The new Benjamin Herman album reeks of cannabis. Herefore I (yes, I!) made the album artwork about altered states, paralel universae, hallucination and other realms of sensitivity. The music’s mostly soundtracky, afrocuban and funky and features guest appearances by (amongst many others) C-mon & Kypski, Git Hyper and Paul Weller. Yet another side of Herman’s musical genius brought to light. Buy and preview/prehear here. Thank you Cathelijne Beijn for backing me up and Tymen Cieraad for chaos management!

Sorry we’re not doin much. I guess we’re a bit tired. Not strange, we’ve been at it since god knows how long doin’ all the stuff and then some. Upcoming is, amongst many other things, the official portfolio website rufusketting.com (aw yeah!) and BLURRR, a group show/event at tent. which will feature Gyz La Rivière AND a brand new HuMobisten performance (!!!!!!). Also Suus and me made one of two new The New Earth Group album covers (the other one is being done by Nicole Martens) and they will be released in october plus I’m finishing the new Benjamin Herman album (Blue Sky Blond) as we speak. First off’s a well deserved holiday and I’ll be seeing you little monkeys in september.

Speaking of which, any of you heard about the apologies some Dresden (Germany) zoo made to the US government on a mandril (monkey) born a couple of months ago named Obama? My oh my! I don’t know about you, but my guess is that a monkey named after a white president(ial candidate) can keep his or her name like it ain’t a thing. A dog named after Obama, or a horse, or how bout a lion? or some weird ass fish? now would that have been a problem? I think not. I think Germans think like so: We all know negroes and monkeys must NOT be compared, in ANY way! That’s just wrong!!!’ Hang on now, aren’t you guys underlining just how you feel about them scary ape-like negroes by restricting monkey names to some names? Naming a monkey after a guy, I mean how harmless is that? It’s even sweet, we all luuuuuuuv monkeys, don’t we? But having to make an official apology and change the monkey’s name (to Okeke, a real common ‘multi-racial’ name), well now THAT’s just downright racist, right? Make up your own mind and read something funny as hell, yet also quite horrible here.

The year’s almost over so I figured why not be on time with the years Album Top 5 for a change. Let me start by saying it’s a personal Top 5, so please try and keep the ‘Where’s Kanye?’s, and the ‘You mussed be kidding not to include MGMT!’s and such to a minimum. I can tell you however that I haven’t really heard Lil’ Wayne’s ‘Tha Carter III’ but it’s supposed to be great, I guess the ‘A Millie’ single therefore should have made my list, but since it’s an album listing well… it can’t. Albums I have heard but didn’t make the Top 5 however are (among others) Beck’s ‘Modern Guilt’, Santogold ‘Santogold’, Hot Chip’s ‘In The Dark’, Hercules and Love Affair’s self titled album, Erykah Badu’s ‘New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)’ and MGMT’s ‘Oracular Spectacular’ (which would have made No. 6 if this were an Album Top 6). I guess the picture above pretty much gave it away, but here’s my Top 5, 5 to 1 style:

5. Marnie Stern ‘This Is it and I Am it and You Are…’
on 5 because I haven’t heard it more than three times, but those three times must have all been within the last week. It’s, excusez le mot, ‘original’, it kicks ass, it annoys the hell out of people who know jackshit about music and it features Hella’s Zach Hill (earlier mentioned on this blog here). Download it!

4. Fleet Foxes ‘Fleet Foxes’
I guess everyone with ears will agree to this one. Fleet Foxes is the new Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. If their next album is going to sound like this one tho they’ll be forgotten before the fall of 2009.

3. Benjamin Herman ‘Hypochristmastreefuzz’
The Herm did it again! Hypochristmastreefuzz is Herman’s second homage to the Dutch Godfather of improv, Mischa Mengelberg. Herman’s genius on this recording makes ‘De sprong O Romantiek Der Hazen’, a Chicago Art Ensemblish weird Mengelberg track sound more like a Phil Woods ballad and Broezimann an introspective Monkish Mengelberg track like it was performed by The Revels, but still manages to keep the album from going all over the place. Insightful, occasionally sweet and action packed, once again.

2. Fuck Buttons ‘Street Horrrsing’
Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power are often being called the new Neu!, but that’s a compliment that merely does justice to the quality of both Street Horrrsing and the concert I saw may something this year. Sure, they’re as ‘droney’ as their thirty year older colleages, but their drones seem to fit better in the now than the drones that must have fitted the seventees earlier. Couple of weeks ago I was on a trainride thru the The Green Heart (a region in Holland where there’s a lot of meadows, farmland, occasional birds of prey and such) which was covered in early snow and blurred with fog while hearing ‘Sweet Love for Planet Earth’, the albums opening track. I felt like crying, I felt like smiling, I felt like calling loved ones, I felt like shutting up forever. If Street Horrrsing had come out eleven years earlier I guess it would have been the soundtrack to Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm. Great record!

1. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds ‘DIG, LAZARUS, DIG!!!’
Here’s the record I’ve been listening to all year. I must have made at least fifty dinners this year singin’ along stuff like ‘everybody’s coming round to my place! everybody wanna be a midnight man…’, ‘we’re gonna have a real cool time… TOOOOOOO-NITE!’ and ‘…and what an enormous and encyclopaedic brain… and we called upon the author to explain!!’. Like all Nick Cave albums, it reeks of crime, rocky landscapes, literature, opium dens in the wild west, self knowledge and an ever present God laughing in our faces. Only this time Cave laughs along. And therefore it’s easier for me to relate to Nick Cave than on any of his earlier recordings. I’m not an all-time Nick Cave fan and I certainly don’t think The Birthday Party was all that great (although the actual Harold Pinter play was quite spectacular). I only stepped in when first seeing the ‘Stagger Lee’ (from the Murder Ballads album) video on MTV and I believe Cave and the Seeds have gotten better with every record since. For example, a year ago I thought Grinderman was the bees knees and of course the soundtrack for ‘The killing of Jesse James…’ was awesome. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

That’s it! Next Top: same time, next year.
photo above (detail) taken by one Polly Borland

When it came out I already wanted to say something about this beautiful album, but then I forgot and there wasn’t a real reason in quite some time. As if I need a reason?! Well, I guess I somehow do. Anyway, what better reason than letting you all know about the Edison, a prestigious musical award, Benjamin Herman recently won for his album ‘Campert’. An album based upon the original score Herman made earlier for a documentary my friend Jeroen S. Rozendaal had been working on named ‘tijd duurt een mens lang’ about dutch poet and writer Remco Campert.

Many people know Herman as being the band leader of his legendary New Cool Collective and NCC Big Band, but the alto saxophone player Herman is above all a jazz cat. He’s the only young musician I ever heard who’s able to combine modern jazz with a sort of nostalgic or pure feel one has when listening to jazz dinosaurs Ben Webster, Charlie Parker or especially Sonny Rollins (who I admit is least of a dinosaur of the three but who still is born, unlike Herman, in the year 1930). His influences notably vary from Jaki Byard and Mischa Mengelberg to Defunkt’s Joseph Bowie or James Chance, but I somewhere overheard he recently is into Fleetfoxes as well. So I guess why he‘s such a great musician is pretty obvious: he simply loves all music, a quality seldom seen by at least the jazz musicians I know.

The moody ‘Campert’ reeks of fallen autumn leaves, stifled heart ache and the joy of einzelgangin’ and is already being compared to legendary jazz soundtracks like Miles’ ‘Ascenseur pour l’Echafaud’ and such, but it reminds me most of all of Gato Barbieri’s Soundtrack for ‘Last Tango in Paris’ (orchestrated by Oliver Nelson). Anyway, it’s just a really, really awesome record which can be played at least four or five times a week when the wheather’s right. Much respect for all musicians, but extra special credits go out to piano player Gideon van Gelder who genuinely plays with the subtlety of someone who does little, but is probably capable of lots.