An actual to scale map of hell.
Come Sunday. Come back Sunday. Whoever invented the Sunday session is a bastard. But this morning I couldn't be happier to be on the Beenleigh iron sleigh on course for the Unutterable once more because it's 36 degrees (that's celcius Americanos) out and it's just gone 7:30am. Nothing to see here folks. Oh look there's a lump of coal let's just burn it for fun! Our current Prime Minister Scott Morrison (ScoMo) even famously brought a lump of coal into parliament (as you do), but who was walking who? Well despite the ever encircling dystopic blazes around Brisbane I persevere with this completely pointless weekly rant. Come Sunday, come back Sunday, riding solo with Anthony Braxton solo live 1971 exploring the very depth of his sax and crawling into all sorts of strange and wonderful corners. Screeching here, yelping there, peeling off Parker licks and descending into fragments of blues and the cries of black folks, of all folks. That's right as promised I'll dig as much as I can into Anthony's huge and prolific catalogue of improvised and composed works. This train ride isn't long enough, but I'll get somewhere.
Deep retrograde blues. Ragtime ripples of broken lines that break up against the rocks. Duos of Anthony Braxton and Muhal Richard Abrams, truly stunning, blending tradition with future. Afro-futurism of the most sensitive and inward kind. Deep deep creeks of sound, brittle and full of love. A world away from this train running full industrial tilt toward Beeno, soon to pass coronation drive where an actual siege is underway, gun men, heat and violence combine. Studies have found correlation between extremely humid, hot climates, and heightened levels of violence. Will this be an expected bi-product of global warming? One thing's for sure, Tony Braxton is so cool he's taken my burning guts down a few degrees on this rustbucket ride at high speed from the Unutterable towards home.
Composition No. 95 on the way to the 9-5 on the rolling refrigerator in the heatwave hell. Two pianos colliding and intertwining, beginning as melodica wheeze, driving into hammered haze or dense urban constructions from some unknown civilization both ancient and post-temporal.
19 solo compositions 1988. 88. There I go stirring up crypto-fascist hysteria again. Beautiful alto lines running me free of the Unutterable. No time, closed eyes towards nothingness amongst the somethingness.
Wodensday, midweek hell, not even listening to Tony Braxton today due to my wife insisting I listen to this nutty podcast about Nauru, Australia's concentration camp island, a tax haven dodgy bank dump for the world's absolute cunts. Interesting but not relevant to Anthony B. Or is it? Has he been there? Does the Tricentric Foundation secretly wash it's money in one of Nauru's dodgy mid-range crimebanks? Probably not. But I'll take a break from writing, to listen and speculate.
Composition no. 100 on an album called Eugene is what currently fills my head in this capitalscene, surrounded by loud self-centred instant gratified products of the great neo-CON. Oh how I wish they'd shut the fuck up because they art in the quiet carriage. A place where signs clearly state shut the fuck up in polite terms. Gucci bag for Christmas she says. But aside from homicidal thoughts I am deeply enjoying the incredible work of Anthony Braxton on this woeful Woden's day. Nauru where it plunges into the abyss that skirts the island, 4kms deep all round and packed full of sharks. I imagine deep sea creatures may appreciate Anthony Braxton's compositions, discombobulating soulful cries parped from the dark and tumbled around deaf and blind, directionless but always moving forward in the current, or perhaps ahead of the current, and driving down down down with the pressure of deep deep blues. These idiots are ruining my already ruined day. May they be ruined and may Braxton get louder and louder to drown them, out.
Fuck! The only thing keeping my brain dome down is this intense beautiful (black)power full quartet performance from a Santa Cruz date put out by the always great Hat Hut. Thank you Anthony Braxton for being a genius. Many of the same old drone domes on this back carriage embarrassment en course for the Unutterable on tracks of rust and regret, blackbird blues and Irish airs still clinging to their molecules. Piano keys being hammered down like mallets on sleepers, coasting along the shunt of rhythmic push while this piece of shit toy loco lumbers lumberers wayward north. I used to love Thursdays, Thor's day, they're still pretty good, except Friday still yet to come cause Thursday I've got Friday on my mind. I'm the Apprentice, Tony Braxton, the Master. The song I'm thinking of, actually being by the Easybeats.
Speeding backwards on the world's worst locomotive wonder listening to more recent Braxton, Composition No 372 to be precise, minimalist bagpipes screeching in polyrhythmic glee over clattering drums, scrummaging horns and angular seeking in left and right headphones, in disorienting delight. Rhythm rhythm rhythm. The rhythm of trains is buried in this, that movement and clatter that inspired some basic primal parts of the blues still sitting there deep in this somewhere as I roll backwards towards the bastard Unutterable on this balmy Friday, Freya's day, Goddess at the gateway to the 48 hours of freedom every worker yearns for. Fuck I love Anthony Braxton. I also love the Buzzcocks, sad to hear of Pete Shelley's passing to the beyond, he'll be tipping speed in his mead in Valhalla by now. South Bank, I have nothing to say about you. The glory of Composition No. 372 keeps the movement towards the inevitable more beautiful than it should be as the mud swallowing snake of brown, bruised and oily black in patches slides beneath in its own ancient rhythm.
Ancient filth caked to the floor boards so tired that's all I can stare at yearning for booze delicious booze. Braxton I'm done with you for this week, blasting Bizzcocks in honour of the deceased instead and what a ripe racket they raised. From Chicago to Manchester from Bowen Hills towards the bottom on an overpriced ticket to Friday night oblivion cause I was almost Late For The Train since the barber was closed and this babble is closed for this week.
Next week...Clara Schumann and more...
No comments:
Post a Comment