Oscar Peterson
Live in '63,'64 & '65
Jazz Icons
16 song DVD

I hate to admit this to you dear readers, but when I discovered that the third live set on this disc included trumpeter Clark Terry with the original trio, I immediately skipped over the first two sets to watch the last one. You see, this was the classic lineup that was featured on the landmark 1964 album, Oscar Peterson Trio Plus One, one of my all-time favorite jazz albums, period. This DVD contains live versions of three of those tunes, plus another one with Terry. So, you'll have to forgive my impatience, as I could not wait through the other two sets with the remote being so close by and near my trigger finger. After witnessing that set twice (ahem), I moved back to the first two, overjoyed from end to begining and back to the end.

As mentioned above, there are three live sets presented on the DVD, the first being in Sweden in 1963, then Denmark in 1964, and finally, Finland in 1965. All three shows are wonderfully produced, with excellent video and audio quality. It's easy to see that Europeans took their jazz seriously in the 60s, and these high-quality, multi-camera recordings are proof positive of that fact. The famous trio of Peterson, Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen simply smoke their way through each track, showing their knack as one of the tightest jazz trios that ever existed.

In Sweden, trumpeter Roy Eldridge joins them for a smooth, muted take on But Not For Me, and in Denmark the trio slowly shuffles its way through an amazing rendition of Bags' Groove. But, it's the Finland tracks that steal the show, as Terry walks on after the opener Yours Is My Heart Alone to join the trio in their version of Mack The Knife. From there, Terry wah-wahs his way through Blues For Smedley and drifts dreamily in Misty. The real short-but-sweet treat here is the closer, Mumbles, where Clark Terry does his famous bluesy scat-singing as his alter-ego "Mumbles". Even though the song only lasts a couple of minutes, it makes owning this disc more than worthwhile by itself.

MISH MASH Mandate: Tripleplusgood
Oscar Peterson @ Jazz Icons Website

Alva Noto
UNITXT
Raster-Noton
26 track CD

German audio artist Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) twists and turns electronic music into an interesting and exciting direction, taking the underlying noise of the information age and transforming it into rhythmic beats. The way I understand it is that Nicolai/Noto mathematically mixes his electronic audio units into a 120 bpm grid. It's a barrage of wonderful noise, wound together in beat packets that rip through the speakers unrelentingly. To enhance this in a most peculiar way, poet Anne-James Chaton then adds a spoken word vocal over a few of these tracks, providing a jarring human element thrown into this decidedly unhuman mix.

The second part of the album, however, takes the digital noise factor to its most base extreme. Noto converts non-audio computer program files into digital audio files, resulting in a wall of unbearable sound. Want to know what the programs Word, Excel, and Powerpoint sound like? Well, maybe you don't. It's hard to sit through a one minute and forty second track of pure digital chaos (Word), even out of morbid curiosity.

MISH MASH Mandate: Bring The Noize
Alva Noto Website
Alva Noto (US distribution)

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
Live in '63 & '67
Jazz Icons
14 song DVD

While the lineup of other Jazz Icons titles sounds like the standard rundown of Who's Who in jazz (and it's a list that would make you drool), thankfully the series also digs a little deeper to cover a few artists who may have been slighted by the passage of time. Rahsaan Roland Kirk is one of those artists. Sometimes dismissed as a novelty jazz act, this disc proves that his talent of playing more than one horn at once was more than a mere gimmick and an integral part of his unique playing style.

The DVD showcases three separate European live sets, two in Belgium and Holland in 1963, and a performance in Norway from 1967. The beauty of having the archival film is that we get to see Kirk in action. Hearing him play two or three horns at once is one thing, but seeing it is another. On an audio recording, three horns sounds like three horns no matter how many people are playing, but on video, the full effect is felt as we see Kirk fingering and blowing his horns like a man possessed by the music. Having only heard his recordings over the years, I personally had never seen Kirk in action before, so it was a pleasant treat to put his technique into perspective.

The culmination of his distinct talent is evident in the track Three For The Festival, which is presented here twice, from each of the 1963 concerts. Kirk plays three sax parts simultaneously in this tune, along with a separate flute solo. When he plays the three horns at once, he sounds like an entire horn section ripping out. His sound is not weakened by the extra load, instead it expands and explodes with fervor. It's an amazing amount of music from one person, and seeing it does not make it any easier to believe.

MISH MASH Mandate: Three Is A Magic Number
Rahsaan Roland Kirk Page @ Jazz Icons

Hanne Orvad
Choral Works (Corona)
Dacapo Open Space
7 song CD

The cover art of Hanne Orvad's Corona is a fantastic introduction to the works held within. It depicts an abstract space-scape, splashed with hazy gradient colors that reach out into the void. Orvad's music does much the same thing, only with a cappella vocal choirs that paint pictures in the ethereal darkness of aural space.

Corona is a collection of Orvad's works from 1991 to 2003, as performed by the Danish National Vocal Ensemble, Danish National Chamber Choir, and Danish National Girls' Choir. Orvad uses their choral voices in place of instruments (with the exception of Threna, which includes instrumentation), building her interpretive orchestrations around Danish poetic verse, giving them life beyond mere words on the page. She also stretches the words away from their contextual meaning, mainly concentrating on the sounds of the words as they're being sung. This is even more apparent for someone who does not understand Danish (or Latin, in the case of Vega), as the words come across as something approaching pure tones, as the listener is not distracted by the meaning of the words.

The overall effect is atmospheric and expansive like the openess of space, voices rising and drifting into the openess with a light and airy dissipation. There's also an almost spiritualness involved, as you can picture a choir performing inside a great cathedral, with voices filling up and echoing across an enormous physical space.

MISH MASH Mandate: Voices Carry
Dacapo Records
Hanne Orvad Page @ Naxos

The Vital Might
Red Planet
Magma Music
10 song CD

The Vital Might is a modern rock amalgam, showcasing all that is good and worthy in the current state of progressive modern rock. Their approach is dynamic, moments of easiness surrounded by sheer loudness, a towering haze of condensed sound layers that shift throughout. Think The Mars Volta meets the Doves, with a dash of early Radiohead thrown in for good measure.

The album begins with Phantom Spaceman, a track that stops and stutters around a staccato guitar riff. From there we find a more classic indie/alternative pop sound in The Truth, which gives way to the unusually-observant-yet-gripping City, a song that repeatedly asks "Why is this city here?" Trouble rips along like a Rush tune played at double time, borrowing a bit of early 90s grunginess to make its final point understood.

The band is adventurous and quick to avoid the pigeonhole, eagerly supplying the listener eclectic musical visions with each new track. While the blueprint is somewhat scattered in theory, it never fails to deliver results.

MISH MASH Mandate: Red Rover
The Vital Might Website

Various Artists
In The Pines
Tar Heel Folk Songs & Fiddle Tunes
Old Time Music Of North Carolina 1926-1936
Old Hat Records
24 song CD with booklet
TOM DOOLEY MP3 SAMPLE

North Carolina has always had a rich tradition of "hillbilly" music, and this latest release from Old Hat Records documents the era of major label activity in the Tar Heel State from 1926-1936. It seems that the influx of industry and disposable income into the state early in the 20th Century convinced the labels that there was an audience for recordings of native musicians, so a wealth of tradtional North Carolina music was recorded at that time, ending with the failing economy of the Great Depression. In effect, we're given a unique snapshot of that decade of recording activity, along with literal, rare photographic snapshots in the 22 page booklet. As an added bonus, most of the tracks have never been released on CD before now.

The disc begins with the track that started it all, "Dock" Walsh's In The Pines, recorded in 1926 by Columbia in Atlanta. It's a simple and stark folk song featuring only Walsh's solo vocals and banjo, reminiscent of a blues song with its repetitive lines and percussive picking. Old time gospel surfaces in Dixon Brothers' & Mutt Evans' Are You Sure?, where they pointedly ask, "shall I meet you in the land beyond the sky?"

Perhaps the most interesting track is the original version of Tom Dooley, as performed by writer/fiddler G.B. Grayson & guitarist Henry Whitter, which of course was made famous decades later by The Kingston Trio. The original has a decidedly upbeat bluegrass feel, told in a winding storytelling fashion, differing from the later version. In the booklet, we get the background story of Tom Dula (aka Dooley), who was hanged for murder in 1868 at Statesville.

As with all Old Hat releases, In The Pines is flawless in both execution and presentation, as attention to detail and quality is impeccable. This disc has a wonderful selection of hard-to-find music, along with even harder-to-find information and documentation rounding it out. Simply put, this is more than a history lesson --- it's a chance to meet the musical past face-to-face.

MISH MASH Mandate: Doodlebuggin'
Old Hat Records Website

WILX
Didactic Dichotomy
Self-Released
8 song CD

Crawling from the same Southern Gothic mid-section of Georgia that spawned R.E.M., WILX stirs up an edgy, country-fried rock album that is sure to shake things up down in Athens. While they also worked with R.E.M. producer John Keane, the band's original roots are in Mississippi, which explains why the comparisons to Stipe & Co. are short and sweet. There's an underlying grittiness that escapes the high-falutin' musical panache of the traditional Athens music scene.

WILX keeps it simple, relying on big guitar riffs and anthemic choruses, not trying to get flashy or heady. Their forumla works without being formulaic, freshly riding the wave of classic rock without sounding derivative or simply retro. For me, this all comes together in the absolute driving rock of To You And Yours, where a fuzzy bass rides gleefully beneath one of the catchiest rock hooks I've heard in a long, long time.

This is the kind of album where you can imagine that the band really does best in a live setting, as every song sounds like its been finely honed in front of an eager audience. My advice would be to catch the album, and while you're at it, catch them live if you get the chance.

MISH MASH Mandate: Southern Soul Stew
Wilx Website