John Frusciante 'Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt' (1994)

Resykld:
Who would've thought the popularity of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (whom popular opinion holds to be a gaggle of gurning, shirtless Californian twats with a few conversely great LPs to their name) could be indirectly responsible for an album like this?: A home-recorded double album of avant-garde, dissonant demons ('92 & '94 respectively) by guitarist John Frusciante. This is up there with other shadow flowers like Oar and the Madcap Laughs, except even more abstract in its style. Whereas Skip's music was a schizophrenic mess and Syd was just shot-away, Frusciante is not of that generation, and through the 90's was an extremely reclusive, emaciated crack and heroin addict with his head tightly screwed on and free of whimsy.

The songs/instrumentals are warts-and-all, frequently detuned, almost ignore melody (but not really) and sound as if they were written/recorded on the spot, freeform. If this spontaneity was the method, Frusciante's four-track tape machine (my favourite recording tool incidentally - because it forces you to make the most of the little space available) captures and preserves these moments of torment uninhibited. These recordings do not answer to gravity, they have their own laws and operate in an emotional and musical vortex. If you have experienced such a vortex or are capable of stepping into one, then you will 'get' Niandra. And no, you don't need to enjoy his group work, Frusciante has his own muse.

Listening back to this album by a physically withered, disintegrating individual, it seems miraculous that Frusciante managed to emerge the other side of the 90's; and go on to use his considerable talents to forge a decent solo career... but he'll never write like this again. He escaped the vortex, stepped through a waterfall, and today explores a different kind of spirituality. For all their macho sex-funk and Hendrixising, the Chili Peppers' constituent members cite an eclectic range of greats for influence, and Frusciante would go on to make some excellent, introspective and ambitious music off the back of post-punk/new wave/krautrock obsessions.
On Niandra however there is no trace of this later polish, it's a totally unique and isolated document - on its own planet musically and deeply personal, achieving a sort of metaphysical junkie plateau. The mistakes are left in, and anything resembling a pretty song is quickly ravaged with psychedelic tape effects and everything from tormented howls to banshee screams (made even more inhuman by occasional pitch-shifting). It's sad, ugly and beautiful.
When he finally rejoined his old group in 1999, cleaned up, Frusciante had lost all his teeth to infection and received extensive skin grafts for needle abscesses. He also suffered severe burns after his crack den burned down. Ladies and gentlemen:

I (Niandra Lades)
II (Usually Just a T-Shirt)

Remarkable 1994 interview and the only press Frusciante did during this period

Song from the album
Example of latter-day oeuvre

Einstürzende Neubauten 'Zeichnungen des Patienten O. T.' (1983)

Zeichnungen des Patienten O. T. (1983)

Here the Berlin group, led by the positively demonic Blixa Bargeld, expands its sound, underlying the metallic clatter and grating noises of the first album with something resembling a pulse (quite literally, on one track). The disturbing, minimalist sound still reigns but it's much more textured and varied this time around; O.T. is one of those albums where you will have it on in the background and mistakenly think you have been through half of it, only to check the tracklisting and find you've been listening to but a single epic composition. This progression is one reason I consider Neubauten's 80's period to be great.

We are not in the territory of conventional songwriting yet, no choruses or verses are here to give you a tether into popular music or safe familiarity, this is the world of Collapsing New Buildings - the constant disintegration and perpetuation of disposable modern structures (ideals as trends, cultures, powers-that-be, people?). You might say that musically and lyrically Neubauten are deconstructing it all themselves, but I think they had aspirations to destruction as well:
'I am waiting on the edge of the world for the new sun which burns more than it shines /The president howls at the grave of the HMV dog / And the newsreader bears his honest as bones face / The station ID, a blow on the bones.'

A few aspects of the broadening and deepening of the Neubauten sound, which has a resonance different to that of the masochistic appeal of the debut:
- synth burbles, circuit buzzes and static that provide a lower register to the found-sound ambience, which are fleshed out with a wider range of objects being struck/plucked/scraped etc
- at least twice the number of tape tracks (seemingly) in use, with several dedicated to analogue sampling and field recordings (a Hamburg fish market being one, apparently)
- occasional use of atmospheric, Central African-sounding woodwind and percussion, even dissonant strings ('Armenia')
- found sounds like water, animals and, erm, race cars...
The eclectic whole makes perfect sense as a coherent, continuous record, with an atmosphere so beautifully executed yet brooding and malevolent it probably belongs in a 'scariest albums' nerdlist. Has to be heard to be believed!

The album title means 'Drawings of Patient O.T.', O.T. refers to this man and gives you some idea as to the darker themes of the album, and perhaps Bargeld's growing sense of isolation from the world. Most of us may not be able to understand the lyrics, but this is not essential, especially when the music is perhaps a most effective narrator that often threatens to drown out Blixa's tortured exultations and improv. Not to detract from his talent as a vocalist (which is part of what defines the group) however, but it is a presence less dominant on this album.

I wanted to include a stream of a standout track, the neo-classical 'Armenia', but can only find live versions which have a totally different sound.
You can hear snippets here, but bear in mind that the tracklisting's messed up the so 'Armenia' isn't 'Armenia': Drawings of Patient O.T. – Einstürzende Neubauten – Listen free and discover music at Last.fm

Mr. Bungle - s/t (1991)

This is the last of the impromptu Tomahawk background posts, although Señor Patton will be making more appearances in the future. The order I've done this in might seem to imply that Tomahawk are the culmination of all these lesser career highlights, but this is not the case... Consider the albums from this and the previous three posts equatable to four ancient historic landmarks, demolished for their composite materials. These are used to build a towering modern facility for the common good, one that affords views of the land around. However the ancient foundations remain the same, a testament to it's workmanship...
And somewhere in that garbled metaphor is Mike Patton's quite unfathomable debut record with his first band, Mr. Bungle!

However this wasn't the first major label album he'd appeared on. Having done several cassette-only releases with Bungle in the mid 80's, 1989 saw a 21-year-old Patton assume vocal duties on 'the Real Thing', alternative metal group Faith No More's eclectic third album and the one that launched them on the global circuit. Over this album Patton had no control in the production aside from lyrics, as he was brought on board after the songs were already written, dropping out of college to join.
While 'the Real Thing' was far from a conventional album, it was an MTV hit, and responsible for starting an unfair comparison between Patton and Red Hot Chili Peppers singer/frat-goon Anthony Kiedis with their then-similar vocal styles. A bitter rivalry ensued that eventually resulted in axed Mr.Bungle festival gigs (at the behest of the headliners), many a jibe and vindictive 'tribute gigs'.

'The Real Thing' was a hugely successful debut, but Patton merely used it as a springboard to get his first band a deal and to cut an album that fulfilled the previous decade's most bizarre and twisted, avant-garde metal ambitions... complete with horn section!

The objective for Mr. Bungle was and is (three albums in a decade and they've not announced a break-up) an ALL-in-one philosophy. Every style of music that any member of the band can play (i.e. everything) is given space in any one song; consequently I could spend the next twenty minutes reviewing a song, which simply won't do. Oh... maybe just one then =P

^Oh an egg comes out of a chicken
Oh a chicken comes out of an egg

Here's a good archetype for the album (see above), 'Egg' is the Bungle-ites anthem and it gives you an inkling of how volatile and unpredictable their songs are. It's like a contemporary progressive rock, except instead of boarding school boys droning on about classical/jazz influences, you just have punk rockers on drugs doing everything else!
On 'Egg' you have, in order: funk, polka, ska, space rock, some bad-acid doom metal, a quick freakout combining funk and death metal, then back to the ska figure, after that it kind of goes into meltdown. And that's just under three minutes in to what, on record, is a 10-minute song (my description makes more sense with the album version too =P).

By now you may be getting an idea of the sheer scope a reviewer of this album has to deal with, and at this point I strongly suggest you stop reading and just clarify the situation for yourself. Go on, the words will still be hear when you get back:
256kbps (comprend des oeuvres d'art) Ein, Zwei

I could go on playing 'spot the genre' here, which is tedious for you but good fun for me: free jazz, rapping, carnival music (giving the album it's sinister edge), Middle-Eastern modes, even an elegant strings-and-ballroom waltz to see us off when we finally claw our way out of the rabbit hole... You get the picture. And needless to say it's an awe-inspiring set of musicians indeed that could play all of this and make it look easy to boot.

So while at it's core the album is rooted in funk metal, perhaps evoking traumatic images of a certain rival band's early incarnation; 'Mr. Bungle' is still a groundbreaking concept and essentially the ultimate fusion album... Unless you count the follow-up 'Disco Volante', but we won't go there just yet.
Far from being 'a bit like RHCP', Mr. Bungle are quite possibly the little demonseed offspring of that expert manipulator of rock forms, Frank Zappa. And unlike RHCP, you get the feeling Bungle is a tongue-in-cheek project, they're prodding to see just how much they can get away with.

The record presented here is also the easiest entry point for newbies and the epicentre of Patton's two decades of experimentalism, a manifesto on magnetic tape.

Amendment: Bungle did in fact officially split, inamicably, in 2004; and their debut was produced by avant-jazz giant John Zorn.

Yoko Ono - Fly (1971)

^Screenshot from the Fly short

The second album by Yoko Ono. Her first was 'Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band' with the fluctuating supergroup that included John Lennon, and at variously Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Phil Spector, etc. It was a companion piece to what is considered Lennon's most accomplished solo album 'John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'.

'Fly' is definitely up there with the debut, a record that is variously avant-garde and jam-oriented - groovy even - but always experimental in it's approach. For the most part it sounds like nothing else from the period, the only music that came close was the budding 'krautrock' scene, and this was unfortunately lacking in Ono's kabuki-theatre wailing (which is like Marmite, except if you don't appreciate the spectrum of it's abrasive/beautiful range then you're a dick).

Unlike 'Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band', which was at times loud and fast and today is still hailed as proto-punk, 'Fly' is more spaced-out, much longer and more of an all-round Fluxus (the Japanese Dada-inspired art collective Yoko represented) statement.
Not only was the gatefold sleeve stuffed with sublime frames from the 'Fly' art film and instructions for performance taken from Yoko's 'Grapefruit' book; tracks were culled from various installation pieces (Telephone Piece, Toilet Piece, Airmale is the soundtrack to Lennon's 'Erection' film). On record you will also hear the use of mysterious, specialist 'instruments' custom-built by Joe Jones, a Fluxus artist whose idea it was to evoke emotions yet to be illuminated by sound vibrations.

^ From Grapefruit, to be performed by the reader. Ono's background in conceptual and performance art is all but evident on 'Fly'

Also, if you're a Beatles fan it's interesting to hear the rhythm section of Klaus Voorman (the man responsible for several iconic Beatles record covers) and Ringo thrashing out weird jams with Clapton and Lennon atonally banging away in the background. It feels like they have all been infected with the Yoko virus, and the results are electric.

So this is a must-have, as everybody from Sonic Youth to David Bowie would testify (if that's the kind of convincing you need). Lennon and Yoko's later musical collaborations would get a lot more direct and conventional, the feminist themes a lot less oblique; and in the singularly idiotic 'Yoko Vs. Beatles' debate these great records and Ono's light-hearted and accessible take on the avant-garde have all too often been forgotten. For shame, as you will hear.

This upload is at 320, and it's one of the recent Rykodisc remasters with two bonus tracks and artwork included. Needless to say, if you really, really like it go out and buy the CD - the packaging of the reissue is special.

Ichi
Ni
San