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Night Watch
Sunday March 19th, 2017 with Dav Fot
Harvey Mandel! Ian Carr's 'Belladonna'!!

Start in the Stoner vein, run thru some hard rock, jam, kraut, then into the Merrie Mack set with a fistful of more avant-garde stuff, and finish on the fusion side, with Ian Carr (of Nucleus fame)'s 1971 solo effort 'Belladonna'.
Starting out with some great stoner material from this century!
Usurper
Eye - Centre of the Sun - Columbus OH, 2011
Arabia
Black Bombaim - Far Out - Portugal, 2014
Continuing with stoner material from last century!
Inside Looking Out
Grand Funk - Live
Memory of Pain
Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation - S/T
First feature, a sampling of an unheralded LP from Harvey Mandel from '71. Legendary unsung guitar hero, owner of a extremely personal technique, an instantly recognizable sound and highly influential on ANY guitar player in 70's/80's. All the tracks are great, full of crawling snaky Leslie-guitar solos.
Baby Batter
Harvey Mandel - Baby Batter
Midnight Sun
Harvey Mandel - Baby Batter
Freedom Ball
Harvey Mandel - Baby Batter
El Stinger
Harvey Mandel - Baby Batter
Making the move to more prog-and-experimental material by degrees, starting with the one-and-only LP by Universe, great horn-driven rock... with some 'outside' influence!
Acid West
Jeff Sturges and Universe - S/T
Flossing With Buddha
Mahogany Frog - Senna Canadian
King Insano
Embryo - Father Son and Holy Ghosts
Finally we make our way into the Merrie Mack, a set of music inspired by Mary Mackinnon (RIP). A few efforts in there from Japanese guitar great, Keiji Haino, and finish with Pekka Tuppurainen, contemporary music with four David Bowie and David Bowie/Brian Eno compositions working as a pluralistic frame for their improvisations. Consisting of the swedish avantgarde trumpeter star Magnus Broo, saxophone virtuoso Mikko Innanen, drummer phenomen Joonas Riippa, award winning pianist Aki Rissanen and conceptual sound designer Pekka Tuppurainen.
Billy Barty in the Great Unknown
Linus Pauling Quartet - Ashes in the Bong of God
The Royal Wedding
Terry Riley/Kronos Quartet/Wu Man - Cusp of Magic
By Mischance, that Soul I Devoured was a Transparent Vertical Blues (Excerpt)
Kikuri (Keiji Haino & Masami Akita) - Pulverized Purple
Ruhnfhiooak
Keiji Haino & Yoshida Tatsuya - Uhrfasuddhasdd
Track 4
Islaga - Blaze Mountain Recordings
Weeping Wall
Pekka Tuppurainen - Röd / Blå
Another set to ease us into the jazz-side of things and prepare us for the final feature!
Son of Orange County
Frank Zappa and Mothers - Roxy and Elsewhere
Bullfrog Dance
Maneige - Composite
Ian Carr (who passed away in 2009) was a jazz trumpet-player and founder of the groundbreaking jazz-rock/fusion band Nucleus. I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of his 1971 solo LP 'Belladonna'. Rather than try to explain the nature of this LP and the personnel involved, I unabashedly plagiarize a review from Rate Your Music: "On the verge of financial disaster, with barely enough money to eat soup, having had to sold his car for some extra Sterling pounds and with threatening health problems lurking, Ian Carr watched as most every body abandoned the ship lured by perspectives of greater commercial success; Yet he did not lower his arms, and faithfully accompanied by Brian Smith, the sole survivor from the previous line-up, he found the force to renew the band and reinvent his artist directions; now as an undisputed leader, and not recognizing the new band as the collective entity called Nucleus that had abandoned its statutory quest for a common goal, he forgot about the brand and assumed a role similar to that of Miles on the ”In a Silent Way/Bitches Brew” groundbreaking pair, works he actually only discovered after Nucleus was on cruising mode, but which he could identify with.

Unlike with its predecessor, for “Belladonna” Carr discarded the idea of writing and working on complex structures, and focused instead on the building-up and release of tensions, on the dynamics derived from the spontaneous reactions to the ideas the leader threw into the creative cauldron; also unlike the pharmaceutical effects of its homonymous plant, there´s nothing fatally toxic about it, as the moods it is susceptible of inducing are ones of enjoyable calm and tranquility; not that it is ever boring or lethargic, on the contrary: the music flows seamlessly, like a river stream through a lush tropical jungle , and as you observe it from the banks or let yourself be transported by its flux, you can hear its sounds pouring down or rising up from unsuspected or unpredictable locations, and sense the naturalness of its movements as they spill or adjust to each other, gently fade-in or out or unexpectedly disappear behind an hidden gully…

There’s a spirit of concerted efforts and interactivity that reigns throughout – like only unanimous leaders are able to instill - , revealed as soon as on the long opening title track, where without traditional solos everybody solos and works on creating textures as Roy Babbington propels with irresistible bass lines of the type he’ll use on Soft Machine’s mid 70’s Fusions opuses, and Clive Thacker accentuates with the dry, stomach hitting drum hits of his Soul/Jazz/Funk school;

Brian Smith, of course, proves he’s a valuable asset, both in the way he sympathetically interweaves with Carr on the front line -on the more common sax/trumpet duets or with his eerie bamboo flute set against the muted trumpet on “Remadione”- or when he exhibits his soloing skills on the velocity changing, drone-based, “Bitches Brew” like, chunky guitar strumming impelled, spacious Funk of “Mayday” (for which percussive barrage, as for “Remadione” and the title track’s rich percussive colors, ex-Rendell/Carr 5tet member and guest Trevor Tompkins’s help on percussion proved a wise choice), or when he launches a fabulously constructed solo on the closer “Hector’s House”, which he wrote in what is the only exception to Carr’s inexhaustible creative vein.

This leads us inevitably to another newcomer, the relatively green Allan Holdsworth, who after discreet front-stage runs and a lot of competent backing work, finally unleashes his concealed and impressive power, his Coltrane inspired cascading, legato flurries of notes in a premonitory look at what he’ll soon reveal to amazed audiences .

Another notable newcomer was Dave McRae – at the time dividing his talent with the neglected Matching Mole – who contributes with his lush Fender Rhodes backdrops, who alone or in tandem with Gordon Beck (who guests with his Homer electric piano on four tracks) bring a vital new element to Carr’s catalogue of employed sounds , or reveals an unexpected sensibility while emulating drops of rain on the soothing “Summer Rain” and working out a soulful solo, as Holdsworth adds intuitive embroideries.

Intuitive is also Carr’s role all along, either leaving spaces for his fellows to express with no vestiges of showmanship or dictatorial leadership, or exploring new harmonic challenges as the tricky suspension on “Suspension”, his both dramatic and elegant laments hovering above the long notes of the anchoring bass riff, as the keyboards, guitar and sax subtly fill in the interstices of the unresolved tension: arresting!"
Belladonna
Ian Carr - Belladonna
Summer Rain
Ian Carr - Belladonna
Remadione
Ian Carr - Belladonna
Mayday
Ian Carr - Belladonna
Suspension
Ian Carr - Belladonna
Hector's House
Ian Carr - Belladonna
Interactive CKCU