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Paradise (1975) by Sonny & Linda Sharrock
6.5
Apollo / End of the Rainbow / Miss Doris / 1953 Blue Boogie Children / Peaceful / Gary's Step
A
giant of a musician whose output and reputation are in serious need of a re-evaluation,
Sharrock is one of those musicians whose influence reaches so much further
than you presume can be possible with such an obscurity. While it's unlikely
you'll find a decent music store not offering any albums by Pat Metheny
or Bill Frisell, Sharrock's releases are scandalously hard to find nowadays.
Several reasons can be pointed out, though. First of all, Sharrock's early
reputation is mainly based on his session work, with Pharoah Sanders (on Tauhid
(1966), Sonny was doing things no one had even thought of yet), Herbie Mann
(with whom he played in the late 60s and early 70s) and Miles Davis (an un-credited
contribution to A Tribute to Jack Johnson), while his solo productivity
of the time wasn't exactly what you'd call impressive. Paradise was
his first album since the 1969-'70 duo of Black Woman and Monkey-Pockie-Boo
and like those first albums, it's not an ideal showcase for Sharrock's playing,
as it is surrounded by confusing elements, lack of focus and occasionally
annoying contributions from others, his wife Linda in particular. Also, after
this release, it would take Sharrock more than a decade to release another
album, but it kick-started the most memorable phase of his career, with a
few terrific solo albums and his involvement in the brutal avant-garde terrorism
of Last Exit. Not exactly a sellable product, there. Right when it seems that
Sharrock would reach a wider audience, he passed away in 1994, at the age
of 54.
In an interview, Sharrock once expressed the wish that Paradise would never see the light of day and that wish does make sense, as the album (which was a collector's item for years, but re-released in 2002) doesn't exactly know whether it wants to be fusion, world music or avant-garde, with some awkward stylistic shifts and turns as a result. In that respect, "Apollo" is representative for most of the album: starting off the proceedings with a light-paced African-tinged rhythm, Linda's wordless vocals and Sonny's exotic licks, it seems a rather conformist take on the exotic fusion of the day. Linda's sudden moaning (an annoying, throaty sound) already indicates this won't be your average jazz-funk album after all, and then the band suddenly switches to a keyboards-dominated section incorporating clavinet, Moog, piano, etc. It's nearly jazz-prog. After that, equally abrupt, the keys make way for Sharrock's guitar squalls & skronks. While it's nowhere near as metallic, distorted or puzzling as his earlier or later work, it tells you why the guy is held in such high regard. The influence of his peculiar style - feedback screams, sheets of sound, a wildly confusing array of effects, ultra-psychedelic shredding that takes the blues as a starting point, but quickly gets in orbit often ending up in extraterrestrial regions - can be heard in the work of artists as diverse as Adrian Belew, Robert Quine, Vernon Reid, Gary Lucas, Mark Ribot, Bill Frisell, Nicky Skopelitis, Elliott Sharp, Nels Cline, Eugene Chadbourne, Arto Lindsay and Billy Jenkins, while rock bands like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine wouldn't have sounded as they did and do, without Sonny's groundbreaking axe-work.
The other lengthy tracks - "Miss Doris," "1953 Blue Boogie Children" and "Gary's Step" range from 6:57 to 9:14 - follow the same pattern: you get a fairly conventional foundation (percussion-heavy fusion in "Miss Doris," bluesy in "1953," more restrained and nearly ambient in "Gary's Steps"), as the Sharrocks do their thing. While Sonny's guitar playing is often mind-boggling in its weirdness, combination of chaos and order (his playing on "1953" is as jerky as anything Carl Stalling ever composed), dissonance and tradition, Linda's contributions are less enchanting. Taking her cues from African clicking sounds, meaningless avant-garde vocalizing bringing Yoko Ono and Diamanda Galas together, and an imitation of - *fasten your seatbelt* - a wah-wah-pedal, her vocal histrionics easily surpass Sonny's performance on the "grating"-level. Contrary to the guitar playing, however, the vocals become really, really tedious after a while and even ruin the listening pleasure. Linda may look like Diana Ross's cute younger sister on the album, but her vocals can become disturbing examples of aural exorcism. The two shorter tracks - "End of the Rainbow" and "Peaceful" - are quite different: short, majestic pieces featuring washing cymbals, ethereal vocals and gentle percussive rumbling. They're almost pretty, as opposed to the awkward abrasiveness of the fusion tracks. In the end, Paradise defines frustrating. While the playing's competent throughout, Sonny's guitar work is the main and only relevant attraction here, as the songs often lack focus or are turned less interesting by the domineering vocals of Linda, who got a bit too much freedom here. Guitar aficionados will definitely find something of their liking here, but it's the next album - released eleven years after this one - that's the real stunner.
Guitar (1986)
9.5
Blind Willie / Devil's Doll Baby / Broken Toys / Black Bottom / Kula-Mae / Princess Sonata: Princess and the Magician - Like Voices of Sleeping Birds - Flowers Laugh - They Enter the Dream
By
the time Guitar - Sharrock's first full-length album since 1975's Paradise
- was released, the revolutionary playing style of the hulking musician had
finally become more recognized. You might even say that during that decade
an entire generation of guitarists had stood up that were directly and indirectly
very much influenced by Sharrock's dazzling pyrotechnics and furious amp abuse.
Whether it's the Voidods' Robert Quine, James Blood Ulmer or the legion of
NYC-based avant/rock guitarists, to some extent they suddenly all bore the
mark of Sharrock's earlier experiments. Way back in the mid/late 60s, Sharrock
was the first guitarist to attempt to come up with a six-stringed aural equivalent
of the influential revolutions of Davis, Coltrane & Coleman, and even though
the techniques used were radical - abrasive sheets of sound, grating drones,
turning the volume up so high the amp created overtones that could match the
forceful blowing of sax opponents - Sharrock's music and interpretations often
retained a very pure and melodic core that you couldn't find in the style
of, say, Derek Bailey, another seminal "free" player operating on a much more
abstract level. In Sharrock's oeuvre, the remnants of his blues roots are
always there, even though it may be hard to distinguish them with all the
noise he's making. By the early 80s, producer/bassist Bill Laswell invited
the guitarist (who had already passed 40) to his star-studded Material-project
and a bit later also in the monstrous free jazz super group Last Exit, consisting
of Laswell, Sharrock, drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson and Peter Brötzmann.
Around this time, Sharrock and Laswell also recorded the solo album Guitar,
an insightful and often brilliant exercise in guitar artistry that laid bare
what the jazz community had been missing out on.
Even though it's certainly not the kind of album to play during all circumstances (the record ultimately remains fodder for guitar aficionados and fans of experimental jazz/rock), there's an awesome, undeniable beauty to the way these overdubbed layers of guitar sounds convey Sharrock's style. Opening song "Blind Willie," perhaps Sharrock's signature song and one he already recorded on his 1969 album Black Woman (appearing as "Blind Willy") immediately offers a blueprint for most of the album: there's one abstract layer or riff that's repeated on and on, creating a kind of trance or drone, and on top of that, Sharrock lets loose with stunningly elegant improvisation (just listen to the sustained notes of "Broken Toys" and the four-parted "Princess Sonata), bluesy soloing ("Black Bottom") or seething and distorted noise ("Devils Doll Baby" and "Kula-Mae"). Regardless of how "challenging" this might seem on paper, the album's overall tone is one of meditation and beauty, not one of aggressiveness (as opposed to the brutally ferocious escapades on the Last Exit-albums). This is also where the strength of Sharrock's playing lies: despite the weight of tradition and a melodic core that prevents the music from becoming too "out there," the album retains a hypnotizing beauty that is unlike anything else that was being recorded at the time. As would be the case on his later collaboration with Nicky Skopelitis (Faith Moves), Guitar often betrays an almost Eastern feel of contemplation, especially when he's playing less distorted and in a higher register (on "Broken Toys," you get an idea of how it would sound if Santana played Chinese traditionals). At other moments - and this is probably where the "1986"-factor comes in - the guitar sounds almost resemble synth drones, but these 'colder' sounds are actually a nice break from the standard fuzzy guitar tones. Guitar may not be that striking on first listen - especially since it starts off with the subtly evolving "Blind Willie" - but it's an album that reveals more meaning and beauty with each spin, ultimately giving you a glimpse of the true core of Sharrock's music like few other of the albums he appears on do. And maybe if Coltrane had been a guitar player, he would've come up with something similar to this during his last years. That about sums it up. (Dec. 31st, 2005)
Read album reviews of similar or related artists: Bill Frisell - Gary Lucas - Sonic Youth