movin' on up

I don't think about albums in this way as much as I used to, but if I were to list my favorite albums Of All Time and compare that to what the list might've been a year or two ago, two albums would've moved up into the top tier: Nilsson's Schmilsson and Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom.

Nilsson was someone I only discovered this year, but I've been listening to Wyatt / Soft Machine for over a decade. I'd be doing pretty well if each year I found one or two more top-tier albums.

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells

The theme for The Exorcist is one of the most recognizable movie themes in American history. But it's not as well known that the theme was from an early album of prog rocker Mike Oldfield. Oldfield came out with Tubular Bells in 1973; it was used in The Exorcist in the same year. So the first few minutes of this album, at least, are already familiar. The rest of it, perhaps not so much. Tubular Bells is nearly ubiquitous at used record stores, so I decided to give it a try.

What a treat! At first, the unusual time signatures and general repetitiveness of the music reminded me of Steve Reich and other classical acts. With time, though, the way various instruments are introduced, the way things culminate, peak, decay, soar, and disappear reminds me more of prog rockers like Soft Machine. It's rock, it's kinda jazzy, it's well-composed. Tubular Bells is only two tracks; each spans the entire side of a record, much like Soft Machine's Third album. So it's not surprising to see that Oldfield has some connection to Kevin Ayers. (The surprising bit is that he was 16 [16!] when he went on the road as part of Ayers' touring band.)

There are about 50 different instruments that come into the mix here, and Oldfield is playing the vast majority of them. It seems in the early 70s there was this trend of a self-made album, like Paul McCartney's McCartney, Stevie Wonder's Music of My Mind, Roy Wood's Boulders, and Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star. There's a level of ambition and talent in those albums that seems absolutely inconceivable today.

Really, the more I dig into this album the more amazing it seems. For instance:

Tubular Bells, originally dubbed Opus 1, grew out of studio time gifted by Richard Branson, who at the time was running a mail-order record retail service. After its completion, Oldfield shopped the record to a series of labels, only to meet with rejection; frustrated, Branson decided to found his own label, and in 1973 Tubular Bells became the inaugural release of Virgin Records.

Yowza.

Yellow Magic Orchestra

Coming across something like Yellow Magic Orchestra vindicates this dumb effort to keep finding new music.

As much as I enjoy Krautrock, I never really want to listen to much Kraftwerk; I find it too uptight. YMO is like a Japanese Kraftwerk, but fun to listen to. This, their self-titled debut, is considered the first computer-themed album. This came out in 1978, the same year as Space Invader!

I came to YMO in a fairly roundabout way. Basically I got to this through Destroyer, via Japan. Destroyer came out with Kaputt either early this year or late last year. In an interview with Dan Bejar about the album, he mentioned something about David Sylvan records. So that got me to his solo career as well as the band Japan. On some of those records, Ryuchi Sakamoto was listed as a collaborator and YMO in general was considered an influence.

Pitchfork: Back in your twenties, would you ever imagine that you'd make an album like Kaputt?

DB: No, not at the time. When I got into the American scene, I put aside a lot of stuff that was dear to me. There was this 10-year period where the idea of putting on a David Sylvian record was ludicrous because it was just too lame. I banished Morrissey from my life in favor of Sun City Girls, so I only really discovered Your Arsenal in my thirties. It's embarrassing.

Pitchfork: Do you think your 25-year-old self would think Kaputt sounds lame?

DB: For me to bother with it at 25, someone would have had to sit me down and said, "No, you should actually listen to this." Maybe I'm selling myself short. At that time, I was almost exclusively listening to classic rock records from the 60s and 70s.

Yeah, that's where I am, or where I have been for the past five years, listening to classic rock records from the 60s and 70s, really in need of someone to sit me down and tell me to listen to stuff. You'd think the internet would make it relatively easy to find where to go next, but it's not that simple. If anything, it provides access to too much. It would be overwhelming to take that much in.

Anyway, this is definitely one of the better finds. Last weekend I was giddy when I saw the translucent yellow vinyl version for under 10 bucks at the local record store. I fully expect to check out some more YMO and related stuff like Sakamoto's solo work.

Psychic TV - Force the Hand of Chance

OK, so this is instructive. Psychic TV's Force the Hand of Chance was a blind download. I knew nothing about this other than it was suggested in a thread I made about 'song cycle' albums. This, by the way, explains how I come across about 5 percent of the albums I try.

Van Dyke Parks' album Song Cycle is undoubtedly a top-10 album for me. Going by the definition I found on Wikipedia:

A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's second Liederkreis, by the atmospheric setting of the forest. The unity of the cycle is often underlined by musical means, famously in the return in the last song of the opening music in Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte.

The term originated to describe cycles of art songs (often known by the German term "Lieder") in classical music, and has been extended to apply to popular music.

In that case, some of my favorite albums would be considered song cycles: The Clash's Sandinista, Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star, and perhaps Allen Toussaint's Southern Nights. (VDP's album, ironically, doesn't really fit the definition.)

I listened to this on repeat today, perhaps four or five times all the way through. I rarely do that with a new album, so this is what qualifies as excitement for me. I've been intrigued to research this album that I've never heard of before, but before I do that, I wanted to try something.

This is my guess: I'm thinking this album is from the UK and released in the span of 1988-1993. Influences include Television Personalities, Public Image Ltd., This Heat, and Bill Holt's Dreamies. I'm betting this was the band's only album. The genre is avant-garde post-punk, although it's a bit later than most post-punk albums.

So now I'll actually research it and see how close I got.



Update: Oh bruddah. I was right about the UK post-punk bit, so I should've known it was even earlier than I guessed. This was released in 1982, after Genesis P-Orridge was out of Throbbing Gristle (a band whom, despite their appearance on several post-punk compilations, I've never been able to get into). This album is as old as I am.

I was way off the mark thinking this was a one-off album. Then again, it appears Psychic TV is more of an audio/visual house collaboration among dozens of artists. They described themselves as a video group who does music, rather than a music group which makes music videos. In the mid/late-80s, they set the Guinness record for most releases in one year. Perhaps the rest of their work doesn't sound much like this one. Without digging too deep, it appears the rest of their work is more industrial and exotic before transitioning to house and techno in the 90s.

Something I don't yet understand is that Wikipedia describes this as a single album with 8 tracks. That's certainly what I've been listening to today. Yet AllMusic refers to a double-album with 13 tracks. I guess I've got to find the other five tracks.

Japan - Tin Drum

Japan's Tin Drum is nothing like the glam swagger of their debut, Adolescent Sex. Their trajectory across albums seems to run parallel to that of Talking Heads. Around 1980, when the Heads turned to Africa for rhythmic ideas, Japan turned to, well, Japan. Really, this is the only thing I've heard outside of the Eno-related sphere that comes close to what the Talking Heads were going for at the height of their arty new-wave, taking-funk-seriously success. But in the decades since, Remain in Light has achieved mythical status while Tin Drum is lucky to get an honorable mention among the best albums of the '80s. Granted, there's no "Once in a Lifetime" here, but "Ghosts" is pretty phenomenal.

Part of the eastern influence here is credited to lead singer David Sylvian's connection to Yellow Magic Orchestra's Ryuichi Sakamoto; I expect I will seek out some YMO and Sakamoto solo work later on.

Ultravox - Systems of Romance

This was Ultravox's last chance, having previously struck out (in my mind) with their debut, which I think is called David Bowie's Players, and their Vienna which, other than the phenomenal title track, didn't seem like the New Wave statement I was searching for.

Systems of Romance was produced by German Conny Plank, who is better associated with Krautrock and early electronica.  Here, Plank grafts Ultravox's guitar lines onto a more synthetic backdrop.  Indeed, take out the vocals and some of these tracks might as well be a Neu! outtakes.  Basically this is a sound that others would put to better use on some of the best albums of the coming decade.  (Gary Numan in particular credits this album as his Polaris for Pleasure Principle; Julian Cope hints that Numan's 'inspiration' was closer to 'duplication'.) 

So Ultravox finally delivered on the kind of album I was looking for.  It's unlikely to displace anything in my list of favorite New Wave albums, but Systems of Romance works as a bridge between two genres I severely enjoy: German motor-tik Krautrock and New Wave/Romantic.

The Art of Noise - Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise?

This is a bit frustrating, but I'm trying to remember how I came across this band. I know I had seen a few of their albums when flipping through the 'punk / new wave' sections of record stores, but unless an album has a very distinct cover and I made a note of it, that's typically not the way I find things that might be worth exploring.

Every now and then you come across something that sounds as if someone made a mistake somewhere and perhaps time and space are not one-way vectors, as surely for an album like this to have existed in 1984 is evidence of a rift in the space-time continuum. It's not that it sounds way ahead of its time; it's just that assigning this to any specific point in time seems arbitrary.

Who's Afraid is best described as a sound collage, two words that normally translate to 'stay away'. But what a mistake that would've been--I wouldn't have heard the full 10-plus minute version of "Moments in Love," a beautiful, chilling opuses of avant-garde synthesized goodness. Of course it has been sampled numerous times since then; even the band made dozens of different versions of the song.

(Ignore the video; it's the only full-length version of the song I could find on YouTube)



But really, most of the album isn't really like that. The remainder is closer to the other big hit from this album, "Close (to the Edit)." By no means is that a bad thing; it's just been copied so much that it's hard to separate the original from the cliche imitations. Witness the fables of the deconstruction:

Roy Wood - Boulders

An intricate, deliberately idiosyncratic record, assembled piece by piece, Boulders perfectly captures Roy Wood's peculiar genius, more so than anything else he recorded. All of his obsessions are here -- classical music, psychedelia, pre-Beatles pop, pastoral folk ballads, absurdist humor, studio trickery, and good old-fashioned rock & roll -- assembled in a gracefully eccentric fashion. Some listeners may find that eccentricity a little alienating, but it's the core of Wood's music. He wrote tuneful, accessible songs, but indulged his passions and weird ideas, so even the loveliest melodies and catchiest hooks are dressed in colorful, odd arrangements. The marvelous thing is, these arrangements never sound self-consciously weird - it's the sound of Wood's music in full bloom. Never before and never again did his quirks sound so charming, even thrilling, as they do on Boulders. As soon as "Songs of Praise" reaches its chorus, a choir of sped-up, multi-tracked Roys kick in, sending it into the stratosphere. All nine tunes unwind in a similar fashion, each blessed with delightfully unpredictable twists. It's easy to spot the tossed-off jokes on the goofy "When Gran'ma Plays the Banjo," but it may take several spins to realize that the percussion on "Wake Up" is the sound of Roy slapping a bowl of water. Boulders is a sonic mosaic -- you can choose to wonder at the little details or gaze at the glorious whole, enjoying the shape it forms. Wood has an unerring knack for melodies, whether they're in folk ballads, sweet pop or old-fashioned rock & rollers, yet his brilliance is how he turns the hooks 180 degrees until they're gloriously out of sync with his influences and peers. Boulders still sounds wonderfully out of time and it's easy to argue that it's the peak of his career.

(Roy Wood - Boulders)

John Cale - Fear

Right from the start, Cale makes it clear he's not messing around on Fear. If his solo career before then had been a series of intriguing stylistic experiments, here he meshes it with an ear for his own brand of pop and rock, accessible while still clearly being himself through and through. Getting musical support from various Roxy Music veterans like Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, and Andy Mackay didn't hurt at all, and all the assorted performers do a great job carrying out Cale's vision. He himself sounds confident, sharp, and incisive throughout; his playing on both various keyboards and guitar equally spot-on. The almost title track "Fear Is a Man's Best Friend," starting with focused, steady piano into a full band performance before ending on a ragged, psychotic note, makes for as solid a statement of artistic purpose for Cale and the album as any. There's everything from slightly (but not completely) lugubrious ballads to bright, sparkling numbers -- "Ship of Fools" alone is a treasure; its steady, sweet pace and beautiful chorus simply to die for. Cale's own bent for trying things out isn't forgotten on the album, with his voice recorded in different ways (sometimes with hollow echo, other times much more direct) and musically touching on everything from early reggae to, on "The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy," a delightful Beach Boys pastiche. As for sheer intensity, little can top "Gun," the equal of Eno's own burning blast "Third Uncle" when it comes to lengthy, focused obsession translated into music and lyrics. Having earlier experimented with his own version of country & western, "Buffalo Ballet" finds him creating something close to meta-country: stately piano and backing singing mixing with gentle twang. It practically invents Nick Cave's late solo career all on its own.

(John Cale - Fear)

Laurie Anderson - Big Science

There was a backlash against Laurie Anderson in "serious" musical and artistic circles after the completely unexpected mainstream commercial success of her debut album, Big Science. (The eight-plus-minute single "O Superman" was a chart hit in England, unbelievably enough.) A fair listen to Big Science leaves the impression that jealousy must have been at the root of the reception because Big Science is in no way a commercial sellout. A thoughtful and often hilariously funny collection of songs from Anderson's work in progress, United States I-IV, Big Science works both as a preview of the larger work and on its own merits. Opening with the hypnotic art rock of "From the Air," in which an airline pilot casually mentions that he's a caveman to a cyclical melody played in unison by a three-part reeds section, and the strangely beautiful title track, which must feature the most deadpan yodeling ever, the album dispenses witty one-liners, perceptive social commentary (the subtext of the album concerns Anderson's own suburban upbringing, which she views with more of a bemused fondness than the tiresome irony that many brought to the subject), and a surprisingly impressive sense of melody for someone who was until recently a strictly visual artist. For example, the marimba and handclap-led closer, "It Tango," is downright pretty in the way the minimalistic tune interacts with Anderson's voice, which is softer and more intimate (almost sexy, in a downtown-cool sort of way) than on the rest of the album. Not everything works -- "Walking and Falling" is negligible, and the way Rufus Harley's bagpipes intentionally clash with Anderson's harsh, nasal singing and mannered phrasing in "Sweaters" will annoy those listeners who can't take either Yoko Ono or Meredith Monk -- but Big Science is a landmark release in the New York art scene of the '80s, and quite possibly the best art rock album of the decade.

(Laurie Anderson - Big Science)

Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom

Rock Bottom, recorded with a star-studded cast of Canterbury musicians, has been deservedly acclaimed as one of the finest art rock albums. Several forces surrounding Wyatt's life helped shape its outcome. First, it was recorded after the former Soft Machine drummer and singer fell out of a five-story window and broke his spine. Legend had it that the album was a chronicle of his stay in the hospital. Wyatt dispels this notion in the liner notes of the 1997 Thirsty Ear reissue of the album, as well as the book Wrong Movements: A Robert Wyatt History. Much of the material was composed prior to his accident in anticipation of rehearsals of a new lineup of Matching Mole. The writing was completed in the hospital, where Wyatt realized that he would now need to sing more, since he could no longer be solely the drummer. Many of Rock Bottom's songs are very personal and introspective love songs, since he would soon marry Alfreda Benge. Benge suggested to Wyatt that his music was too cluttered and needed more open spaces. Therefore, Robert Wyatt not only ploughed new ground in songwriting territory, but he presented the songs differently, taking time to allow songs like "Sea Song" and "Alifib" to develop slowly. Previous attempts at love songs, like "O Caroline," while earnest and wistful, were very literal and lyrically clumsy. Rock Bottom was Robert Wyatt's most focused and relaxed album up to its time of release. In 1974, it won the French Grand Prix Charles Cros Record of the Year Award. It is also considered an essential record in any comprehensive collection of psychedelic or progressive rock. Concurrently released was the first of his two singles to reach the British Top 40, "I'm a Believer."

(Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom)

Kevin Ayers - Bananamour

Bananamour is ripe with Kevin Ayers' most mature and accessible compositions to date. Ayers grounded himself in a newly formed trio for his follow-up to Whatevershebringswesing. With bassist Archie Leggett and drummer Eddie Sparrow at the hub, Ayers selected guest artists for a handful of the tracks: Whole World colleague Dave Bedford ("Beware of the Dog"), Gong's new guitarist Steve Hillage ("Shouting in a Bucket Blues"), and former Soft Machine mates Robert Wyatt ("Hymn") and Mike Ratledge ("Interview"). "Interview" is easily one of the album's strongest, most original tunes, charged with a rugged, positively electrifying guitar sound courtesy of Ayers and psychedelic organ flourishes by Ratledge. And "Shouting in a Bucket Blues" is Ayers' inspired pop/blues groove. Armed with a few biting lyrics, the song became a concert staple, fronted by a number of well-known guitarists over the years including Mike Oldfield and Andy Summers. Hillage delivers heat in this original studio recording of the song; he went on to repeat the performance many times while in Europe with Ayers' Bananatour band, Decadence. The song "Decadence" is the album's centerpiece and towering achievement. Here, Ayers, Leggett, and Sparrow create progressive, atmospheric music quite unlike anything else on the record. An original, spine-tingling workout with potent lyrics concerning Nico, "Decadence" is a kind of superior foreshadowing to the following year's "Confessions of Dr. Dream" epic, which features a vocal collaboration with Nico on "Part One." The compositions on Bananamour emphasize the vocal aspects of the material; in fact, Ayers secured the industry's premier session vocalists to back him on the recordings: Liza Strike, Doris Troy, and Barry St. John. In various configurations, the trio fleshs out the songs, adding a compelling depth to the album that pleasantly expands Ayers' eclectic repertoire. In particular, they lend a gospel quality to the Beatles-tinged opener, and imbue "When Your Parents Go to Sleep" with rather soulful Ray Charles stylistics. Intended to break Ayers to a wider audience, Bananamour was his last release on EMI/Harvest before switching to a new label (Island) and a new manager (the influential John Reid, Elton John's manager at the time). The ideas on Bananamour, arguably Ayers' finest work, gave way to some very focused, full-fledged prog rock and blues numbers on his ambitious follow-up, The Confessions of Dr. Dream and Other Stories (Island Records, 1974).

(Kevin Ayers - Bananamour)

Ash Ra Tempel - Inventions for Electric Guitar

This album is sometimes credited to Ash Ra Tempel, but the music was composed and performed by Manuel Göttsching alone. All sounds were created with guitar, but Göttsching's use of echo, delay, and assorted treatments give these pieces the flavor of sequenced synthesizer music, occasionally reminiscent of Tangerine Dream's work from the period. The opening "Echo Waves" is a trance-inducing space guitar masterpiece, with repeating rhythm figures and gradual phase shifts creating a warped sense of time. The first 14 minutes of the track consist of short, subtly changing melodic phrases, until Göttsching questionably chooses to close with a searing, acid-fried guitar solo. "Quasarsphere" is much more contemplative, with Göttsching processing his guitar to sound like a synthesizer in the vein of Robert Fripp. The closing "Pluralis" consists of endless variations constructed around a simple guitar sequence; it possesses a structure similar to "Echo Waves" (down to the late-breaking blast of psychedelic soloing) with a bit more space and a slower tempo. In some respects a precursor to the groundbreaking proto-techno of E2-E4, Inventions for Electric Guitar is an essential document for space rock enthusiasts.

(Ash Ra Tempel - Inventions for Electric Guitar)

La Düsseldorf - La Düsseldorf

After Neu! broke up in 1975, Klaus Dinger formed La Düsseldorf with his brother Thomas and Hans Lampe, who had both contributed percussion on Neu!'s swan song album. Neu! always displayed a split personality, rooted in the conflicting temperaments and sensibilities of Dinger and guitarist Michael Rother, differences that were dramatized on the duo's final record, where Rother's mellower, melodic atmospherics contrasted with Dinger's anarchic, noisier inclinations. Recorded in 1975, La Düsseldorf's self-titled debut effects something of a compromise between those two aesthetics. Built on driving beats and fleshed out with expansive synth coloring, the 13-minute "Düsseldorf" is a grand, pop-friendly homage to Dinger's hometown. Although its repetitive glide recalls Neu!'s signature Motorik groove, there's something more playful and joyous about Dinger's approach here, especially at the moments when the vocals venture briefly into mock operatics and a glammy piano hammers away. The title track involves similar sonic ingredients but puts them to more concise and aggressive use. As with Neu!'s "Hero" and "After Eight," Dinger injects this song with a speedy, sloganeering rush that anticipates punk; at the same time, though, its incorporation of a soccer-crowd chant seems almost a prescient parody of the brainless variant of punk that would later turn the movement into self-caricature. Indeed, while Dinger was punk avant la lettre, he already had a foot in the post-punk era, something that's most evident on "Silver Cloud" and "Time." These tracks are more minimalist, looking forward to the pared-down, monochromatic austerity that would follow punk's color-cartoon demise. On "Time," an oceanic ebb and flow and somber church-organ sounds eventually yield to a hypnotic, nodding pulse. The album's standout, the mesmerizing instrumental "Silver Cloud," sees prominent synths and mechanical rhythms impart a cool electronic aura that certainly resonated with Bowie and made its presence felt on his Berlin recordings.

(La Düsseldorf - La Düsseldorf)

Kevin Ayers - Whatevershebringswesing

Melancholic and reflective, Kevin Ayers' third solo effort, Whatevershebringswesing (this time sans the Whole World as a collective), finds the ultimate underachiever languishing in a realm of ballads, free (for the most part) from the façade and pretensions of prog rock that plagued the previous project. Released in January 1972, Whatevershebringswesing was Ayers' most commercially accessible album to date. The opening track, the "There Is Loving" suite, was both apropos and deceptive. The song picks up nicely from the previous album, linked by its Soft Machine/prog rock sound and fronting the lyrics from the single "Butterfly Dance"; however, for the very same reason, this was a deceptive opener for an album that was far removed from the prog subgenre. In the interim between Shooting at the Moon and Whatever, Ayers gigged with his friend Daevid Allen's band, Gong, on a European tour, the results of which can be heard on the phenomenal Peel session recording Pre-Modern Wireless. Afterward, Ayers plucked saxophonist Didier Malherbe out of Gong momentarily to supplement the sound on his next album. The perfect substitute for Lol Coxhill, Malherbe and flute are a standout on the opener, "There Is Loving," with moving orchestral arrangements by Dave Bedford on the "Among Us" midsection. Initially released as a single, the album's highlight and concert staple, "Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes," is classic Ayers. While many outstanding guitarists have ripped up this grooving, occasionally aggressive blues/pop riff, Ayers himself laid down the guitar and piano tracks on this maiden recording. In line with Ayers' most appealing, successful compositions, "Stranger" and the majority of cuts on Whatever are uncomplicated and frank, allowing the listener to immediately step inside. Ayers' tunes may be light and semisweet, but he doesn't beat around the bush. "Oh My" and "Champagne Cowboy Blues" are exquisite examples of Ayers' ability to immediately pull in the listener via his lighthearted, slightly skewed approach. "Champagne" features the signature Mike Oldfield sound/style that would soon sell millions of records for him as a solo artist. Noteworthy are "Song From the Bottom of a Well" and "Lullaby." Intoned with darkness and foreboding, "Well" harks back to Soft Machine's "Why Are We Sleeping?" and foreshadows Ayers' Dr. Dream album, particularly "It Begins With a Blessing." But like much of the experimental material on his previous release, "Well" just doesn't build up to anything of substance. And the instrumental "Lullaby" (appropriately titled) closes the album on an odd note. Reminiscent of King Crimson's "Cadence and Cascade" (from In the Wake of Poseidon) and highlighted by Malherbe's fluid flute, "Lullaby" is an early example of new age ambience, complete with running brook in the background. Whatevershebringswesing falls short of the ambitious peaks found on Ayers' previous record; however, the material is much more consistent, focused, and devoid of that album's pitfalls. Ayers sounds comfortable and in his true element on Whatever, but like much of his post-'70s output, the compositions lack challenge. Whatevershebringswesing has often been cited as Ayers' magnum opus, but the term should be reserved for his follow-up, Bananamour, or even The Confessions of Dr. Dream.

(Kevin Ayers - Whatevershebringswesing)

Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star

Undoubtedly the best album I discovered this year; it now reigns as one of my favorite listening experiences. Stick with it! --slowen

Something/Anything? proved that Todd Rundgren could write a pop classic as gracefully as any of his peers, but buried beneath the surface were signs that he would never be satisfied as merely a pop singer/songwriter. A close listen to the album reveals the eccentricities and restless spirit that surges to the forefront on its follow-up, A Wizard, a True Star. Anyone expecting the third record of Something/Anything?, filled with variations on "I Saw the Light" and "Hello It's Me," will be shocked by A Wizard. As much a mind-f*ck as an album, A Wizard, a True Star rarely breaks down to full-fledged songs, especially on the first side, where songs and melodies float in and out of a hazy post-psychedelic mist. Stylistically, there may not be much new -- he touched on so many different bases on Something/Anything? that it's hard to expand to new territory -- but it's all synthesized and assembled in fresh, strange ways. Often, it's a jarring, disturbing listen, especially since Rundgren's humor has turned bizarre and insular. It truly takes a concerted effort on the part of the listener to unravel the record, since Rundgren makes no concessions -- not only does the soul medley jerk in unpredictable ways, but the anthemic closer, "Just One Victory," is layered with so many overdubs that it's hard to hear its moving melody unless you pay attention. And that's the key to understanding A Wizard, a True Star -- it's one of those rare rock albums that demands full attention and, depending on your own vantage, it may even reward such close listening.

(Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star)

Ash Ra Temple - Schwingungen

Ash Ra Tempel's second album featured the first of several personnel changes, Klaus Schulze having departed for other realms and replaced as a result by Wolfgang Muller. A few guest players surfaced here and there as well, with one John L. taking the lead vocals -- another difference from the self-titled debut, which was entirely instrumental. The general principle of side-long efforts continued, though the first half was split into two related songs, "Light" and "Darkness." "Light" itself sounded halfway between the zoned-out exploration of "Traummaschine" and bluesy jamming, a weird if not totally discordant combination that still manages to sound more out there than most bands of the time. Gottsching's fried solo, in particular, is great, sending the rest of the song out to silence that leads into "Darkness." Said song initially takes a far more minimal approach that bears even more resemblance to "Traummaschine," fading out almost entirely by the third minute before a full band performance (including Uli Popp on bongos and Matthais Wehler's sudden alto sax bursts) slowly builds into a frenetic jam. John L.'s vocals become echoed screams and yelps not far off from Damo Suzuki's approach in Can, and the overall performance is a perfect slice of Krautrock insanity, sudden swirls of flanging and even more on-the-edge solos from Gottsching and Wehler sending it over the top. "Suche & Liebe" takes up the entire second side, the performers this time around concentrating on the quiet but unsettling approach, Gottsching's massive soloing kept low in the mix but not so much that it doesn't freak out listeners. The song concludes on an almost conventionally pretty band jam, something that could almost be Meddle-era Pink Floyd, only with even a more haunting, alien air thanks to the wordless vocal keening.

(Ash Ra Temple - Schwingungen)

Kevin Ayers - Joy of a Toy

As the Soft Machine's first bassist and original principal songwriter, Kevin Ayers was an overlooked force behind the group's groundbreaking recordings in 1967 and 1968. This, his solo debut, is so tossed-off and nonchalant that one gets the impression he wanted to take it easy after helping pilot the manic innovations of the Softs. Laissez-faire sloth has always been part of Ayers' persona, and this record's intermittent lazy charm helped establish it. That doesn't get around the fact, however, that this set of early progressive rock does not feature extremely strong material. Ayers' command of an assortment of instruments is impressive, and his deep bass vocals and playful, almost goofy song-sketches are affecting, but they don't really stick with the listener. It's no accident that some of the tracks recall early Soft Machine: Robert Wyatt drums on most of the songs, and "Song for Insane Times" is virtually a bona fide Soft Machine performance, featuring actual backing from the group itself. A likable but slight album that is at its best when Ayers is at his folkiest.

(Kevin Ayers - Joy of a Toy)