ZOLA JESUS - STRIDULUM II

I am reviewing this because it's been on my work desk and staring at me for the best part of 5 months. Also because I am not entirely sure that the fawning and in-depth write up I want to give Deftones 'White Pony' would be appreciated by anybody apart from me (Just to say it's in my top 50 albums and if you don't own a copy get over that Nu-metal labeling and treat yourself).

I've had this in and out of the CD player (also on my desk) since around Christmas and it's really grown on me. To be honest I hadn't been sure what to expect. The personnel listing wasn't exactly inspiring: One person (Nika Rosa Danilova) with a keyboard. It could quite easily have fallen flat like a Jamie Lidell gig with a broken sequencer. But it doesn't. Given the lack of other instrumentation it's a surprisingly dense piece. It's brooding, dark, haunting, it's all of those other words that appeared in reviews of the record when it came out in the middle of last year.

The whole album is like an elongated study of This Mortal Coil's version of 'Song to a Siren', and if you ever saw that track used in the trailer for the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre then those visuals add even more credence to that line of thinking. It comes from a very black and pained place, somewhere close to death.

Another thing that undoubtedly every review of this so far will have pointed out is how close her Nika's vocal range is to that of Siouxsie Sioux. At first her delivery was massively grating but like the music that accompanies it, in time you find yourself immersed.

Despite all of this and my repeat listening at work, I am trying to think of circumstances where I might choose this as a soundtrack and I am coming up short. You can't really have sex to it unless that sex involves ropes and potentially knives. I wouldn't want to drive to it, unless my driving culminated with a high-speed and slow motion chase resulting in my untimely and messy crash based death. It's not ironing music unless I am contemplating ironing my hand and or face. You get the picture - It's very emotional, borderline wallowing music or like I said, maybe something you play when you are having knife sex.

So given I don't intend for copious amounts of blood to feature in any love making in which I might partake I will leave this on my desk, safe in the knowledge that it's a suitable accompaniment to putting together elongated and over-styled Power Point presentations.

JAN FRYDERYK CREATIVE SOUND - FAUN

This guy is German. (At least I think he is German)

He's a piano player.

He does not have a Wikipedia entry.

If I could stretch to more than a dozen words in German there would be some clues as to the man's history and background on the rear of the sleeve. Sadly the comprehensive notes, probably outlining the making of the record and the chief protagonist's history are a series of 'k's, 'z's and umlauts.

Given this I shall take my customary tact and make something up...

Jan Fryderyk discovered the world of Jazz after being admitted to Ansbach Military Hospital as a child. He had complained of a chronic stomach pain and on examination doctors removed approximately 4oz of human hair from his stomach and intestinal tract.

Jan Fryderyk had a hair eating problem, unlike most people with this affliction the hair was not in fact his. At weekend Jan would roam from barber shop to barber shop with an eye to scoring a snack and had been doing so since an incident involving a wig on his seventh birthday.

It was whilst he was recovering from the operation that Jan heard some G.Is stationed there playing John Coltrane's 'Blue Trane' and he was hooked.

To this day nobody knows how or why the hair eating problem started. What they do know is that despite a relapse in the early 80s his passion for the jazz piano has all but cured him.

Sound wise, this is obviously piano led, but don't let that put you off. It's not a painful Cecil Taylor excursion into the land of the solo plinkity-plonk. The other players here do a fantastic job of filling in, covering for and adding to Fryderyk's key-happy ways.

I need to single out Alan Skidmore formerly of Kieth Tippet's 'Centipede' here for a special mention. He's an exceptional saxophone player and he has a tidy beard. He does soft, distant and gentle AND 'I'm having a shit-fit' both surprisingly well. I say surprisingly as he's a Brit and despite evidence to the contrary I still firmly believe that 'Jazz' is the realm of the dead (with a few exceptions) American.

Quite who to thank for rest of it I do not know as Peter Giger(Pictured above), Doug Hammond and a guy called Trilok Gurtu all contribute percussion of some type or other. The sheer amount of skin beating gives you some idea of how good this could and does get.

It isn't indispensable by any means but when the repetitive percussion gels with the piano 'Faun' comes alive in a wholly entertaining and mostly enjoyable way.

MOEBIUS AND BEERBOHM - DOUBLE CUT

I touched very briefly in my previous post on the state of affairs in Libya. A leader losing grip and a people tired of years of tyranny and oppression in search of a better life. It's such a shame that Muammar couldn't keep his shit together as I fear the world of international politics will be a much a much duller place without him. World politics has gone the same way as New York in recent years: Mondo Kim's has shut down and there's a Starbucks on every corner. Yes he is 'evil', I read a piece on the 1996 Abu Salim prison massacre and everybody is more than aware that despite attempts by our former government to gloss over the fact, he was entirely responsible for the Lockerbie bombing.

These hideous crimes against humanity aside let's look at the case for the defendant: He was, it turns out shockingly handsome as a young lieutenant coming up through the ranks. He takes his tent everywhere with him, he seems to operate exclusively with a female special forces guard, he dressed like michael jackson and got away with it. Muammar is a style animal, an ever changing thing of fashion wonder and excess, sunglasses and a crooked smile endlessly spouting utter lunacy not hears since the reign of Idi Amin.

He's a character (yes an evil character) but he's a character and there aren't many of those left. Take Germany's Angela Merkel for example - A fat and styleless Ann Robinson, her political sandbagging and denial of financial turmoil mere footnotes to the fact she dresses like a day release patient going to a Christening.

Why is it the bad guys dress so much better? It's not a new thing either. The staggeringly forward thinking yet timeless fashion of The Third Reich is well documented but what nobody seems to have cottoned onto just yet is the subtle and underplayed suave stylings of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I swear to God/Allah that Dior are dressing him on the quiet. His bearded look has been copied the world over as has his undone smart -casual chic. Again, such a crying shame he's a mass murderer who justifies his dictatorial actions through religion whilst laughing in the face of the West.

The first track on Double Cut is contender for best opener in the world ever, it's fantastic, slow and brooding, pulsing 80s synths, all very much of its time. So much so that it sounds like it could have been recorded with the help of Libya's very own bad man right around the time he was dressing like he'd stepped out of the video for Thriller on his way to blow some shit up.

'Hydrogen' pulses by in very much the same way a quirky Germanic signature on the ever growing face of electronica, slightly more clunky and repetitive.

Track 3, 'Narakose' is awesome because it sounds like I recorded it myself when I was a bit drunk, same instrumentation and lush studio but without the help of Muammar, Moebius and your other man.

Track 4 'Doppelschnitt' I don't remember because I started this review a few weeks back and didn't get chance to finish it off. In the meantime It would appear we are at war with Moebius and Beerbohm's third keyboard player and on another continent that latter day jewel of the Orient - Japan appears to have fallen into the sea.

Not much to say on that really, not yet. All of the observations about lost world class record collections and quieter aisles in Beatles sections across the US are misplaced, tasteless and way too early. I can't comprehend living with that still utterly shocking tragedy and here's to hoping I never have to.

I re-listened to 'Doppelschnitt', all 21 minutes 43 of it and it's further proof that this sly dog of the Africa's has a soundtrack with his name written all over it. I can see him rockin' the Toni Basil patented 'pop and lock' to this as American fighter pilots high from watching Top Gun one too many times crash and bail all around him.

If it wasn't so patently obvious that Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a Strokes completist the search for his very own theme would start right here - Man, he must be well Jazzed that their new album is out.