Feedback, tape manipulation, and hard rock and punk attitude are at the heart of the Machine Gun approach to music and noisemaking. There are riffs and form, but lots of improvisation follows that form, and mutates it further into other forms. From the opening skronk of "In Court," it's obvious that Machine Gun plays high-energy, visceral music. Special guests on these dates included the late guitarist Sonny Sharrock and Karl Berger (melodica, voice). Personnel were the late saxophonist Thomas Chapin, guitarist Robert Musso, drummer Bill Bryant, bassist Jair-Rohm Parker Wells, and vocalist and electronic cutup artist John Richey. Machine Gun was a band that played hybrid forms of rock, jazz, and funk, all from an outsider's perspective. Never was this more in evidence than on this first, self-titled release, one of the very finest albums of the '80s.įor all practical purposes, this is the very first Machine Gun record, comprised of two live performances in New Jersey and New York. Mix these elements together and Laswell (with his own funky, dub-heavy electric bass anchoring the proceedings) had an incendiary formula, one that perhaps couldn't hold together long but, while it did, it produced some amazingly powerful music. The wild card was German saxophone behemoth Peter Brötzmann, known for his classic, shatteringly intense album Machine Gun from 1968 as well as multitudes of subsequent recordings where a premium was placed on visceral, gut-wrenching interplay among musicians. Sonny Sharrock had burst onto the scene in the late '60s with Pharoah Sanders, Don Cherry, and others, establishing a unique approach to free electric guitar playing, only to retreat from the scene before being lured out of retirement by Laswell. Drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson was a veteran of Ornette Coleman's Prime Time ensemble as well as a past member of Cecil Taylor's volcanic mid-'70s bands. Why not combine rock's raging rhythms and volume with free jazz improvisation's unfettered creativity and ferocity? To this end, he made three inspired choices to fill out his band. In the mid-'80s, Bill Laswell had a great idea.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |