precipitation

After watching Constantine the other day, and posting that nonsense about cats and God and baptism and Dave Brubeck, I grabbed up my said Dave Brubeck and jammed it all the way into the freaking CD player. Yeah, I still gots a CD player, but I had to hook it up. So I hooked it all the way up and blasted that. Man I love that album.

Alright.

So afterwards I put in Charles Mingus. Excellent.

Then it happened.

I have a Technics 5 disc changer from 800 billion years ago. It is the kind with the huge tray and the 5 disc carousel that goes around in a circle. Fairly primitive as far as CD changers go, but I sort of have a romantic draw to those things. Something about it's limited capacity and the fact that it spins around in a circle in such an inefficient manner...

Charles Mingus' Mingus Ah Um wrapped up and the changer changed (as it is wont to do, being a changer after all, changing is it's primary function, second only to the actual playing of CD's... can you have a secondary primary function? Is that some kind of paradox?) and it returned to Brubeck's Time Out! as those were the only two CD's in the machine...

I let Time Out! go for a little bit since I started the album at Take Five, the actual song played in Constantine, because, having my memory tickled in just such a way, I needed to hear exactly that. But as Take Five approached, I decided it was time to move on to another CD, and I contemplated for a moment.

Now I know I'm going on and on like I am some sort of jazz guru, or aficionado, or enthusiast, or some other adjective, but I'm not. I don't know all the specifics of who did what, who wrote this or that and all the stats of the different players... I just like jazz. Not that noodly new age crap. But real jazz. I like old jazz from 100 years ago. I like the modern improv jazz. I like Count Basie, Monk, Miles, Coltrane. That shit rubs all over me like some kind of hot oily feminine hands caressing my body into some warm sleepy state where I can no longer tell the time, and I forgot how I got there...

But really I don't know a lot about jazz, or all the great musicians and singers. I fall into the category of "I know what I like". And I know it when I hear it. I guess that's the best way to know about anything, really. I've heard a ton that I don't know what it was, or how to ever find it again... but that's how things go sometimes.

Now that I've branched off so far you forgot what the hell I was talking about, Mingus finished off, the quaint roundy CD changer returned to Brubeck (and who can blame it, really?), I figured it was time to move on to the third disc of the night. So I went through my (not) extensive jazz collection and said "wow" and pulled out Sun Ra's Space Is The Place. Man, what a nutty piece of music. It is a beautiful assault on sanity, coaxing circles out of squares. And it struck me just then.

I am a huge fan of the Swedish band, Meshuggah.

Deep breath here. I have no idea what the hell you, reader, are about, but Meshuggah is one of the heaviest (death) metal bands ever to torture the audio spectrum. I will not attempt to convey here what they sound like. Words will fail. I assure you.

My first experience with Meshuggah was in 1998. On a fluke I bought Meshuggah's Chaoshpere, put it in the (quaint 5 disc roundy roundy changing) CD player and thought to myself, "Self, what the hell is this shit?" I couldn't make out what was going on, heads or tails, I couldn't find the rhythm, I didn't hear the melody. It was noise. Just like all those stodgy old parents had been telling kids for the last thirty plus years...

I took it out, put it in it's (jewel, love that term) case, and there it sat, like a festering seed, for six months.

Then one day... for some unknown reason, much like the time I actually bought the CD, I took it out and jammed it into the CD player. I figured I bought the damn thing, don't know why, but, I'd give it another go. The ol' college try, whatever the fuck that is.

And...

BAM! It hit me over the head. It was like the mirror shattered and now I saw past the world reflected back at me. I know that sounds deep and transcendental and whatever the hell kind of experiential crap you want to call it... but musically I was floored. Suddenly I heard what they were doing. I heard the drums, like some kind of seven armed, lumbering elegant beast, falling and catching itself, the massive guitars grinding, crashing and then flying, the two meeting together in accord with one another and falling back again. I don't mean to, but I think of Mozart, and I am no master of music theory, but just in regards to his complexity, how he was able to take so many varied melodies and have them compliment and dance with each other...

In a very different way, Meshuggah accomplishes the same effect. Do they sound like Mozart? No. Definitely not. If you like classical music will you like Meshuggah? I highly doubt it. Seriously. Am I a nut job? Yes, but my point is still valid. There are a few of you out there, who's minds and musical tastes are so freaking open and broad that you will listen past pounding drums, or tender flutes or jackhammer guitars, or ferocious pipe organs, and hear the music, hear the pattern, the rhythms inside rhythms, and the melodies flirting around them, and you'll be satisfied like the eater of a fine banquet.

What does this have to do with Dave Brubeck? Very little. When I listened to Sun Ra's Space Is The Place it sounds just like a horn and vocal version of what Meshuggah plays. They are so close together... and yet the instrumentation keeps them polarized. Kind of sad that the timbre of grindy guitars or gentle horns carry more weight for most people than the music itself.

Either I am highly evolved, musically, or I have really lost perspective. I don't know which. All I can say is, I know what I like when I hear it, and both of these strike the same chord in me...

Fundamentally astounding.