Pete

Alto saxophonist Pete Brown has been showing up on Keynote and Savoy reissues for years, but seldom if ever has there been an entire package devoted to recordings made under his name. The Classics Chronological series has accomplished many impressive feats, but this disc deserves special attention. Brown brought excitement and sonic ballast to nearly every band he ever sat in with. His works with John Kirby and especially Frankie Newton are satisfying, but this CD contains the very heart of Brown's artistry. It opens with "Cannon Ball," a boogie-woogie from 1942 sung by Nora Lee King. This relatively rare Decca recording features Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Hamilton, and Sammy Price, the pianist with whom Brown would make outstanding music a bit further on down the road. Similarly rare and even more captivating are two extended jams recorded in Chicago in April of 1944. Brown's quartet on this date consisted of electrically amplified guitarist Jim Daddy Walker, bassist John Levy, and drummer Eddie Nicholson.

During a Jazz Festival in Frankfurt 1997, Bill Laswell introduced Pete Namlook to Karl Berger. Both were immediately into the idea of working together on a new combination of Jazz and Electronic Music. What came out was a collection of pieces that range from Jazz to 70's film music to Ambient and Blues. The sound of Karl Bergers vibraphone and the liveliness of his performances in Pete's studio were stunning. If you listen closely to the tracks "Insight" and "True Blue" you will hear Karl breathing deeply while he plays… he creates unconsciously a perfect accompaniment to his solos that gives a rare organic environmental feel to the music. The tremendous value of improvised music… there are not just phrases being played and combined… the minds and bodies of the musicians are fully involved and in a constant process of musical creation.

Melodic, meandering synths, thick bass, live down tempo drums and percussion - Re:sonate brings together the smooth analog mastery of Pete Namlook and the dubby, exploratory 'home grown' sounds of Gaudi. The result is one with an ambient aesthetic veering off on a truly unique tangent. Repetition of the dominant patterns on Re:sonate creates a hypnotic familiarity, different layers dropping in and out, echoing congas, various peripheral effects enlivening the surface.

The results on this two-track double-disc are nothing less than transcendental, and the two have found a good balance between urgency and ambience up in Sharp's San Francisco studio. Disc one, a single piece called "Interdimensional Communication," pulses along with analog warmth and gloom as if it were the background music to a great sci-fi novel. The second disc, titled "A Long and Perilous Voyage," proves that no song is too long if it has a good groove, and vaguely tips its hat to the sort of ambient work that Brian Eno has been doing for years. Namlook is the Bill Laswell of electronics; he puts out so many recordings that sometimes he has to rely on outside contributions to provide inspiration. Disc two is clearly a showcase for Jonah Sharp, who shines here more than on some of his more recent solo work, like "Emit Ecaps"…

Rob Gordon was a co-founder of the UK's Warp Records, onetime whizz-kid employee of Sheffield's Fon Studios and creator of Forgemasters'mighty underground “Track With No Name.” Recorded during his mid-90s freefall from an acrimonious split with Warp, Ozoona is one of the only surviving longform examples of Gordon's mercurial art, and therefore represents something of a coup for Fax. “She Ship” is an elegant, urbane update on ‘bleep'techno, while “Flat Pack”'s Moog input suggests this track is Namlook's main contribution to the CD. The 17-minute “Blackbird Suite” is a loose, swinging take on ‘intelligent'drum 'n'bass that sounds like a band of cybernetic jazz virtuosi. But “The Hunt” raises the bar entirely: a manic, monotonous grey slew of compressed Hardcore breaks that's rarely been outrun, even by the likes of Autechre in their more jackhammering moments.

Dreamfish (1993). Galactic tides of white noise usher in an expansive trip from Pete Namlook with the UK's silver-suited Ambient space cadet, Mixmaster Morris, whose eclectic DJing graced many a comedown party at the time. If Dreamfish now feels anchored in its era, it's still one of the best surviving examples of a moment when new Ambient lived a utopian dream of a technologically enlightened borderless society, sharing immersive virtual experiences around the world wide web's global campfire. There's a minty freshness and optimism about “School of Fish," while the shorter (nine minute) “Fishology” features the synthetically treated voice of Terrence McKenna, Hawaii-based futurologist and author of Food of the Gods, whose shamanistic theories of techno-paganism and extraterrestrial ancestry fit right in with the stew of ideas and New Age psychedelics which fertilized much of the early '90s Ambient scene…

Heaven and the Sea isn't quite as dance-oriented as Pete Shelley's first two albums, nor does it have the nervous pop energy that was a hallmark of those records and his work with the Buzzcocks. Instead, it's a layered and textured release, given a polished, mature production which ironically only emphasizes the lack of notable songs. There are a handful of relatively strong cuts on the record, but even they don't match the high points of its two predecessors.