Cerberus Vol.3(17)
Featuring Kajsa Lindgren, Peter Kris, 81355, Dahveed Behroozi, and Seth Kasselman
First off, it looks like Cerberus newsletter drops will happen on Tuesdays now. It just makes much more sense with my current schedule, and frankly, we need some music-related things on Tuesdays since albums come out on Fridays. I really miss Tuesday album drops but those are a relic of a bygone idyll.
Second, everyone should read When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. Sure, one of the four women highlighted is Betty White (but with good reason, it’s not just an inclusion in the hopes of appealing to a certain set of fans and readers), but it’s a great tome concerning something as innovative as television programming being pioneered by women before being plundered by white patriarchy. I promise it’s not a blunt instrument against white male dominance and fascism under the guise of the Red Scare, but it’s also totally about those things and a great presentation of just how subversive and creative the women who helped launch and further the medium became largely forgotten or eclipsed.
Lastly, thanks once more to all you fine readers and supporters. It’s all greatly appreciated. And I thank you for going along with the slow changes and evolution.
Kajsa Lindgren — Momentary Harmony
Haunting in its simplicity, Lindgren’s Momentary Harmony is the sort of classical concrete that Recital does best. With Recital’s big-wig Sean McCann — along with other notable instrumentalists including Maxwell August Croy (the proprietor of the awesome but defunct Root Strata label) — Momentary Harmony comes loaded with a cache of reputable players to capture Lindgren’s vision.
Lo, how they do their job.
Lindgren is known first for her electroacoustic and field recording habits, but Momentary Harmony explores repetition across a broad spectrum, with each composition similarly capturing the natural rhythms of the outside world. There is a spiritual and ecological impact when settling into this gem of an album. “Interlute” is such a plucky, determined tune that we hear from an undetermined distance; the plumage and accompanying call cannot be observed from up close but must be taken in blindly from afar. “Punes” is a striking vocal exercise echoing from secret canyon walls that intertwines with a subtle drone like a refreshing, rinsing jungle rain.
Lindgren is transforming instruments into their own set of found sounds and field recordings. At a time when nature and man seem to be at growing odds, it’s the strong gusts (sometimes quite literally) that feel as if Mother Nature is pushing against us with real determination, slapping us in the face to wake up to the current challenge. But Momentary Harmony is usually more subtle than this in its execution, but the message isn’t lost in its quieter tones. Sometimes screaming above the din will work for a moment, but Lindgren’s honed, humble sentiment repeated over and over advances the plot much better over the slow course of time.
Seth Kasselman — UV Catamaran
I could not be more stoked that I stumbled upon this recent release from the artist once (and maybe again in the future) known as Warm Climate. That it happens to be mastered by longtime Cerberus show-about M. Geddes Gengras with art by Phil French (“Stunned is still one of the best labels of all time!” is a standard Cerberus mantra chanted to myself daily)…yeah, you know this is gonna be good.
Of note is Kasselman recording an album over four years in Phoenix that revolves around the motif of water. This juxtaposition alone of the near-desert and UV Catamaran as a sort of oasis is what continually strikes me. Portions of the title track seem to be recorded underwater (though I may be projecting based on Kasselman’s stated experiments with hydrophone mics, who knows where and how they were used and toward what purposes — that’s the fun of it).
The album marks Kasselman capturing a period of what is noted as “significant change”, which is very well represented by each song’s movement like the water it symbolizes and embodies. It becomes more than just a gimmick and gives life to Kasselman’s compositions much as it is the essence of life for living creatures. So drink it up, swim in it, and immerse yourself in its calming waves. Much like water itself, UV Catamaran ebbs and flows, cutting through the landscape with a gentle edge of rushing intensity as Kasselman’s vibe dictates. This ain’t no lazy river, but it certainly is calling for little more than an innertube as necessary accompaniment to its enjoyment.
81355 — This Time I’ll Be of Use
The Hoosier Triforce of Oreo Jones, Sirius Blvck, and David “Moose” Adamson has always worked together in various iterations and collaborations, but none has had the visceral potential as this unification as 81355 (which should be read as “Bless” if you didn’t already know).
Each has done much to skirt genre and definition, and This Time I’ll Be of Use continues this grand tradition of blending power, wisdom, and courage. Within the microcosms of their own musical projects and pseudonyms, there’s always a drive to change up and even pervert expectations. Opener “Capstone” is plain evidence of this, with a music box twinkle giving way to a simple but effective beat. As the melody progresses, it becomes darker under Jones’ cadence and Adamson’s growing menagerie of onyx and sapphire jewelry.
This switch between the light and the dark runs throughout This Time I’ll Be of Use to mirror content that exposes some raw truths, but also mimics how as a society we’re all too eager to glide over the harsh peaks and winds of treacherous mountains as we chase the newest shinnies. This is best summed up by “The Void”, a terse song that does much by keeping the palette as clean and uncrowded as possible. There is no release, no easy path in this abyss save for Blvck’s voice providing the low beam of a headlight leading a way through it.
This Time I’ll Be of Use is not perfect. Despite each of 81355’s principles having worked together before with great effect, the pall of this unification is something different. It does give off similar vibes to Hiding Places from Billy Woods and Kenny Segal in how 81355 play with subject and musical inspiration, but it’s not nearly as uniform or refined in its messaging. This Time… is a diamond in the rough, and while it may lack a bit of necessary polish, it also speaks to our current moment where we’re all little more than coal continuously under pressure. Yet, that faint glimmer of goodness is there for the world to see.
Dahveed Behroozi — Echos
I find myself gravitating (back) toward jazz as time marches forward. We had a fling while I was in college, as I devoured the well-known and ragged albums that are still considered the genre’s touchstones, while also dabbling in the free jazz and more modern takes I found while digging the virtual crates of Napster, Audiogalaxy, KaZaa, and Soulseek.
The audiophile communities never abandoned the genre, and its Renaissance is one not of rediscovery but rather reawakening. But the market for the classics and adjacencies of the 50s and 60s jazz era are ballooning in price: partly due to demand, partly due to audiophile labels producing quality pressings with the best vinyl composites using original analog masters, and largely because the demand of vinyl and the backlog it has caused bloats the market’s demand with a depleted supply.
But this is where the piano magic of Dahveed Behroozi comes to save the day. While snobs of the highest vinyl pressings may snub this modern music released digitally and on compact disc, they are missing out on Behroozi’s classical virtuosity. It’s not quite Bill Evans but Behroozi is pretty damn close. And like Evans’ famed trio albums of the mid-60s, Echos finds Behroozi backed by bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Billy Mintz to great effect and plenty of exponential feel.
The album’s best moments are when Behroozi and his collaborators explore the music signatures provided by space and patience, such as the slow trip of “Alliteration”. This quiet movement collides into the noisy, hyperactive din of “Sendoff” where little air lives and space is as tight as a rapidly rising metropolitan block.
But what Echos really accomplishes is reminding us that jazz is for everyone, and that its borders and definitions are as loose and freewheeling as the melodies. The album allows all of us to bask in the same glow audiophiles do when collecting all the original presses and analog represses do on expensive turntables and sound systems most of us will never be able to afford. Because jazz is a form of art that can be captured by the higher classes but can never be owned by it. Echos is just another in a long line of great jazz albums that, no matter its format, speaks to a higher truth in connecting us to the great big something.
Peter Kris — No Language for the Feeling
As humans, we’re adept at needling each other. Every carefully crafted barb or simpleton insult connects with us right between the eyes to the point of nagging us endlessly. Whether we confront these slings in the moment or let them ruminate continuously on a loop as we try to close our eyes, it’s this reflection on interaction that keeps us on our restless pursuit toward something better.
This is what strikes me while flipping through the chapbook photographs that accompany this double cassette from Peter Kris’s latest transmission from the ether as I listen to opener “A Dual Nature of Complaint”. It is heavy with the Roy Montgomery noise, perhaps trying to drown out the implied insult of an existence we share. And it continues in the sweltering twang of “There Were the Soldaderos”, which harkens like Beefheart’s “Ice Cream for Crow” from a hot desert as the song’s subjects — female Mexican soldiers — march on a war path toward some unseen enemy.
In these lush, darkened guitar instrumentals is a battle that is continually waged — it will always be wagging. But it does not do this in the background. Kris’s effect-laden guitar builds upon itself before toppling as a casualty of whatever metaphysical war is undertaken around it. The landscape of his chapbook is bleak, capturing a hamlet that has fled from conflict.
Is Kris the nobler mind, suffering the slings and arrows by snapping pictures of this outrageous fortune so that we may have perchance to dream? No matter, it’s all fits of tossing and turning. We all must bear the whips and scorn of time as it eats at us, eroding and corroding our humanity ever so slowly. But this is the confronting nature of No Language for the Feeling, that there are others who bear this brunt and proudly display their hearts upon their sleeves. The romantic swells and harassing strings of Kris’s guitar accompanying the one-person acts we carry out as all our sins are remember’d.
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