind of error condition in Apple Music that causes it to freak out when the external drive is temporarily unavailable and re-download all the music in the iCloud library. Which is OK, I guess, except when the external drive comes back online, you now have two copies of all the music in your library. Or, if it happens again, three.
I’ve figured out a rubric for cleaning this up, which will be the subject of another post. But I’ve been going through all the music in my library album by album, and in the process creating new genres to make it easier to find some types of music. In particular, the genres that inspired this mix were Jazz Funk and Fusion. The latter needs no explanation due to our journey with Miles; jazz funk is just the hybrid of a bunch of different strains of African American music with a heavy focus on improvisation over a funky beat. The end mix combines some tracks I’ve already written about with some more modern jazz from my collection; I’ll provide notes for each track below.
“Wiggle-Waggle,” from Fat Albert Rotunda: the track that got the most comments from my write-up of Herbie Hancock’s TV show soundtrack, with friends noting how it sounds like this track dropped in from another dimension.
“Chunky,” from Live: Cookin’ with Blue Note at the Montreux Jazz Festival, by Ronnie Foster. I’ve programmed Foster’s great “Mystic Brew” in past Exfiltration Radio segments, including the Hammond special. This is a live version of the opening track from the same album, Foster’s great Blue Note debut Two Headed Freap. There’s a lot that’s different about his approach to the Hammond organ compared to earlier artists, but all I can say is: he funky.
“Flat Backin’,” from Moon Rappin’ by Brother Jack McDuff. Speaking of earlier artists, a lot of McDuff’s early work was squarely in the “soul jazz” category (like his great Hot Barbecue), but by the time of this 1969 album McDuff was on another planet, and the electric guitar and bass land the music in Funklandia.
“Funky Finger,” from The Essence of Mystery by Alphonse Mouzon. We have seen Mouzon on the first Weather Report album, but his solo debut for Blue Note is another thing entirely. Despite the name, it’s got less of the mystery of Weather Report and more of the funk, and this track is a great example.
“Sugar Ray,” from Champions by Miles Davis. “That’s some raunchy sh*t, y’all.” Listen to how the chord changes are so wrong, the way they just walk over to an adjacent major key and then settle back into the original as though nothing happened. Also note the remarkable Wayne Shorter solo.
“Superfluous,” from Instant Death by Eddie Harris. Sampled on “What Cool Breezes Do” from Digable Planets’ Reachin’, this is an instant classic.
“The Griot,” from Henry Franklin: JID014 by Henry Franklin, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Composer Younge and former Tribe Called Quest member Shaheed Muhammad have been having a blast recording albums with their jazz idols in the Jazz is Dead series, and this newer release with bassist Franklin, who played with Freddie Hubbard, Bobbi Humphrey, Archie Shepp, Willie Bobo, Stevie Wonder and others, is a tasty slice of funk anchored by his acoustic double bass.
“Tell Me a Bedtime Story,” from Fly Moon Die Soon by Takuya Kuroda. This funky cover of Herbie Hancock’s original from Fat Albert Rotunda is a great example of latter-day jazz-funk, with the arrangement draped (or smothered, depending on your taste) in layers of Fender Rhodes, synths, and electric bass. Kuroda’s incisive trumpet anchors the arrangement and lifts the funk to another level.
“Timelord,” from Inflection in the Sentence by Sarah Tandy. A great 21st century London jazz album, featuring Tandy on both acoustic piano and electric keys, the latter notably apparent in this moody track.
“Where to Find It,” from SuperBlue by Kurt Elling. I’ll write more about this track another time, but it’s worth noting that Elling is one of the few vocalists to brave the task of putting lyrics to modern jazz tracks like this one, Wayne Shorter’s Grammy award winning “Aung San Suu Kyi.”
Enough words. “We have taken control as to bring you this special show, and we will return it to you as soon as you are exfiltrated.”
This go-round of Exfiltration Radio investigates an unusual jazz instrument, the flute. This one has been bubbling around in my mind since I started putting jazz mixes together. I kept running across unusual instrumentation on some of the recordings, well beyond the sax or trumpet plus piano/bass/drums that I first started listening to thirty years ago. First it was organ, then vibes, and today I finally started pulling together this playlist, which focuses on that other woodwind, the flute.
One thing that jumped out at me in looking through the credits on these tracks is the number of flautists who were also, or even primarily, known for their chops on the saxophone. James Moody, who leads off this set with his famous false start from his Last Train from Overbrook album, was one, but then there’s Pharoah Sanders and Joe Henderson on Alice Coltrane’s “Blue Nile,” and Yusef Lateef (who here is playing the xun, or “Chinese globular flute”).
But part of the fun of this set for me was digging into some of the artists who were best known for their work as flautists. Hubert Laws, whose playing graces “Windows” (here drawn from the Chick Corea compilation Inner Space, but originally released on his own Laws’ Clause), is all over recordings from the 1960s and 1970s where the flute appears — in fact, he’s also on “Blues Farm.” (There is an alternate universe in which this mix is all Hubert Laws, all the time.) Bobbi Humphrey’s fine playing on “Harlem River Drive,” though drenched in 1970s production values by the Mizells, is outstanding, as is the more modern playing on Chip Wickham’s “Soho Strut.” Finally, we come somewhat full circle on Matthew Halsall’s cover of Alice Coltrane’s “Journey in Satchidananda.”
So kick back, dig, while we do it to you in your earhole.
The Moody One – James Moody (Return From Overbrook)
The Plum Blossom – Yusef Lateef (Eastern Sounds)
The Great Pumpkin Waltz – Vince Guaraldi (It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown)
Windows – Chick Corea (Inner Space)
Blue Nile – Alice Coltrane (Ptah, the El Daoud)
Harlem River Drive – Bobbi Humphrey (Blacks And Blues)
Blues Farm – Ron Carter (Blues Farm)
Nancy Wilson – Brian Jackson, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Adrian Younge (Brian Jackson JID008)
Soho Strut – Chip Wickham (Shamal Wind)
Dogon Mysteries – Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids (Shaman!)
Journey In Satchidananda – Matthew Halsall & The Gondwana Orchestra (Journey In Satchidananda / Blue Nile)
Boris Blank, of the 1980s band Yello, with the Fairlight CMI sampler
Today’s edition of Exfiltration Radio looks at making songs from other songs. I started making it just as an exercise in a certain type of 1980s dance music, but realized that what drew me into these songs were the bits of other songs and sounds that popped their heads up in the mix. And why not? The 1980s were when sampling came into its own—whether the cut and paste techniques of Steinski or the early digital sampling exercises of Art of Noise. Even some kinds of remixes fall into the pattern, where a song is deconstructed to its component pieces and augmented with other sounds to make something new. And weird, don’t forget weird.
Do not attempt to adjust your set, there is nothing wrong.
Jazz – Steinski (What Does It All Mean?: 1983-2006 Retrospective)
Close (To the Edit) – Art of Noise ((Who’s Afraid Of) The Art of Noise?)
Regiment – Brian Eno & David Byrne (My Life in the Bush of Ghosts)
Megamix – Herbie Hancock (Megamix)
Love Missile F1-11 (Ultraviolence Mix) – Sigue Sigue Sputnik (The Remixes)
Push It (Remix) – Salt-n-Pepa (Hot, Cool and Vicious)
Pump Up the Volume (USA 12) – Colourbox (Best of Colourbox: 1982-1987)
Wise Up Sucker (12″ Youth Remix) – Pop Will Eat Itself (This Is the Day…)
Beef – Gary Clail & On-U Sound System (End Of The Century Party)
God O.D., Pt.1 – Meat Beat Manifesto (Storm The Studio (Remastered))
Justified & Ancient (Stand By The Jams) – The KLF (Justified & Ancient)
Paranoimia – The Art of Noise with Max Headroom (Paranoimia (12″))
It’s been quite a rollercoaster of a year, for all sorts of reasons, and there were times when it felt like we were hunkering down and waiting for a beating to end. But people are getting vaccinated now and it’s spring, and suddenly it seems reasonable to start hoping once more.
Musically, the period I associate most with “hope,” as opposed to “nihilism” or “despair” or “80s hair,” is the time from the late 1990s through about 2003 or so, which produced some of the loveliest songs of hope and happiness I can remember. Part of it was the rise of indie rock, part probably the sustained recovery of the world economy. Maybe it was just that I got married at the beginning of the period, who knows? For whatever reason, it feels like a good time to dust off some of these tracks and start hoping again.
Do not attempt to adjust your set…
Untitled 4 (“Njósnavélin”) – Sigur Rós (( ))
Scratch – Morphine (Yes)
The Laws Have Changed – The New Pornographers (Electric Version)
When You’re Falling – Afro Celt Sound System (Volume 3: Further in Time)
The Way That He Sings – My Morning Jacket (At Dawn)
Diamond In Your Mind – Solomon Burke (Don’t Give Up On Me)
Brief & Boundless – Richard Buckner (Since)
All Possibilities – Badly Drawn Boy (Have You Fed The Fish?)
Time Travel is Lonely – John Vanderslice (Time Travel Is Lonely)
Shine – Mark Eitzel (The Invisible Man)
Why Not Smile – R.E.M. (Up)
You Are Invited – The Dismemberment Plan (Emergency & I)
Where Do I Begin – The Chemical Brothers (Dig Your Own Hole)
Lee Morgan’s “Search for The New Land” session, Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 15, 1964. This is the cover shot for Shorter’s “The All Seeing Eye.”
I’ve been going down a rabbit hole in my listening lately, as I grow increasingly conscious that great artists live among us… but perhaps not for too much longer. One I’m thinking about right now is the great saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter.
I started listening to Shorter over 30 years ago, thanks to a CD copy of The Best of Wayne Shorter: The Blue Note Years that I found in Plan 9. Like all single-disc anthologies (and like this mix!), it’s a sparse summary of an astonishing period of creativity and excellent performances. But it hooked me… especially the opening track, the title from Shorter’s sixth album, which manages to be both relaxed and full of tension at the same time thanks to his unshowy use of modal scales.
I think I heard this album before I came across the Second Great Quintet recordings he did with Miles, which included many of Shorter’s compositions (especially the great “Footprints,” heard here) in very different arrangements. Miles’s version of “Footprints,” on Miles Smiles, ups the anxiety in the modal scale through tempo and urgency, especially in Tony Williams’ polyrhythmic drumming. I also looked backwards in time, finding some of the great recordings that he did with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (and recently uncovering some of the sideman work he did for some of his colleagues, including Lee Morgan here).
Thanks to early-90s bias against fusion (which, in fairness, had fallen pretty low by the late 1980s), it took me years to discover Weather Report, particularly the first album, and I only recently began to listen to some of Shorter’s mid-1970s output, which featured a more accessible side of the great composer on songs like “Ana Maria.” And his late-period works with Danilo Perez, John Pattituci and Brian Blade continue to blow my head off with the genius of the collective improvisation, even as they document Shorter’s declining physical stamina. (He retired from performance in 2019 due to mounting health issues.)
Like that first Blue Note compilation, this sixty minute set is necessarily scanty, but hopefully will convince you to seek out more of Shorter’s work as well—and to utter a silent word of thanks that we walk the earth at the same time he does.
Enjoy…
Speak No Evil
–
Wayne Shorter
(
Speak No Evil
)
Ping Pong (No. 1)
–
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers
(
Complete Studio Recordings (with Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter…)
)
Edda
–
Lee Morgan
(
The Rumproller
)
Yes or No
–
Wayne Shorter
(
JuJu
)
Footprints
–
Miles Davis Quintet
(
Miles Smiles
)
Tears
–
Weather Report
(
Weather Report
)
Ana Maria
–
Wayne Shorter
(
Native Dancer
)
Aung San Suu Kyi
–
Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock
(
1+1
)
Adventures Aboard The Golden Mean (live)
–
Wayne Shorter Quartet
(
Emanon
)
Pinocchio
–
Herbie Hancock Quintet
(
A Tribute To Miles
)
