Cato Salsa Experience & The Thing with Joe McPhee - Two Bands & A Legend (Smalltown Superjazz)
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
If you covered this covers album it would sound completely original. I'm not sure if that means anything, but if it does it is undoubtedly true. And though we can't really beat what Thurston Moore says about this band in the inlay (you'll have to buy the album to read that), we'll have a go anyway.
This is rock-sax, noise-jazz fun. This album makes you want to be alive, and then proceeds to give birth to you. It's probably the noisiest music you could still play at a parties (unless you're one of those people who only have friends that like noisy music, in which case you're lucky, but ungrounded). Hence, I'm looking forward to my next party, just so I can hear this in a room of people.
The recording sounds very much like sessions on the tracks are based around a couple of good simple melodies, then they have clearly all just run with it, and had a hell of a lot of fun. I am currently sawing off my right leg to see this band live, just in case that is the required tender for tickets.
The band, as you may have guessed, is made up of two bands, and a legend. The Cato Salsa Experience (everything that you wanted from the sixties, without the rubbish, split into to two channels - one channel driven through a bog and the other filled with the pure energy of good news), The Thing (Swedish rock-jazz, sound like polar bear warmed up - true players) and Joe McPhee (started recording in 1967 and has barely lived a day not near a microphone, as to capture every last fantastic squeek). There's always more Joe McPhee than the others, but you will always need more Joe McPhee.
This album solves problems. You don't need to like rock and jazz to love this recording, you need only to think one of them is o.k. If you like music you'll love this. If you're fat, don't go on a diet. If anything, eat more, just make sure you listen to this. You'll lose weight in no time. If you want to start wars this will stop you. If you are hungry this will nourish you. If you are diseased, you will die happy listening to this. To be honest with you it's a bit of a weird one to sit down at a computer and write about, I should be wrapped in fits on my living room floor but I am just about containing myself.
For the most part it's very simple - they are either fiddling around making noise with their instruments, or really rockin' out. But there is more. There's intense jazz poetry, and then some much more gentle pieces of music, particularly in 'You Ain't Gonna Know Me 'cos You Think You Know Me', in which every musician shows that they take a great deal of care in what they do. A lot of guitar players should listen to this album. No, just because you are playing a simple riff doesn't mean you shouldn't put every last bit of effort in to getting it to sound perfect, and we don't want to have defend a musicians right to mess around on a recording ever again in our lives but if we must, we must. Do not tell me that these people have not bothered to write songs and that you cannot see the point of this sort of music, these people have spent their entire lives getting really good at messing around.
The band cope fantastically with having eight people improvising together. The more times I hear two drummers play together the happier I am. If you're in a band with a drummer, by no means rule out getting another one. The two saxophonists compliment each other perfectly also, the one hammering out the sound of a fat duck with his baritone (the guy from The Thing) and Joe McPhee providing the most accurate noise of a being from another dimension I have heard to date.
Don't buy this album based on the fact that they're going to be successful. This is a project of people messing around and having fun. But I wouldn't want it any other way. However, do buy this album because it is that good. It's fantastic. Also, keep your ears open for The Thing (frontman Matts Gustaffon can be found knockin' it out with various other collaborators, notably Eye of The Boredoms), and obviously the legend is a legend - do your homework for that if you haven't done already - but one of the more intriguing elements that would be worth chasing up is the Cato Salsa Experience, a band who have a fantastic website, linked below, with lots of MP3s.
This is no 'Dark Side of the Moon', however, it does serve a function that no other album to our knowledge can - a disc to have on your shelf which actually has a use.
Download MP3s by The Cato Salsa Experience and The Thing with Joe McPhee HERE.
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