Stark Reality - Now (Stone's Throw)

Arbete och Fritid - s/t (MNW)

L'infonie - Vol. 333 (Mucho Gusto)

Georges Montalba - Pipe Organ Favorites & Fantasy in Pipe Organ and Percussion (Hit Thing)

"Wow!" was also my immediate reaction to Arbete och Fritid's eponymous 1973 album. To be honest, I was geared up to be blown away by these guys, who have pride of place in the first lines of the notorious Nurse With Wound influences/admiration list, since well before this reissue was even in the offing. Having devoured the recent years' bounty of Swedish avant-rock arcana unearthed to whet our appetites, I knew to expect something special from this late revival. Arbete och Fritid (Work and Leisure) bore the reputation of a live favorite on the Scandinavian festival circuit and some crossover with the membership of the exciting Pärson Sound/Träd, Gräs och Stenar/(International) Harvester axis. Propitious enough, and the album's opening notes only served to confirm Arbete och Fritid as the real deal. I should say "note," a glorious sustained blur of brass and strings trembling with the potential to go anywhere. Oh Lordy!

Like the circle gathered around the creative compass of BoAnders Persson, Arbete och Fritid mainstay Ove Karlsson was inspired by the tape and drone experiments of Terry Riley, whose frequent visits to Stockholm throughout the '60s had stirred up and galvanized the local talent. Jazz, rock and folk musicians enlightened to the possibilities of the almighty drone, Karlsson, Persson and others began to blend techniques gleaned from avant-garde avatars like Riley and La Monte Young with the traditional melodies and rumbustious jazz-rock jams that went over so well at communal gatherings. Where Träd, Gräs och Stenar appealed to the youthful rabble with Rolling Stones and Hendrix covers and the paraphernalia of Eastern exoticism and shamanism, Arbete och Fritid cleaved to Nordic culture and recorded infrequently. Adapting folk melodies, already steeped in the rich overtones of keyed fiddles, bird-like flutes and thrumming drums, to drone-minded arrangements of horns and electrified instruments, Arbete och Fritid made the ancient music of Sweden much more palatable to modern ears, without resorting to the crass tactics employed by later Scandinavian folk upstarts like Hedningärna and Väsen. Arbete och Fritid's revitalized versions of such tunes as "The European Way" and "Halling efter Ulrik Jensestuen, Valdres," a Gaelic-sounding reel executed with shiver-inducing echoes of Steve Reich and John Cale, parallel what Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span were doing concurrently for the music of the British Isles—and prefigure what Makoto Kawabata has done with Occitanian folk music in recent years. A Bulgarian melody even gets the full Para Dieswärts Düül acid-folk treatment with flutes and bells on the gorgeous "Dagen Lider." With the exception of Torsten Eckerman's "Vägen till Nylva," a jewel in a glittering Hosianna Mantra-era Popol Vuh acoustic setting, most of Arbete och Fritid's originals are short and, oddly enough, more conventionally traditional-sounding. But the churning "Petrokemi det kan man inte bada i," with its sputters of Ayler-esque sax and animated vocalese, brings Faust's Tapes favorite "J'ai Mal aux Dents," the Persson-axis bands and the jazzier (and rather more obscure) Fläsket Brinner to mind. A 19:41 bonus track, "Ostpusten— Västpusten," recorded in 1972 but previously unreleased, goes further out than anything on the album proper, with devotional chanting, tandem fiddle-and-brass explorations and percussion that builds from antsy patter to a tribal-jazz deluge that carries the players (and listeners) into an ecstatic state Fela Kuti could have embraced. A 12/12? And then some.

I'm not quite as enthusiastic about L'Infonie's third excursion, 333, though it's nice to have it available again. NWW's Steven Stapleton left this Canadian crew off his "List," perhaps owing to personal taste. It's exactly the sort of stylistic mishmash he generally endorses, a somewhat inexplicable but entertaining mix of chamber music, jazz, funk, blues, wild vocalizing (in French, to boot!), musique concrète and acid rock that doesn't slot as neatly as it should into the Canterbury, Rock in Opposition or Zappa/Beefheart categories. L'Infonie ringleader Walter Boudreau (and sometimes retlaW uaerduoB) had all the pretenses required of a composer but preferred the company and consort of contemporary musicians. He eventually assumed a post as the Artistic Director of the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec, though not before recording three volumes of bizarre music for history to decipher. The problem is that Boudreau's L'Infonie albums aren't nearly as much fun as they ought to be, what with all the cartoon sounds and psychedelic jazz jams that were spliced together in their construction. While usually interesting, and worth throwing on when the mood strikes, they feel like exercises in forced zaniness. I don't doubt that they were a blast to make—the musicians appear to be having a good enough time, at least. But, like most free jazz, the joy doesn't quite translate. Boudreau's strange sense of timing and jump-cut sequencing may have something to do with that, making less than 43 minutes seem endless, though not boring. And including a full side of Bach interpretations played out with precision but precious little emotion was as questionable a move as any. Another side featuring an orchestration of Guillaume de Machaut's tender "Kyrie" and two Boudreau originals, one in the L'Infonie style, fare quite a bit better. "Ubiquital" is even great, like a Carl Stalling score as arranged by Stravinsky. Stapleton may have known exactly what he was doing. Still, 333 isn't bad; it just throws off fewer sparks than one expects from music like this. Someone really should take the initiative and mail Boudreau a copy of the Stark Reality CD.

Robert Hunter didn't intend for his records to be anything other than classical interpretations suited to the days' taste for modern instruments, perhaps best heard in darkened houses as accompaniment to silent films. He couldn't have imagined the layered patina of unalloyed strangeness these two LPs, recorded under the slightly exotic pseudonym Georges Montalba, would acquire independently over the years.

The most immediate curiosity comes from hearing the grand wheeze of the Mighty Wurlitzer, tarnished by several decades as a signifier of funfair and ballpark kitsch, assuming the elegant Slavic melodies of Borodin, Saint-Saens and Rimsky-Korsakov. No matter how familiar you are with Khatchaturian's fiery "Mazurka" (from Masquerade) or the seductive theme from "Scheherazade," it's quite another thing to hear them with all orchestration rendered in the rich, reedy tones of the Wurlitzer organ! Hunter's intricate and demanding arrangements on 1958's A Hi-Fi Fantasy, complex enough to call for the accompaniment of two drummers equipped with an assortment of bells, cymbals, vibes and percussion, also raise the eyebrows and delight the ears in this context. The less eccentric Pipe Organ Favorites, recorded a year earlier, is inclined towards lighter "pops" fare such as Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers", Sousa, Grieg and Gautier's "Le Secret" as well as the swooning melodies of picture-show favorites like "Aura Lea," "Diane" and "Evening Star." Weird? Nah. Or only for a moment. Both albums are charming-and quite different.

Ah, but then there's the weirdness attached to the persona of Montalba himself. For years, rumors proliferated that Georges Montalba was in fact an alter ego of Anton Szander LaVey, noted miscreant, hedonist, huckster—and founder of The First Church of Satan! LaVey did nothing to disavow the notion, seemingly supported by the similarity of his own pre-infamy Wurlitzer recordings, and happily basked in the popularity of the Montalba LPs. Just like LaVey to besmirch the name of a gentle, God-fearing Lyon gent (or so the Montalba legend held) for the sake of cheap self-gratification. Hit Thing's reissue finally sets the record straight, in fascinating and thorough liner notes by label founder Toby Dammit, concluding with a quote from LaVey's daughter that settles the stolen-identity brouhaha for once and for all. The Real Georges Montalba, Glendale, CA resident Hunter, recorded these two albums on the pipe organ at nearby Lorin Whitney Studios. While enjoying modest renown as an arranger/accompanist under his given name, Hunter still trotted out his alias for occasional incognito performances, playing the Montalba legend to the hilt. At least until he found greater success, making his own name on the Great White Way while working closely with Carol Channing and George Burns(!) Truth truly is stranger than fiction.

gil gershman 2003 jun 6