Alan Sorrenti • Aria (Harvest, 1972)

Haunted toy shops...most annoying of places...Jack In The Box's saying over and over again "I'm going to kill you"...the reason for this annoyance is once the logistics become clear, unless they are going to rip themselves out of the box and sprout little legs where the spring should be, nothing is going to happen...I remember this one establishment in West Virginia, I believe it was in Doddridge County. It seems the Skin Walkers infested all the inanimate objects, as they are want to do. Betsy Wetsies were heard to moan "Fuck me Daddy" to real fathers, fully embarrassed, brows damp with sweat, trying to steer their daughters past the plastic Lolita's. 

While in this store, I came face to face with a Noddy doll doing his best Arthur Brown. Shrieking away, proclaiming he was the God of Hell fire...well that's what I thought he was saying...after all he was speaking in some spirit world tongue...come to think about it, he could have been doing a mean Alan Sorrenti impersonation...

Sorrenti's first album "Aria" on initial listen could be easily dismissed as a pale Kingdom Come, or Van Der Graff Generator. You would only be partially wrong. There's no electric guitar in sight and the songs employing long form, but short of flashy playing.  The most shine given is supplied by Jean Luc-Ponty guest appearance. On the title track Sorrenti is in company to Arthur Brown's cackle and the sneer of Peter Hammil. But because Alan's voice doesn't have the full theatrics of Kingdom Come behind him, it seems almost lost in the mix. This also may be due to my not understanding of Italian. I'm sure that something dramatic is being sung. The music while not as heavy as the cover graphics suggest, does often turn on a dime, going from pastoral playing to cosmic bombast. 

The second side is broken up by relatively shorter numbers. Somehow, it's from these songs that a single was selected. I would love to hear how these were pared down to fit a 45. Like side one, everything is in a state of flux.  

As I wrote earlier that off hand he could be dismissed as a pale imitator, but that would be unkind.  There is a high strangeness factor that elevates this to note worthy. The whole album, and certainly the title track gives the feeling of a opera, but without the heavy handedness that usually happens when rock is welded to classical. 

Please click on the review title for selected track: La Mia Mente

Terry Riley • Persian Surgery Dervishes (Shanti, 1972)

There are some stars that while invisible to the naked eye, pull strings of influence still. The Dogon tribesmen for centuries swear by the (somewhat faulty) information that the Space Ark Captain Nommo gave them, and keep their hopes of a celestial world beyond this unwavering. Other stars blaze brightly in the night sky then for all it's intensity burn out, leaving vague memories, and radioactivity as a calling card. Terry Riley by the early 1970's had reached the height of his above ground carrier. He was name checked by Pete Townsend in the song Baba O' Riley, and used in it's opening bars a truncated Rainbow In Curved Air. The Soft Machine were starting to adopt the same Rainbow style of playing, and the majority of Krautrock was certainly an off spring. Perhaps Riley's popularity could be that he's the only Minimalist that understands the need for a middle eight...

   By the time the Persian Surgery Dervishes appeared in 1972 he was just about to pull the plug on his popularity, and go to India to study. Nothing he would do afterward would sound so thick or funky. Over two LP sides taken from two live performances a year apart the piece moves from musical mode to mode. One moment it's Middle Ages fugue like, slipping in bits of R & B slight of hand, only to give way to rapid fire cascades of pure Minimalism filtered through raga. The real time tape loop pulses in a way that points to a future musical style that (regretfully) he has been tied to, Techno... 

   What makes the first performance so amazing is the use of an emotion that is rarely if ever evident in Riley's work, that of menace. There is a determined presence in the playing that was foreshadowed on The Church Of Anthrax record obvious here. The endless cascading of notes never gives one time for rest, I can not stress the cold menace here. If techno is to far a stretch for you too grasp, then the next comparison would be John Carpenter, only played much better.

    Record two presents a more textured reading of the piece. Using the style of an evening raga, there is funerary air to it. Here the piece wanders, the same melody sections are used, but this time it seems that Riley is choosing what comes next.  Quiet contemplation arises between the long drawn out organ tones. The tape loop even seems to have less notes. 

   Released on the tiny label Shanti in France, this was never an easy record to find. After the first pressing, the Shanti gallery had a flood and the master tapes were damaged, resulting in no reprints. In the early 1990's a CD issue came out from Italy. This was taken from a well worn copy, with the usual pops and clicks of vinyl. Normally I wouldn't mind. There is a warmth to vinyl that CD's just haven't gotten down yet. The real shame here is the mastering. Everything is muddy. Not having heard the original, it's had to say if that's from the Shanti issue. I'm also not too sure how much I believe the lost tapes story. A few years back Sun Ra had his record from Shanti reissued and they sounded fine.

   All the sound issues aside, it's good to have this document still around showing the depth and mastery of Terry Riley before he imploded back to willed obscurity.

Please click on the review title for selected track: Persian Surgery Dervishes (performance one, part one)

Cosmic Eye • Dream Sequence (EMI, 1972)

I remember once, when I was a young intern, after a night of chemical studies that I had stayed up so late that I saw the sun rise. Realizing that it was way past my bedtime, I bid my fellow students (ironically) a good evening and drifted home. After arriving home, I climbed the stairs and went to bed at 8 o' clock. A few minutes later my eyes popped open I saw that the clock hands had barely moved a inch...what a disappointment, my blasted insomnia had returned, and here I was in a false state of being awake. All I wanted was some rest. There the morning sun crept in the sky, another Summer day about to begin...and then it hit me, it wasn't 8:15 AM, but PM...I had slept twelve hours, and it only felt like five minutes...

Cosmic Eye's album has that same affect. I had somehow found this album, or at least a track, on line. This persons blog was full of Bollywood and Sitarpoitation tracks. For the life of me I can't recall how I got there. As I heard Sequence 9, I was struck how similar it was to George Harrison's Wonderwall Soundtrack. It was from that likeness, that I had conjectured the music had to be from the 60's.

As luck would have it, I found a CD of the album at Kim's St. Marks. Not too cheaply I might add, but that one track with it's running time of under two minutes was so intriguing. Like I had said, it reminded me of Wonderwall, with it's juxtapositions of jazz and Indian music.

Playing it immediately when I got home, the music was so intense I could do nothing else. I was listening to music that was in collage form, a melancholic Procol Harum like tune would give way to a restrained free jazz work out, from there that in turn that blended a spy music like theme with traditional Sitar music...How is it other Psych-Heads have not raved about this? And then I looked at the copyright date, disbelieving my eyes...it read 1972...that explained it all. Most Psych fans are forgiving of of certain musical styles coming from other countries at later dates, but not England. If this came from Germany, or even France lets say, high praise would be heaped on it. But it hails from England, when Sitars , flanging, and artistically treated echo, were well past their hip sell by date.

It seems that this album was the brain child of one Alan D'Silva. He was noted for playing jazz in a raga style, but much later than Garbor Szabo. D'Silvas first album is from 1969, and he recorded up until his death in 1976. Yet I cant help but think this was perhaps his first recorded work. In 1969 this would still sound relatively fresh, but by 1972, very much like yesterdays papers.

There's very little information about D'Silva online. I was able to find a pitifully uninformative web site run by his family. They mention there the CD issue, and it being a bootleg of poor quality. I've listened to this CD numerous times, and found nothing wrong with the sound. Unlike most legitimate reissues where you can tell the music was remastered from a vinyl copy, here everything is surprisingly clear. I'm not sure how easy it will be to get this CD, but it's well worth hunting down.

Please click on the review title for selected track: 4