From the second we checked into the remarkable Ace Hotel, it was clear that Portland was just a little different. I'd absorbed the back-story previously - a generation of hippies who clung to the counter-culture had moved here, it stayed young and hip, and now it's a jungle of ironic facial hair, unashamed liberalism and democracy. Some of that is real, some of it is mild mocking by a national that doesn't always seem to get this place, but isn't prepared to entirely write it off as some den of Communism - at least only in the most right-wing of circles anyway. Because, it turns out, it's in fact very, very hard not to love Portland. The city core is old - largely un-reconstructed, squat low-rise brick buildings which hark back to the early 20th century and which face each other across wide streets where the car isn't quite king any more. A couple of modern, but largely quite confusing Streetcar lines shuffle across downtown - but don't seem to head anywhere too useful as such. It's an incredibly comfortable city to sink into and become part of very quickly, when one can walk comfortably and pause aimlessly without appearing too strange or alien. For me, this is a very good thing indeed.
From our temporary home on Stark Street, Powell's World of Books is not far away. A city-block sized store across four floors and several crazily confusing sub-divided areas, this is a truly remarkable place. With used and new books filed alongside each other, there is a wonderfully Portland-like sense of being offered a fair deal here. The selection of books, the range of subjects and the surprising depth of the range is astonishing. We set out with a basket which increasingly filled - not just with books but with smart, well-chosen arty cards and suchlike. Eventually, after several hours here we paused and common sense descended. We had to weed out our purchases carefully. We found a spot and showed immense restraint in selecting a few choice things to purchase. Oddly, here in this mecca of books, it didn't feel painful to have to surrender a title or two - being surrounded by books you could never hope to purchase seemed to assist in that.
The remainder of this short visit seemed to involve lots of food and beer - both of which Portland is pretty good at supplying. But a special place will always be reserved for Voodoo Donuts. We'd talked about this place and it was an essential visit. Forget the antics of Heston Blumenthal - this place has been making giant donuts for years, and has dabbled in the absurd by including pepto-bismol fillings and crushed aspirin for the badly-hungover. With the rain blown away by a Pacific wind, it was a bracing but perfect walk down Burnside towards Voodoo. We'd been warned off walking this way at night - and while it was fair to say this was a colourful neighbourhood of adult cinemas and empty lots, it felt no worse - and far less menacing - than many cities I've passed through. Finally we found Voodoo by virtue of it's line - even this early on a weekend morning there was a queue around the block for this local institution. The gaudy pink building with it's Alice-in-Wonderland like diorama of giant donuts and paraphenalia was hot, dizzying and smelled strongly of melting sugar and hot dough. Our purchases in hand we slipped over to the adjacent coffee stand which was doing equally brisk business with the sugar-sodden masses. The return walk was via the outdoor market and Chinatown, the iconic ironwork of the bridges in the background. The older buildings in this neighbourhood had achieved state protection - perhaps a rarer status here than at home, but welcome. It seems that here, redevelopment is at least a little bit more sensitive than elsewhere in the US.
One last trip before we left the Ace, and indeed Portland, was to the line of tiny boutique stores along the street adjacent. Among these was Tender Loving Empire - a record label, distributor of local artists' work, and generally surprisingly packed with strange and wonderful items. The store was busy, bustling with people - and not just hipsters. We browsed the music - listened to Loch Lomond which completed a circle right back to Song, By Toad in Edinburgh, my blogging exploits and Scottish links. In fact we almost missed the train back to Seattle in our leisurely browsing. But finally after a haphazard cab ride to Union Station we settled into the seats and watched the Columbia River slip by as we began the journey north. For me, it was the beginning of a longer journey home too in some ways - and with the novelty of just $14 between us, we celebrated with overpriced beer and watched darkness fall on the Pacific North West. The couple of days we spent in Portland were an eye-opening, intriguing rush through a city that I'm certain I want to revisit.
I recently read a blog which suggested that somehow releasing things on cassette was some sort of wilful hipster act of assured obscurity. As someone who ran a tiny label long before CD writers and blank media were cheap enough to consider and before the internet made it easy to distribute music, I suppose I recognise a necessity and a pragmatism in the format which might be lost on those who've grown up buying CDs or downloading digital music. For me then, perhaps releasing cassettes - despite their recent decline towards obsolescence - still has a sense of purpose. And after all, it's still perhaps one of the most direct and accessible routes available between the musician and the listener. So, I can't help but wonder how the writer who dismissed cassette releases as largely an act of vanity will regard this release from Gerry Loves Records - which is essentially a cassette re-release of an already out-of-print tape. Is it the ultimate in vanity releases, or is it perhaps just the right way to treat this unusual music?
Wounded Knee is Drew Wright - a Leith-based singer of strange, disembodied shanties and oddly soulful folk tunes - and this cassette, clocking in at around an hour and a total of 21 compositions, is an expansive and sometimes confusing ramble through his world. The project hinges on Drew's voice, which delivers sonorous, melodic incantations over the most minimal of instrumentation. Occasionally there is some electronic percussion, perhaps a dusting of droning keyboards, and a range of background atmospherics - but rarely are these intrusive and they almost never stray into the foreground. For the most part in fact, they are mixed low and almost hidden while Drew's voice is left to carve out the melody. That said, there are a couple of curious and playful instrumentals scattered throughout - such as the kazoo powered "Scotsport" which provides a reasonable approximation of an already pretty strange 1970s STV theme tune. But it's important not to mistake low-tech for low quality - and while there is little in the way of polish or production here, there is nothing throwaway about the songs Drew has selected. His lyrics, particularly mark out a strange tension between simple lilting delivery, traditional song constructions, and more complex lyrical preoccupations. Wright's songs owe more to the spirit of the rural Highlands than the cityscapes of the Central Belt, and on "Muckle Sang" he takes us rambling into the hills in search of spiritual enlightenment with the landscape becoming "the temple/where we contemplate the infinite" before concluding that perhaps it's nature he's been worshipping all along. "Lowland Lullaby" explores similar territory, alongside a simple and beautifully direct melody picked out on a cheap keyboard. Whilst the songs are timeless, they are precisely located in a geography which seems to seep into their bones.
Another advantage of homegrown cassette recordings was always their ability to allow artists to respond quickly to life around them without storing up songs for the next expensive recording session. Thus, some of the songs on "House Music" reflect an overtly political response to events which is barbed and acutely observed, but never overtly vitriolic. "Coffee Ballad" uses the beverage of choice around these parts to explore allegorical relationships between 'strong' and 'rich' versus 'poor' and 'bitter'. Wounded Knee's political stance is however far more directly expounded in "Anti-Facist Reel", where a twanging, warbling, almost comic background lifted directly from Rolf Harris's back catalogue sees Drew ask the very reasonable question "Why would anyone vote BNP? It's a fucking disgrace". It's a refreshingly honest take on these issues, and perhaps surprisingly it doesn't jar with the more pastoral material here at all. Wright's lyrical pallette is rich enough to encompass both the broadly political and the more personal, as amply demonstrated on "Burnett" which sets an oblique, partly-revealed domestic tale in a post-industrial edgeland landscape with "sent home on full pay/insubordination" sitting alongside "wild garlic in the air along the old railways". It is, in fact, hard to single out individual songs because every listen to this collection yields new couplets and lines which strike a chord as Drew's deep, searching voice delivers them with gravity and often perhaps, a hint of regret.
Recognising one of the points raised by our erstwhile anti-cassette blogger which perhaps has some merit, there is a question about how accessible this music is? Originally a cassette only release on Wright's own Krapp Tapes imprint - with a concious nod to Beckett of course - this re-release does at least offer a digital download to those no longer possessing - or perhaps never having seen - a working tape deck. The music too requires some effort - and for me Wounded Knee only really began to make sense once I'd immersed myself totally, headphones on, Drew's voice echoing and booming around me. It's absolutely worth the effort. These songs are subtle and poignant, often funny, but always wonderfully detailed word paintings. The lack of traditional musical backing and the curious selection of sound-effects and background noises is perhaps a little uncomfortable at first, but it works to push the voice and the words into the foreground where they belong. This tape isn't going to deliver some sort of whirling, stomping Radio 2 pleasing Mumford-like folk pastiche, but it's packed full of the hymns to the land, acutely observed stories and political statements which folk song has delivered for hundreds of years. On that basis alone it's absolutely essential listening.
Wounded Knee's "House Music" is available now from Gerry Loves Records on cassette with immediate digital download for just a fiver. You can also purchase it together with the recent 10" EP also featuring Fox Gut Daata, The Japanese War Effort and Miaoux Miaoux for a bargain price.
Wounded Knee - Muckle Sang
Yusuf Azak - Turn On The Long Wire 15 years ago
Posted in SHOFT on Wednesday 24th November 2010 at 7:11am
I had a conversation yesterday about people caring about what they do. In particular, about attending to the detail of things for their own sake, and not because they're trying to impress or influence someone else. It's a rare thing nowadays to find someone who is committed to something entirely because they see it as intrinsically valuable - and as I get older, more cynical and less forgiving, I see ulterior motives everywhere. Then, with almost embarrassingly perfect timing last evening, the Yusuf Azak record appeared on my doorstep. From the very outset this is about attention to detail and a sense of purpose. The packaging is remarkable - a carefully folded card sleeve, secured with a sparkly sticker. Inside a brief hand-written career summary from Yusuf is printed on crisp paper, lovingly folded around the disc itself. Unwrapping the CD was an exercise in anticipation itself. This is why physical product will always triumph over digital media, no matter how often I kid myself that for half the music I want to own I just can't get my hands on it without the internet.
And the music? The theme of studied craft and commitment to quality continues. Yusuf's breathy, urgent voice is unique - and it's near impossible not to become breathless in empathy as the voice soars and dives over the delicate guitar work. There is a genuine sense of event about this album - it sounds like a celebration of effort and workmanship over the throw-away culture which surrounds modern music. Occasionally the guitar is augmented by brief stabs or washes of strings - never overpowering and just enough to move the compositions forward as Yusuf's voice climbs through the range towards it's next joyful burst. Elsewhere, on 'Thin Air' the spirit of the Beatles' 'White Album' is invoked, and the lush orchestration carries the slightly picked guitar through a beautiful, multi-layered sweep.
The track which preceded the album's release (can I call it a single nowadays?) 'The Key Underground' is by far the closest that the record gets to a bona fide pop hit - and even then it's a soaring and swooning composition which has as much of a kinship with the Cocteau Twins or My Bloody Valentine as it does with Yusuf's folkier contemporaries.
As I listened, I knew I wanted to break my years of blogging failure and write about this record - but how? The lazy art of comparison is sort of redundant here and I'm entirely certain to make an utter fool of myself - but I was moved to think of fellow Glasgow musician RM Hubbert, whose sparse instrumental guitar masterpieces aren't a million miles from this. However, where Hubbert stays indoors to provide the necessary introspection and reflection, Yusuf Azak is up early and audibly gulping lungfuls of fresh air on cold winter mornings. This record has certainly arrived at just the right time of year. Highlights and stand outs are hard to pick so soon after first hearing a record, but I find myself returning to 'Christabel Blues' - perhaps the record's most straightforward singer-songwriter effort, but blessed with some dizzying guitar playing which forms into a sort of deranged blues. The song curiously, and rather sadly fades away all too soon - perhaps the only genuine criticism of the album being that it's too short.
If I find myself writing about something here, it's almost certainly wormed it's way into my listening habits in a fairly permanent way. I can't recommend this record highly enough - it's a gem of a winter album. You can get it here and no doubt eventually from the various digital emporia. However, this is one to own and cherish.
Yusuf Azak - The Key Underground
Lost::MikeGTN
I've had a home on the web for more years than I care to remember, and a few kind souls persuade me it's worth persisting with keeping it updated. This current incarnation of the site is centred around the blog posts which began back in 1999 as 'the daylog' and continued through my travels and tribulations during the following years.
I don't get out and about nearly as much these days, but I do try to record significant events and trips for posterity. You may also have arrived here by following the trail to my former music blog Songs Heard On Fast Trains. That content is preserved here too.
