A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man
 

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One night. Twelve hours. Twelve albums. One lonely, see-through bastard.

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7:00 pm
Bud Powell—Time Waits: The Amazing Bud Powell (1958)

The invisible man sits at a table by himself, munching on a bread roll. He loves this restaurant—the godfather booths, the mood lighting, the jazz on the speakers—the whole kit and caboodle just has such fantastic ambiance. Normally just being here makes him feel mellow and content, but tonight he's feeling kind of anxious, worrying if his date is going to show up. She's almost forty-five minutes late and he's starting to wonder if he's been stood up, or for that matter, if she even knew they were supposed to meet in the first place. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened—meeting someone he likes at a party only to discover later that she had mistaken him for a coat hanging on a door and assumed she was talking to the cute guy standing nearby in line for the bathroom. He's not generally a morose sort of person, he usually tries to see the bright side of things, but it's moments like this when his condition definitely feels like a burden. He slouches down in his chair and tries to immerse himself in the sounds of the bebop album that fills the air around him, Time Waits: The Amazing Bud Powell.

Like our transparent friend sitting alone in the the restaurant, this album is generally upbeat but with a depressive undercurrent running throughout that it fights very hard against. It opens with the latin-esque "Buster Rides Again", which is one of those swinging, upbeat songs where it's almost impossible to keep your body from moving while listening to it, due in a large part to the interplay between Powell's rhythmic keys and the shapeshifting patterns of drummer Philly Joe Jones. The second track, "Sub City" is a little more mellow, but still a toe-tapping bebop classic, with somebody, probably Powell, off-mic scatting nonsense along with the melody. It's not until track number three, the title track, that the album slumps down into melancholy. Sure it tries to sound simply relaxed, but the subtly dissonant, off-kilter piano staggers reveal a heart that belongs more to the sad sack passed out at the bar than the hipster smoking a cigarette by the stage. Once revealed, the sullen soul of this album can't hide itself despite it's best stabs at being cheery. On the subsequent tracks, "Marmelade", "Monopoly" and "John's Abbey", for example, the tunes pump along in groovy bop fashion, but those off-mic vocals show up again, sounding less like scatting and more like a testy drunk arguing with himself in an alley. Beyond that, on the last of those three, the entire piece feels like it's teetering on the verge of mania. On the one hand it's straight-up bebop, but on the other, like a lot of classic bop, its formalism barely able to contain itself within a mechanism that's flying out of control. In the end, the album turns introspective again with "Dry Soul", another late night rambler that sounds anything but dry.

The despondency that seeps in around the edges of this album is unfortunately no surprise. It was recorded late in Powell's career, when his alcoholism and personal baggage were just on the verge of obliterating his talent. His brother had died less than two years before, in the same Pennsylvania car wreck that killed legendary jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown, but even before that Powell was not the most stable of characters. He was abnormally sensitive to the effects of alcohol and sadly also came to be dependent on it. He spent several years of his life in mental institutions, overmedicated and subjected to electroshock therapy. The result was a shattered man. A genius on par with Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, but one who was so tragically broken that in end he died young—only eight years after this album—of tuberculosis, alcoholism and malnutrition, no longer even able to play piano like he used to.

It made me excited to see another Janszoon journal.

It's making me even more excited to see a Bud Powell album right off the bat... If all the reviews are like this one, I will be a very happy Blarobbarg indeed. :D

Just stunning. Where do you get your ideas man? Incidentally, is the guy really invisible, or is that just how the world makes him feel? Again, as in most of your material, the music is not anything I would gravitate towards, but I always love to see your writing and this has as ever not disappointed. If "25 albums" was the dark epilogue to life, this is perhaps the lead-up to it, the last lingering gasps of life before we all succumb to the inevitable; the powerful yet dour realisation that, as so many doomsayers have told us on every street of every city in just about every century, the end is nigh.

Looking forward to the hopefully developing story of the I-Man, and great to see you writing again! :clap:

Thanks for your encouragement guys! I'm really looking forward to writing these and hoping that I do so more frequently than I did with my last journal.

And yep, TH, this guy is really invisible. Though fortunately he isn't evil like Griffin or Kevin Bacon. :)

Damn it! I've been trying to think up a funny idea for a journal, and you beat me to it again! Bastard. Great entry though. Makes me feel inadequate about my musical taste.

It's about time someone recognized that monster for what he is.

Great idea for a journal and will read with interest.

You're just a lazy bastard, we all know that you could write a great journal if you stopped being so lazy.

That's what I'm here for. :p:

Indubitably. He's only two degrees removed from Hilter after all.

Thanks man. :)

Lovely album, great concept! Stunning write-up, I'm tickled.

Indeed I am lazy, but I also have no desire to do anything so obvious as give my legitimate opinion on music that I have listened to.

:laughing:

I think that just might be the most perfect response I've seen in years.

Thanks, Wolke! It's nice to see you posting again. I still need to check out those recommendations you gave me a while back. :)

:pimp:

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8:00 pm
K-the-I???—Broken Love Letter (2005)

After waiting another hour, the invisible man finally decides that his date isn't coming so he pays the bill and he goes outside. Ducking into a nearby alley, he strips off all his clothes like some sort of reverse super hero and stashes them in a box, next to a doorway, behind a dumpster, in the cleanest corner of the alley that he can find. Now truly undetectable to the human eye, he does what he often does to relieve stress: he runs. The sun has just disappeared behind the downtown canyon walls as he starts, and he darts through a group of Red Hat Society ladies leaving each of them with only a vague notion that one of their companions may have bumped into them. He zigzags along partially clogged sidewalks, through clouds of fractured conversation and zoetrope-like movements, past high-end chain stores and tourist-trap restaurants, under el trains and through snarled traffic. He fills his lungs with oxygen then exhales. Fills then exhales. Lost in the rhythms of breathing and transparent feet pounding on cement, he vanishes further still into simple motion of the urban machine, pushing himself forward as the cityscape flickers by on all sides.

Appropriately for this situation, the album begin with a track entitled "Miss Gofuckyourself", which sounds like a whirlwind of heartbreak and is built on top of a looped sample of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' "Cannibal's Hymn". It's a suitable introduction to this swirling maelstrom of an album, which feels more like the stomach-churning emotional turmoil of a recent breakup than any music I've ever heard in my life. Even when it's not immediately apparent what the lyrics are specifically referring to, there's this sense that we as listeners are on an out-of-control psychic train ride that could at any moment jump the track. Beats pound at us and then skitter away. Samples of everything from super-crazy record scratching to jazz to 70s-style analog synths to Italian folk to psychedelic rock to Portishead to the aforementioned Nick Cave echo in and out of this broken heart, courtesy of Thavius Beck. Bitter lyrics bang their way through the abstraction as K-the-I??? repeatedly reminds us in quiet moments that, "You're not that beautiful." It's not until the title track, three-quarters of the way through the album that things settle down in a groove that resembles normal hip hop, but that track is so angry and emotional that normal rap posturing is left sobbing in the dust.

Kiki Ceacz—the man behind this music—is the Jackson Pollock of rapping, his words splattering around in abstract patterns that nevertheless communicate something deep and human and raw. It's kind of an amazing feat when you think about it. Hip hop is so much about rhythm after all, but Ceacz's music somehow works by eschewing all that. Sure there are beats, but they don't necessarily line up with the words he's spitting or the enormous wall of noise that typically provides the backdrop. In some ways this feels more like a spoken word album than hip hop album—but really, really good spoken word. Spoken word that's on some level of emotion that's never even been considered in any coffee shop built by humans. Spoken word that will find your heart under that flinty exterior and bang the hell out of it with a tack hammer.

Definitely checking out K-the-I??? after reading this and listening to the tracks. Love his style and the beats are continually interesting. Great post, Janzs.

Glad you liked it! I hope you think he's as great as I do. :)

Well that was incredible. That first song was pretty good, but that second was particularly incredible. I'll be checking this album out, fo' sho'.

I have no interest in rap or hip-hop,as you know, but nevertheless it's great to see a new entry in what is already shaping up to be a contender for Journal of the Year 2013! Personally I love your prose about the Invisible Man doing his run, and the way you describe him "vanishing further into the motion of the urban machine" is just genius. I wonder if at some point in his lonely existence he may think to look around and realise that there are other more invisible men in the city, even if they can be seen? People who live their innocuous, unremarkable and unremarked lives on the edges, in the shadows, never really seen, never really part of humanity. The forgotten, ignored ones? I'd love to see you explore that aspect of his being.

Unlike the others then, as I say, I won't be checking out the album, but as ever I come here for the writing and I have never once yet been disappointed, nor do I ever expect to be. Superb job.

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9:00 pm
Harry Belafonte—Calypso (1956)

After running and running and running the invisible man finally begins to tire and finds himself far from the crowded downtown streets in some far-flung residential neighborhood he's never been to before. He wanders the quiet sidewalks for a while before the faint sound of Caribbean music drifts through the air around him. Following it, he winds up in a church basement packed with a large group of mostly geriatric Jamaicans. It takes just a little bit of observation and a little bit of eavesdropping for him to understand the circumstances that surround him. The crowd is dressed to the nines. A multi-tiered cake sits in a corner waiting to be cut and served. He hears comments here and there about childhood love back in Moneague, a lifetime of separation, a recent reunion late in life. A gray, wrinkled man and woman sway slowly in the middle of crowd of watery-eyed family and friends. These elderly newlyweds seem so happy to finally be together as they drift around the dance floor to Harry Belafonte's "I Do Adore Her". Love-scorned and jaded as he feels this evening, it's still hard for the invisible man to choke back the lump in his throat as he gazes on.

Harry Belafonte's breakthrough album Calypso has the distinction of being the first LP to ever sell over a million copies within a year of its release, and with good reason—it's absolutely flawless. The album functions as perfect slice of life really, full of innocence, joy and love, but also pain and struggle and even some disturbing socio-political content. It's an album of contradictions in many ways. The largely upbeat music is often coupled with surprisingly dark lyrics for example. It's also named Calypso despite the fact that it's full of Mento music not Calypso. And it's the biggest Jamaican album of its time despite being released by an American (though he did live in Jamaica from age 5 to age 13).

It starts with one of Belafonte's most famous songs: "Day-O (Banana Boat Song)", a prime example of the dichotomous nature of the tracks herein being that it's a somewhat gritty description of the lives of dockworkers set to a very upbeat tune. It immediately follows with the gorgeous "I Do Adore Her", a heartbreakingly romantic track which is revealed to be a tragic tale of regret and lost love on a closer listen to the lyrics. Similarly, the next track, "Jamaica Farewell", is filled with homesickness and longing despite its low-key arrangement. It's not until "Will His Love Be Like His Rum?" that we reach something truly happy, in this case a humorous and upbeat wedding song. Likewise, the next track "Dolly Dawn" is incredibly lively and uplifting. Side two opens with "Star-O", a sort of sequel to "Day-O", which is both weary-sounding and contented. "The Jack-Ass Song", the silliest three minutes of the album, follows and is one of the release's purest moments of joy. After the most religious song on the album, "Hosanna", we are treated to the bittersweet pairing of "Come Back Liza" and "Brown Skin Girl". The former being a heartbroken tune in the vein of "Jamaica Farewell" and the latter being the album's angriest track, deceptive in it's mellow arrangement but extremely critical of American exploitation its lyrics. Last is "Man Smart (Woman Smarter)", a jokey song that's substantially different from the rest of the album with its elaborate percussion and bigger sounding production.

Smiling, surprisingly, the invisible man bounds up the steps of that church basement, the sounds of clinking glasses and happy chatter following behind him. Flinging the doors at the top wide open, he strides out rejuvenated, ready to reach out to this city with a warm bear hug. Ready to strut.

Wow, this is quite the chronicle: it appeals to my inner novelist who tends to get filtered and wrung out through my burgeoning review mesh. Keep it up sir! :tramp:

Yet another transcendant, unparalleled entry, Janszoon.
The fact that it makes me pay serious attention to Belafonte for the first time is an unexpected bonus.

I wonder if Jaszoon might not have missed his calling as a music teacher. He has the uncanny ability to make me want to listen to music that I probably would have never had any desire to listen to otherwise.

Heh. Thanks! :)

Thanks man. It's always nice to see a response from you. And, yeah, Belafonte is well worth some serious attention.

Haha, I think my head would explode if I had to deal with kids every day but thanks. :laughing:

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10:00 pm
Robotobibok—Nawyki Przyrody (2004)

The invisible man walks down an arrow-straight road beneath the steel supports of an elevated train track. After strolling past several blocks of abandoned industrial buildings he notices a small group of people milling around on the sidewalk, smoking cigarettes outside the door of an old factory. He eavesdrops on their conversations for a moment as he examines the sign on the door. "SHOW TONIGHT", it says in rough, silkscreened letters. Slipping undetected through the entrance, he makes his way up a concrete ramp, past an old railing, and through an open doorway into a vast, wide-open space. In the middle of it a crowd has gathered in a circle to watch a performance art piece. As he approaches, he gets a clearer view. A cluster of glowing spheres of light in various colors hangs from the ceiling, illuminating the scene below them. On the floor, a woman clad only in galoshes and a Porky Pig mask writhes around, shredding a stuffed animal elephant with a steak knife. Standing above her in a circle, a group of five people in jumpsuits, wearing papier-mâché masks of various woodland animals—a deer, a chipmunk, a woodpecker, a bear and rabbit—clasp hands and dance in a circle. There is music playing around this quirky, humorous, jarring scene. The music is Robotobibok.

Formed in Wrocław, Poland in 1998, these guys played a unique style of music that, though rooted in the Polish yass tradition, drew heavily on free jazz, fusion, kraut rock, post punk, post rock and vintage electronica. The result was something unique and fun, hooky yet experimental, typically managing the astonishing feat of being both frenetic and relaxed at the same time. Despite only existing for ten years and having numerous lineup changes, they managed blaze a trail all their own across their three albums, creating a unique, hybrid form of jazz that, as far as I'm aware, is without peer.

All of their releases are good, but their last album, Nawyki Przyrody (which means "Habits of Nature" according to Google Translate), is definitely the most refined and eclectic. The production is amazing—vintage yet modern, a textural fusion of the organic with the synthetic, with a diverse array of sounds that snap together like sonic Legos. Beyond the studio magic, it can't be denied that these guys know their way around their (multiple) instruments, and they certainly know how to write an engrossing and often catchy tune. Starting with the opening track "Kamaji", which features a rare vocal performance and essentially sounds like a jazzy take on Kraftwerk, this is the kind of album which defies all expectation. The cinematic synth-jazz of "Symfonia Zmysłów" and "54 Kw" sound like a crazy, metamorphosing soundtrack to a detective movie that exists in both the 60s and 80s. "Skipping A" and "Skipping C" are free jazz companion pieces that sound like they come directly from the 60s. "100000 Lat Gwarancji" sounds like Devo collaborating with Charlie Haden on an instrumental interpolation of 90s gangsta rap. "Zemsta Gniewosza" plays like post punk colliding with free jazz. "Tylko dla Zwierząt"—with its collage of analog bleeps, horn squirks, cat meows and monkey sounds—seems reminiscent of White Noise or Faust. And the album closes with the markedly different "Jurij"—a gorgeous post rock track with a heartrending guitar lead.

The older I get, the harder it seems to find albums that really blow me away and redefine the way I think about music in the way albums did when I was younger and had heard less. But this this is one of those albums. The combination of styles, and the way they're put together, is really like nothing else that I'm familiar with and I think it's quite a credit to these musicians that they're able to forge something almost poppy out of such a style.

That Robotobibok entry is super-awesome.
Aside from the museik being a new excitement for me, this journal's prose has reached a level where I truly feel like I am your version of The Invisible Man as I read it.

Thanks homes! :)

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11:00 pm
Byetone—Death of a Typographer (2008)

Leaving the performance space behind him, the invisible man resumes his journey east under the el tracks. Each step on the concrete of the sidewalk brings fresh pain to his aching, bare, invisible feet. He can only imagine the size of the invisible blisters that are forming as he keeps moving. Presently he sees a taxi stopped just ahead. A couple from out of town with several pieces of musical equipment in tow are talking to the cabbie by the car's open trunk, trying their best to describe their downtown hotel, the name of which they've forgotten. During the confusion, the invisible man slips into the passenger's seat.

He had initially only planned on stowing away in the taxi long enough to deliver him downtown but the throbbing of his feet convinces him to stay in the car long after the couple has collected their instruments and disappeared though the revolving door of their hotel. He rides with the cabbie from place to place, picking up a trio of young women in microscopic skirts from a curbside and delivering them to a club, picking up a pair of paunchy middle-aged men in sport coats from a restaurant and delivering them to a piano bar, listening to talk radio in some unidentifiable foreign language, stopping at red, accelerating at green. Dioramas of urban life breeze by outside the windows. He begins to feel that he is a part of the vast circulatory system of the city—flowing and pausing to the rhythms of electrical signals, carrying essential nutrients from one corner to another.

This vital metropolitan electronic pulse is the raw material from which Death of a Typographer is constructed. It's an album of minimalism, space, and tiny precise detail that draws you in with that hypnotic power of feeling like you are a nanoscale circuit in some vast, important electronic network. Throughout the album, Olaf Bender, the guy behind Byetone, treats us to a number of urban heartbeat style tracks such as "Plastic Star", "Straight" and "Capture This [ii]" which call to mind sped up images of headlights and taillights streaking by, stopping and starting abruptly at traffic lights like luminous blood coursing through the city's veins. At other times, as on "Black is Black", he brings in more of a melodic, almost pop sensibility—the sounds of people interacting on the sidewalk or hopping into a taxi. Then of course he delves into the tiny, clipped percussive minimalism of "Rocky" and "Grand Style", both of which feel like the very electric signals that drive the traffic lights and power the street lamps crisscrossing beneath the city streets. Lastly, are the album's more ambient sections, "Capture This [i]" and "Heart", fuzzy droning moments that call to a taxi ride along the waterfront, windows down, zipping through the darkness.

When, after several laps throughout the city, the cab is hailed by a group of five large Texans, the invisible man knows his ride is finished. He slips out the door as a curly-headed fat man opens it, and drifts away down the street.

New invisible man review apparently goes unnoticed. Author drowns in irony.

No man. I read it. Your writing is great as usual and, also as usual, I really like the music you featured. I was gonna respond as soon as I could think of something clever to say about 5 fat Texans trying to get into a single cab.

I almost wet myself when I saw this bolded! Yay! A new chapter on the Invisible Man! Love the taxi idea, but I do feel sorry for him traipsing the street in the rain all alone. Excellent, evocative writeups as always Jansz, and if this were updated more regularly I think you'd stand a good chance of winning the award for 2013. So, er, don't be in a rush to update.... :laughing:

Seriously, like many others I'm sure this journal gets a rush of people to read it once there's something new, and you can be sure you'll be getting a mensch on the update thread on Sunday!

:thumb:

:laughing:

Dude's definitely worth your while. The other two albums I have by him are great too.


Thanks TH! :)

Very interesting concept, hombre!

Gracias, señor!

Hey, I read it. I even got my hopes up that you had actually updated twice in less than two months. Of course this wasn't so.

Hey, you never know, I might update sooner than you expect. These things usually go in streaks for me.

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12:00 am
Rocket from the Crypt—The State of the Art is on Fire (1995)

Several blocks south of the last of the city's glass towers, past the Salvation Army and the glowing neon cross of the Gloomy Bible Institute, past the crowd of people camped under the highway onramp with all of their worldly possessions in shopping carts, there is a smallish basement music venue with a peeling sign illuminated by a single red light. It's a place the invisible man has visited many times before, though of course no one there would know him as a regular. Tonight, he slips past the titanic bouncers and down the stairs to find the place packed from wall to wall with a sweaty, rowdy crowd surging with excitement. A band is on the stage—a six-piece blast of guitars and horns known as Rocket from the Crypt—and they're clearly relishing the way they're balancing this crowd on the knife edge between party and riot.

Because of his condition, the invisible man is understandably leery of crowds. So at the earliest opportunity he hops over the bar and starts pouring himself shots as he ducks and dodges the bartenders.

The reality with Rocket from the Crypt is that I could have picked pretty much any of their albums to review here—they're virtually all that consistent and that good—but I decided to go with this little seven song EP (nine if you have the CD) because I feel that it's the strongest, most concise RFTC experience there is. It roars out of the gate with "Light Me"—the first of several compact, high-energy tracks with something of a fire motif. Surf drums pound, horns and guitars blast, and a little vintage organ even weaves it's way in and out for a moment before the churning wall of sound that is "A+ in Arson Class" blasts its way through the wall. "Rid or Ride" follows quickly, allowing the slightest chance to catch your breath amid it's rockabilly vocals while still beating your ass with it's minute and a half of punk rock guitar herky-jerk. Then before you know it, you're being swallowed by the brassy assault of what is probably the album's defining moment, "Human Torch". Epic by this EP's standards, this three minute twelve second track takes you through a gut-wrenching lesson in build and release sonic dynamics before dumping you into the ever-so-slightly slower, bass-heavy spin cycle of "Ratsize". If you're listening on vinyl, the album closes out here with "Human Spine", a five-plus minute encore-evoking opus that most clearly harkens back to the band's 1960s garage rock influences. If you're listening to the CD release here, you're also treated to two more tracks—"Trouble" and "Masculine Intuition"—both covers of songs originally performed by 60s garage rockers The Music Machine. Both are quite good, and not surprisingly, even more 60s-sounding than the rest of the EP.

When the band decide to take a break, the invisible man sneaks his way out from behind the bar and back up the stairs to the the street above. He's had a lot to drink and knows from past experience that too much booze sometimes interacts very strangely with his unique physical condition. He makes his way down the sidewalk, gulping the cool night air, hoping to stave off side effects.

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1:00 am
Goran Bregović—Alkohol: Sljivovica & Champagne (2009)

The invisible man stumbles a bit as he walks, the alcohol making him far less aware of his invisible feet than he usually is. After passing under a railroad bridge and a viaduct he notices that the neighborhood has changed subtly. No longer do trash and people pushing shopping carts dominate the streets, instead they have been replaced by a decidedly residential vibe. Brownstones line the streets here, the yellow light of domestic life glowing in their windows. The sweet smell of flowering trees hangs thick in the night air.

Up ahead he hears the sound of brass instruments being played at a frantic pace. On closer inspection he discovers a vacant lot strung with lights and converted into a garden which is filled with tables and chairs and a group of people dancing to beautiful Balkan music. At first he sits at a table and simply watches them, but before long he is overcome by a powerful urge to dance and he rushes out into the middle of the crowd, jumping and spinning and confusing the hell out of everyone he bumps into.

This is the perfect party album. Listening to it you can imagine drunk people grabbing the microphone from each other or grabbing a partner and twirling sloppily around the dancefloor. I'm sure the atmosphere of drunken revelry it evokes is no accident, it is called Alkohol after all. The tempos—with the exception of the slower track "Ruzica" in the middle of the album—are fairly upbeat across the board, bass horns oompah-ing enthusiastically left and right. The higher register horns laugh and weep with gusto in a way that is reminiscent of both klezmer and mariachi music. The vocals change a great deal from track to track as if, as previously mentioned, different people keep grabbing the microphone. The end result is an album that is thoroughly Balkan and utterly global, with noticeable links to everything from mariachi to bhangra to ska to Carnival and Mardi Gras music, all of it partying hard and reeking of booze.

Once he is thoroughly exhausted and sweaty as hell he staggers out of the crowd and swipes a bottle of champaign on his way out of the garden. One utterly blitzed guest, nearly passed out at a table, is surprised to see the bottle go floating away down the street, occasionally tilting upside down to drain its contents into an invisible throat.

This is still easily the best journal here. I love how the album reviews are neatly slipped into the prose, which is inspired. And the music choices are invariably good.

The invisible man sounds like a fun guy to have a few dozen drinks with.

Thanks man! :)

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2:00 am
Capitol K—Andean Dub (2008)

An empty wine bottle smashes in the street. Invisible feet stagger in a zig-zag pattern down the sidewalk. Brick buildings spin around him. A hard gust of wind lifts a tattered old plastic bag into the air and slams it into him. He looks down in disgust and is somewhat fascinated by the way the bag appears to hover in mid air as it flutters in a U-shape against his invisible chest.

Out of the corner of his bleary eye he spies movement: a square foot disappearing into the alley next to an industrial building of some kind. He stumbles off in pursuit, making his way awkwardly past piles of rusting scrap metal, down the alley and around to the back of the building. For a second he thinks he hears music but a moment later he isn't so sure. There is a door back here, a rusty old thing slightly ajar and squeaking on its hinges. He pulls it open and charges in, running down a hallway and pushing his way through another door. It's pitch black on the other side but he can sense that it's a vast space with a high ceiling. Around him, as far as he can tell, are rows upon rows of machinery. High above, a speaker erupts with the noise of an electronic cowbell counting off a beat with metronome-like precision. Then the music kicks in and row upon row of robots—hundreds of them—spring to life around him, their eyes ablaze like pairs of small headlights in the dark. They begin to dance with extreme precision. Like some incredibly complex country line dance, they form and reform in elaborate patterns, the stomping of their steel feet shaking the floor.

This is the nature of Maltese/British electronic music maker Capitol K's album Andean Dub. He's taken the Andean strain of cumbia—a style of music dating back to the slavery era of Colombia and Panama—and turned it into IDM. The beats retain the classic infectiousness of straight cumbia that just makes you want to hop up and dance, albeit robotically, while also delivering a level of quirkiness heretofore unknown in the word of cumbia. There's a good amount of variety here as well. The opening track, "Celestial", for example, starts with ambient analog-sounding keyboard and forest noises before segueing into the next song, the eminently danceable "Yo Tarzán, tú Jane". The album runs through a few more fantastic variations of typical cumbia—"Cumbiatronic", "Zokkor u Popcorn" and "Huayno"— before smacking you upside the head with the more aggressive, somewhat industrial "White Steal". "Cumbia Esqueletos" brings the quirk back for a few minutes, then the guitar and pan flutes of "7th Charango" and "Andean Dub" kick in to remind you this isn't just cumbia, it's Andean cumbia. At last, the album signs off with the brief "Diamond Skys" which strips away all semblance of electronica and simply ends up with Andean pan flute and guitar music that sounds like it's being played in a train station.

The invisible man tries his best to remain undetected throughout all of this but he inadvertently bumps a robot and they all begin to get wise. In a short span of time, all of their eyes turn red as they snap into infrared mode. Once that happens, there's no hiding for him. Dozens of metal heads jerk abruptly in his direction and metal arms seize him, passing him overhead from one robot to the next before tossing him out the door and locking it behind him.

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3:00 am
Jimmy Radway & The Fe Me Time All Stars—Dub I (1975)
(Errol Thompson at the controls)

Being hit now with the full brunt of all the alcohol he consumed an hour ago, the invisible man is feeling the strange effects that he experiences on the rare occasions when he drinks to excess: he is losing the sense of separation between himself and the rest of the world.

He's standing on the sidewalk in a residential part of the city when a trio of sharply dressed club refugees brush by him, one seemingly passing through his right arm. With nothing else around to guide him, he follows them down a dark street, along a fence between two homes, and finally to a backyard and a backdoor with a red light glowing above it. When the club kids go in, he does too. He observes with detached amusement that the last one slams the door on him but it passes right through. Inside the house it's warm and clouds of smoke fill the dimly lit rooms, drifting through him where ever he stands. Balloons are inhaled here and there around him, lines are snorted, pills are swallowed. He settles down onto the floor next to a couch, wary of being sat on—or rather, given the way he's feeling now, sat in. The faces around him are obscured in shadow and wreathed in smoke but they seem to be shifting in shape—sometimes seeming long or wide or covered in spines like a pufferfish, sometimes smudged, sometimes whirling above people's shoulders like slow-motion cyclones. The conversations he hears are mumbled and impenetrable.

This is the world Dub I inhabits—a dim, smokey place of heat and shadows. It was apparently Jimmy Radway's final album before he got fed up with the music industry and retired to the Jamaican countryside. That being the case, it's quite a swansong. The production here is probably the best I've ever heard on an old dub album—sparse and reverb-drenched in all the right ways. The bass is some of the deepest, heaviest, warmest tones you will ever hear, perpetually sounding like it's coming at you through a shag carpet covered wall. The drums reverberate like they were recorded in the bowels of a subway tunnel. The horns are overdriven and fuzzy, coming on like sparkles of light in a shadow and fading just as quickly. Organ, when it's present, is warm and right up front. Guitar drifts in and out, barely noticed. Vocals only appear on one track, but they're every bit as spacey and transient as the guitar.

Strangely enough for such an incredible album, this release languished in obscurity for decades before it was reissued in 2008. Not only did the reissue do the world a favor by putting this album out there again but it also added five bonus tracks, and unlike most such situations, these bonus tracks are all excellent and fit perfectly in with the rest of the album. Honestly, there's not a bad song to be found here, but there are assuredly some standout tracks. "Back to Africa" and "Mother Liza" are both the epitome of that heavy, heavy bass mentioned earlier. "This Child of Mine Version" and "Black I Am" tear at your heart with their beautiful, bittersweet chord progressions. "The Great Tommy McCook" turns guitar triplets into part of the rhythm section and even tosses in some surprising piano for good measure. "Wicked Have to Feel It" closes the album out with some more elephantine bass and the heaviest, most prominent organ on the album. Some samples are below, but If you check this out,do yourself a favor and listen to this on a decent sound system or headphones because you are just not going to get the full badassery of the low-end from computer speakers.

And so we have this week's contender for the "Back from the dead!" slot on the update thread! Welcome back Jansz! :clap: