Crumb Crumb

Crumb’s second album, Ice Melt, takes its name from the coarse blend of salts that you can buy from your local hardware store for $9.99. When sprinkled on your wintry steps, this mixture absorbs water and gives off heat, transforming the ice into a viscous, briney slush and, eventually, nothing at all. Beginning with the dynamic chaos of “Up & Down,” and ending with Crumb’s closest thing to a lullaby, Ice Melt's ten tracks combine, like ice sculptures melting into a glistening puddle.

For all the agony as to the status of classical music in the modern musical landscape, the three 20th century string quartets on this fine French release can be said to have entered the repertory, with a reach that extends far beyond the U.S. They go quite well together, which is the first point in favor of France's Quatuor Diotima here; both Steve Reich's Different Trains, for string quartet and tape, and George Crumb's Black Angels for electric quartet feature an artificially enhanced string quartet, and even Samuel Barber elected to "enhance" his String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11, by orchestrating its central movement and making it into the famous Adagio for strings. Highly recommended.

This is a live recording, made at a pair of concerts in May, and ‘live’ is undoubtedly the word for it. All the performances have an improvisatory quality, interpretative decisions seemingly made before your very ears. At the beginning of the Prokofiev it is as though Mutter and Orkis, realising that the audience in the Beethovensaal are already uncommonly silent and attentive, had decided after a quick glance at each other to begin the Sonata almost confidingly, with quiet tenderness and muted colour.

R. Crumb - And His Cheap Suit Serenaders (1974) {Blue Goose Japan Mini LP AIRAC-1024 rel 2002}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 262 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 99 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 23 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1974, 2002 Blue Goose / Shanache / Air Mail Recordings Japan | AIRAC-1024
Jazz / Blues / Old-Timey / Early Jazz

Robert Crumb, Allan Dodge and Robert Armstrong, inspired by collections of 1920s jazz 78s, decided at the height of post-hippie electric madness to form an anachronistic acoustic band. Banjo, mandolins, saw, accordian, and assorted violins and brass make a sound not quite ragtime, not really bluegrass, just as loosely related to Hawaiian and klezmer but transcendent: sweet, sentimental, sometimes spooky.