Lost Chords and Serenades Divine #2 by Stephen McClurg

Junk Genius, Ghost of Electricity, (1999)

Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off …

The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face

     ~ from “Visions of Johanna,” By Bob Dylan

 I’ve been haunted by this Junk Genius recording for almost two decades. The next record that Junk Genius never made, but that I badly wanted, haunted me, too. I suppose we all have a secret playlist of the soul.

During the ‘90s, I had an obsession with Bay Area jazz and free improv recordings. Junk Genius was a Bay Area quartet of serious and exploratory musicians. Both of their records take on large song and music forms and then use their personal and group interests as filters to de-code and recombine the elements of the genre traditions they happen to be tackling.

In both instances, these musicians spent a lot of time playing from a particular tradition (bebop for the first record, the American folk tradition for the second) and then they used that musical knowledge as inspiration for sets of new tunes that explore the tones and textures of the precursor compositions and recordings. It’s not homage or throwback music.

I’m still processing their first record, but Ghost of Electricity immediately spoke to me. The photo on the cover is perfect to complement the music. This was released during the CD-era and vinyl hadn’t found its way back, but if it had, this would have been a beautiful record cover.

I like dense music, but I also like it when musicians let sounds breathe, when they use silence and space as much as knotty, note-filled passages. There is a lot of breath on this record and a spareness, maybe, again, that haunting quality. Melodies flicker and cough, and are frequently played softly.

John Schott and Ben Goldberg are precise musicians, with intelligence, wit, and soul, and this record is often about how their musical voices interweave, fray, and meet again. It’s a small version of some of the traditional American themes of there-and-back again: hobo boxcars, road trips, migrations, homecomings, rags to riches to rags.

“Gone Away,” the opening track, begins with a lilting, plaintive melodic line that captures what so much American music is devoted to: loss. What makes Junk Genius’s approach different is that they are not trying to echo these themes in lyrics or in getting a string section or toy piano, or even trying to be Ye Olde String Band. They filter that past through their own contemporary approach to improvisation that is influenced by Bill Frisell, Albert Ayler, late-era Coltrane, and angular jazz from the Chicago Art Ensemble or ECM recordings.

“Long Way” opens with the earthy, dark tones of bass and clarinet. Then the percussion rhythms are echoed by guitar arpeggios. Schott plays snippets of melodic pieces that recall the melody from “Gone Away,” though the tone is more restless, more lost. If “Angle,” the third track, were a kind of descent, “Long Way” is a floating in the darkness.

“Aberdeen” reminds me of the moment in a noir when a down-on-his-luck man wanders the streets, dusty or rain-beaten, no hope. A slight lilt here hints at the Tramp or Harold Lloyd’s Man with the Glasses.

“When” resounds with dreamy hopefulness, and with dissonant guitar chords backed by soft, malleted percussion. Goldberg plays long tones over the rest of the group. There is a buoyancy that has enough brightness to be hopeful that spills over in cymbal washes. It’s possible the title is a reference to how the American Dream seems to be something not in the present, maybe even that possibility of reaching a “when” provides some sort of hope, no matter how small or quiet.

“Indication” contains a lyrical, tuneful melody and also opens with the duo of Goldberg and Dunn. The tune finds a darker tone towards the end when after a short drum section, Dunn plays arco long tones that slide and descend. The interplay throughout this section is interesting because you can hear all four musicians pick up threads of melody or rhythm from each other and reconfigure them back out into the group. There is a restlessness, a searching quality, in the performance that realizes an ideal Americanness.

You can get Junk Genius’s records from online distributors and their label Songlines.

Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.

Lost Chords and Serenades Divine #1 by Stephen Mcclurg

Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band: II (2016)

Music has all encompassing merits,
its worth is of a city, it can be as useful as you wish…
—from Phra Aphai Manee, by Sunthorn Phu

Certain sounds are familiar, but as a whole, this music has a welcome strangeness. Melodies like surf ballads or slightly delayed minor pentatonic electric fiddle tunes rise over the thuds and clangs of marching band percussion and groovy electric bass ostinatos.

I’m introduced to this on YouTube, which reminds me of being a kid and seeing, as much as hearing, new music on MTV. The musicians wear matching red vests and sit in plastic white lawn chairs surrounding a booming pillar, a column of amps and horns wired together. The handheld camera wobbles around them and skims across a table topped with beer and whiskey and tip buckets. Unclear and at a short distance away, under a pavilion, A young person holds hands in prayer at the center of a gathering. Someone seems to snip locks of hair from the young person. 

I’m not sure what celebration Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band is playing for in the video, but over the last few years, I’ve listened to Thai music around the New Year, when we’re prone to thinking about new projects, new selves, and wishing for more happiness, more love, or maybe just for more. I’ve found Thai music brings me joys that other New Year’s rituals don’t, and rather than trying to create a new self, this column will be more about connecting with an older one.

I’ve spent decades as a music lover and musician. When I had my first child, the time I could spend playing music disappeared. As someone who enjoyed the pre-internet dives into dusty bins of used vinyl, library discards, and flea market castaways, I’ve found little reason to explore music online until now. In some ways, this column is a return to a former life as an independent music store clerk. I now have access to more music than I did in that mom-and-pop, and I’ve found my interest in all things increase along with my urge to have something like the conversations I had in that little store. Khun Narin’s music instantly resonated with whatever musical soul I could be said to have and reminded me of pricing new trades, picking something I’d never heard, and after the silence of pressing play, the flash of unexpected sonic joy.

A similar thrill has been finding music played on the phin, a three-stringed lute, often elaborately carved with dragons or serpents, and now frequently run through amplifiers. One of my favorite groups is Narin’s Band, whose recent album II is available on Innovative Leisure Records.

“Rin,” as the bandleader is known, also carves his own instruments and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s responsible for their electric amp icon.

The music is frequently described as psychedelic, sometimes even (eye roll) Thai-chedelic. While I can hear that, it resonates as dance music in my mind. It’s music to move by. And I can listen to it with my children, who are still too young for The Fugs or the other music I like which I’ve been told sounds like household appliances. But when we have dance parties and I get tired of Taylor Swift or “The Hot Dog Song,” and they get tired of James Brown or Talking Heads, we can dance and be wild with Khun Narin. This is party music.

Though less noticeable on the records, the repetitiveness that makes the music danceable makes some of the live shows that stack up at two-plus hours difficult to absorbed. I imagine that this is less bothersome the more one is enveloped in Dionysian pursuits. Good news for writers out there, though, I’ve found that the repetition has the same effect as works by Steve Reich or Philip Glass in making a music I can write to. Such music creates a mood that keeps my thoughts and feet moving. When I was growing up, I did almost everything with music. As I get older it becomes increasingly more difficult to do that, and I never read with music these days, but occasionally I like the energy music gives my writing process.

Ultimately, Khun Narin makes perfect tracks for a party mix. They divide often into two types: the shredder and the slow jam. Many of the songs do both—begin slow and increasingly shred. This gradual tempo increase is a part of some traditional Thai folk forms. Melodic hooks, tremolo picking, and trills make up much of the language of the melodies. Occasionally, they will throw in a descending set of Iron Maiden-esque riffs or disco-octave bassline accompaniment.

I’ve been struck how when Rin switches tones, from delayed to distorted and back, he has the effect of multiple lead guitarists or voices, not simply someone stomping on an effect and changing one voice. I’m still not sure how he pulls it off.

You can listen to the Khun Narin albums on the label’s YouTube channel or Bandcamp page.

Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.