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2CD
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ESPDISK 5109CD
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Volume 1. One might think that an album titled Louis Armstrong's America is a tribute to the famed trumpeter, and certainly he's a focus here, but a normal tribute would feature compositions by him, or at least associated with him. Allen Lowe doesn't operate in the realm of the predictable, though; instead, the concept -- powered entirely by Lowe compositions -- takes in not just Armstrong's influence but also the evolution of jazz starting with influences (not all jazz) on Armstrong and continuing to the end of his five-decade career in 1971 -- which means that even Albert Ayler is touched on in this wide-ranging album (heck, even indie-rock icon Steve Albini is referenced). In his liner notes, Lowe quotes himself: "I think that Louis Armstrong may have been the first true post-modernist, picking and choosing between a hierarchy of personal and public musical sources and tastes, but without any concern for the way in which hierarchy acted on all of this in terms of class and even, ultimately, race (e.g.; think of Armstrong's reverence for opera and the way it effected his broad and classically expressive method of phrasing). So he fits all the definitions of post-modernism, even as a kind of anachronistic vessel for so much that was still to come not just in jazz but in all of American popular music, in particular but not only through the mediation of black life and aesthetics. Black song, vernacular and popular, is amazingly flexible it its ways and means of expression, lyrically, rhythmically, and sonically." Personnel includes Aaron Johnson, Frank Lacy, Ray Anderson, Lewis Porter, Ray Suhy, Will Goble, Rob Landis, Brian Simontacchi, Rob Landis, Loren Schoenberg, Ethan Kogan, Ursula Oppens, Nick Jozwiak, Colson Jimenez, Kresten Osgood, Matthew Shipp, James Paul Nadien, Jeppe Zeeberg, Marc Ribot, Huntley McSwain, and Andy Stein.
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2CD
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ESPDISK 5110CD
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Volume 2. One might think that an album titled Louis Armstrong's America is a tribute to the famed trumpeter, and certainly he's a focus here, but a normal tribute would feature compositions by him, or at least associated with him. Allen Lowe doesn't operate in the realm of the predictable, though; instead, the concept -- powered entirely by Lowe compositions -- takes in not just Armstrong's influence but also the evolution of jazz starting with influences (not all jazz) on Armstrong and continuing to the end of his five-decade career in 1971 -- which means that even Albert Ayler is touched on in this wide-ranging album (heck, even indie-rock icon Steve Albini is referenced). In his liner notes, Lowe quotes himself: "I think that Louis Armstrong may have been the first true post-modernist, picking and choosing between a hierarchy of personal and public musical sources and tastes, but without any concern for the way in which hierarchy acted on all of this in terms of class and even, ultimately, race (e.g.; think of Armstrong's reverence for opera and the way it effected his broad and classically expressive method of phrasing). So he fits all the definitions of post-modernism, even as a kind of anachronistic vessel for so much that was still to come not just in jazz but in all of American popular music, in particular but not only through the mediation of black life and aesthetics. Black song, vernacular and popular, is amazingly flexible it its ways and means of expression, lyrically, rhythmically, and sonically." Personnel includes Aaron Johnson, Frank Lacy, Ray Anderson, Lewis Porter, Ray Suhy, Will Goble, Rob Landis, Brian Simontacchi, Rob Landis, Loren Schoenberg, Ethan Kogan, Ursula Oppens, Nick Jozwiak, Colson Jimenez, Kresten Osgood, Matthew Shipp, James Paul Nadien, Jeppe Zeeberg, Marc Ribot, Huntley McSwain, and Andy Stein.
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CD
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ESPDISK 5082CD
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Allen Lowe writes: "America: The Rough Cut is my statement not only on American music and American song, but also my commentary on the way American musicians of all styles handle that old-time music and those old song forms . . . The old things -- not just the blues, but gospel music and pre-blues shouts and language, plus hillbilly/minstrel song and medicine show irony -- reflect a disinterest in the polite trappings of (primarily but not only white) society, an implicit rejection of basic tonal, sonic, and harmonic rules. 'Noise' has, over a long time, come to be an accepted creative strategy for many musicians, with diminishing results. What is missing is...funk? Maybe, but not in that slick, drum machine, '80s way (the 1950s and 1960s, not to mention the 1920s, are another matter). What is missing is the funk from Funky Butt Hall of New Orleans, the sweat of the churchgoing gyrations of white and black Holy Rollers and the eccentric movements and sounds of attendants of the Pentecostal Church; not to mention the religious screams of white and black folk in the throes of post-rational bursts of tongues and trembling worship; or the ecstatic eternal protest of the Church of God in Christ . . . I live in a musical world (mostly in my head) in which the sacred and the profane are two sides of the same coin, and in which the blues is more effect than cause. As for most revivalists and folkies, well, they tend to sound (like most but not only jazz musicians) overqualified; there are some very satisfying exceptions to these rules, and I have tried to reflect that in America: The Rough Cut. So here we have gospel formulations ('Damned Nation'), pre-blues ruminations ('Full Moon Moan'), a little bit of Hank Williams-directed honky tonk ('Cheatin' My Heart'), heavy metal ('Metallic Taste', 'Blues in Shreds'), 'Poor Mourner's Serenade' (hail, hail Jelly Roll Morton), 'Hymn for Her' (to my savior, and wife, Helen); a little bit of my own statement on the fallibility of free jazz, dedicated to a certain guitar player who shall remain nameless ('Blues for Unprepared Guitarist') in which, overdubbed on guitar, I make a personal appeal for a MacArthur, while daily sitting by the door, waiting for that envelope. There's also 'Old Country Rag,' an evocation of the old-time hillbilly rag; 'Eh Death,' a variation on an old fear; 'It's the End,' a bit of autobiography; 'Cold was the Night, Dark Was the Ground" (and I was the first, back in the 1990s, to reference Blind Willie Johnson in a jazz way; here is my update); and 'At a Baptist Meeting,' recorded in concert some years ago with the late, great, grievously missed Roswell Rudd.
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3CD
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ESPDISK 5080CD
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Allen Lowe writes: "In the Dark is a commemoration (sic) of the worst time of my life -- a period during which, having been operated on to remove a cancerous tumor in my sinus, I slept for only brief periods of time. Sometimes I made it as long as two hours continuously, but most often I dozed off for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, maybe an hour -- encamped as I was on my couch, trying not to wake my wife as I wandered in the dark contemplating the long night ahead. Sometimes I turned the television set on and slept fitfully to the sound of the late news shows. Most often I slept most peacefully at about 5 am, only to be awakened an hour or two later by the light that flooded my living room, even with the curtains closed. I could barely breathe through my nose, or any other place; my face had been carved up by the surgeons who saved my life, and I sometimes did mad circles in the dark to see if I could exercise and avoid collisions with inanimate objects like chairs, doors, stairways, tables, etc. I have never before (or since) felt that desperate about anything. For a little while, in the late stages, I was able to breathe better, but then something called neuropathy set in, as what felt like a low-level electric current seething through my left foot. So -- at this point I would go to bed at 11PM, and at 1AM, like clockwork, that left foot began to vibrate, which it would continue to do for five or six hours, leaving me, at 6 or 7AM, with the very temporary relief of sleep -- all the while trying to ignore the sunlight that tormented me like a celestial alarm clock that never stopped ringing. At some point during this ordeal, I started composing again. To my surprise -- because I felt blank and near-death -- the music poured out of me, and the result is this recording (and its ESP companion, America: The Rough Cut (ESPDISK 5082CD)). I don't why it all happened like this, but I am reasonably sure that I will never be this prolific again, that I will never again produce this much good music this quickly. The music is sometimes structured, sometimes free-improvised, sometimes blues and American song form; Ken Peplowski is let loose to play free jazz on some tracks; Aaron Johnson shows himself to be one of the best and most creative saxophonists playing today; Lewis Porter is a phenomenal pianist, adept at all forms and musical structures. Anthony Braxton has said 'Allen Lowe is the tradition,' and I am honored to accept his recognition."
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