Asaf Sirkis - Solar Flash

The cover of Asaf’s latest release is a very striking artwork from singer Sylwia Bialas. I can imagine she was inspired by Tarkovsky’s work from the realms of Solaris and Stalker. Or it could have been inspired by something bold and mysterious throughout the pandemic. Solar Flash is an unknown journey that awaits us.

Sirkis himself has been a very busy man working with artists such as Gary Husband, Markus Reuter, Kenny Wheeler, Tassos Spilotopoulous, and Yaron Stavi. The collaborations on this album featuring alongside Husband, contains bassist Kevin Glasgow, and special guest Mark Wingfield. Now that is a collaboration right then and there.

In an interview from 2010 on the Music Without Borders:Innerviews website, Anil Prasad asked Asaf on what were the biggest challenges he faces in his creative process and how he overcame them. His response was this; “As a professional musician and a band leader, I often face situations of stress in which it’s hard to let go. There’s also recognizing your weak points and being able to face up to them and work on them. The trick is to organically combine these elements together in a way so they complement each other and become beneficial to the music.”

Solar Flash is quite a challenging release. And for both Asaf Sirkis and the MoonJune label, it is a fast-driven spiritual beauty brought to life that is like a flower ready to bloom at any second.

The three-part story arc Polish Suite is like a silent movie brought to life. You have these gentle mournful piano work from Gary, setting up this city that is now a ghost town in the middle of nowhere. You can almost feel a pin drop while Sylwia arranges the emptiness of the city that it once was, is no longer there anymore.

Sirkis’ brush on the snare, walks across the town with Glasgow’s bass in tow helping out the melodic vocals to give the last rite in this fair city. Then, he packs his bags and goes into Nick Mason’s city to celebrate The Grand Vizer’s Garden Party from the Ummagumma album.

He becomes this mad scientist on the drums going crazy before this foghorn-like sound from Husband takes full control for Mark’s guitar to send a message to the gods in the sky in the Himalayan mountains in the middle of a heavy snow storm. What Husband, Sirkis, and Wingfield would do is to take listeners into the unknown that is a door-opening experience.

I can see Gary channeling bits of the Canterbury vibes from Hatfield and the North in the style of scale-soaring beauty Calyx. I always envision Robert Wyatt singing the third and final section of the suite. That would have been something to close the curtain down throughout the structure of the composition.

Kinship opens the album with a surf-like wave arrangement that the trio create. You have Gary doing this mysterious balance to channel Matching Mole’s Dave MacRae while Glasgow has some mellowing tones on his Bass. Under the Ice has these cavernous arrangements to set up a film-noir vibe from the 1940s.

Glasgow can go high and low on the fretboards. He captures that smoky atmosphere before Gary lends those smooth R&B touches to know that the case has been solved. Now comes the dark side in Asaf’s arrangements. Aquila is an ominous Mahavishnu approach as Gary sets up this dooming rise on his organ to let Mark come out of Dracula’s coffin and set up this mid-snarling effect he creates to let the Beast calm and subdued.

Not only he channels both Frank Zappa and Allan Holdsworth, it’s almost as if the two maestros are watching him up in heaven, knowing that he’s tipping his hat to them up in the sky and they got his back. For Eric is dedicated to the drummer of Weather Report, Eric Kamau Gravatt. It’s a cross between Steely Dan, Tangerine Dream, and Soft Machine’s Third album.

With the spiritual voice of Sun Ra talking various subjects throughout the piece, it becomes an intensive drive for the instruments to go into this NASCAR race segment to reach the finish line at the end. Solar Flash is not only engaging, but an amplified release this year from MoonJune Records.

When the trio gets together to create something unexpectedly, it is like a cannon blast, knowing that it is going to be a wild ride waiting to be unleashed.

Memories of meeting Stan "The Man" Lee at Comicpalooza 2014

I am not a morning person, mind you. Whenever I would wake-up between 9 or 10am to get ready for Comicpalooza, I would take a shower, get cleaned up, and have a small amount of breakfast so that I could get ready to go the George R. Brown convention. Whether my Mom or Dad would take me from 2013 to 2018, it was a magical time to go for those Memorial Day weekends.

The construction can be tricky for them to take a different passageway, and sometimes we would go a different route so that I can enjoy my time from 10am to 6pm. I would look and see the cosplayers looking down at their phones, going as a family, talking to their loved ones, friends, or whatever they might do when they enter the building to enjoy the fun and forget about all the craziness that is going on in the outside world.

When I’m at Comicpalooza, I am free from everything. I have a great time, it can make my feet tired during the afternoons from all that walking, but it becomes a safe haven. When I show them my badge whether it’s a 3-Day pass or a Speed pass, I’m in to have a ball.

I never cover Comicpalooza. I don’t want to ruin the moment for everyone during my time at the Convention. This is their moment to shine. It’s sort of like other cons or expos from San Diego Comic-Con, New York Comic-Con, E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), Wizard World, or Anime Expo where they launched the new dubbed version of the original Sailor Moon back in 2014 in all of its uncut glory.

But it would be a whole expose to cover those and all those travel expenses to go from area to another. It was the summer of 2014, I had just graduated from Houston Community College and getting my Associate’s Degree for Music in Performance for a nine year run. It was announced prior to the convention that Stan “The Man” Lee was going to be there.

Meeting an icon like Stan Lee, was like meeting The Beatles when they first arrived in the States on February 7, 1964. He along with Bernie Wrightson, Peter Mayhew, Armin Shimerman, Jim Cummings, Sigourney Weaver, Neal Adams, or Jim Steranko was the person I wanted to meet. I grew up watching the animated series of both X-Men and Spider-Man on FOX Kids back in the ‘90s when animation was cool then.

Then reading comics during that time frame. I stopped reading comics until I got back to reading them again in the summer of 2012. But I digress. The line for Stan was long, I my Superheroes PBS Blu-Ray docuseries for him to sign. I couldn’t tell if I was in the middle or at the back. But I could imagine it was long.

When he came in, the crowd went crazy as he sat down and signed autographs. I came in and as he signed my Blu-Ray. We shook hands, and I said to him, “Thank you for coming to Houston.” He replied back, “You are very welcome!” Then came for the Photo Op. I always get starstruck whenever I meet the people I wanted to meet. But I always keep my cool and not go ga-ga over them. Just like those crazy people who are autograph seekers who sometimes hide under the bushes and invade their privacies to get they’re signatures and use it to sell on auction websites.

I was wearing my CAN Future Days shirt as I showed my Blu-Ray he signed, the photo was taken and I thanked him again. I felt like it was winning the lottery at times, but that was the moment I will never forget.

It was a moment in time that Comicpalooza during the mid-2010’s like looking through your old scrapbook for a long, long time. Now in the pandemic, it’s almost as if the dream is over and going through conventions on your computer. But I look back on it now, and it was the memories that I will never forget.

PAKT - PAKT

It’s quite a strange concept that Dr. Leonardo Pavkovic would create some strange experiment inside his laboratory at the basement of MoonJune Records. But something has lurked underneath the curtains that is waiting to be unleashed. It is a form of live music from one of the most important quartets that has unleashed all of its ammunition, and bring it to life at the Shapeshifter lab where originally Markus Reuter, Tim Motzer, and Kenny Grohowski had recorded their experiment live for a MoonJune release back on August 18^th, 2019.

Brand X’s Percy Jones, Testament’s Alex Skolnick, Kenny Grohowski, and Tim Motzer, have brought enough fuel to light the fires up for this amazing 2-CD live recording at the same venue. Recorded last year during the lockdown, you can imagine yourself being in the venue, being free from the craziness that’s going on in the outside world.

Listening to the first act entitled The Unsilence, you can feel the tension cut with a knife. You have Alex and Tim going at it by creating this beautiful sculpture as if they were channeling either Jackson Pollock’s art design or creating more magical spells to show off to their friends instead of pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

For Alex Skolnick, he’s more than just a Metal head, and a member of Testament, but he can create these visual scenarios on his instrument while Percy’s fretless bass goes into a counter clockwise as he climbs each ladder with challenging results. I love how Kenny’s drumming goes on this rampant whilst Alex channels the Krautrock masters, Manuel Gottsching and the late great Michael Karoli from Ash Ra Tempel and CAN.

I imagine he would feed Motzer some strange idea as they open up the soundscaping location before they take us into Andrei Tarkovsky’s wasteland from the sci-fi epic, Stalker. It is very chaotic and very hay-wiring at the same time. PAKT would do some strange experiments as Motzer uses bits and bobs throughout his electronics to go all over the Shapeshifter lab like there’s no tomorrow.

He and Skolnick are hammering down those Egyptian-like textures in the hottest part of the Sahara desert. They work well together as a team while Percy and Kenny go into a little Space Jam (no pun intended) as they take a trip into the Isle of Everywhere from Gong’s You-era meets Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters period.

The second act is called The Sacred Letter. Now this is where we really get those boiling waters bubbling. It adds a virtual landscape into an unknown wasteland that is waiting for us. Motzer’s eerie textures sets up the illustration while Jones walks back and forth by giving Grohowski more intense ideas on his drum kit.

There is a moment where I believe it’s Alex tipping his face mask to Mike Ratledge’s composition on Facelift from The Soft Machine’s Third album originally released in 1970. It’s quite a treat from Alex making his instrument sound like a wah-wah organ that would have gotten Mike’s stamp of approval to create something like that.

Meanwhile, they walk into Sonar’s territory as Alex and Tim go for the jugular. They walk into David Torn’s sonic voyages, but carrying more of the Irrlicht-era from Klaus Schulze. Percy is a madman to go crazy throughout his bass exercise as Alex, Kenny, and Tim follow him in hot pursuit.

The climatic ending is where all hell has broken loose for PAKT. They raise the roof up by going into a nuclear explosion by giving it a mind-boggling finale with a sigh of relief. But I can imagine there’s more to where it came from. I just wish it had continued more instead of a cliffhanger ending by leaving us dangling on top of the Grand Canyon.

Contributor to All About Jazz’s own Mark Sullivan who wrote the liner notes for the 2-CD set, watched the livestream performance during the pandemic. And I could imagine that it was quite a revelation for him to watch these four amazing geniuses bringing listeners on an adventure that we will ever think of dreaming about. I hope to hear more from PAKT in the years to come from the MoonJune label. I can always wait and hear to see what not just the quartet, but what Leo will have in store for us in the roaring ‘20s.

Dewa Budjana - Naurora

It’s been three years since Dewa Budjana has made another album after the release of Mahadini. He’s been quite the busy man. Collaborating with Tohpati, Tony Levin, Jack DeJohnette, and Peter Erskine, he has shown no sign of stopping to bring his spiritual textures to life. With the release of Naurora, he’s bringing the circle in full.

Released on the Mehsada label from Indonesia on the MoonJune label internationally, the album was recorded remotely during the Pandemic. Naurora takes you away from the craziness of the outside world into the unknown. With help from Simon Phillips, Joey Alexander, Jimmy Johnson, Gary Husband, and Carlitos Del Puerto, they’re just band members, but a band of brothers lending Dewa a helping hand to bring his latest creation to life.

The opening title-track features Imee Ooi’s vocalizations to bring the curtains to rise with snarling guitar sections. Featuring Goblin-sque atmospheres with its Epic sounding vibrations, it becomes a duel between Dewa and Mateus Asato before they go into an exhilarating bossa-nova metallic groove! As Puerto’s bass sets in the grooves, Joey takes center stage by laying down some piano vibrations of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Swarna Jigga has these spiral staircasing improvisation as Dewa and Mateus share a duel by duking it out a Zappa-sque midsection. Soaring arrangements thanks to Philips’ helicopter like drum work, the landscaping textures go for some time changing melodies while walking towards these mystical forests to see what the future will have in store for us on Kmalasana.

Sliding acoustic double-tracking guitars from Dewa, we as listeners are waiting for the sun to shine as he turns this composition into crossover combination of ambient electrical rain power to cry out in the middle of a heavy thunderstorm. When you listen to Sabana Shanti, at first, Dewa tips his hat for a brief second to Procol Harum’s Grand Hotel.

But then, McCandless’ sax gives an insight of a spectacular beauty while Dewa and Dave Weckl go for a samba segment. It gives Paul a chance to relieve the stress that people are going throughout the pandemic before Joey returns for another Gershwin showdown by sending us into the clear blue sky.

Blue Mansion closes the album with an ominous Indian tribe. With its Magma-like riffs, it becomes a celebration before Husband lays down some Mars Volta-like grooves as Carlito’s upright bass becomes a cat-and-mouse chase.

Naurora is Dewa’s message for a chance of relaxation. While everything came to a screeching halt last year in March, this album is definitely a sign of hope. It makes us go through the tricky times during the pandemic that would make you want to dance, punch, and sooth yourself throughout the situations that we're going through.

Molesome - Are You There?

 

Whenever Roth-Handle Studios cooks up something strange inside their laboratories, you know that Dr. Mattias Olsson’s experiments are out there when it comes to Molesome. He’s very much like a mad scientist by creating more strange inventions that is waiting to be unleashed. And he’s pretty much done that with the latest release, Are You There?

Listening to this album is like going through the structures of Hardcore Devo, Post-Punk, Chamber Music, Tori Amos, Bill Fay, The Faust Tapes, The Residents, and the independent music production library, De Wolfe Music. Mattias has followed Zappa’s advice by throwing the rule book into the fire. While we might abide by them, it doesn’t mean we have to follow them. For Mattias, he broke the rules, one by one.

Sometimes the grooves are trapped in this dystopian house that is trapped between the 1950s and the futuristic ‘70s. For Olsson, it’s almost that he had written the alternate score for the German Sci-Fi miniseries from Fassbinder’s 1973 classic, World on a Wire. You have the surreal Cinevox Italian Psych lounge take of Long Island, Booji Boy returning to the post-apocalyptic sequel from Tunnel of Love with Naturales while Mattias channels the Faerie Symphony-era from Tom Newman on Vernon.

Meanwhile Tanaka is speaking through the intercom in the styles of Laurie Anderson between Spacestation Funeral and Spirits before Molesome raises the roof on Tim (Original Soundtrack). And then, the nod to Delia Derbyshire flows in the string quartet in the melodic textures of Ziwzih Ziwih (OO-OO-OO) on Blues Soaked Hope before the string section takes us to our home planet with our Boxes.

Molesome’s latest release this year may not be everyone’s cup of Joe, but Olsson is always opening doors to see what the 22^nd century might be waiting for us. Challenging and insanely beautiful, Olsson is quite the mad scientist that we really need for many years to come in the near future.

Quel Che Disse il Tuono - il Velo Dei Riflessi

Quel Che Disse il Tuono are an Italian progressive rock quartet that considers members of Unreal City and Cellar Noise. Last year, they released their debut album on the AMS label entitled, il Velo Dei Riflessi. Inspired by T.S. Eliot’s poetry The Wasteland which was originally published in 1922, the poem tackles themes on religion. Not only that, but how the modern world itself is not impacted from the landscape as it was before.

Francesca Zanetta, Roberto “Berna” Bernasconi, Niccolo Gallani, and Alessio Del Ben are keeping the spirit of the Rock Progressivo Italano genre alive. You can hear aspects of Camel, il Paese dei Balocchi, Celeste, La Coscienza Di Zeno, Phideaux, and il Balletto di Bronzo’s YS.

The opening track il Paradigma Dello Specchio, fires up their engines with mellotron, guitar, and flute. By the moments the clouds are parting, we are driving in a deserted highway with the four members channeling the Mirage-era from Camel with its organ fanfare by travelling into the unknown as Zanetta channels the Marquee Moon-sque vibes from Television’s Richard Lloyd and Tom Verlaine.

As the call-and-response comes crawling out the soil, Figlio Dell‘Uomo is a terrifying nightmare for Zanetta and Gallani adding more fuel to the fire. Featuring some lyrical textures of Jacques Brel’s Port of Amsterdam and My Death, it has some Murple-sque textures for Quel to rescue the penguin to being free from being a sideshow performer and going back to his home land in the North Pole.

Moog snarling monsters coming in to terrorize the city, we are in the battlefields to go into aspects between Van der Graaf Generator and Le Orme as it segues into this post-apocalyptic Twilight Zone atmosphere that Rod Serling had envisioned right before our very eyes.  

Il Bastone e il Serpente goes into The Mars Volta’s territory while Francesca channels her vision of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. Bernasconi slaps some funky bass introduction to honor Bootsy Collins as we head into the city with no chance of escaping with some swirling synths and car revving percussion works by Alessio Del Ben.

Zennetta hammers those frets down with unexpected changes before travelling into space and time of Phideaux’s Snowtorch-era while the final duel between good and evil on Loro Sono Me has some of the most intensive battle sequences for the quartet to head out into the battlefield for honor and bravery.

Il Velo Dei Riflessi may not be everyone’s cup of coffee per se, but while this Quel Che Disse il Tuono’s debut, they really done their homework very well during the pandemic while everything came to a screeching halt last year. So I will be on the look-out for this incredible band to see what they will come up with next.

SKE - Insolubilia

It’s been ten years since Paolo “SKE” Botta, best known for his partnership between Yugen and Not a Good Sign has released a follow-up to his 2011 debut 1000 Autunni released on the AltrOck/Fading Records label. It received critical acclaim and then went out-of-print until 2018 when it was reprinted as 1001 Autunni as a double CD set featuring an additional live recording.

Now in 2021, SKE has released a follow-up entitled Insolubilia. Produced by Marcello Marinone, the second album is a return to the melodic waters once more by following in the footsteps of Gryphon, Latte E Miele, Gentle Giant, Present, Wojciech Kilar, Univers Zero, and Le Orme’s Felona E Sorona, Paolo’s follow-up is like a flaming fire that simply won’t burn out.

And to be allowed to have 25 musicians from Stormy Six, Wobbler, Ciccada, Isildurs Bane, Loomings, and Shamblemaths to name a few, they aren’t just band members lending Paolo a helping hand, but a band of brothers working together both as a team, and as a family. Not only have we had the five-part opus of the title-track, but some of the most incredible highlights that SKE has taken their listeners close to the edge.

Opening track Sudo features an intensive organ and synth exercise with melodic horn arrangements. Martino Malacrida’s climatic drum patterns takes us into a tidal-waving climax featuring a spine-tingling folk background done by Tommaso’s mandolin. Insolubilia II has Evangelia Kozoni’s angelic voice soars through the skies as we hear Airport announcements throughout the building ready for another plane flying to another city.

Jacopo’s mallet percussions has some complex time changes while Francesco’s heavy guitar lines go through a RPI (Rock Progressivo Italiano) momentum with an arrangement done in the styles of Van der Graaf Generator. Lo Stagno del Proverbio takes place in the aftermath of a mob riot gone horribly wrong. Luca’s trumpet takes us into the bloody streets by crying out to the gods above the heavenly skies with some fanfare arrangements.

La Nona Onda is a heavy, nightmarish, and brutal composition. Paolo channels the Pawn Hearts period by continuing where A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers had left off. As the snarling textures of the guitar and mellotron lifts-off into outer space, it continues of the reprise for the final battle on Sudo.  

Insolubilia IV at first begins with some 8-bit video game synthesizers, but goes in depth of the RIO movement. Camembert’s Melanie Gerber is giving the sermon inside a gothic cathedral as she channels the vocal styles of North Sea Radio Orchestra’s Sharron Fortnam with some Wyatt-sque vibes as a mournful arrangement.

Scogli 4 feels at times like a Univers Zero composition. Honoring the late great Roger Trigaux with some late ‘60s Giallo themes from Mario Bava’s Blood & Black Lace, the dooming harpsichord, clarinet, and rain pouring effects leaves us on a cliffhanger not knowing when the killer will strike again.

The operatic choirs and horror themes on Insolubilia V comes at you with an eruptive explosion for the shocking finale. Almost making an alternate score to the 1975 unsung gem of Day of the Locust, the bell tolls with some ghostly synths before Fabio’s bass brings the fuse to explode at any second by going into a crossover between the first two albums of Banco del Mutuo Soccorso and Black Sabbath’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath rolled into one.

Insolubilia is quite an adventure from the complexing stories by Paolo “SKE” Botta. He has a headstrong view on where he wants to take the next logical step by following into a dangerous tightrope. But for Paolo, he’s brought a lot of ammunition and brutal textures to life on his second release during the pandemic.