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.

Trial Of The Bow >> That's not a knife

Trial Of The Bow - ""Inverloch"

(Release Entertainment, 1994)

This is a pretty ethereal and somewhat menacing track, with a timeless feel that makes its origin hard to pinpoint.  It's a shame that Trial Of The Bow (no idea what the name means) only recorded one EP and one full-length.  This is from the EP, called Ornamentation.  I almost posted the more dynamic "The Two Sacred Tapestries Of Persia" or "From The Mountains Of Tangier", but decided "Inverloch" deserves to be better-known as a chillout classic.  They were from Melbourne, and this EP would make a great soundtrack for one of my favorite Aussie flicks, the existentially violent Walkabout, or for Picnic At Hanging Rock, which I just saw for the first time last month.  The song is named after the seaside town of Inverloch in Victoria, Australia.  This one goes out to ManiacEyeball.

AllMusic Guide says "In addition to the use of the standard guitar/bass/drum setup, the duo also uses several exotic instruments, including the tabla, hammer dulcimer, tamboura, manjira, bansuri flute, and e-bow. Their lengthy, evocative, contemplative drones take cues from several ageless sources, alternating from haunting to soothing."
They actually made an official music video for the song, which I have on one of those Rock Video Monthly VHS tapes.  It's also on YouTube, sadly at only 240p.  The video's director (username: warmcola) said "I made this video waaaay back in 1994, shot on Super VHS and edited together on my Uni's brand spanking new AVID... Great to see it again."

Sept. 1995 VHS; Trial Of The Bow's EP cover is at bottom right

This VHS has videos for some amazing, era-defining songs by Buffalo Tom ("Summer"), Matthew Sweet ("We're The Same"), Better Than Ezra ("In The Blood"), and Faith No More ("Evidence"), and is capped off perfectly by the "Inverloch" vid.  I have a bunch of these RVM VHS tapes but since the advent of YouTube I never watch them.

Well, I was pretty mad about the ridiculously poor sound mix that Swervedriver had inflicted upon them by the Jimmy Fallon show (or I guess by NBC in general) last Monday.  It totally neutered their sound and made them sound muddy and amateurish, whereas in reality nothing could be further from the truth about them.  Maybe their sheer volume simply overloaded the limiters / attenuators and caused the levels to be artificially low?

I found this magazine the next day in someone's trash on the curb, a few minutes before a massive storm came through.  It's a beautiful, Anton Corbijn-esque shot in every way.  I think I'm going to frame the cover, since I'm really into desert plants; the pic is of a group of Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia), of course.  December '93 was a really rough time for me for several reasons, so this cover helps me reboot my brain when it comes to how I remember that time.

Going back a few weeks...

March 20: Saw Alcest (from France), Deafheaven (from San Francisco), and Whom Do You Work For? (from NOLA) at The Big Top.  It was probably the smallest crowd that Alcest, a hybrid shoegaze-metla band, has played to in years, but they were appreciative.  WDYWF? stole the show, in my mind at least, with their edgy, Slint-y, CAN-y, controlled chaos.  I recommended A.R. Kane's "Green Hazed Daze" to their singer afterwards, and he immediately typed it into his phone as a reminder.  Also bought their new CD-R EP, which comes in several different spray-painted covers.

Flyer showing upcoming shows put on by An Idea Like No Other + a show preview from local zine Antigravity

I snapped a pic even though lots of people were taking better ones up front:

They probably haven't played on a stage this small in many years

March 23: Saw two concerts by Dutch saxophonist Tineke Postma at the Manship Theatre in Baton Rouge.  Esperanza Spalding is no longer her bassist, unfortunately, but it was very good nonetheless.

March 24: The annual spring Record Raid at Tulane.  Got a bunch of stuff I never thought I'd find, such as Band Of Susans' Love Agenda (LP), the influential ambient compilation Ambient 4: Isolationism (2xCD), and other stuff like some Massive Attack, Idaho, Miles Davis, and Breathless.  Talked to this girl Candice who remembered talking to me at a Broken Water show two years ago, and even remembered that I was wearing a James Chance & the Contortions shirt that night.  Wow.  She showed me a Wipers tattoo on her tricep; I think it said "Is this real?"  Bought a New Bloods 7" and a Hell-Kite cassette from her booth, plus she tipped me off to a zine with a semi-nude photo of Broken Water on the back cover, so I of course bought that.  Also met some other really cool people, including a guy who was at a Trans Am show I saw in '99 (see upcoming post on that) and his wife, Kathi.  She was, unbeknownst to me, DJing when I called in to WTUL to ask about a song (which turned to be from Belong's latest album) a few days later, and recognized my voice, so we talked for a few minutes.  I requested something by Seefeel, whom she had never heard of; I told her to pick any song and she ended up choosing "Climactic Phase #3".

March 29: Was driving around in east Baton Rouge near Prairieville and saw a Blockbuster Video that was going out of business, so I hit it hard for a few hours and got some obscure foreign films.

March 31: Went to the annual Dept. of Parks & Parkways plant sale at Dillard.  Got a huckleberry tree, a spicebush, and two little flowering plants.  Talked about lots of obscure plant topics with a DPP employee named Skip; decided to name the huckleberry tree after him because his praise of the species led me to buy it.

This post's title is everyone's favorite line from a certain famous Aussie movie, duh.

130 Simpsons episodes at once

Planets with similar climates: Steve Roach & Robert Rich - "Touch" (1992), Miles Davis - "He Loved Him Madly" (1974), Brian Eno - "Lantern Marsh" (1982), Bark Psychosis - "Pendulum Man" (1993).

Constance Demby >> Hammer time travel

I can't believe it's still California Month, tremor #56:

Constance Demby - "The Longing"

(Gandarva Records, 1982 / Hearts Of Space Records, 1988)

Since this track constitutes half of the album's entire length, I will take it down at some point, and maybe put up a little excerpt, because I don't want to just give half of the album away forever.  Constance herself might show up at my door and beat that ass.

I bought this CD, Sacred Space Music, in summer of last year on a total whim at a pawn shoppe for about 50 cents, despite the religious-themed album title.  I guess I got it because I was somewhat familiar with Hearts Of Space Recs., and I'm a big fan of the hammered dulcimer, which sounds kind of like a mandolin crossed with a xylophone, and you know I'm going to be curious about any album with the phrase "space music" in its title.  She plays dulcimer and piano on this track, and the viola is played by someone named Toni Marcus.  At around the 11-minute mark, the dulcimer fades out, and the piano and viola take the spotlight for a few haunting minutes.  Apparently Demby is quite famous in New Age music circles, but this album deserves to be more than just a cult classic.  The other track on it, "Radiance," has some wordless "Ahh" vocalizing by Demby.

J-card from the 1982 cassette

You have to admire New Agers' lack of comprehending that they can come off as cheesy or overblown when talking about their music.  This year I bought another Demby album, 1986's Novus Magnificat: Through The Stargate, but I'm not feeling it quite as much.

In sarcasm-is-not-dead news, check out these Occupy-inspired pepper spray reviews on Amazon, partly set in motion by this offhand comment by Megyn Kelly last week.  It's kind of unfortunate, because in my opinion she's one of the few non-sociopaths on that whole channel.

Planets with similar climates - Trial Of The Bow - "Father Of The Flower" (1997), Macha - "Light The Chinese Flower" (1998), Andreas Vollenweider - "Belladonna" (1982).