Monday, March 3, 2025

Music Week

March archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 43769 [43749) rated (+20), 38 [46] unrated (-8).

This will be another perfunctory installment, just noting the few albums I've managed to check out, with minimal embellishment or commentary. I'm effectively stalled, a state unlikely to change any time soon. I've had a rough week, although perhaps not as bad as I had feared. I expect more of the same, although I suppose I should be cheered that the arctic chill has retreated into usual Winter gloom. Also that two minor surgeries have moved to done from looming, and while I can't say I've recovered, I've survived no worse than expected.

I had the root canal last Monday, and go back to dentist for a crown on Wednesday, which should be uneventful. I had cataract surgery on my left eye on Thursday, and went back for post-op exam on Friday. I've written about it at more length in my notebook, but no need linking much less reiterating all that here. Both of these events seemed rather ominous coming out of the anaesthetic, but improved significantly the day after. The eye is still blurry, but I'm told that a day later my vision with it had improved from 20/80 to 20/50. I was cleared to drive home, and did confidently. Since then, it's hard to gauge further improvement. It is still not as good looking at computer or reading as the also-not-very-good right eye, but I'm fairly functional with the combination.

Still, "functional" does not mean I have much if any ambition to work on anything, including figuring out my future writing life. Aside from the paltry few records below, the only things I've written in recent days were the surgery write-up, a list of highly-rated television shows, and a post-dream tweet:

Starting to reimagine my "Weird" book idea as a three-act play, one act for each Trump campaign, starting out as farce and ending up as tragedy, with more corpses on stage at the end than "Hamlet." Meanwhile, reading Hobsbawm on Berlin 1932.

I didn't initially cross-post this on Bluesky, figuring I'd keep my powder dry there until I figured out what I wanted to do, but seeing as I had 27 notifications there this morning (vs. 2 on X), I let it rip (adding the book title).

I couldn't very well excerpt, much less explicate, Hobsbawm in that format, but the gist was that by 1932, the Weimar Republic parties had lost their credibility and their ability to govern, but the left had nowhere near the power to initiate a revolution, despite seeing the obvious need for one. As for the Nazis, they too were unable to seize power on their own, but were ultimately gifted it by aristocratic conservatives who deluded themselves into thinking they could control Hitler as a tool. Hitler offered them a degree of popularity they could never muster on their own. They, in turn, gave Hitler the power to destroy the whole nation.

But their decision to do so wasn't driven by necessity. The KPD, while growing as the SPD lost credibility through ineffectiveness, was far from being able to rise to power, and if sensible people just managed to keep their heads and smooth out the kinks in a badly shaken economy, both the Communists and the Nazis would have faded back into the Weimar muddle. The right picked the Nazis not because they had to, but because they relished the idea of using Nazi stormtroopers to impose their will on an unruly public.

A few months ago, I was thinking that the mainstreaming of the "Trump is a fascist" meme was simply bad tactics: the few people who even remotely understood it had already made up their minds on Trump — most against, but there are some people who like that aspect of Trump — while everyone else was simply confused. But now I'm beginning to realize that there are very few historical analogies, especially well known ones, that capture the present moment with such resonance and depth. And also that the real problem isn't the right fringe that Trump has rallied to power, and certainly not the leftists who see catastrophe unfolding so clearly, but the emboldened "center-right" who see Trump as their ticket to growing their already ridiculous oligarchy, and the cowardly "center-left" who have dissolved into nothingness.

Historical analogies are almost by definition always wrong, but we have few other techniques to clarify out thinking. But rather than start with "is Trump Hitler?" perhaps we should start with "is American Weimar?" Very few Americans know anything significant about Weimar Germany (or any other period of German history, even the Nazi period), but among the few that do, some on the left and more on the right could make a few connections. To the extent that you do, Trump and Hitler, regardless of their differences, are too unique to map to anyone else. The real question is who, in Trump's world, plays the role of Papen, Hindenburg, Krupp, Schleicher, et alem? (Thälmann is irrelevant to the handover of power, as are the more famous minions Hitler promoted and/or eliminated.)

I wouldn't expect much precision in such personal analogies, but general types keep returning in various guises — much as Napoleon III reinvented his namesake as farce. I'd also point out that much of Weimar was unique and specific to its time and place, while contemporary America is no less so. (A good background reference here is Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, which includes several more comparative studies.)

Perhaps the quote I was looking for was this one (pp. 57):

We were on the Titanic, and everyone knew it was hitting the iceberg. The only uncertainty was about what would happen when it did. Who would provide a new ship? It was impossible to remain outside politics. But how could one support the parties of the Weimar Republic who no longer even knew how to man the lifeboats? They were entirely absent from the presidential elections of 1932, which were fought between Hitler and the communist candidate Ernst Thälmann and old imperial Field Marshal Hindenburg, supported by all non-communists as the only way of holding up the rise of Hitler. (Within a few months he was to call Hitler to power.)

Initially I retyped a promising piece from the following page (p. 58), which didn't quite get to where I recalled it going, but since it's typed, I'll offer it anyway:

As I entered the school year 1932-3, the sense that we were living in some sort of final crisis, or at least a crisis destined for some cataclysmic resolution, became overpowering. The presidential election of May 1932, the first of several in that ominous year, hd already eliminated the parties of the Weimar Republic. The last of its governments, under Brüning, had fallen shortly after and given way to a clique of aristocratic reactionaries governing entirely by presidential decree, for the administration of Franz von Papen had virtually no support in the Reichstag, let alone even the makings of a majority. The new government immediately sent a small detail of soldiers to dismiss the government of the largest German state, Prussia, where a Social-Democratic-Centre Party coalition had maintained something like democratic rule. The ministers went like lambs, as Papen, trying to bring Hitler into his government, revoked a recent ban on the wearing of their uniforms by Nazi stormtroopers. Their deliberately provocative parades now became part of the protection squads of the various parties. In July alone eighty-six were killed, mainly in clashes between Nazis and communists, and the number of those seriously injured ran into hundreds. Hitler, playing for higher stakes, forced a general election in July. The Nazis were returned with almost 14 million votes (37.5 per cent) and 230 seats — barely fewer than the combined strength of the Weimar parties (Social Democrats, Catholics and the now virtually invisible Democrats) and the communists with over 5 million and eighty-nine seats. For practical purposes the Weimar Republic was dead. Only the form of the funeral remained to be determined. But until there was agreement between the President, the army, the reactionaries and Hitler (who insisted on the Chancellorship or nothing), its corpse could not be buried.

This reminds me that I long ago broke the habit of marking up books. (I was taken aback some months ago when I opened up my old copy of Dialectic of Enlightenment and found that it was more underlined than not, mostly in ink.) The Hobsbawm books are full of bits I can imagine wanting to refer back to. (I found the quote above only by looking Papen up in the index.)

As my tweet suggests, I now think one has to look at all three Trump presidential campaigns to get a coherent picture of how he works, what his appeal is, and how badly Democrats have bungled the "assignment" of talking about him. (Chait's term in quotes, which despite its inherently snide air is useful for focusing on the one essential asked of every Democrat who's run against him, which is to beat him. Any other compromise is forgivable, but letting him win is not.) We also have to pay considerable heed to the Sanders campaigns, and the intense preoccupation of centrist Democrats with stopping Sanders even at their own expense.

Such ideas continue to percolate in my head while I'm otherwise doing next to nothing. Sorry about that, but I'm not ready to "face the music" (even when it's just music). I spent a lot of time last week fiddling with the jigsaw puzzle — which requires eyesight, but not so critically — and watching TV. I didn't get much of the latter done, but did finish Feud: Capote vs. the Swans — L gave up after 2-3 episodes, but I hung on and watched the 4th — picking up with the 5th (easily the best, with Chris Chalk as James Baldwin; way too much drinking himself to death after that, while the aging "swans" hardly seemed worth the trouble, although Jessica Lange's ghost of a mother added some value). I also watched Get Millie Black (which L had started without me, but we finished up together).

It's her TV, so unless I get impose, I only get to watch what she wants when she wants, and mostly this week she wanted to watch Oscar movies. To that end, we watched Anora, which milked 10 minutes of plot for 139 minutes of overkill editing, and The Substance, which was horrible — although both had a fair amount of what one friend calls "redeeming social value." With that, I've seen 3 (of 9) Best Picture nominees (the other is Conclave; L went ahead and saw Emilia Pérez without me, as well as 3 animation nominees — although I did catch the end of Memoirs of a Snail).

I watched the first 30-40 minutes of the Oscars, and found myself irritated or worse by virtually everything starting with the host change to Conan O'Brien — another reminder that elections have consequences? Sure, I haven't watched Jimmy Kimmel since the election, but not because I want to live in a world devoid of humor and meaning, where "the times" are only whispered about in hushed, ominous tones. While I took comfort from Kimmel's ridicule of Trump, I came away thinking that we have to find new ways of talking about Trump and his posse to his base. Still, that's no reason to back off when you're right.

Only thing to note on this week's music is that I finally dipped into the 2025 demo queue. I can't say I felt the need to move on, but found it took minimal thought to pull the next item from the queue, especially compared to searching out more 2024 prospects. Of the latter, note that the two A- albums came from Chuck Eddy's 150 Best Albums of 2024, which I belatedly added to my EOY Aggregate.

I suppose I should also note that I've added a fair number of individual top-10 lists, drawing mostly from the Uproxx Music Critics Poll. I originally went through the critics list and picked up names I recognized (pretty much anyone I had picked up in a previous EOY Aggregate). But at some point, I decided it would be ok to skew the results a bit toward hip-hop, so I grabbed the voter lists for several well-regarded albums, especially Doechii's Alligator Bites Never Heal -- now in 7th place, which also helped lift Kendrick Lamar's GNX to 2nd, Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter to 3rd, and Tyler, the Creator's Chromakopia to 11th. (I didn't go through their voter lists, but those three albums picked up more than other contenders, especially the Cure's Songs of a Lost World (drop from 2nd to 5th) and Adrianne Lenker's Bright Future (4th, I think, to 8th).

Quite possible I'll do a bit more of that sort of thing, and look for a few more lists, although at this point the utility of putting more work into this project is dwindling.

New records reviewed this week:

Frank Carlberg: Dream Machine (2023 [2025], Red Piano): Finnish pianist, has a couple dozen albums since 1992, was inspired by a 1959 sci-fi gadget to compose four "Dream" suites (13 pieces in all), with complementary keyboards from Leo Genovese (organ, farfisa, synths), outstanding tenor sax from Hery Paz, backed with bass (John Hébert) and drums (Dan Weiss). A- [cd]

Cumgirl8: The 8th Cumming (2024, 4AD): New York post-punk band and "multi-media collective," "their style and artistic practice are shaped by an opposition to patriarchy and capitalism," debut album 2020, this their second (although I've seen it billed as their first). B+(*) [sp]

Dengue Dengue Dengue!: Agita2 (2024, Club Romantico, EP): Peruvian DJ duo, Felipe Salmon and Rafael Pereira, a couple albums but mostly singles/EPs since 2012. Discogs abbreviates the group name here as "DNGDNGDNG," which in lower case seems to be top slugline on the Bandcamp page. Five tracks (20:40). B+(**) [sp]

Peter Erskine & the Jam Music Lab All-Stars: Vienna to Hollywood: Impressions of E.W. Korngold & Max Steiner (2024 [2025], Origin): Drummer, best known for Weather Report but he has a lot more range than that, with his most memorable early albums as leader being piano trios, and considerable side-work in big bands. Large group here, short of a big band on horns but long on strings, playing hackneyed movie themes arranged by Erskine and Danny Grissett. B+(*) [cd]

Flagboy Giz and the Wild Tchoupitoulas: Live From the French Quarter Fest 2023 (2023 [2024], Injun Money): New Orleans MC, took over the venerable New Orleans Indian group, best known for their Meters-backed 1976 eponymous LP. B+(**) [sp]

Andreas Gerth & Carl Oesterheit: Music for Unknown Rituals (2023 [2024], Umor Rex): German musicians, have fairly substantial credits since early 1990s, but not much more than their two duo albums as leaders. One of the best albums I've heard in the Hassell-Eno "4th world" domain. A- [sp]

Glorygirl2950: Queen of the Land (2024, self-released): Not much on her, some suggestion that her self-released label is UK-based, but Pitchfork review pegs this as "a welcome blast of rowdy Atlanta rap." Accent favors Atlanta. B+(*) [sp]

Brad Goode Polytonal Big Band: The Snake Charmer (2023 [2025], Origin): Trumpet player, called his first (1988) album Shock of the New, recorded four albums (2001-03) with Von Freeman titled Inside Chicago, career since has been vigorously eclectic, including a 2008 anticipation of this group called Polytonal Dance Party. Conventional big band, conducted by John Davis, playing six original compositions and two new arrangements ("Ornithology" is one) by Goode. B+(**) [cd]

Hieroglyphic Being: Quadric Surfaces (2024, Viernulvier): Chicago electronica producer Jamal Ross, prolific since 2008, soundtrack bits for "an abstract animation film by visual artist Gabriela González Rondon," pleasantly bleepy. B+(***) [sp]

Erik Jekabson: Breakthrough (2024 [2025], Wide Hive): Trumpet/flugelhorn player, from Bay Area, side credits from 1996, debut album 2003, eighth own album, has a long list of supporting musicians on most tracks here, including strings, flute, oboe, and some vocals (two tracks). Quite lovely, for the most part, as far as that goes. B+(**) [cd]

Jessica Jones Quartet: Edible Flowers (2020 [2025], Reva): Tenor saxophonist, actually two in the group as husband Tony Jones also plays, as well as sharing most writing/arranging credits, backed here by Stomu Takeishi (bass) and Deszon Claiborne (drums). Free jazz, solid and poised. B+(***) [cd]

Jupiter & Okwess: Ekoya (2025, Airfono): Congolese group led by Jean-Pierre (Jupiter) Bokondji, who grew up as a diplomat's son in East Berlin before returning to Kinshasa to organize his band, which lately has been big in Europe. B+(*) [sp]

Doug MacDonald: Santa Monica Session (2024 [2025], DMAC Music): Guitarist, many albums since 1981, quartet with piano, bass, and drums; three originals, five covers, closing with "Perdido." B+(*) [cd]

Polyfillas: Rude Boys of England E.P. (2024, self-released, EP): Brit band from Sunderland (on the North Sea, near Newcastle), Ava and Jamie Dangerous sing, play guitar, wrote the songs, backed with bass and drums: two old-fashioned punk anthems, the "reggae-tinged" 8:30 title track, and "two acoustic numbers" -- total 21:37. Experiments, I figure, each with a small measure of promise. B+(*) [bc]

Praktika: Balani Factory (2023 [2024], Blanc Manioc): Electronica duo from Finland, Heikki Rinkinen and Risto Eskolin, debut album 2016, impresses with a cornucopia of beats. A- [sp]

Valknee: Ordinary (2024, TuneCore): Japanese rapper, released an album in 2019, not sure what else. Jumps pretty hard to start with. Still, short as it is (10 songs, 26:42) it doesn't quite sustain. B+(**) [sp]

Vincenzo Virgillito: Precondition (2017 [2025], self-released): Italian bassist, born in Sicily, based in London, side credits since 1994 but this is his first as leader, and for that matter his first solo album. B [cd]

Jeong Lim Yang: Synchronicity (2023 [2025], Sunnyside): Bassist-composer, from South Korea, based in New York since 2011, has a previous (2017) album. Quartet here, focus on viola (Mat Maneri) and piano (Jacob Sacks), with Randy Peterson on drums. Enchanting. B+(***) [cd]

Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad: azz Is Dead 22: Ebo Taylor (2025, Jazz Is Dead): Hip-hop producers back with another installment (7 songs, 26:06) in their anti-jazz series, each new volume featuring someone semi-famous from way back when (usually the 1970s), in this case the now 86-year-old Ghanaian highlife star (who also appeared on last year's various artists sampler, JID 21). B+(*) [sp]

ZA!/Tomás De Perrate: Jolifanto (2024, Lovemonk): Barcelona band, active singe 2006, combines "African beats, noise, thick distortions, vocal loops, free jazz, sounds from the shepherds of Tuva, Balinese polyrhythms, math rock, dadaism, drones," etc. De Perrate is a flamenco singer of some note. Sounds, indeed, like all that got dumped into the blender. B+(**) [bc]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

None

Old music:

Andreas Gerth & Carl Oesterhelt: The Aporias of Futurism (2021, Umor Rex): I was so struck by Music for Unknown Rituals, I went back to the previous album, which more clearly shows their roots in avant-electronica, minus the acoustic touches and rhythmic quirks that made the later album so appealing. This has its own, more somber, appeal, almost industrial. B+(*) [sp]

Unpacking: I have a half-dozen still-unopened packages on my desk. Check back next week.

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