Vol. 1 - Inaugural Issue
I’d like to start by saying thank you to everyone who has already subscribed by the time this is being sent out. The purpose of this newsletter is just to periodically share some albums I’ve been enjoying, and make a small case as to why a reader might find them interesting and worth hearing. This isn’t intended to be critical, and the format will likely be loose. I won’t be limiting myself to any particular period or style, and the fact that two out of the three albums this week are the only release ever published by their respective artists, both in 1981, is an unlikely coincidence. Thanks again for reading and subscribing.
Albums Covered:
Fad – Fad! (1981)
Steve Eliovson & Colin Walcott – Dawn Dance (1981)
Esquivel and His Orchestra – Other Worlds Other Sounds (1958)
Fad – Fad! (1981, Invitation)
To properly set the tone of this newsletter, let’s start with something fun. FAD! comes to us from the short-lived duo of the same name (punctuation notwithstanding). The group is comprised of Tohru Yamashita and Susumu Hashimoto, who were 22 (yes, really) at the time FAD! was recorded. Yamashita, son of Lupin III composer Takeo Yamashita, lends his vocals to the project, splitting composition duties with Hashimoto. To realize their compositions, FAD took the Steely Dan approach and recruited some of the best session musicians working in Japan at the time.
The music itself is centered on synth-pop by way of YMO. FAD takes this form and examines it though a wide range of stylistic lenses. What results is an album that takes conventions of the pop music landscape of its time and manipulates, inverts, and modifies them to create something totally fresh. Yamashita and Hashimoto clearly had a sense of humor about the project. Yamashita’s crooning vocals on album centerpiece The Winter Sea are cool and collected. On Be With Me, the very next track, the tone shifts to conversational and affected. It all feels very loose.
Undergirding the entire project is some incredibly tight drum work from Shuichi "PONTA" Murakami. That, along with Masaki Matsubara’s bullseye guitar solos, prevent you from writing this off as a punk send-up of pop conventions. There’s some serious musicianship in here, and it’s deployed tastefully. Listening to FAD! felt like window shopping in some idealized luxury district of a bygone era, seeing only the best of what was on offer.
FAD! is a captivating document of a particular moment in music history created by some expert tinkerers. As might be implied by the title, it seems to be simultaneously looking backward to dredge its influences, and forward to consider how they might develop further. Ultimately, this would be the only album the group ever released, but it left me wanting very little.
Steve Eliovson & Collin Walcott – Dawn Dance (1981, ECM)
Steve Eliovson and Collin Walcott - Venice
Another album with a story that’s shorter than we might want it to be. After mailing a demo tape to the ECM offices in Munich, South African guitarist Steve Eliovson was quickly offered a record deal. Unfortunately, Dawn Dance is the only album he would ever record on. Throughout the single work that comprises his legacy, Eliovson leaves us with a document of his quiet virtuosity.
Walcott’s contributions here are mostly textural. His percussion work is excellent, and helps to build out drones that the guitar can slot into. This really feels like Eliovson’s album though. Walcott crafts the aura, and Eliovson populates the world. I found myself immersed in the guitar work, noticing pieces from disparate classical guitar traditions and mesmerized by how Eliovson was able to put them together to make something layered and coherent.
Moments of meditative repetition give way to bursts of melodic improvisation that are often explosive. Dawn Dance might be best characterized by its deep explorations of harmony. Eliovson will bend his strings to form microtones, evoking traditional harmonies of Indian classical music. A few phrases later, he will resolve the harmony back to the major scale, before moving to the subdominant right as the listener feels comfortable. This creates an effect of constant progression, an impressive thing to impart onto music that, formally speaking, is pretty droning and mellow.
If you like the ECM sound, and you’re like me prior to this week and haven’t yet heard Dawn Dance, add it to your back-catalog ASAP. Maybe bump it to the top. I was completely floored by this album.
Esquivel and His Orchestra– Other Worlds Other Sounds (1958, RCA Victor)
1958年 Esquivel And His Orchestra – 「Other Worlds Other Sounds 」专辑 (12首)
I know what you may be thinking. While it’s true that I have a sneering appreciation for all things kitsch and midcentury (retirement goal: open a Tiki bar), this album is exemplary, and nostalgia is not a precondition for appreciation. Mexican composer and bandleader Juan García Esquivel, by all accounts a consummate perfectionist, did not mess around when he wrote and recorded Other Worlds Other Sounds.
This is not an easy listening album. Don’t let the cover fool you. This album is deep. The arrangements are ruthlessly complex, and the composition is as intentional as anything I’ve heard. When you hear a piano run, you can tell that Esquivel meticulously selected every single thirty-second note that went into it. There is a singularity of vision here that infuses the album with vitality. Things are always moving together perfectly in step, and this really elevated the listening experience for me.
Esquivel’s acumen for composition and arrangement is apparent. What moves this album from great to extraordinary is the production, especially the manipulation of dynamics. Listen to the first minute of Poinciana. It starts with a powerful horn hit before folding back in on the rhythm section. The band moves through a broad dynamic range, different instruments pop out in the mix before immediately receding back. The texture completely changes from moment to moment, and the effect is exhilarating.
If you make the mistake I made, you will see the lounge music label and try to listen to this album as background noise while you get some work done on a sunny afternoon. You will quickly find that you are getting nothing done, before turning the volume up and giving this album your full undivided attention. Note - you must listen to this in stereo. The most impactful production flourishes often come from the binaural mix creating a “spacy” effect, and this is almost completely lost in mono.
This concludes the first issue of Retrospectral. I hope you, dear reader, find something here that you enjoy. I am excited to continue to share my thoughts with you, and hope you might feel compelled to share some back with me! Until next time!