ASCENSION: search & destroy

The Ascension/SJ things I've heard are much more like Borbetemagus or Blue Humans than the Dead C. I've never heard a Harry Pussy rec (or a Jackie-O Motherfucker rec) and I've never even heard of orthrelm! What abt The Sunburned Hand of the Man - are they any gd, do you know? I really like The No-Neck Blues Band, but then who doesn't? (Not to be confused w/ the Necks of course, whose 'Hanging Garden' alb sounded to me like a third rate copy of 'In A Silent Way', hey ho)

mark s did a grebt pissed off review of ascension in the wire once (general gist: for fuck's sake BE POP!). bet ben w loved it ;-)

The _Broadcast_ 2CD is a definite highlight, or failing that _LP_. No real "destroys", although I don't think the band rate the Descension (the band amalgamated with sax & double bass) LP that highly.

Always fun seeing them annoy jazzers when they play jazz venues & indie kids when they play London's usual toilet venues. Probably the reason they haven't done a gig in eons.

perversely of course the descension album's my favourite - with charles wharf and simon h fell.

wharf in particular doesn't get his dues, prob because he's not in the london improv "loop" but he's one of the best and most considered alto players around; easily the equal of the elton deans and trevor watts of this world.

i am not particularly fussed abt no neck blues band. is this a lapse in taste?

um re ascension i don't like their name nor jaworzyn's: thus dud (always true!)

shut up zemko.

ascension are great and i have more love for them than the stooges, clash or pistols, etc etc.

snoom- you need 'broadcast' (2 CD) and 'five titles' CD. I did talk abt these recs on the skullflower thread so go check. The LP 'three titles' has a great track on side 2. Side 1 (a recording of their first gig) is disappointing but its still worth it for side 2.

and as marcello says: get descension. yes, its a 'bad' recording but it is exceptional. The nearest I can think of is,as andrew said, borbeto, takayanagi's 'Call in question' and the blue humans stuff.

also get the jaworzyn/alan wilkinson duo on Incus ('A sentimental mood') for some top improv action.

''mark s did a grebt pissed off review of ascension in the wire once (general gist: for fuck's sake BE POP!). bet ben w loved it ;-)''

well when Ben did a write up on ascension for the wire he did mention that review, and of course, he did think his conclusions were wrong but there you are.

my review wasn't anti-ascension!!

that review in full (1995?)

Ascension: Broadcast
Borbetomagus: Seven Reasons for Tears
William Hooker: Tibet

What’s to love about all three of these records is easily enough named: the fearlessness and force and discipline of their sound, the rage or energy or turbulence of noise in the groove, the relative unfashionability of what they want to be and where they choose to face. The thick, overbearing scribble-fury of Stefan Jaworzyn’s high-amped guitar, driven along and grounded for what seems like inexhaustible hours by his duo-partner, drummer Tony Irving; Borbetomagus’s collective chunks of outrock scrape’n’squeal; the tumultuous delicacy of Hooker’s drums and Mark Hennen’s piano (in a quartet that also includes Borbetomagus guitarist Donald Miller). All three could be used to clear a room: all three some of us would probably listen to forever.

And yet there’s something depressing about them also. This fearlessness and energy has such a clear border-point, beyond which a debilitating timidity rules. If Punk-Jazz is still to be the name for this genre, this approach, this attitude—as named nearly half a decade ago now—then surely it’s time for a few home-truths. Seven Reasons for Tears is a repackaging, minimalist in red lettering on yellow, with (seven) tracks numbered rather than named, a Byron Coley sleevenote, aggressively (and perhaps accurately) favouring the No Wave survivors over most of the NY alternoise indie that Coley’s zine Forced Exposure favoured—except that recording and sleevenote are now both nine years old. Tibet comes with an inner-sleeve poem that may be about transcendence, plus watercolour-expressionist paintings of faces, and one of its two improvs ("The Coming One", ‘Big Mountain") structured round a uncredited Japanese folksong ("Sakura") about—if childhood memory serves me—cherry blossom. If anything, Ascension’s self-presentation is the most disappointing, given the fevered invention at work in the music: a double-CD arrives with a single folded sheet of card, information kept to barest minimum (namechecks, thanks tos, datelines). For sleeve photos, the cosmos and nature in black-and-white negative; and track titles—"As Above" and "So Below"—that allude to a slogan much dropped in Astrology (and related Mystical philosophies). Everything’s reduced to hints and scraps; once playing time is over, there’s little boldness, delirium or perverse pleasure here. Everything except the sound-making itself is dutiful, and actually a bit dreary: a tacit admission that the technologised systems of the culture industry can no longer be turned against themselves. And just how punky is that, exactly?

If I wanted to be harsh—and the generalised anger and contempt swirling round in this music surely demand nothing less—I’d point out that Punk-Jazz has not of late gathered in strength and significance (in its alleged challenge to Postmodernism, say), but rather once more retreated into a little niche-market, a zone of psychic shelter, hermetic in its resigned complacency. Seeming fearless and pure is the pose that gets it accepted where it is accepted (where saying No is actually only a localised Yes). But if this way of being and behaving is geneuinely of value to all, that means getting off your butt and back out into the world: and running the risk of the Failure that is Success, sure, and learning to trade off certain kinds of compromise with certain kinds of cheeky crossover triumph. OK, Zorn and Last Exit never took things as far as they should have done: but they got further than this. I want Ascension on the Chart Show; I want Borbetomagus invited over to the Proms. Anything less is faking it, frankly.

haha i wz pissed off tho

actually I thought it was a live review. but anyway...I like the review but I have to disagree with the conclusions (you say you were pissed off but i bet you still agree with this).

heh...you know today my scum list order arrived (SJ's online thingy for those who don't know) and with it came a copy of Borbeto's Snuff Jazz. coincidence or what?

i also don't get why they're called ascension: the SJ of scumlist is the kind of energy the sleeve and whatever shd have.... what you get is quasi-misterioso peter saville for cheapies, which i don't get the point of

i saw em live with b.watson once: bw said "hoho sj looks like a serial killer" but i tht he looked more like a grown-up uriah heep fan

heh...I did like the sleeve because it was such garbage. I don't think the ppl responsible rubbed two brane cells really.

but the music is something else to me. I do agree with the points you raise abt not 'engaging'. but I don't enjoy listening to 'compromise', which is why i like both.

I agree that, apart from track 2 on 'seven reasons' just doesn't quite do it but i do listen to it now and again. 'New York Performances' is much much better but you do have a problem with the basic, er, 'point' of all of this.

SJ always reminds me of a bit of Catweazle.

I'm sure I've used this anecdote before, but the only time I saw SJ live, he at one point stuck a metal rod into his v. heavily amplified gtr and the resulting horrible noizeblurt literally made my teeth vibrate - so, top marks for that, at least!

Personally, I'm all for using punk-jazz or chart pop or anything else as a "zone of psychic shelter"!

you have said that andrew.

''Personally, I'm all for using punk-jazz or chart pop or anything else as a "zone of psychic shelter"!''

bring it on!

I'm all for borbeto on 'last night of the proms'.

ayo julio i can find nothin online for this scumlist of which you speak

link me motherbitch

(are they not named after the ooo scary coltrane LP then?)

i've never, ever, in my life, nerver, seen an ascension album for sale anywhere. even my friend who owns EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN THING skullflower ever did doesn't own any ascension/descension.

what i'm trying to say is, "where the fuck does one find albums by them?"

null- google for THESE RECORDS. they don't list the ascension recs on the website (is is working properly anyway: yes, its that kind of operation!) but they do have it in stock in the shop. give 'em an email and order it (they should have it in stock though I haven't bee there for more than a month).

zemko- I'm going on holiday for a month today. if i don't have time to give you an email today then ask sinker for 'the link'.

i get it snailmail bob as i am v.old: but yr welcome to that - email me

actually just had time to send email. ok i'm off.

mark- sent you a reminder for the ut tape too.

sent an email to snoom as well. hopefully you got that.

happy hols julio!

bye julio have a great trip

well I'm back. thanks for the goos wishes and i did have a lovely time there.

bob- did you join the scum list in the end?

alas, no, (as detailed elsewhere) but i answer here to keep a thread about "shit" music high on the list yeh sockit to 'em big daddy

um, actually since zemko asked abt scum list I asked him. hey, if you want a tape of some ascension I'll post it to you.

oh, the ignominy of it all! please scuse my presuptuble behaviouralisms messrs zemko &desouza. bless you all

and, actually ... a tape would be pretty fkn classy and most honourably appreciated - thanks!

i should do something about this bob thing... snoom was here first after all

(and with it being his actual name and all unlike me)

er julio i didn't get round to it i have there been any further scumlist missives in the last coupla months? i will do it now promise

OK snoom. I'll tape some stuff.

the last scum list was sent on the 19th nov.