In 2021, during a bumper-crop year for live albums and collaborations, John Dwyer released an album called Endless Garbage. Though seemingly of-a-kind with the Bent Arcana and Moon-Drenched improv records, it's actually quite a different beast. As explained by the man himself, “...one day, I hear a frenetic, free drummer playing in his garage a few blocks from me. And I think “interesting”. I stand outside his garage staring at the wall, like a fool, for a minute, then decide to leave a note on the car parked there. This is how I ended up meeting and working with Ted Byrnes. He wasn’t creeped out, and he ended up sending me a pile of truly spontaneous drums recordings from the carport to work with. I decided to have every musician come in one at at time and just take a wild pass at their track over the drums. None of these people had ever met or played together. I was the connecting thread.” So, rather than a group playing together in a room, Dwyer presented each participant with the different drum tracks and had them freely improvise over it. He also added some of his own playing, and mixed/edited the whole project into something a bit more consistently interesting and intelligible.
When is a remix album not really a remix album?
In 1998, Bill Laswell released Panthalassa: The Music Of Miles Davis 1969-1974. Though it is ostensibly billed as a remix album, Laswell did far more than just add some beats here or there or elongate the music to danceable lengths. As Allmusic.com put it, he “...occasionally deleted the rhythm sections, brought up obscured instruments, added Indian and electronic droning sounds from elsewhere on the tapes, constructed moody transitions, and premiered previously unreleased passages from Davis' sessions.” This is interesting because in some sense this makes Panthalassa a remix of a remix. Much like what Can was doing contemporaneously in Germany, Miles Davis and resolute collaborator/producer Teo Marcero would edit down tapes of lengthy jams, sometimes repeating vamps/run throughs of different song sections, other times cross-editing different takes of songs together. A great example is found on the seminal Bitches Brew album. The song 'John McLaughlin' (which features no trumpet or playing from Miles Davis at all) is actually an edited excerpt of an especially great solo from McLaughlin during a take of the album's title track.
When is a remix album not really a remix album?
Panther Rotate was released on December 11th, 2020. As near as I can tell it was entirely done by John Dwyer, as no liner notes or info I found indicated that any of the other members of the band worked on it—well, other than obviously providing the original source material. It's billed as a remix album, and was made concurrently during the Protean Threat sessions. Before listening, I always had the impression it was just the standard modern-style remix album; the truth isn't quite so simple. The official description goes like this: “A companion LP of remixes, field recordings, and sonic experiments using all sounds generated by the hum and crackle of the desert farm.” Meanwhile, the blurb accompanying the original limited edition 3D lenticular vinyl edition of the release goes as follows: “Remixed, Reimagined, Respooled takes from the Protean Threat tapes. Served Up Piping Hot On Half And Half Colored Vinyl And Featuring A Special Lenticular Cover.” So perhaps the best way to think of Panther Rotate is as a companion piece, though in my mind it can also fairly be considered as its own thing. Even though the track titles directly reference the song names on Protean Threat, this certainly isn't as simple as 'Scramble Experiment' is just 'Scramble Suit II With Beats And A Rapper.'
When is a remix album not really a remix album?
Late in his career, Miles Davis became hugely interested in the popular R&B and hip hop of the day. Though finished after his death, Doo-Bop became an early example of mainstream jazz acknowledging the links to newer genres like hip hop and electronic music. Though far from his best album, Doo-Bop gives us a glimpse of what Miles might have continued to make. Inadvertently, it does give us a preview of the future. Album producer Easy Mo Bee took unfinished trumpet takes by Miles and built songs around them to finish the album, even adding samples and rappers in a pseudo-remix technique. It does beg the question though: if Miles Davis didn't finish/approve of the record himself, is it really his album? Is it even an album at all if some of the tracks are effectively remixes of unfinished songs?
When is a remix album not really a remix album?
Let's talk for a bit about what this album is before I get to my thoughts on it. Panther Rotate, along with the Damaged Bug side project and the recent improv collaborations he's been doing, is a clear indicator that John Dwyer is a restless spirit who wants to bring the truly experimental bent back to this creations. And mind you, I'm using the word experimental in the true sense of the word, not the lazy shorthand for “it's a weird and/or noisy album.” Hell, most of the tracks on Panther Rotate are titled with the word experiment in them! Listening to this release, I can't help but imagine Dwyer wanted to amuse himself between sessions with the full band. Maybe this started as something he was only doing to challenge himself and only later decided to release it. Who knows.
If anything, I would say there's two immediate touchstones for this album: early OCS records and Alien Soundtracks by Chrome. Now, anyone familiar with the latter may assume I'm thinking of it because Osees did covers of songs from it for the Levitation Sessions II performance. However! I had actually heard of/heard this record before their covers, and the abstract, fragmentary nature of the music on Alien Soundtracks is mirrored in the structure and feel of Panther Rotate. It's not quite a 1:1 comparison of course, and that's where the early OCS output comes into play. I'm going all the way back to the very first OCS release, the double album known variously as 1, OCS, and 34 Reasons Life Goes On Without You/18 Reasons To Love Your Hater To Death. Oh wait, on the OCS Bandcamp it's now 35 Reasons. Whatever! I digress. The point is, it's not the early folky aspects of the OCS sound but the experimental stuff that Panther Rotate calls to mind. True it's not as noisy and droney and atonal as OCS 1 can be, but the spirit and similar “throw it all at the wall and see what sticks” vibe pervades both. I mean hell, 'Untitled 3' from OCS 1 is a found sound recording of someone walking in gravel and doing something with water(?), while 'Poem 2' on Panther Rotate sets a whimsical, bizarre Dwyer poem to vintage crowd sounds and a distant brass ensemble. I don't remember any of that on Protean Threat, do you?
When is a remix album not really a remix album?
Madlib, early in his career, began to learn instruments and perform jazz under the Yesterday's New Quintet name. These records, which began releasing in 2001, were not actually a real quintet. Instead it was just Madlib playing all the instruments and doing the production. In 2003, Madlib released Shades Of Blue. Though early in his career, legendary jazz label Blue Note Records invited (soon to be legendary) jazz-head hip hop producer Madlib to take a journey through their archives and see what he could come up with. As with the equally influential work of his friend and collaborator J. Dilla, Shades Of Blue would cast a long shadow, influencing a new generation of music makers, crate diggers, producers, and beat makers, in particular the then-nascent lo-fi hip hop scene. Anyway, Shades Of Blue is a hard release to pin down, not a typical remix album at all, seeming to bring the past, present, and future together by being equally jazz and instrumental hip hop at the same time.
When is a remix album not really a remix album?
All of this leads us to....well, I'm still not entirely sure. I've been struggling with Panther Rotate, in a good way. It's a difficult record to wrap your head around, not in terms of “getting it” but in terms of “getting it and deciding if you like it.” I suspect this was and will continue to be a very divisive release in the ol' Osees discography, much like OCS 1. The simple fact is that experimental music just isn't everyone's cup of tea, and though Panther Rotate ain't exactly Metal Machine Music (which still holds up today, and just keeps getting funnier every time I listen to it) I can for sure see some fans tilting their heads, puzzled at what the hell this is supposed to be. As for myself, my reaction thus far has been similar to other experiments by bands I love, like Metal Machine Music or (No Pussyfooting) insofar as Panther Rotate is also:
Interesting but inessential listening
Not especially compelling to listen to on repeat
Best enjoyed on as many drugs as you can get your hands on
Like a lot of experimental releases, there won't be certain songs you gravitate toward. Rather, this is very much a collection of ideas and moments. Some are but brief flashes of chaos, like the electronic beeps and whooshes of the breakdown during the end of 'If I Had An Experiment', which sounds like a drunken, lurching, inside out version of its parent song. Others will go for extended grooves that fade in and out, or stop and start, like the opening 'Scramble Experiment', interrupted at 1:13 by a glitch escaping from an Autechre song before it continues on until 3:00 when we apparently enter a swamp or marsh with buzzing flies and mosquitoes. For my money the most thrilling parts of Panther Rotate come when no familiar terrafirma is below us and we're in the dark realms of Dwyer's restless urges. 'Terminal Experiment' presents us with a slow motion bassline that feels like it's being played by someone actively fighting falling asleep, over and over, as all sorts of flotsam and jetsam goes by in the background. It reminds me a bit (a bit!) of some of the more free floating and spacey moments from really out there Grateful Dead jams from the late 60s to mid 70s, part free jazz skronk and part psychedelic fireworks and daisies being sprayed across the sky.
When is a remix album not really a remix album?
Released in two parts initially in 1994 and 1995, John Oswald's two-CD set called Grayfolded is one of the more interesting cult items of a cult band. The title is a pun on the Grateful Dead, and as this “plunderphonics” project was officially commissioned by bassist Phil Lesh, Oswald was given full access to their vault, choosing to focus on two album length suites edited together from over a hundred different performances of 'Dark Star' from 1968 to 1993. Nowadays you can find innumerable mixes on YouTube of jam band performances, themed around certain ideas: Phish Ambient Mix, Grateful Dead Space Mix, Phish's 'Tweezer' megamix, and the like. But in his time, Oswald's project was unique, a for-fun-only release still beloved by fans who remember/know of its existence.
Kinda like what we'll tackle next time, Weirdo Hairdo.
No comments:
Post a Comment