Music is the poetry of the air

I want music and I want it now! Go first to the ‘Miles Runs The Voodoo Down’ 45, which I don’t own and never knew existed until the recent Legacy Edition of ‘Bitches Brew’ came out – mmm – yes, an irresistible slow-funk jam, I wonder if it charted? It seems contrary to cut the action Miles was making at the time down to 2.50 – insane! But the same was done to Blue Note sessions in the 60s and I always find those singles unsatisfactory, knowing that more fantastic playing lay beyond the fading point. Then again, should I happen to have been in a hip bar circa ’66 their very existence would mean I’d have a chance of being able to stroll up to the juke-box and hit the buttons for, say, ‘Sidewinder’ – imagine doing that!

Dip into ‘A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind’ on Platypus, which I’m only just beginning to explore and I would normally avoid any album with the word ‘psychedelic’ in the title; I’m not really the psychedelic kind, but then, in a way, the music of Miles around the time of ‘Voodoo’ and later was a form of psychedelia, I suppose. Anyway, there’s good stuff on this combination of old and new variations on the ‘exploding in your mind’ theme – like Grover Washington’s version of the Temps’ ‘Masterpiece’ – not what I’d expect to find on a psychedelic comp but I applaud the compilers for including a 13min-long fusion of jazz in a Norman Whitfield vein. Holy Fuck is some kind of name for your band, isn’t it? I admire the nerve and I like their track on here, ‘The Pulse’. Like it enough to add their album, ‘Latin’, to my ‘LPs To Check Out’ list (you should see the size of that!). Time? So little, and so many sound to ‘check out’. Holy Fuck are a duo from Toronto, by the way. They sound like...well, a Prog-techno- Rock sound, and if that hasn’t put you off, nothing will. ‘So You Want To Be A Drummer’ by Cozy Powell is here; a breakbeat-funk-rock classic, I’m sure you’ll agree. Before I leave this insanity behind, I listen in to ‘Anonymus II’ by Focus (26mins long!) – and it has a very strange effect, namely of making me want to listen to more of a band that only existed as a name on my register.

   Craving contrast, flip to T.Williams’ ‘Chop & Screw’ EP just out on Deep Teknologi Records – yep, it’s got that crazy modern flavour that the kids no doubt dig, some kind of genre that’s been named and I don’t know, probably – but ‘Hard Cash’ is just the kind of thing I’d be firing at the ‘floor if I hadn’t hung up my ‘phones years ago. There’s a kind of technological funk to it all and a bass that comes in during ‘In The Deep’ that it would be a pleasure to punishers dancers with.
   Like you, I’d never heard of Carey Nutman until recently. Now you’ve heard of him too. I like to share. I like the name so I’ll say it again: Carey Nutman. But who is he and what does he do? He’s a qualified pharmacist and, more to the point, has a Masters in composition, not of chemicals, but music. So, I came across ‘Saxophone Tapestry’ the other day and, man, it’s blowing my mind (and listening to psychedelic music is also possibly changing my mind back to thinking/speaking like a hippy). It’s from the album ‘Pour Une Francaise’. Dave Allenby plays saxophone - overdubs, multi-tracks and effects mutate the harmonious into something alien as Nutman works the technological magic to greater degrees through the 17minute duration. Through the cans it will blow your mind as what sounds like a Martian (you know what they sound like, don’t you?) jams with a concert saxophonist – Adolphe could never have imagined the kind of musical universe his invention would end up sharing in the 21st century, surely.