Matthew Ship
One
(Thirsty Ear, 2005)

Matthew Shipp is famous for playing in a number of different groups in a number of drastically different settings, working towards different goals. The odd thing is, he’s usually successful, though. While recording for Thirsty Ear, the pianist has participated in acoustic jazz groups, hip-hop and jazz cross-breedings and even a little funk to top it all off.  On his album One, Ship is the only performer; expressing himself through the notes of an acoustic piano. There is no sign of production trickery. There are no effects washing away the organic talent of this musician. It’s just Ship’s talent and creativity. The music isn’t all pretty, some of it’s disturbing, but it’s mostly inventive. Mostly. This player has a style his own, and in a solo setting, Ship displays why he’s been invited by these various other groups and recording companies to participate in the vast number of records he has played on over the years. There’s no end in sight and he can only get better from here on out.

Anarchestra
4/04+
Self Released, 2004

I don’t imagine that The Residents are actually human beings. I imagine them to be creative robots – some sort of terrifying, yet entertaining and futurist rendering of what earth will be taken over by. Those suits are snazzy too.

Anyway, Anarchestra sounds like creative robots squeezing out the jazz jams. While the music can conjure a room full of face-less cyborgs, it somehow still manages to maintain a sense of organics, which becomes even more bizarre when one opens the cd and finds that Alex Ferris plays all the instruments. Well, all that means is that Alex Ferris is a bloody genius. His perceptions of music and the instruments that make it are an all consuming part of his life.

In the studio Ferris is Anarchestra, but there are apparently even performances with the instruments being the centerpieces as opposed to the players (the person makes it work but, the machine limits the tonalities).  Whatever, visit the website.

It’s meticulously organized in a way that only a man so unorthodox and passionate about music can manage. It honestly should inspire hundreds of other bands, but it probably won’t. And that’s what’s wrong with music today.

There are articles about the instruments and a lengthy section about sound at the aforementioned site.  It’s all encompassing. The slab (that is what I’m supposed to be writing about actually) is divided into two parts according to the track listing: “demented jazz” and “abandoned.” The first part comprises 18 tracks, while the later is a track unto itself. The “demented jazz” section ranges from swingin’ in an unsettling manner to sounding plain sinister. And the last track, which is also the longest, ends up sounding like a funky Devo, in a wildly mechanic way. I suppose that brings me back to my original thought on robots.  Maybe, Alex Ferris is in-fact a government experiment to give robots independent thought.  If it is, it worked and robots have begun to take over the music industry.