Post-Alarmist

Some of you jaded turkeys may be convinced that I'm so obsessed with Eva Saelens that if she were to belch in the studio for 40 minutes, I'd call it a work of genius (hmm...maybe so). But in this case, her work on the Post-Alarmist project is worth checking out. Eva, aka Inca Ore, was in a Portland, Ore. collective called Alarmist, along with Argumentix (James Squeaky), Ghost to Falco (Eric Crespo), and Tunnels (Nick Binderman). On this compilation, the four of them get together to offer spoken-word poetry, tenor saxophone squonkings, and random noises and hip-hop profundities that rank in the best of Inca's work. Yep, 2009 is off to a good start in music, and this is the type of project that should be emulated by others.

(P.S. I didn't take along the video camera, but got to see banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck play with Abigail Washburn and Sparrow Quartet Thursday night. Abigail is a Colorado College graduate who has mixed Mandarin-language folk songs with bluegrass and chamber music. Her collaborators on cello and violin (Ben Sollee and Casey Driessen) are chamber-trained musicians who play modernist classical with a bluegrass sensibility. There is a connection here with Post-Alarmist - quartets from another dimension.)

Inca Ore in Dublin

Good ol' Eva, always beyond your borderline, and mine too.

Inca Ore Nightmare Before Christmas ATP dec 06

Here's Inca Ore and her collaborator Michael "Lemon Bear," at All Tomorrow's Parties in England last December. I think she and Michael got married pretty recently! For more on Inca, check my earlier blog item.

In Praise of Inca Ore

There's been some fascinating debates on various blogs and listservs since September on the legitimacy of "primitivism" in improv music, and on whether people who appreciate improv/noise are inherently in a higher state of evolution than those who insist on musical structure. OK, I admit it, I've been tossing some well-meaning grenades at those who just don't grasp free-form improv. But isn't it deserved? Don't you get a little tired of 4/4 time?

The most interesting debate of late has been between the print magazine Rock-A-Rolla, and the online music review journal Tiny Mix Tapes, which recently reviewed the album Birds in the Bushes by Inca Ore and the Lemon Bear Orchestra. The reviewer ragged on a Rock-a-Rolla writer for calling Inca's work "absolute nonsense," and suggested you had to be a more highly evolved creature to grok what she was doing. Maybe this is harshly judgmental, but the TMT reviewer is right: if you don't understand what Inca Ore, a/k/a Eva Saelens, is doing, maybe you're just too stupid.

Inca, a native of mid-Michigan, was with several Portland bands before gravitating toward the Bay Area improv and noise scene courtesy of Yellow Swans. Her early stuff on Jyrk used a chanting voice to yield a musical version of Finnegan's Wake, particularly on A Knit of My Own Fibers and the expanded vinyl Brute Nature vs. Wild Magic. The reviewer battle this summer was over the merits of a strange and widely distributed CD she produced on the 5 Rue Christine label with a guy from Oakland named Lemon Bear. In the midst of chanting, jangling, and frightening sounds, she's toured with Jackie-O Motherfucker to give Tom's band a little more soul. Just in time for Christmas, Inca and Lemon Bear have teamed up with the Eureka, Calif. improv geniuses, Starving Weirdos, for a special jam CD-R. She's also done a duo CD-R with Tom Carter from Charalambides, called Rainbow Trout. Inca/Eva does not make "absolute nonsense." You either realize her name will be recognized in several decades, a la Terry Riley, Diamanda Galas, John Cage, or else you're stooooopid.