In My Changer, 11/17/02

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

String quintet no. 1 in A major, Op. 18; Octet in E flat major, Op. 20

Hausmusik

EMI

I've had this CD for a while, and it seemed pleasant but anonymous. However, I popped it in the changer last weekend looking for some nice string satisfaction, and something in it grabbed me and wouldn't let go. I hadn't heard before how the String quintet straddled the Classical and Romantic eras with such poise, like in the shockingly (for the time) ambiguous harmonies in the second-movement Intermezzo. While my favorite memories of the Octet will always be of live performances, when the freshness and energy of Mendelssohn's invention can make their best impression, I hadn't fully appreciated how much of that freshness and energy translated onto CD in Hausmusik's performance. I have these revelations about the quality of CDs I own a lot, but the delight I take from them is, thankfully, endlessly renewable.

Mr. Lif

Emergency Rations

Definitive Jux

This EP almost feels like an appetizer to Lif's full-length I Phantom, which is completely produced by El-P. I haven't heard it, but based on the preview song here ("Phantom," featuring El-P; I think it's safe to call it a preview) it has El-P's trademark aggressive lo-fi production, which makes for an only intermittently comfortable listening experience for me. Emergency Rations has actual hip-hop beats on it, like the hard-charging plucked bass on "The Unorthodox," the nicely minimalist scratch-and-beat underpinning to "Home of the Brave," and the buoyant "Get Wise." The last of these is a bit odd because the buoyancy uplifts one of at least three anti-George W. Bush screeds from Lif; if you lean so far to the left you can't even see the right, Emergency Rations is your hip-hop album. I don't dislike Bush as much as Lif does, but I do like hearing someone who raps as well as Lif does attack Dubya, because that's some damn good rappin'. Perhaps only Talib Kweli can incorporate extended vocabulary with his ease and assurance, but Lif flows over beats more assuredly than Kweli, and Lif tells his tales of conservative conspiracy without even a momentary conceptual pause; every word needs to be there, and Lif makes you listen. I may well buy I Phantom, even though I'm not sure I'll like it better than this, just because Emergency Rations is too damn good not to make me want more.

Guy Klucevsek and Alan Bern

Accordance

Winter & Winter

Two avant-garde classical accordionists, united at last! I got this CD from Jazz Times and listened to it occasionally for a while, but lately I've been really taken with the way Klucevsek and Bern cheerfully ignore genre boundaries, compose for both the memorable tune and the under-your-skin sonority, and jam the hell out of their polka boxes. I also like how the Winter & Winter packaging is not only deluxe after their manner but refuses to say anything at all about the music, forfeiting what on other albums would be the pages of inane discussion of the pieces for some cool abstract drawings. Klucevsek and Bern are better served by the omission of liner notes; in their absence, you concentrate on the music rather than the explicatory words, and come into the composers' world on your own. While much of the music draws on the influence of the downtown New York school—there's even one piece called "Astor Place," which doesn't really map to my experience of that street, but perhaps it's different when you play the accordion while strolling—the range here encompasses every emotion, rhythm and compositional goal you could want. Since Klucevsek should be commended for his efforts in supporting other composers as well, picking up this one should be a no-brainer for downtown enthusiasts.

Funkadelic

Uncle Jam Wants You

Priority

George Clinton's music tends to lead writers into ecstatic cataclysms of prose as they madly attempt to find a language equivalent of an unstoppable groove adorned by precise, driving details and laid down as if nothing else in the world mattered. I'm not going to attempt it, because the messes of jumbled modifiers are far more numerous than the actual transcendences in language, but let me say that every time I hear "(Not Just) Knee Deep," I feel convinced, against all available evidence, that one day the Mothership will come for me and I will be happily assimilated and I will shake my booty in the peace that passeth all understanding for the rest of eternity. Thank you for listening

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