Hotel X >> Flute routes

Hotel X - "Iqbal"

(SST Records, 1997)

I wrote most of this post in 2012 or '13 but never posted it.  I got this album, Routes Music, on used CD in '97 for 2 bucks on a whim and found myself smitten by its haphazard blending of styles into a cohesive subtropical gumbo.  This was not long after I had spent a year at the University of Richmond in Hotel X's hometown.  The name of their first album, A Random History Of The Avant Groove, sums up their aesthetic quite well.  I once did an internet search for the band name (pre-Google... I have no idea what search engine I used back then), and I remember that it was a reference to some movie.  This piece is presumably named after Muhammad Iqbal, who helped create the 6th-most populous country on earth, Pakistan.

The coolest thing in my opinion was that SST signed a band like this.  I'm sure the SST logo is the reason I even picked the CD up and inspected it in the first place.  I only ever got one other album by Hotel X, Residential Suite (1994), but didn't like it very much.  Post-1997, the band is still sporadically together, but they seem to only perform live, not release new music.  Based on the insanely huge amount of people who have done time in the Hotel (62, says their website), it must've been some sort of revolving-door collective, apparently always led by Tim Harding.  To see the full list, click here.

Time to cut and paste...  On this album the band was:
Tim Harding: alto sax, bass
Ron Curry: bass, guitar, trombone
Chris Davis: drums
Pat Best: guitar, bass
Eric Ungar: guitar, flute

With guests:
Billy Fox: timbales, percussion
Steve Matthews: vibes

According to their website, "Hotel X toured regionally and nationally between 1992 and 1997, received reviews in Jazz Times, The Washington Post, Option, The Wire and Alternative Press among others; was nominated for Best Jazz Group by NAIRD (National Association of Independent Record Distributors) in 1996, and participated in the JVC Jazz Festival in NYC, 1997. National Public Radio selected soundbites of several songs from the Hotel X CD Engendered Species for use between news stories during Morning Edition in 1994. Richmond Magazine awarded Hotel X with the Pollack Prize for Excellence in Arts in September of 2005."
And "Hotel X has shared the stage with Bern Nix (Ornette Coleman and Primetime), Greg Ginn (Black Flag), Balla Kouyate (Super Rail Band), Papa Susso (Gambian kora master),The Roots, Gary Lucas (Captain Beefheart, solo), Harvey Sorgen (Hot Tuna), Yellowman, Medeski, Martin and Wood, Ran Blake, Hasidic New Wave, Marc Ribot, Plunky Branch, Wayne Horvitz and Pigpen, Amy Denio, John Bradshaw and Bazooka, just to name a few."

Their website has a photo titled "The Routes Music line up" at the URL http://www.hotelxband.com/page12/files/collage_lb_image_page12_13_1.png, but it won't load.  Oh well.  I prefer to not see what bands look like anyway.  So here's the highly memorable, primitivist album cover:

Here's a great pic I found on Tumblr recently.  If anyone knows what it's from, let me know:

Planets with similar climates: Frank Zappa - "Peaches en Regalia" (1969), maybe some Yusef Lateef (R.I.P.) due to the flute, Gil Scott-Heron, Fela Kuti, '70s Miles Davis, etc.

Doldrums >> They don't care what time it is now

Doldrums - "Weird Orbits"

(VHF Records, 1995)

It's reverb time, motherfuckers.  If you are so unpatriotic that you don't know what reverb is, you will learn after a few seconds of this song have elapsed.  Though it's mainly used on guitars and keyboards, reverb is also used pretty frequently on vocals; e.g. the singer from My Morning Jacket.  This song from their album Secret Life Of Machines, whose title is of course based on a curious Stevie Wonder album which was a soundtrack to a film about plant life.

Doldrums are what seafarers call areas around the equator with little to no prevailing winds, where a sailed vessel can easily get stuck.  Wind is actually "born" here.  No, seriously: I've seen footage in a world climate documentary (I think it was that one called Planet Earth) of someone standing on a beach near the equator who simply held up a leaf and let go of it, so that it fell towards the sand.  It hung suspended for a few moments, and eventually floated up and away into the æther.  The word is also used to describe sadness, but I don't know which term came first.  Doldrums is a band that grew out of the Virginia experimental band Rake..  Whereas Rake. (it's always spelled "Rake." with a period after it) were prankster-ish, iconoclastic, and kitchen-sink, Doldrums were more atmospheric and mysterious, at least on this album.  The cool thing is that they didn't use synths and other electronic gizmos, which most ambient musicians rely on.  They just plug in their guitars and basses and crank up the ol' reverb and delay to create vast washes of sound, like blue whales sighing or a desert of opals melting.  They did a good job of putting the ghost in the machine with this song.  The airy, crisp, jazzy drumming is the ideal counterfoil to the spacious brushstrokes of guitar.  It's really difficult to describe what genre this song is, as it blends ambient, space rock, post-rock, and dream pop.  Man, this song makes me so proud to have been born in Virginia, birthplace of 14 of our nation's 44 Presidents.  It should seriously be the state's anthem.  "Weird Orbits" segues seamlessly into the album's second track, the 15 minute instrumental opus "Colossal Scissors".  (Great potential band name alert...)  I would say Lustmord's creeptacular ambient classic Heresy is the only album I can think of that uses reverb as prominently / boldly as Secret Life Of Machines.  Slowdive and Low used it to great effect on their early stuff, Windy & Carl made a career out of it, and The Orb used it in some of their "ambient house" soundscapes.  So yeah, go buy a reverb pedal and play a guitar through it and you'll hear entire new worlds unfurling before your eyes.  My amp, a Fender Prosonic, has allegedly the largest spring reverb tank of any amp ever made, hence I don't need a reverb pedal.

Doldrums' next album, Acupuncture, had song structures based more on krautrock / prog; that was the first Doldrums album I bought, on promo CD in '98.  They apparently broke up after their 1999 album Desk Trickery on Kranky.

I found out there's a band named Secret Life Of Machines, but I dunno if they're named after this album.

This CD's artwork features some beautiful photos of our avian friends:

Speaking of orbits and space rock(s), here's one of my favorite thinkers, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson:

Neil deGrasse Tyson is officially the sexiest astrophysicist alive

Why do smart kids grow up to be heavier drinkers? - "Smart people booze so we can tolerate everyone else.'"

Tile your home with recycled money

A few weeks ago I finally went to Tickfaw State Park on a 95º day.  Nabbed two seedlings: a Callicarpa americana (American Beautyberry) and a Saururus cernuus (Lizard's Tail).  Played basketball at an indoor court for a few hours.  Had a semi-slumber party with my sister and her friend Ashley last week. Missed a concert by The Weeknd (House Of Blues, June 12th) because it sold out online literally as I had just reached for my wallet to whip out the credit card.  Flaming Lips / Grimes (June 28th) tickets also sold out right before my wallet-reaching, but I think we have a source for free tix to that one.  My sister is now addicted to Grimes, so missing that show is not an option.  Speaking of Grimes, the Doldrums in this post is not the Doldrums that appears on her latest album.  The one on her album is a techno dude from Canada.

Also recently: Saw some movies, including Boy A, The Dinner Game, American Heart, a Rodriguo y Gabriela tour documentary, Vitus, Skin, and The Brooke Ellison Story.

Planets with similar climates: Slowdive - "Albatross" (1991) & "Losing Today" (1990), Windy & Carl - "Undercurrent" (1998), Bark Psychosis - "All Different Things" (1989), Bowery Electric - "Coming Down" (1996).