Hard to believe, but writer, producer, and label head Orrin Keepnews has been actively involved in nearly every aspect of the development of American jazz for over 50 years now. Last year the Concord Music Group began a series of reissues to commemorate his legacy as producer, from his early beginnings as co-founder of Riverside Records with Bill Grauer through his own Milestone imprint in the late ‘60s and ‘70s. The label is releasing this “collector series” not only with a 24-bit mastering job on each, but new liners from Keepnews himself, which contain jewels of session recollections, random anecdotes about the players, and clarifications on dates and musicians.

For my money, there is no finer piano trio record than Bill Evans’ Portrait in Jazz (1959), although I’d agree wholeheartedly that the following Waltz for Debby (1961) is just as sublime. Few of the selections in this collection benefit more from the remastering than Portrait, the rich pastels of Evans’ voicings taking on a new life as the brittleness of the original recording is remedied, and bassist Scott LaFaro’s invaluable presence in the mix is increased tenfold. If you’re not completely swooned by “Spring Is Here” or the group’s interpretation of “Autumn Leaves,” you’re missing a lot more than just a pulse. Absolutely timeless and unequivocally essential. Wes Montgomery’s breakthrough The Incredible Jazz Guitar (1960) is another welcome rediscovery, arguably his finest hour and a far cry from his late-career schmaltz-with-strings sessions with producer Creed Taylor. The raw intensity between the quartet on opener “Airegin” is still incendiary and fresh, and Montgomery’s touch on the ballads like “In Your Own Sweet Way” is exquisite. Everything about what made the leader such a sensation and “the best thing to happen to the guitar since Charlie Christian” is here in spades: blocky piano-like chords, thumb-picked flights of 16th notes, his signature octave runs that sound almost inhuman. This is one of those “if you could only own one by such-and-such artist” records whose rewards must surpass a hundred listens.

“Mr. Walker” – Wes Montgomery 4:32 (The Incredible Jazz Guitar, Riverside 1960)

Montgomery’s meeting with vibraphonist Milt Jackson on Bags Meets Wes! (1961) has been repackaged enough times to the point of absurdity, but it remains a solid set and one of the highlights of the latter’s discography (his work with the Modern Jazz Quartet excluded, of course); Sam Jones’ bass is captured beautifully in the left channel on this edition. Montgomery also appears in fine form on Nat Adderley’s Work Song (1960), a record that has been on my wish list for years, and despite my generally tepid response to blues-based blowing sessions these days, it’s a pretty infectious listen. Not a ‘classic’ by any means, but certainly a worthy addition (though the analog distortion on “Pretty Memory” is curiously unnerving). Coleman Hawkins’ career-reviving The Hawk Flies High (1957) is also a first encounter for me, an immensely satisfying listen that offers further insight into Hawk’s ingenious adaptation to practically any setting, even one as odd as one that includes the presence of trumpeter Idrees Suliemann and trombonist J. J. Johnson.

“Laura” – Coleman Hawkins 4:34 (The Hawk Flies High, Riverside (1957)

Thelonious Monk was Riverside’s first major signing, so it’s hardly surprising that the pianist is represented in the Keepnews Collection again for a third time (proceeded by At Town Hall [1959] and Plays Duke Ellington [1955]). The stories behind the recording of Brilliant Corners (1956) are almost hilariously over-the-top – how the title track was virtually cursed from the start and meticulously assembled from 24 (!) takes, to a pissed-off Oscar Pettiford miming his bass playing to spite the leader, sending the engineer into a near-mental breakdown – and yet despite all of its flaws, it remains both fascinating and entertaining as ever. Keepnews’ liner notes in this new edition are indispensable and almost worth the purchase price of the disc alone. Also present during the Brilliant Corners fiasco was tenor giant Sonny Rollins, whose underrated Freedom Suite (1958) deserves more than its current footnote status in trajectory of his career. The twenty-minute tour-de-force of the title track tends to overshadow the brief afterthoughts of standards on side two, making for a rather lopsided listening experience, but if nothing else the record is important in the development of Rollins’ compositional talents, which tend to get overlooked in discussions of his oeuvre.

“Brilliant Corners” – Thelonius Monk 7:47 (Brilliant Corners, Riverside 1956)

I can think of a dozen records from pianist McCoy Tyner’s catalogue that deserve the 24-bit reissue treatment more than his bloated Fly with the Wind (1976) project (namely Sahara [1972] and Trident [1975]), but the remastering job here removes some of the original CD transfer’s chalkiness, helping to spotlight the impeccable air-tightness of a rhythm section like Ron Carter and Billy Cobham. Still, I’ve never been sold on the pairing of Tyner’s muscular, full-bodied playing with the dense sonorities of a string section, and the record mostly sinks under its own weight. Cannonball Adderley’s In New York (1962) is another head-scratcher, one of the lesser outings in a long series of platters for Capitol and OJC in the early ‘60s. Recorded with his working sextet at the time – which included brother Nat and Yusef Lateef on horns, plus a young Joe Zawinul – the session rarely rises above mere competency; this is the era when Adderley seemed stuck in an endless recycling of his own jollied-up licks and phrases, churning out album after album of good-time nightclub jazz in an assembly line fashion. Trumpeter Blue Mitchell’s Blue Soul (1959) fares better in the R&B-jazz category, a slick and soulful date with a band that can’t be faulted, and the electricity between the leader and Jimmy Heath’s tenor sax makes up for the rather run-of-the-mill material.

“Park Avenue Petite” – Blue Mitchell 3:58 (Blue Soul, Original Jazz Classics 1959)

As any audioblogger will tell you, finding a logical context for the music presented on a site is one of the more challenging aspects of maintaining and contributing to it. There are probably a few dozen records that I own that I cherish and praise, yet because of stylistic considerations and their inherently arcane nature, I rarely get the chance to expound upon them in a single collective post. This should resolve the issue, as I present the first of hopefully more installments on some of the more stranger, or ‘esoteric’, if you will, favorites in my collection. An open mind and healthy taste for adventure are highly recommended here.

Devo Hardcore Devo, Vol. 2: 1974-1977 Rykodisc 1991

One of the more lesser-known pieces of pop music trivia is that before the ’80s New Wave, oddball stage costumes, and the universal success of “Whip It,” Akron, Ohio’s Devo recorded some of the most bizarre, incomparably brilliant music ever committed to tape. Four-track tape, that is, which is the recording medium of which the band’s two Hardcore compilations are sourced from. These basement demos were unearthed by Rykodisc and released in 1991 before going out of print, and are now fetching steep prices on the online auction market, but they’re worth every cent – especially the second volume, which is even more delightfully warped than the first. It’s a heady challenge to describe the material here without succumbing to schoolgirl-like levels of giddiness, but I’ll try to rein my enthusiasm down to a manner of coherency. Hardcore Vol. 2: 1972-1977 (1991) contains all of the following: surf guitar freakouts, slick power punk, candy-coated pop songs, psychedelic rave-ups, serene electronic mood pieces, and the most impressive application of shitty malfunctioning synths that I’ve ever heard in a “pop music” context. Hell, there are so many tracks that are just beyond description I would have an aneurysm trying to explain them. Let’s just say that they’re in spirit with the cover, a shot of the band wearing 3D glasses and fake plastic breasts accompanied by half-naked women in various sexual poses, perfectly in line with the “what the fuck exactly is going on here?” mantra that reverberates around the listener’s head when first hearing the record. I don’t even care for the rest of Devo’s catalogue; the Hardcore volumes, on the other hand, are truly something special.

“Can You Take It? – Devo 3:02 (Hardcore, Vol. 2: 1974-1977, Rykodisc 1991)

Bernard Herrmann The Day the Earth Stood Still 20th Century Fox 1951

While it would certainly be a tough call, my vote for greatest film composer of all time would have to go to Bernard Herrmann. Generally speaking, I’m not one for soundtracks and other programmatic music without their corresponding visuals (blaxploitation titles and various Morricone works excluded), but Herrmann’s scores stand up so well as “absolute music” that I’ll gladly pick up anything with his name on it regardless of whether I’ve seen the accompanying film or not. There is a chain of thought that most people follow whenever they hear the name “Herrmann,” which goes something like, “Hitchcock – Janet Leigh shower scene – now-parodied “eek!-eek!” strings – horror music,” but Herrmann’s score for The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) is eons more frightening. From a strictly instrumental standpoint, what the composer did here was entirely groundbreaking at the time, employing two theremins, amplified strings, organs, vibraphone, and various brass and percussion – light years ahead of the standard four-section orchestra that was de rigueur in the film music industry back then. The effects that Herrmann wrings from this setup are simply astonishing: dark swells of sonorous brass combined with the psychotic electronic hum of the two theremins, nervous violin drones and chilling bursts of white noise from the clashing cymbals. There are a couple of Copland-ish “Americana” pieces to break the tense atmosphere halfway through, but by and large, this is edge-of-your-seat music that begs for headphones and a dark environment. For purely sentimental reasons, Vertigo (1958) will always remain my favorite of Herrmann’s scores, but The Day the Earth Stood Still comes in damn close as a runner-up. (This score was re-recorded in 2003 by Varese Sarabande with Joel McNeely conducting, and while its fidelity is crystalline compared to 20th Century Fox’s transfer from the master tapes, the original is still to be preferred.)

“Prelude/Outer Space/Radar” – Bernard Herrmann 3:50 (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 20th Century Fox 1951)

JD & The Evil’s Dynamite Band Explodes Across the Nation Soul Fire 2001

With no information to glean from the production credits on the jacket and little coming up in the way of a Google search, I still know next to nothing about JD & The Evil’s Dynamite Band. I mail-ordered an LP copy of Explodes Across the Nation (2001) from the Truth and Soul site a few years ago without hearing a note of the music, one of those rare caution-to-the-wind moments that I can’t afford now that my income isn’t of the disposable variety. What a jewel this album is – albeit one that’s been nicked, scratched, cracked, and submerged in a barrel of used motor oil. In terms of pure vibe, Explodes’ closest comparison would be the scorched-earth, apocalyptic funk of Miles Davis’ Agharta/Pangaea (1975) records, but weirder, grittier, and, well, much more “evil.” The funk here is raw, loose, and almost otherworldly, with backward vocal samples, torture-chamber percussion, and a menacing voice whispering, “DIE” on occasion. Song titles include “Beer (So Nice) Right On” and “My Beach, My Waves, Fuck Off!” This is precisely what funk shouldn’t be – inaccessible, cryptic, drugged to a near-comatose state of hypnosis – but it works marvelously. I’d be tempted to sacrifice one of my toes to hear another full-length from the group, assuming the members are actually mortals instead of ghosts who haven’t already dissipated into the ether. If you like your funk with a sinister, uneasy edge, you’ll love this (then purchase the above Miles records, along with Dark Magus [1974] and On the Corner [1972]).

“Heavy, Heavy… Heavy” – JD & The Evil’s Dynamite Band 4:19 (Explodes Across the Nation, Soul Fire 2001)

Peter Thomas Film Musik Polydor 1997

German TV and film composer Peter Thomas experienced a bit of a resurgence in his work during the late ‘90s, as everyone from Jarvis Cocker to Stereolab eagerly cited his music as a heavy influence on their own material. A handful of European labels rushed to issue as many Thomas “lounge” compilations as the market could handle, all but ignoring his horror and spy soundtracks as well as his more experimental works (he actually invented and developed a synthesizer called a ThoWeiphon). Film Musik (1997) was one of the few that got it right, a two-in-one disc that combined Thomas’ soundtracks for the 1960s German television series Edgar Wallace and Jerry Cotton. Like many of the greats, Thomas was at his best when he took unthinkable risks with his music, and Film Musik is loaded with cues that flagrantly span extremes: free jazz colliding with a bluesy sitar, a rollicking ballpark organ pitted against tense brass figures, a dreamy harp accenting a thick buzzing guitar, and so on. It would be convenient to dismiss this music as little more than camp or kitsch, which is an incredible disservice to Thomas’ ingenious arrangements, to say nothing of his sheer balls when it came to instrument combinations. Even the players here sound hesitant, unsure, and not a little clumsy, which only adds to the music’s charm, as one envisions the guitarist scratching his head uneasily at the direction of “noisy beach-party surf guitar solo.” With nearly 50 cues and vignettes, there’s enough Thomas here to snack on for weeks, which is why I believe it’s the best introduction to his anomalous sound-world.

“Der unheimliche Mönch” – Peter Thomas 2:45 (Film Musik, Polydor 1997)

Various Artists Princess Nicotine: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma) Sublime Frequencies 2004

Whenever I feel like my listening tastes have stagnated and there’s little hope for any sort of new music exciting me anymore, I conveniently (and arrogantly) remind myself that there are seemingly hundreds of thousands of “world music” records out there that are just waiting for my ears to discover them, ravage them for weeks, then spew out some psychobabble on this site about how incredible they are. I was likely in one of these moods when I picked up a used disc of Princess Nicotine (2004) for five bucks in a CD Spins a few years ago, intrigued by the cover art and the fact that I had little idea of what Burmese pop music actually sounded like. And I’m still struggling to describe, with any sort of accuracy, how bizarre and flat-out amazing the music contained within this disc is. Princess Nicotine was compiled by a gentleman named Alan Bishop, who journeyed to Myanmar back in God-knows-when and purchased and/or traded armfuls of 45s and cassettes until he had his dozen favorites to compile here: batshit-insane signatures and stop-start patterns that only a grindcore band could match, pastoral love songs based on mind-warping microtonal scales, thunderstorms of percussion aerobics with a de-emphasis on pulse, stoned mid-tempo psychedelia, gongs, chants, harps – it’s all here. I guarantee that you’ve never heard anything like it, and here’s the best part: it’s all fucking phenomenal. There is a wonderful looseness to the ensemble playing, even when executing some sickeningly complex passage, that simply can’t be replicated, and the sheer number of unidentifiable instruments bouncing around the mix is enough to keep me entertained for hours. Kneejerk descriptors like “snake charmers on crack” are not only condescending, naïve, and flat-out ignorant on my part, but more importantly, they prove how futile it is to place everything in the context of Western musical systems and thought – and so help me Christ if I hear someone bitch about the fidelity. Princess Nicotine has become something of a rarity since it went out of print some time ago, but if you happen to stumble across it, by all means pick it up immediately. Just trust me on this one. You’ll be thanking me for years.

“Really Strange and Weird Things” – Sein Sah Thin 3:15 (Princess Nicotine: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar [Burma], Sublime Frequencies 2004)

As much as it pains me to admit, my longtime infatuation with Sweden prog-metal gods Opeth has appeared to have come to an end with the release of Watershed (2008), which dropped this past Tuesday. It’s the first time I’ve deviated from the now-standard new-album routine from the band: every two or three years Mikael Åkerfeldt & Co. release latest opus, critics and fans shit themselves silly with the amount of accolades they heap upon it, and I dutifully follow suit with my own variation on how phenomenal and important the group is. Not this time. Ghost Reveries (2005) was the first Opeth record in ten years that required some effort for me to muster enthusiasm about, and I still have difficulty sitting through parts of it . And I don’t want to place too much blame on the elephant in the room, but I’d be remiss to mention that I was hugely disappointed when I heard of the departures of drummer Martin Lopez and longtime guitarist Peter Lindgren in 2006 and 2007, respectively – especially Lopez, who could tap on the side of a champagne glass with a dinner fork for an entire album and I’d still be on the edge of my seat. So Åkerfeldt recruited Fredrik Åkesson (ex-Arch Enemy) and drummer Martin Axenrot as their replacements (clearly, the man has a penchant for Martins and short ‘a’s), toured the shit out of Ghost Reveries, and returned to the studio to prepare the next album.

Put simply, Watershed is a mess. Not a failure by any means, but easily the most unfocused and least engaging of the band’s “observations” to date.

For starters, you know something is awry on an Opeth record when you can count the number of furious, demonic, grab-you-by-the-balls riffs on one hand. Åkerfeldt, whose riff-writing abilities were once on par with the almighty Chuck Schuldiner – seriously, listen to “The Leper Affinity” again, or the entirety of Blackwater Park (2001) for that matter – now seems to favor standard power chords, open-chord strumming, and finger-picked arpeggios. Most of what constitute “riffs” here have been slowed down to sludgy, doom metal plods that have been done to death by the band and their stoner contemporaries countless times before. Those glorious riffs, whose grooves ran miles deep, could obliterate armies of guitarists, and trump the entire catalogs of most bands, are few and far between here. When a thundering, good old-fashioned palm-muted riff does finally appear, such as the 2:30 mark in “Heir Apparent” or during “Hessian Peel” at 6:31, it’s almost as if salvation has finally arrived. Sadly, it’s short-lived, as Åkerfeldt’s attention deficit disorder gets the best of him and the track shifts gears for the umpteenth time into some idyllic acoustic interlude.

Which brings me to my next complaint, the complete disregard of “flow” and linearity within the album that was one of Opeth’s most impressive characteristics. On past outings, such as My Arms Your Hearse (1998) and Deliverance (2002), the material was rife with sudden shifts in mood and dynamics, yet the transitions made sense, gravitating naturally and organically from one to the next. Watershed practically embodies the critical adage of complexity for complexity’s sake, throttling the listener through endless channels of seizure-inducing quick edits: pointless piano miniatures, power ballad strumming, masturbatory organ solos, grinding noise, or an excuse to dust off the old Mellotron. One can’t help but admire Åkerfeldt’s increasing interest in experimenting with various sounds, exotic instruments, and recording techniques over the years, but here they come across as bitty and far too self-conscious, as if he desperately wants the listener’s head to fucking explode upon hearing sudden Ligeti-like clusters of dissonance, the inexplicable chatter of restaurant patrons, or the pegs of a guitar being detuned – wait for it – while it’s being played. Yawn. Without an appropriate context, these “shocking left turns” carry the same ingenuity as a first-year composition student emptying his bag of tricks in a hopeless attempt to wow his instructors.

Considering the aforementioned loss of half of the band in recent years, my gut instinct tells me that this detour isn’t temporary. Åkerfeldt has been inching towards this sort of bombastic theatricality since the Deliverance and Damnation (2003) siblings, and honestly, it would hardly come as a surprise if the group released a purely symphonic or even opera record five years from now. Ultimately, this is about the age-old dichotomy of artistic growth vs. a fan’s selfish desire for uniformity; Opeth could release five more variations on Still Life (1999), throw in the towel, and I’d have no qualms claiming them as the finest metal act of the past century. Watershed is still better than a good 80% of the metal releases I’ve heard so far this year, but expectations are a bitch. To open a record with a quiet, almost tender acoustic duet between Åkerfelt and guest Nathalie Lorichs comes as a shock to someone intimately familiar with every note in the band’s cycle of five (arguably six) near-perfect albums of prog-metal of the highest order. I’ll always be rooting for Åkerfeldt and will continue praising his talents at every opportunity, but damned if he isn’t making me work for it, as his output becomes exponentially harder to digest with each passing album.

“Porcelain Heart” – Opeth 8:00 (Watershed, Roadrunner 2008)