Wednesday 4 January 2017

Return of a fave: Feigenbaum and Scott's Things Are More Like They Are Now Than They Ever Were Before (1







From 6 and a half years ago:

Feigenbaum and Scott is a little more challenging but it's really worth the effort to understand.  Basically we get intelligent composition at its best, with various mixtures of acoustic guitar and chamber instruments, flutes, clarinets, some electric guitar, in a style that could be described as similar to canterbury-zappa except it's very different. A slow opening ("And night into day") leads to a surprising a cappella passage like gentle giant ("the earbenders") then an experimental piano piece with some gorgeous hopper-style sustained fuzz bass and guitarwork. It ends with a handful of flutes playing a superb chamber piece a la egg (why isn't this stuff played in the local symphony hall????), then comes some canterbury style singing ("cirrus mist") with electric piano. "Sunday drive" is a bizarre throwaway jazzy beat sax song. In "morning thrash" we get a crazy soprano sax soloing on top of acoustic guitar. Like the other progressive masterpieces, you can listen a hundred times and every time find something new you hadn't noticed before.

Title track is very zappaesque in instrumentation but I dare say more composed than average zappa, less jumpy. Continues on into the oddly titled "egress gnome odd" which is perfection in chamber rock, mixing bassoons, clarinets, flute, in a really interesting little cantata, then "guitar orchestra" with an acoustic guitar duet in the default key of E weaves some really unusual harmonies and dissonances together.

The stunner of the album is the closer, "One's day." Starts with a screeching sax, then henry cow-like blasts of electric guitar, moves on to flutes and reeds on quick strummed acoustic chords, then suddenly stops dead and a beautiful flock of woodwinds plays a gentle melody over an acoustic guitar's A minor chords to close out the work


The last track which seems to summarize the course of the day:





Information here.

Of course, Feigenbaum was the founder of Cuneiform Records.
And perhaps this title is an apt opener for the coming four years of Trumpism.  Be sure that his long day's passage into night will not be a peaceful one, but taking Rob Ford and Toronto as a template, will be marked by scandals, nastiness, and the turning against him of previous sympathizers in desperate attempts to neutralize his power and threats, until eventually something causes him to fall like Ozymandias to behold the monument in the dust, because in human history it's always been true, that the revolution will eat its own children...




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