# Retconning X: Prog (Avant-rock, R.I.O.)

The term “rock in opposition” (R.I.O.) was coined in the late seventies. It was the name of a festival held by the band Henry Cow (at that point pretty much on its last legs as Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, and Slapp Happy import Dagmar Krause were about to commit to Art Bears exclusively; also, on a tangent, love that Krause is the first fully accredited band member/artist to make a repeat appearance in this column) in 1978 in London that featured several avant-rock bands who believed the record industry was too interested in profit and not enough interested in fostering musical community and political consciousness. Of course, this wasn’t exactly a new complaint from those on the fringe of progressive rock.

As I mentioned the last time we visited prog, my first real experience with R.I.O. (or the less specific “avant-rock” or “avant-prog”) was the Mothers of Invention album Ahead of Their Time (a 1993 issue of a 1968 concert, also in London). A young music fan in grade ten, having no preconceptions of what I was going to hear, I was pretty surprised by what I did: half-jazz, half-rock instrumentals defined by weird horn work and odd time signatures (at that point, I think “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues,” “Money,” and all those Led Zeppelin songs that Bonham refused to not play 4/4 during were likely the weirdest signatures I was used to), bizarre humor that I sort of got the politics to, all intercut with serial-based chamber music and a developing narrative about the band breaking up. It was a weird way to get into the band; the album’s a bit sloppy, and the release was more for historical purposes than anything else, but I quickly worked on getting all the early Mothers albums. Zappa’s composition and wild production provide a natural point of inception for the genre. His equal love of Edgar Varese, Eric Dolphy, and Johnny “Guitar” Watson define the basic template for R.I.O.: taking free and atonal jazz and classical serialism as inspiration to mix the avant-garde (with varying degrees of seams) into rock music. His band, which couldn’t always perform the music he composed, forced him to use tape manipulation and other studio tricks to achieve the results he wanted. 

Later variations tend to place less and less emphasis on the “rock” part of the whole equation. But even if results vary, the clear link between the avant-garde and R.I.O. unites these artists against the more traditional classical tendencies (apeing Brahms instead of Stravinsky, I mean) of their more traditional colleagues in art rock and symphonic prog. Another important link was the emphasis most of these bands placed on technology and the studio. Maybe that’s another influence of Zappa, but especially as the genre mingled with no wave and post-punk in a post-This Heat world, some avant-prog artists became increasingly reliant on technology as well as chops. 

This is my bread and butter in a lot of ways. Avant-prog tends to blur the lines of all the other best music I like; it’s “out” music in the best of senses, interested in the way sound can work, experimenting with those boundaries but never letting experimentation get in the way of song craft. If you can get onboard with the rhythmic foolery and the wild instrumentation you’ll find a world of wild music that almost never feels like it’s talking down to you (which is sometimes the case with bands like Yes and King Crimson); these bands don’t want you to be geeked at how brilliant they are so much as they want you to join in and get out with them. Which is why this music is far more nuanced, humorous, and political than art rock or symphonic prog. Like the work of the serialists and free jazz musicians it aspires to, the point is always about employing and parodying a whole range of artistic impulses to create a venue where political and personal impulses can be engaged with. There is (almost) always a message with avant-rock: be yourself in the face of a world of systemic oppression. It’s not always clean, there’s a lot to criticize in the way those politics are presented; however, the basic premise of post-war avant-garde is always present: drag the art out into the streets and make it mean something. Instead of trying to create evidence of the progress of culture, try to create a springboard from which culture can proceed.

## Mothers of Invention - Absolutely Free (1967)

Poor Lyndon Johnson, primary victim of three albums from Frank Zappa. Here he starts off the album sick and pissed off that nobody likes his policies (the Tet was still a few months away when the album was released, so once again Zappa proves himself weirdly capable of anticipating public opinion) before being chained to “Louie Louie”-remake “Plastic People,” a song just as critical of the police and government as it is of hippies and beats. Zappa was in the process of extricating himself from the Los Angeles freak scene; he was already in New York as the album was being released; his frustration at the Pandora’s Box riots on Sunset and the hyperbolic-but-apolitical aftermath (by his estimation, anyway) is highly evident throughout the album. As is the fact that MGM gave the band no budget to record the thing after the dismal sales of Freak Out! (1966). The result sounds like a collage, Zappa manipulating the tapes to even greater affect than he had with the band’s debut, band members shouting “wanna buy a pencil?” mid-song, fucked takes (listen to everybody laughing when Ray Collins ad libs the lyrics in “Duke of Prunes”) used regardless, and new band members Don Preston and Bunk Gardner (who, unlike the former members, could read music) running wild all over the place. The message of the album (so awesomely vocalized by Jimmy Carl Black during “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It” when he rich-kid drones “TV dinner by the pool / I’m so glad I finished school” is simple: play by the rules, get nowhere unless you already have money. Free yourself (and not with drugs, meditation, or any other hippy ideas; just decide you’re free) and create a whole new set of rules. Collins may have hated singing about vegetables, Roy Estrada’s R&B bass may have already been evidencing cracks when playing on stuff like “Son of Suzie Creamcheese,” and the main theme from Stranvinsky’s “Petruska” may sound absolutely ludicrous paired with a song about high school ostracism, but the drawbacks are far outweighed by the successful turns. Absolutely Free remains the best example of Zappa’s pre-Woodstock politics, and especially his interpretation of the avant-garde. Sure, we can drag the museums into the streets -- we can make everything absolutely free -- but how then are we gonna convince vegetable teenagers that “free” isn’t the same as “worthless”? With muffins, is the answer, although the real answer is: when you melt everything together like this, it all rocks.

## Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica (1969)

When that opening dissonance cuts beneath Don Van Vliet’s gorgeous melody (“My smile is stuck / I can’t go back to your frown land!”) the basic formula for this album is pretty clear: hot hooks obfuscated by tentacles of music. A method compounded by the fact that many of these gorgeous melodies were recorded away from the band in a separate room, live, where Vliet had to rely on the vague sound leakage through the walls. It’s obtuse shit, and consequently Trout Mask Replica has had its proponents slinging around any number of theories about why it’s good over the years: it’s philosophically erudite once you get past the dense imagery of his lyrics; the music sounds like free jazz but it’s actually rehearsed; you just don’t get what a genius Beefheart is! Yes and no. It is a work of genius, and John Peel was pretty close when he said that (at the time he said this anyway) “if there has been anything in the history of popular music which could be described as a work of art in a way that people who are involved in other areas of art would understand, then Trout Mask Replica is probably that work.” But it has its drawbacks, too. The album goes on for an eternity, for one, which is only a problem insofar as the difficulty of the music makes this one of those albums that is a strain to sit with. The sheer uniformity of vision (there are no breaks here; it’s all wild) is both breathtaking and maddening, and should you choose to unpack the image-laden lyrics (referencing everything from politics to Steve Reich to in jokes with producer Zappa about jellies) it’s quite the exercise. On the other hand, even as it unfolds deliberately and unstoppably at you it’s also built with a variety of ways into the euphoria: stray garage licks, free jazz, Vliet’s blues vocals, and those pristine, gorgeous melodies. Gorgeous and strange, Trout Mask Replica is still a unique document almost 50 years later. Who could improve on this?

## Residents - Third Reich 'N' Roll (1976)

Heh. What to say about this album? It’s a collage of old rock tunes reconstructed and overdubbed with new instrumentation and vocals, packaged in art that features Dick Clark as a Nazi leader holding a carrot, and it’s by a band that…well, almost 50 years later, and we still don’t know who’s in it. So it sounds awesome, it’s about the repression of the music industry, and it’s fun to play at parties (as long as you don’t mind people getting leaving because they’re pissed off). The album ends with what may be the most genius gesture of parody in the history of music, playing the vocal melody of “Sympathy for the Devil” as a guitar solo to the round out chorus of “Hey Jude.” Both classic tunes that stand respectively in our collective consciousness as the most pessimistic and optimistic anthems of the sixties (not saying they are; just assuming what a pole of a Superbowl halftime show might get you), the way the Residents blend them together creates the most cogent eulogy for a dead decade possible: the point is that all music is absolute fluff, even as it moves you.

## Aksak Maboul - Onze Danses Pour Combattre Le Migraine (1977)

Belgium’s Aksak Maboul would be a late addition to the R.I.O. collective; however, their masterpiece was recorded before the collective was formed. One of the earliest groups to employ drum machines and samples (the latter technique would be far more developed on their second album), the music here is collage work, a series of short mostly instrumental pieces that bleed into one another. Main members Marc Hollander and Vincent Kenis engage in a deconstuctive dialogue with all sorts of musical styles, throwing African rhythms alongside gypsy interludes and serialist horn fanfares. It’s unlike the other albums on this list because it doesn’t quite have the band feel that makes the other work; on the other hand, hearing the drum machine crank up an early disco beat on “Three Epileptic Folk Dances” makes up for that. The composition here is incredibly tight; the trace of 20th century composition is everywhere, both obviously in the arrangement of the woodwinds and brass and less obviously in the minimal passage of the less ornate pieces. The touch of minimalism is most obvious on “Mastoul Alakefak,” a beautiful track that unwinds peacefully. In fact, much of the album is peaceful, which may be its only drawback. The folded way Hallander composed these pieces could use a bit of upset; as it is, the album stands as one of the first successful attempts to create pop-patterned music based on world and serial forms.

## Zamla Mammaz Manna - Schlagerns Mystic (1978)

A Swedish group originally part of the R.I.O. collective, Samla Mammas Manna had changed their name to Zamla Mammaz Manna by the time they released the sublime Schlagerns Mystic. The album was a culmination for the band; moving away from the more typical prog modes of albums like Klossa Knapitatet (1974) and fully into their weird would of hinted-at circus soap opera and childhood despair. The title translates to “The Mystery of Modern Music”; the mystery is, apparently, the reason why kids are singing crazy folk tunes like the children of the corn (it’s all tape effects, I think, similar to the stuff Zappa did in the early years). For those of you impressed by the way Beirut employs gypsy ideas to accent his pop songs, here’s an album that takes Swedish folk and carnies as its starting pointing and proceeds to musically capture dark humor with an effortless that is consistently astounding. Like, if I was ever going to soundtrack a movie of Geek Love, here’s the inspiration. It sounds fluffy if you give it a superficial pass, but couched in that performance of circus life are all the tears of all the clowns, the pain of swallowing swords, and the secret masochist existence of the xylophone. This is also an example of what R.I.O. means in conventional terms: Lars Hollmer, Hans Bruniusson, Eino Haapala, and Lars Krantz aren’t really doing anything technically astounding (they could, and the live disc För Äldre Nybegynnare the Silence reissue is paired with certainly makes that clear, as does their early work) so much as mediating their instrumental prowess through concept to create skewed pop tunes. By which I mean, the genius of R.I.O. doesn’t always lie in technical complexity; it’s just as much about uprooting concepts about what rock is. I say: “rock, thy name is ‘Asphaltsong’.”

## Univers Zero - Heresie (1979)

Evil? Or just trying to be? Critics of these Belgian avant-rockers have argued that the “evil” is concocted to the point of absurdity, that the acoustic nature of the group deprives it of a full spectrum of tonal possibilities, or that the album sacrifices a lot for the attempted tone. I’m (perhaps surprisingly) pretty equivocal about it. There are pretentious moments, but there are also moments of sublime beauty, and while Univers Zero may not have been the very first band to pull shit like this, they’re certainly one of the first to pull it for so long. In a lot of ways, the album resembles the burgeoning work of Nurse With Wound and Coil; it is, especially in it’s opening moments, very sparse and overwhelming, as interested in the things that move in the shadows as it is in shadows themselves. Bandleader and drummer Daniel Denis plays with all sorts of textures throughout, especially once the forward momentum gets going about 9 minutes into the epic opener. Bassist Guy Segers throws in some laughable metal vocals (probably the worst choice on the album, simply because they aren’t very good). Guitarist and keybaordist Roger Trigaux plays a lot of nice accompaniement but never really takes over. The stars, however, are woodwind player Michel Berckmans and string player Patirck Hannapier. The interplay between the two (which sounds like more with all the overdubbing and mixing, courtesy of Etienne Conod) earns the band their relationship to their stated inspirations in Stravinsky and Bartók. Of course, that also raises questions about whether this music is as good as, say, “Rites of Spring” -- or at least as good as a small ensemble can make them. My answer is, I think, that it’s just different. Heresie is not, as some have suggested, the scariest music ever set to tape (hello, Homotopy to Marie!). Instead, it’s a gorgeous album that skirts all sorts of genres in its quest to redefine 20th century classical music in rock in roll clothing. Do they succeed? Not necessarily, but it’s a lot of fun watching them try to get there.

## Art Bears - Winter Songs (1979)

While Hopes and Fears (1978) was a Henry Cow spin-off album (the rest of the band wasn’t interested in playing the new vocal-based music Cutler and Frith were working on with Krause; however, they agreed to help record the first Art Bears album), Winter Songs was the first Art Bears album as an unaccompanied trio. Frith wrote the music and Cutler the lyrics (based on carvings from the Amien Cathedral in France) for each of the fourteen songs on the album. These are short songs; the longest just breach 3 and a half minutes. The recording process ups that intensity; the band would catch the sound of the track and commit it to tape directly, refusing to add any embellishments in post. The result is a series of tightly wound tunes that delve into the myths and memories of human ability and hubris. People note that the album isn’t as overtly political as Hopes and Fears; I’d argue that it’s political in a different way, employing religious allegory and obtuse concepts of divinity to highlight the same truths about the human condition as the band’s other work. But the vocals don’t matter so much as the way Krause delivers them, sneering and stolid as she seems to laugh at the “he”s that are the protagonist of each track. Cutler undercuts her deliberations with the kind of drum work that shows exactly why this band and This Heat are the porous boundary between R.I.O. and post-punk (and why no wave and out music in general were guided by this late-seventies/early-eighties sound for so long. Frith is a monster all over the album, exploiting guitar, bass, violin, viola, xylophone, and all manner of keyboards to color the sound extravagantly. It’s actually a bit awing how this album manages to be so internal and explosive at the same time (much of the credit should go to Conod, here again employing his beautiful editing and mixing); the instruments sound like they’re eating one another and growing fat on the protein. A perfect example of how a band can be experimental and erudite at the same time.

## Boredoms - Soul Discharge (1989)

It’s patently ludicrous that this album has yet to see reissue when pretty much every other Boredoms afterthought (with the recent Super Roots collection out) has seen the light of day. And while used copies of Shimmy Discs’ Soul Discharge/Early Boredoms comp are relatively easy to find and generally not too expensive the catch is that the album is featured as one uninterrupted track. Come on Vice, or Birdman, or Very Friendly, or whatever: buy this shit up and get it out. Noise rock and no wave wallow in R.I.O. flavored scatology, where the tautology of the moment is that bathos is serious shit and body (or bawdy) humor is high poetry. Boredoms have always exemplified avant-rock: their push/pull frenetics offset by the glee with which they attack them, their concept of what exact avant means constantly changing, and their long trip toward transcendence mediated by the things they keep with them on the journey. In other words, there’s hella continuity between Soul Discharge and Vision Creation Newsun (2000); if you don’t see it, or if you think the early shit is too infantile you’re missing stuff. Especially since without understanding the boorish tricksterism of their punk-tinged history Super Æ (1998) and Vision Creation Newsun basically amount to high grade jam band routes; the proof of why they’re better than that shit exists solely in the way they inflate the lukewarm humor of such -head groups into something wholly divine and utterly bullshit at the same time. Boredoms, more than perhaps any other band in existence, get that hard core antipathy is performance, and that onstage any other performance gets equal weight. It has to, because in this rush of instrumentation may sound chaotic or spontaneous, but the patterns are all R.I.O., launching Yoshimi’s drums and Eye’s vocals and Hila’s “buzz fuzz mix” and God Mama and No,1 Y and Human Rich Vox and “psychoalphadiscobetaudioaquadoloop sound” at you like the “jam sucker-hucker” you are. And that sense of self-awareness (even at the top of the pyramids they were building in the late nineties) is why Boredoms are such a fantastic group, and trump every psychedelic head-checking community-of-life bullshit hippie that’s ever picked up a guitar. They weren’t offering anything but sound; it’s always your job to interpret what it means. 

## Mr. Bungle - Disco Volante (1995)

I picked up Disco Volante used in a hawk shop sometime in 1996. Used because I was hesitant (their self-titled debut was so mindlessly stupid); bought because I was curious (mindless, yes, but also weirdly ambitious). Barring lame duck opener “Everybody I Went to High School with is Dead” (which doesn’t even get good in hindsight) and the awkward instrumental suite “The Bends” the album was a kick in the guts. Still is, in some ways, even if I’ve grown into misgivings about the band as I’ve hinted at in other reviews. In part that’s because it’s a band full of people (or at least two people) who have made no bones of their dislike for one another, which always throws a wrench into Mike Patton/Trey Spruance synergy for me. In part it’s because of the way the band worked: sure, they got how to use the studio, but every time they’re doing something cool it’s like they had to toss six other cool things on top of it just to highlight the coolness. The music on this album is about three parts in-joke (weird, since the lyrics are so ludicrously serious), three parts studio manipulation, three parts conceit, and absolutely no sense of restraint or real interest in writing songs that live for anything other than the moment. That’s fine, of course, except that it makes it hard to root for a band that obviously already knows just how cool they are, which in turn makes it hard to get inside this music. You watch it unfold and it’s brilliant, but don’t expect to feel anything. All of that said, if you’re not in a feely mood you could do way worse. “Chemical Marriage” and “Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz” are obvious indications of Spruance’s burgeoning Secret Chiefs 3 project, tying Middle Eastern scales to Patton’s weird vocalisms and Spruance’s surf-guitar fetish. His closer, “Merry Go Bye Bye,” is a rollicking tribute to Elvis, Jan and Dean, and Slayer at the same time. Patton’s contributions are mostly co-written; “Desert Search for Techno Allah” again driven by Spruance’s interest in Eastern music while “Violenza Domestica” employs gypsy rhythms to take the sting out of hearing Patton shove the microphone down his throat while intoning “escolta.” Clinton McKinnon shows up with “After School Special”; a needed frivolous break in the middle of the insanity. It’s Trevor Dunn who steals the show, however (somebody get him out of fucking Fantomas and into something awesome): his opener might bite the biscuit but both parts of “Sleep” and the sublime “Platypus” are the album’s secret weapons. They are the only songs that manage to successfully sound heartfelt in ways the rest of the album denies you, even if each represents the most heavy material on the album. Think of this as the ADD version of how R.I.O. ends up post-punk, no wave, and with readily available digital technology.

## Ruins - Hyderomastgroningem (1995)

And, on the other hand, Ruins. Cut from the same cloth as Mr. Bungle (associated with John Zorn, indebted to the Boredoms, Naked City, Painkiller, Samla Mannas Manna, Magma, and the rest of prog); wearing the clothing an entirely different way. This is more like the stuff Patton tries to make with Fantomas; that band isn’t really succeeding, but at least Patton had the sense to sign Ruins for 2002’s wicked Tzomborgha. So, basically: bass and drums duo (Ryuichi Masuda and bandleader Tatsuya Yoshida respectively) attempting (and succeeding) to sound like Magma and Samla Mannas Manna; vocals sung in Yoshida’s variant of kobaia; insane. I mean, it’s not really like Magma in the sense that the jazz is replaced by hardcore, but that sounds awesome too, right? The Ruins had been around for almost a decade by the time they released this album; it marks the culmination of many ideas in their repertoire (they would soon launch off the deep end with their next releases, ending up farther away from rock and closer to free improv. Sort of. I dunno; it’s complicated). Anyway: it is brutal, funky, and proggy at the same time that it exhibits the best ideas of noise rock, zeuhl, and no wave; it has painstakingly composed songs and free improv moments; both musicians are fucking fabulous; and for all those reasons it pretty much defies description. One way to look at it is to again think of the humor. With everything else going on, it’s easy to miss the ludicrous rock giant riffs Masuda throws in by chording the bass. These are rock junkies at the same time that everything they do is anti-rock. Another way to get into it is to hear how clever both band members are in their instrumentation. I was fortunate to see Yoshida on Khoenjihyakkei’s very brief North American tour last month; dude is fucking vicious on the kit at the same time that the sounds he create expand like punch lines through the mix. Every snare hit is clever repartee; every delayed snare hit is a taunt; every fill under the vocals is punctuation. He’s inviting you into the world of Ruins; the scariest hilarity you’ll ever encounter. Bottom line: I don’t get how you could possibly make rock music any more complicated than this. Period.