Job, Party at Ilan's (Feast Or Famine) CD
Improvised Jazz and ambient music is very much suck-it-and-see for me;
hard to predict in advance what's going to be good or work out why
when you've found something you like. One thing I have noticed,
though, is that books can determine how well a record goes down and
vice versa. Further, in a case of weird symbiosis, everything I've
chosen to review while reading J.G. Ballard's "Low flying aircraft"
collection---a series of bleak post-industrial future histories---has
been fragmentary, post-musical collage and spontaneity (see also the
Argos Fiasco and Sean Parker reviews). I don't know which impulse is
feeding the other, but I do know that they marry well. In Job's case
the improvisation is varied, including some snowscape drone ("The
dream editor"), some interstellar laser shoot-outs ("Clear"), a muted
dinner party conversation ("Hi I'm Phil nice to meet you") and album
highlight "Humdinga zoobah" which lets loose a St. Vitus robot funk
squelch bass and slide guitar combination then reigns them in with the
tightest beats on the disc.
By cleverly keeping many of the tracks short
and thus removing the analogy between musical self-indulgence and
self-abuse, Job have delivered a suitably fractured accompaniment for
thought-provoking reading matter.
675 Tennessee St #2 San Francisco, CA 94107 www.feastorfamine.com
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