CUONG VU Pure (Knitting Factory)
This post-jazz trio album came out a few months ago, but I haven’t had a chance to absorb it till now, and I figure it’s never too late to write about work this good. I first heard Cuong Vu (born in Vietnam, raised in Seattle, educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, now living in New York) a few years back on a Chris Speed record; I liked the way his trumpet complemented Speed’s sax while establishing its own melodic territory. Pure is Vu’s second CD as a leader.
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Cuong Vu: Real Audio Format Faith Vina, All Grown Up
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It’s pure art. Cuong Vu has dug so deep into himself that the ineluctable ghost of Miles Davis just isn’t an issue, even in an electronically oriented arena like Pure’s, where you’d think that, between 1968 and 1975, Miles did everything that could be done. A crucial definer was the selection of band members. Drummer John Hollenbeck slugs the toms a lot, plays sparely and with a wide range of volume, uses subtle repetition in a way that you wouldn’t have called a groove till you found yourself stomping your foot on the floor. Bassist Stomu Takeishi, who plucks so busily way up the neck when he’s with Erik Friedlander, completely reinvents himself with Vu, squeezing his mud way down between the beats; mutant loops of his riffs are also used here and there as thematic material. Vu himself is determined to play nothing that’s meaningless. He drones essential planes of sustain, sketches slow minisongs of improvisation one after the other, finds brand-new tonal regions of his horn, sometimes sounding like he’s stuffed his cheeks with popcorn just for the effect it’ll produce. And whoever oversaw the electronic touches (Vu? co-producer Laurent Brondel?) cut them in with diamond precision, using them as accents rather than as ends in themselves.
The compositions are stories that simply make sense, though they’re long and full of gradual changes, and aren’t traditionally hooky. There’s dark-darkness (“Faith”), joyful lament (“Vina, All Grown Up”), quick-stepping spy funk (“Pitter- Patter”). All are terrific. But at least once, take the full 18 minutes and pay strict attention to “I Shall Never Come Back.” It starts with sparse echoes in an empty room, follows with some truly scary monster-bass effects, cuts loose the drums for an episode of soulless brutality, then ushers in a trumpet passage that reveals everything about anguish and despair in flat, naked beauty before introducing a beat and an echoing finale that can’t represent anything but a man staggering self-pitilessly toward his death. It will shake you.
THE SOFT BOYS Underwater Moonlight (Matador)
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The Soft Boys: Real Audio Format Old Pervert The Queen of Eyes
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It’s often been said that great records find you, and not the other way around. Half my life ago, inspired by a rave review in the original Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records, I spent hours digging vainly through import and used bins for the Soft Boys’ Underwater Moonlight LP. Originally released in 1980, the record eluded me until my freshman year of college, when a still-sealed copy suddenly turned up in my local vinyl emporium. Its timing was perfect — six months previous, the magic of an album brimming with sex, psychedelia and Fender Telecasters would have been completely lost on an overly serious high school student who hadn’t had much experience with any of the above. But for the next four years, Underwater Moonlight became my ever-present companion, serving as an acerbic Greek chorus to my grapplings with girls, drugs and various other distractions from my academic career.
Truth be told, I haven’t listened to Underwater Moonlight much in the past decade; I spun it so often that I can still download every lick, lyric and muttered aside at will from the Napster of my mind. That said, Matador’s new edition of the album sounds even better than I remembered. Robyn Hitchcock would go on to make several excellent solo albums after Underwater Moonlight, but none of them ever crackled with this sort of visceral electricity. Hitchcock and Kimberley Rew’s Yardbirdsian guitar duels on “Kingdom of Love,” “Insanely Jealous” and the title track are still dizzying in their beauty, while the soaring kill-for-peace anthems “I Wanna Destroy You” and “Positive Vibrations” — not to mention the Beefheart blues of “Old Pervert” — exude a musical confidence completely at odds with the prevailing sounds of the day. And if someone has since come up with a better fusion of the Beatles, Byrds and Hollies than “Queen of Eyes,” I haven’t heard it.
One complaint: As with previous CD versions, Matador’s reissue attaches several outtakes to the end of the record. While interesting, their presence winds up detracting from the full-blown excellence of the album’s original contents; they should have been relegated to the bonus disc, which features some previously unreleased rehearsal recordings. But just buy the CD, take the time to program tracks 1 through 10 into your player, and let ’em rip; 36 minutes of twisted pop perfection will be your reward. (Dan Epstein)
