Audio files

By Times staff

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 30, 2000

BLACKALICIOUS, NIA (QUANNUM PROJECTS) Significance is a noble goal in popular music, and, as dimwits throughout the music's history have proven, you had better have the smarts to carry it out, and you had better not let the urge to feed that mind overwhelm the impulse to jack that body.

So Blackalicious' Nia, an album whose very title (translates as "purpose" in Swahili) practically bellows its intent to raise consciousness, doesn't automatically earn extra points in my book. In fact, the virtuousness can get a bit wearing, enough that the polysyllabic showmanship of A to G and Reanimation and the fairy tale noir of Cliff Hanger, its stoned techno groove and shivering three-note violin figure recorded in a dungeon by DJ Shadow, stand out.

Although for activism I'll take fellow Oakland band the Coup, I should add that rapper Gift of Gab has the brains, heart and word skills to defeat such quibbles; his nimble flow, ranging effortlessly from calm and conversational to breathless, epitomizes as well as anyone's this side of Mos Def how rapping can be as organic and nuanced as singing.

This music would be compelling if he had rapped about his collection of igneous rocks. The buoyant keyboard and bass lines and the galloping, layered rhythms evoke rap's roots in soul and jazz more joyously than anything I've heard in years, and Chief Xcel is infinitely more beat-wise than any fellow do-gooders you can name. (Remember Arrested Development? Didn't think so.)

Nia displays the rarest of indie-rap virtues: It's fun, it's tuneful, and it delights in tweaking your ear with left-field hooks and samples (the kiddie-show narrator on A to G, the Casio growl that punctuates each line in Making Progress). It may not elevate your being, but you'll be enjoying yourself too much to care. Grade: A-

- ALAN RITTNER, Times staff writer

DEFTONES, WHITE PONY (MAVERICK) Deftone's White Pony proves that putting the musical equivalent of road gravel, thumbtacks and chocolate in a blender won't wreck the Cuisinart.

The five-piece Sacramento, Calif., outfit as always is angry, energetic and driving, but all the fervor and clamor of the band is smoothed over into a pleasing -- if not always coherent -- wall of sound. The grooves make you want to bounce around the room, and front man Chino Moreno's screaming makes you want to, well, scream -- in a good way.

However, bands like that are as numerous as Top-40 radio stations. This Deftones effort shows that they're above the garage-punk-alternative music that spins out of both coasts.

Although Moreno spends a certain amount of time screaming on some tracks -- most noticeably the anti-establishment rant Elite -- he also gets downright croony on other tracks. He has a solid, powerful voice that is evident throughout the album, especially on White Pony's best track, Knife Prty. His voice dips into Billy Corgan-esque breathiness, and he slips the lyrics cleanly between the band's power chords.

The lyrics, however, also undermine the band's third album. Their biggest problem is that, for the most part, the words don't say anything that means anything. That's the way they wanted it, according to the band's promotional material. Nevertheless, it causes the otherwise strong album to slip into the realm of ear-candy too often.

Listening to the album, however, makes such concerns melt away like a Bomb Pop on a Sacramento sidewalk. Candy, after all, tastes good, and, if you just let the waves of sound wash over you, White Pony is a fun ride, indeed. GRADE: A-

-- GERRY DOYLE, Times staff writer

JASON MARSALIS, MUSIC IN MOTION (BASIN STREET) -- Branford and Wynton Marsalis not so long ago regularly praised kid brother Jason as the family member with the biggest share of jazz talent. They may be right, given the vitality, originality and technical virtuosity displayed on the second solo disc from the 23-year-old drummer, best known for his work in Los Hombres Calientes and pianist Marcus Roberts' trio.

Ancient, rootsy rhythms, as befit a skins man schooled in the traditions of New Orleans music, figure prominently in these imaginative post-bop compositions, played by his reorganized quintet, now featuring two saxophonists out front. Derek Douget is on alto and soprano, John Ellis (replacing trumpeter Antonio Gambrell) is on tenor, and the group is rounded out by pianist Jonathan Lefcoski and new bassist Peter Harris. Maracatu de Modernizar, built on a northeastern Brazilian dance groove Marsalis picked up while working with the Crescent City band Casa Samba, weaves together a pulsing, rolling beat, harmony lines, a haunting bass figure and piano comping meant to simulate the agogo, a Brazilian double-pitched bell. Tricky horn figures and leapfrogging rhythm-section parts open up into freewheeling collective improvisation on It Came From the Planet of Nebtoon, and the drummer demonstrates a deft touch with brushes on the bluesy The Sweeper and slinky ballad Treasure.

Marsalis refers to Branford's nickname and frequent modus operandi on The Steepistician, a sparse, dark pianoless trio piece in 5/4 time. The youngest of pianist Ellis Marsalis' four music-playing sons celebrates hometown street-parade traditions on the rousing closer, Seven-Ay Pocky Way, built on a 7/4 meter and imbued with the second-line funk associated with the Mardi Gras Indians. It's a bracing send-off. Grade: A

- PHILIP BOOTH, Times correspondent

VARIOUS ARTISTS, THANK YOU, JOE! (ARKADIA) -- There's nothing like an appealing concept to draw listeners into a mainstream jazz release, and pianist Eric Reed and several contemporaries land on just such a programming strategy with their homage to the sound and sensibility of modern tenor giant Joe Henderson.

The fourth in the label's Grammy-nominated series of tribute discs touches on several key phases of the honoree's durable career, beginning with the funky soul-jazz of his Mamacita, one of several tracks notable for the incisive improvising and rich tone of Henderson-influenced saxophonist Javon Jackson.

Jackson is also center stage on Latin-jazz standard Recorda Me, brightened by trumpeter Randy Brecker's solo excursion, quirky bebop gem Isotope and zig-zagging blues burner Granted, and the young tenor favorite ratches up the tension of the oddly metered Gazelle (alternating between 7/8 and 4/4 time), a one-track collaboration with pianist Joanne Brackeen's trio.

Brecker and trumpeter Terrell Stafford engage in an energetic cutting contest on hard-bop piece The Kicker, and former Henderson sideman Reed, bassist Rodney Whitaker and drummer Carl Allen go it alone on the intimate, elegant Thelonious Monk ballad Ask Me Now, a regular part of Henderson's repertoire. Henderson, who experienced a career comeback thanks to his own series of concept albums on the Verve label in the '90s, would approve. Grade: B

- PHILIP BOOTH, Times correspondent

CLASSICAL FILE

Heiner Goebbels: Surrogate Cities; Jocelyn B. Smith, David Moss, vocals; Junge Deutsche Philharmonie/Peter Rundel, conductor (ECM) -- The coup de theatre of this year's Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, S.C., was the American premiere of Heiner Goebbels' Surrogate Cities in the abandoned Memminger Auditorium. A huge orchestra was deployed on risers that filled the stage, and vocalists climbed on scaffolding to perform their solos. A dazzling light show accompanied the music. The setting of bare brick walls and boarded-up windows was perfect for the German composer's apocalyptic vision of a city on the verge of collapse.

The repetitive music was heavy with percussion, grinding brass and sampled industrial noise, all punctuated by the sweetness of amplified strings. The jazzy vocals were sometimes beautiful and poetic in a hard-boiled sort of way, sometimes ugly and incomprehensible. Surrogate Cities made for a riveting concert that I'll never forget, but I wasn't sure I would want to hear it again.

Now comes an ECM recording of Goebbels' opus, expertly played by the German orchestra for which it was commissioned. Surprisingly, although the CD provides a cooler, more analytical listening experience, it also is more moving than the wild live performance. The recorded version is shorter than what was heard at Spoleto, with sections arranged in different order. There's a different female vocalist, Jocelyn B. Smith (Kristin Williams sang the part in Charleston). Vocalist David Moss is less demented on disc than he was in concert.

The biggest section of Surrogate Cities is the 10-movement Suite for Sampler and Orchestra, an engrossing progression in Baroque form that has everything from a lovely little homage to Scarlatti to the blare of a train whistle, fleet strings in a dance movement to sonar blips, snippets of Jewish cantorial singing to the wheeze of a steam engine. Another section without words is D&C, a brutal tone poem that brings to mind Varese's masterpiece of sonic anarchy, Ameriques.

Other sections are built around texts by Heiner Muller, Hugo Hamilton and Paul Auster. The Horatian -- Three Songs features the affecting, if occasionally mannered, vocals of Smith on themes of conquest and murder, which are treated as one and the same by Muller's adaptation of Livy's account of the war between Rome and Alba. In Surrogate, Moss gives Hamilton's elliptical lyric on a young woman running through the city -- "Running in the street makes you look like you don't belong" -- plenty of hard-driving energy.

Goebbels has said there is no fixed order to the sections of Surrogate Cities. One place where the CD makes a misstep is by closing with In the Country of Last Things, taken from an Auster novel. Moss' narration on life in the city is a blues riff worthy of Philip Marlowe, but it ends this mighty work with a whimper rather than the bang it demands. Grade: B -- JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic