been following the crosstalk on OUTSIDE and am hearby submitting my own
inimitably wordy capsule reviews of the second and third albums. If you
love music, you will LOVE THIS STUFF. (The first album is great too, though
it's a little more straightfoward; less adventuresome.)
Here's the reviews ....
the rough and the smooth (Dorado, UK and Blue Thumb, US)
Matt Cooper and Andy Allen=92s second album as Outside is a kind of map of
where jazz-influenced non-jazz is in the 90s. I guess you could call this
progressive trip hop, but this music goes so many fine places that it truly
is impossible to categorize. Each piece on this album is in a different
mood and style, and most of them are, if not as challenging as "Moodswing,"
at least as fresh as "To Forgive But Not Forget." An array of friends,
studio musicians, and subluminaries beef out Cooper=92s keyboards and
programming, including frequent collaboratrice Jhelisa on one track. The
number of idioms Cooper dabbles in successfully is phenomenal: techno
reggae collides with pure string-backed soul, avant-garde jazz with hip hop
vocals suddenly melts into Motown and then fragments back into jazz, gypsy
violin threnody wails over jungly breakbeats, new age tinkling and
classical strings suddenly chunk up into something like funk. Moods,
styles, and rhythms are changing constantly and yet seamlessly=97this
musicians=92 music is also remarkably accessible music, given how
progressive, ambitious, and wide-ranging it is.
The first four tracks show just what Cooper can do: a series of satisfying
yet challenging juxtapositions. "The 29/8 Steps" starts as a smooth jazz
cool-down over synthesized strings, gets lippy with some Fender Rhodes and
Spoken Word, and then funks up a bit in a mellow way. It=92s a disarming
opening: delightful, but suggesting that little more is in store than some
kind of Maxwell=92s Urban Suite bundle.=20
The staggeringly cool, 10-minute "Moodswing," however, is a wake-up call
for anyone who got lulled into a false sense of security. Here we really
start to whip through the unexpected motifs: some hard bop kind of stuff, a
bit o=92 hip hop, a fragment of a pop song, before getting deep into one of
those improv jazz pieces that takes free-style vamping about as far out as
it can go without getting at least a little "unmusical." But it decides to
play within the bounds, and the incessant bass riff punctuated by horn
honks keeps you coming back for more. Bit of scat here, bit of classical
influence there, bit of sax cat-fight over here again. The song seems to be
about the anxiety of influence and the pressure to do something new. It
sure does, yet in a characteristically relaxed, ultimately accessible way.
I love how it starts out as a sort of a processed rap with swingy backing
vocals and then degenerates through several strains of bop, blues, and soul
before petering out altogether at the end. Oh me. It=92s=
post-deconstruction.=20
After the terminal quack of "Moodswing," the last thing you=92d expect is
what you get, a genuine moodswing: a fuckin upbeat-spiritual-catechism,
children, in the form of a sunny pop soul song, all about the mystery of
the universe and how there juss muss be a God if you think about "The Plan"
underlying everything, just like some simple yet beautifully-orchestrated
gem off of Songs in the Key of Life or something. Complete with a
children=92s choir.=20
Okay, you=92re thinking; I=92ve got a handle on this shit again. But what no=
w?
The searing Eastern European violin cut "To Forgive But Not Forget
(Lim=92chol V=92lo Lishkoach)," which, according to the web site maintained =
by
Dorado Records, is a "memorable testimony to the Holocaust" (!). This baby
was apparently a bit of a hit when it got itself put on one of the more hip
compilation disks of the year. It=92s funny, because usually I tend to find
semi-improvisational noodling of an ethnic sort over jungle-crazed drums &
bass a bit thin. In a way this is thin, too, but it=92s so satisfying and
musically adept, and so refreshing after "The Plan," just as "The Plan" was
refreshing after "Moodswing." Cooper=92s secret is to do everything well and
not do anything for too long, and to know how to mesh these essays and
fragments into a coherent and musically convincing whole. We=92re talking
genius here. If you just want to dance to the same rhythm for 70 minutes,
this isn=92t your album, but if you can swing you=92re spin this puppy till =
you
wear down the laser pocks.
discoveries (Dorado, UK)
Outside's third and most homogenous album, discoveries, is at first blush a
comparatively simple-minded and surprisingly goofy departure. Cooper here
takes the symphonic space music of 70s synthesizer bombasts like Vangelis
and Jean Michel-Jarre and updates it brilliantly, layering the traditional
Holstian orchestral swells, dripping Moog lunarscapes, and New Age
atmosphere-crap, but slipping in such stuff as ambient dub percussion,
house-sampled NASA soundbytes and space effects (is the breathing from 2001
perhaps?), hopped-up sax riffs, jazzy piano and rhodes vamping, World Music
touches like muzzein moaning and Alpenhorn, sampled choirwork doubling as
Carpathian coven caterwauling, all kinds of shit. He's taken this genre,
apparently effete even in its own day and utterly laughable now, and
created something allusive but new, and arguably more successful once again
than the unsummed parts. The feel of the whole thing, though, still remains
very 70s, right down to the campy space opera cover and the Carl Sagan-y
aura of wonder and innocence that pervades the whole suite. This isn=92t
going to be everybody=92s stick of tea, to put it mildly, but if you can mak=
e
the leap with Cooper, you won=92t be sorry. Cooper has the courage and the
musical instinct to march to a different drum machine, and so far
everything he touches, no matter how far-fetched, turns to silky-thin
beaten gold.
_____________________________________________________
Jim Nielson - Sympatico Forums Systems Admin and all around swell guy
jnielson@sympatico.ca=20
416-369-6752 (F)416-350-1516
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20 Richmond E. Suite 600
Toronto, Ontario M5C 2B5