Richard Maxfield / Harold Budd ‎– The Oak Of The Golden Dreams (1999)

Style: Modern Classical, Avantgarde, Contemporary
Format: CD
Label: New World Records

Tracklist:
1.   Richard Maxfield - Pastoral Symphony
2.   Richard Maxfield - Bacchanale
3.   Richard Maxfield - Piano Concert "For David Tudor"
4.   Richard Maxfield - Amazing Grace
5.   Harold Budd - Oak Of The Golden Dreams
6.   Harold Budd - Coeur D'Orr

Credits:
Robert P. Block - Violin
Bob Defrin - Cover Design
Edward Fields - Spoken Word
Terry Jenning - Saxophone
Fahrad Machkat - Violin
Charles Oreña - Sax (Soprano)
Nicolas Roussakis - Clarinet
David Tudor - Piano
Richard Maxfield - Composer, Electronics, Engineer, Sampling, Tapes
Harold Budd - Composer, Electronic Devices, Electronics, Performer, Tapes

This CD is a dual reissue of Harold Budd's The Oak of the Golden Dreams and Richard Maxfield's Electronic Music. The album presents complex, haunting, and evocative electronic soundscapes. In these examples of musique concrete occurs the odd coincidence of jazz motifs, Korean folk music, spoken word, and more. The ebb and flow of tape loops present an aural kaleidoscope, exciting to the ear, in Maxfield's pieces. Maxfield's works date six to ten years prior to Budd's 1969 and 1970 creations. More minimalist, Budd's two, lengthy (18:44 and 19:46) pieces feature ambient tone coloring out of a electric organ-like Buchla Box.

Tom Schulte / AllMusic

Fire! Orchestra ‎– Exit! (2013)

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation
Formar: CD, Vinyl
Label:Rune Grammofon

Tracklist:
1.   Exit! Part One
2.   Exit! Part Two

Credits:
Alto Saxophone – Anna Högberg
Baritone Saxophone, Clarinet – Fredrik Ljungkvist
Bass – Dan Berglund, Joe Williamson, Joel Grip
Bass Clarinet, Sintir [Guimbri] – Christer Bothe´n
Bass Saxophone – Jonas Kullhammar
Drums – Andreas Werliin, Johan Holmegard, Raymond Strid, Thomas Mera Gartz
Electric Bass – Johan Berthling
Electronics – Joachim Nordwall
Guitar – Andreas Söderström, David Stackenäs, Sören Runolf
Organ – Tomas Hallonsten
Piano, Electronics – Sten Sandell
Tenor Saxophone – Elin Larsson
Tenor Saxophone, Electronics, Conductor – Mats Gustafsson
Trombone – Mats Äleklint
Trumpet – Emil Strandberg, Magnus Broo, Niklas Barnö
Tuba – Per Åke Holmlander
Voice – Mariam Wallentin, Sofia Jernberg
Voice, Guitar – Emil Svanängen

Sometimes it's best not to predict. If the idea of expanding Fire!'s core trio of saxophonist/electric pianist Mats Gustafsson, bassist Johan Berthling and drummer Andreas Werlin into Fire! Orchestra's massive, 28-piece behemoth was based on the trio's extant discography— You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago (Rune Grammofon, 2009), Unreleased (Rune Grammofon, 2011), and In the Mouth of a Hand Rune Grammofon, 2012)—then a relentless album of high energy and high volume density would be expected. Which makes Exit! a complete and utter surprise, and in the best possible way.  

That's not to say there isn't plenty of cacophonous chaos amidst Exit!'s two-part, multi-episodic, continuous 44-minute suite; when there is, beyond its six reeds and five brass, a total of three keyboardists, four bassists and four drummers means plenty of potential for some seriously joyous noise, and given Fire!'s predisposition for unfettered and unrelenting improvisation, it's no surprise that, at times, the music builds to wave after wave of climactic peaks. And even when the dynamics drop, there's plenty of angularity clearly not meant for the faint-of-heart.  

Still, Exit!'s biggest surprise—though, following Gustafsson's career in particular, perhaps this should not be a surprise—is that it is a more dynamic piece that, if not exactly beautiful, does break down into quieter passages of greater clarity that allow for Arnold de Boers' text to be delivered—from near-lyricism to ululating freak-outs—by three singers including Sofia Jernberg, whose 2012 Trondheim Jazz Festival performance with The New Song made her an inevitable participant here.  

There's still plenty of freedom, and room for extremes like screaming, whammy bar-driven electric guitars and electronics from a number of sources including Gustafsson, whose occasional unmistakable solo—here, on tenor saxophone rather than the baritone more commonly associated with Fire! (leaving that to fellow Swede, Atomic saxophonist Fredrik Ljungkvist)—is of the visceral, cathartic nature that's become a personal signature. But with its broader dynamic range and Gustafson's conducting, Exit! is somehow more eminently accessible than Fire!'s usual work, the inevitable consequence of past large ensembles like bassist Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra and keyboardist Sun Ra's Arkesta. Still, neither of these precedents had Berthling and Weliin's joined-at-the-hip grooves, which drive most of the proceedings. Further bolstered with additional players including drummer Raymond Strid and ex-Esbjorn Svensson bassist Dan Berglund, they're even more potent as the group shuffles through a variety of meters ranging from the ¾ ostinato that drives the opening of "Exit! Part One" and the slower, greasier groove in its second half, to the fiery 5/4 rhythm that emerges from the freer opening of "Part Two."  

Exit! ultimately ends with a cluttered free-for-all the builds from sparer, more defined components to an ending more in keeping with Fire!'s usual modus operandi, as more and more of the musicians enter the fray, leading to five minutes of truly joyful abandon. It's a fitting ending to this expanded version of Fire! that's unequivocally its greatest accomplishment to date. Broader instrumentation and a stronger sense of construction make Exit! both an exhilarating first experience and one to return to time and again, as its multiplicity of rewards unfold with each and every listen.

John Kelman / All About Jazz

Fire! ‎– You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago (2009)

Style: Psychedelic Rock, Contemporary Jazz
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Rune Grammofon

Tracklist:
1.   If I Took Your Hand...
2.   But Sometimes I Am
3.   Can I Hold You For A Minute?
4.   You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago

Credits:
Producer, Written-By – Fire!
Recorded By, Mixed By – Johan Berthling
Recorded By, Recorded By, Mixed By – Andreas
Drums, Percussion – Andreas Werliin
Double Bass, Electric Bass, Electric Guitar, Organ – Johan Berthling
Tenor Saxophone, Baritone Saxophone, Electronics, Electric Piano – Mats Gustafsson

From the aggrieved, visceral tenor sax wailing which harries the first five minutes of this album, you could easily be forgiven for thinking this was another typically idiosyncratic dive into the deep end of out-there improv by Sweden’s Mats Gustafsson. 

After all, the dust has barely settled since the release earlier this year of the power-jazz freak-outs of his other outfit, The Thing, with their album Bag It. But after those initial opening moments, it quickly becomes obvious that unlike the other Gustavsson-led trio, Fire! is an altogether more meditative proposition. 

Gustafsson (saxes, electronics and Fender Rhodes) is joined by Johan Berthling (acoustic and electric basses, guitar, and Hammond organ) and Andreas Werliin (drums and percussion), and whilst Gustafsson’s trademark honk is never far from the surface, it is tempered by settings that are subtle and gently persuasive.  

But Sometimes I Am gradually coalesces around a pulsing Hammond drone, with Werliin delivering one of those sure-footed shuffles which Can’s Jaki Liebezeit used to conjure up. The appearance of vocalist Miriam Wallentin on this track and her Damo Suzuki-like moans and mumbles only strengthens the association with the venerable German avant-rockers. 

The mood on other pieces is just as hypnotic. Can I Hold You for a Minute? positively sizzles with distorted, shimmering keyboards, whose single notes are fuzzed-up to near breaking point. The resulting heat-haze, underpinned by steady bass and rolling drums, provides a mesmeric backdrop for Gustafsson to be anything but careful with his sax. 

There’s no doubting the impressiveness of the outré fireworks which frequently burst across the album. Yet it’s the sense of control and restraint which is perhaps the most striking aspect of Fire!’s methodology. Rather than letting it all hang out, the tension created in keeping things constantly teetering on the cusp makes this a relative white-knuckle ride from start to finish, albeit with more control than The Thing's wild tangents.

Sid Smith  / BBC Reviews

Paul Quinn & The Independent Group ‎– Will I Ever Be Inside Of You (1994)

Style: Indie Rock

Format: CD, Vinyl, Cass.

Label: Marina Records,  Postcard Records

Tracklist:
1.   Will I Ever Be Inside Of You
2.   You Have Been Seen
3.   Lover, That's All Over
4.   Mooreefoc
5.   A Passing Thought
6.   Outré
7.   Misty Blue
8.   Stupid Thing
9.   At The End Of The Night

Credits: Engineer – Kenny Macdonald Mastered By – Duncan Cowall
Producer – Alan Horne, Blair Cowan Performer – Alan Horne, Andy Alston, Blair Cowan, Campbell Owens, James Kirk , Jane Marie O'Brien, Mick Slaven,
Paul Quinn, Skip Reid

Glaswegian ex-Orange Juice" backing vocalist Paul Quinn finally brought his own rich deep tones to the fore on his 1995 debut, Will I Ever be Inside of You, cut alongside a coterie of musicians including fellow Orange Juice-ers Alan Horne and James Kirk. 

Within the framework of the Independent Group, Quinn's so-distinctive voice, which lands somewhere between Bowie, Lloyd Cole" and Scott Walker, spins out in front of what amounts to a series of interesting, but unobtrusive, backing melodies. The opening title track is a dirgy, longing lament loaded with odd electronic bits and pieces, as well as an ethereally brief chorus. "Lover, that's you All Over" meanwhile, is a sparse, guitar twang that vividly repaints some of the alternative post punk's gloomier acoustics. And, while the rest of Will I Ever be Inside of You follows along in the same sort of vein and, while it's also true that Quinn doesn't break any new ground, there are some absolute gems in the set, as "Misty Blue" unravels like some long lost ballad spun through cobwebs, and the closing "At the End of the Night", with its subtly buried rhythm, plays out a somewhat beery, and completely fitting nightcap. 

Often startling, Quinn loads Will I Ever be Inside of You with unexpected dips and twists, keeping the mood fairly somber, but ensuring that anyone taking the chance can't settle in and kick back too easily. Sweet and just slightly sinister, this set can't be ignored -- it's gorgeous fodder for the older doom and gloom set. 

Amy Hanson / AllMusic

Paul Quinn And The Independent Group ‎– The Phantoms & The Archetypes (1992)

Style: Pop, Pop Rock
Format: CD, Vinyl, Cass.
Lavel:

Tracklist:
01.   The Phantoms & The Archetypes
02.   Born On The Wrong Side Of Town
03.   What Can You Do To Me Now?
04.   Should've Known By Now
05.   Punk Rock Hotel
06.   Superstar
07.   Call My Name
08.   The Damage Is Done
09.   Darling I Can't Fight
10.   Hangin' On

Credits:
Bass – Campbell Owens
Drums – Tony Soave
Guitar – James Kirk, Robert Hodgens
Keyboards – Blair Cowan
Producer – Edwyn Collins

VA ‎– Spiritual Jazz Vol.8 Japan: Parts I & II (2018)

Style: Modal, Contemporary Jazz, Avant-garde Jazz, Soul-Jazz
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Solid Records, Jazzman

Tracklist:
1-1.   Mitsuaki Kanno - Kumo No Ito
1-2.   Tadao Hayashi - My Favorite Things
1-3.   Minoru Muraoka - Positive & Negative
1-4.   Takeo Moriyama - East Plants
1-5.   Koichi Matsukaze - Under Construction
1-6.   Sadao Watanabe & Charlie Mariano - Ragam Sinthubairavi
1-7.   Shungo Sawada - Footprint
1-8.   New Direction For The Arts - Sun In The East
2-1.   Four Units - Scarborough Fair
2-2.   Tohru Aizawa - Sacrament
2-3.   Keitaro Miho - Kikazaru
2-4.   Tee & Company - Spanish Flower
2-5.   Takeo Moriyama - Watarase
2-6.   Kiyoshi Sugimoto - Babylonia Wind
2-7.   Toshiko Akiyoshi - Kisarazu Zinku
2-8.   Yoshio Ikeda - Whispering Weeds

You wait years for a decent Japanese jazz compilation to arrive and several turn up at once. Stacked with enough lengthy modal jams to warrant two double-LP releases, this latest paean to the long-verdant eastern scene arrives hot on the heels of BBE’s recent superlative overview. 

Compiled by collector and DJ Yusuke Ogawa, it’s less rarity-heavy than its BBE sibling and several tracks will already be well-known to Western jazz fans. Minaro Muraoka’s DJ Shadow-approved Positive And Negative is one such crossover; its melding of Japanese shakuhachi flutes with groovy guitars and break-heavy drums a clever cross-pollination of east and west. 

Recognised names such as Sadao Watanabe (who, in partnership with Charlie Mariano, contributes the shimmering indo-jazz jaunt Ragam Sinthubairavi), alongside a number of Western standards such as Tadao Hayashi’s perky, harp-heavy, Coltrane-indebted My Favourite Things, give the compilation a broad appeal. Japanese jazz often seems to thrive over extended lengths and the sublime modal workouts of Mitsuaki Kanno’s Kumo No Ito, Tee & Company’s Spanish Flower and Kiyoshi Sugimoto’s Babylonia Wind use their elongated track times to successfully flesh out ideas and mine some brilliantly hypnotic grooves.

Paul Bowles / Record Collector

Sly & Robbie Meet Nils Petter Molvær Feat Eivind Aarset And Vladislav Delay ‎– Nordub (2018)

Style: Fusion, Dub
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Okeh

Tracklist:
01.   If I Gave You My Love
02.   How Long
03.   White Scarf In The Mist
04.   Strange Bright Crowd
05.   Norwegian Sword Fish
06.   Was In The Blues
07.   European Express
08.   Dream Drifter
09.   Rock-Stone Noah Bingie
10.   Politically KKKorrrekkkttt
11.   Neil Five (Bonus Track)

Credits:
Bass – Robbie Shakespeare
Drums – Sly Dunbar
Electronics, Percussion – Vladislav Delay
Guitar, Electronics – Eivind Aarset
Sampler, Programmed By, Organ, Strings – Jan Bang
Trumpet – Nils Petter Molvær

Some albums are "good", "great" even, but you don’t return to them that often. Other albums, like Nordub, a new release featuring drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare, get right under your skin.  

There’s a moment in the middle of White Scarf which is sheer Nordic bliss, washes of glassy sound, multiplexed muted trumpet (from Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær) with noises that might have come from deep in the dark recesses of a haunted machine – a battered laptop or an ancient analogue mixing desk.  

The Dub genre has prompted some interesting collaborations. We’ve heard the explorations of Bill Laswell (incorporating Sly and Robbie) plus the benign, seductive appropriation of the Gotan Project. King Tubby, one of Dub Reggae’s most innovative artists, was known to have been a big jazz collector, who sought to achieve the freedom of his favourite improvisers in this freewheeling approach to record-making, using the mixing desk as an instrument – see ‘Ghosts in the machine’ (Guardian, 2004).  

Sly and Robbie have been Reggae royalty and first-call sessioneers for donkey’s years – working with everyone from Grace Jones and Ian Dury to Shaggy and Serge Gainsbourg. They are prolific producers and artists, too, and their influence on popular music is hard to overstate.  

The Nordub project brings their backline skills to the front in a new way, in a glorious meeting of empathetic talents. There’s a gentle firmness to the drums and bass that complements Eivind Aarset’s icy guitar soundscapes. Defiant analogue effects (the "ping" of overdriven spring reverb; tape delay that spins on the cusp of feedback) rub up happily against the cleaner digital sounds and echoes we expect from European blue-screen nu-jazz.  

Shakespeare sings on How Long (an original, not the Paul Carrack hit) and Was In The Blues. The two vocal numbers add pleasing warmth to the otherwise instrumental and electric album.  

Nils Petter Molvær leads assuredly without dominating – the rapport between his trumpet and Aarset’s guitar is as thrilling as it was on Khmer and Solid Ether nearly two decades ago. The wonderfully named Finnish co-producer Vladislav Delay (live dub, percussion) fills in the sonic spaces between soloists and celebrated rhythm section. Yet if you let the album wash around your sound system for a while, you realise that this is a kind of music where "Everyone solos and nobody solos", to quote Weather Report’s famous dictum. 

Standout tracks include If I Gave You My Love and European Express but there are no duds. The album is sensitively produced by Jan Bang, and well sequenced, but it sounds just as good on shuffle play. Nordub is that rare thing, an uncompromising crossover album – a contemporary work that already sounds like one for the ages. 

John L Walters / London Jazz News

Harry Partch ‎– The Harry Partch Collection Volume 4: The Bewitched (1997)

Style: Contemporary, Experimental 

Format: CD
Label: Composers Recordings Inc. (CRI)

01.   The Lost Musicians Mix Magic
02.   Three Undergrads Become Transfigured In A Hong Kong Music Hall
03.   Exercises In Harmony And Counterpoint Are Tried In A Court Of Ancient Ritual
04.   The Romancing Of A Pathological Liar Comes To An Inspired End
05.   A Soul Tormented By Contemporary Music Finds A Humanizing Alchemy
06.   Visions Fill The Eyes Of A Defeated Basketball Team In The Shower Room
07.   Euphoria Descends A Sausalito Stairway
08.   Two Detectives On The Tail Of A Tricky Culprit Turn In Their Badges
09.   A Court In Its Own Contempt Rises To A Motherly Apotheosis
10.   A Lost Political Soul Finds Himself Among The Voteless Women Of Paradise
11.   The Cognoscenti Are Plunged Into A Demonic Descent While At Cocktails

Credits:
Bass Clarinet – Joseph Firrantello
Cello – Peter Farrell
Chorus – The Chorus Of Lost Musicians
Clarinet – Warren Birkett
Composed By, Supervised By, Liner Notes – Harry Partch
Conductor – John Garvey
Ensemble – The University Of Illinois Musical Ensemble
Koto – Carol Zuckerberg
Marimba – Warren Smith
Marimba – Danlee Mitchell
Marimba, Voice, Leader [Chorus] – William Olson
Organ – Herbert Bielawa
Other – Brian Conley
Percussion, Marimba – Thomas Gauger
Percussion – George Andrix
Percussion – Michael Donzella
Piccolo Flute – Charles Delaney
Vocals (The Witch) – Freda Schell
Zither (Harmonic Canon) – Barbara Grammar, Georgi Mayer
Zither (Kithara Left Side) – Jan Bach
Zither (Kithara Right Side) – Sanford Berry
Zither (Surrogate Kithara), Gong – Jack McKenzie

The earliest surviving recording of Harry Partch's "Dance Satire" The Bewitched was made in 1957 from a production of the work given at University of Illinois and originally issued on his own Gate 5 Records. This is one of Partch's longest continuous works of music and perhaps the most successful realization of his ideas about ritual theater, which he hoped in vain to make obsolete the "music drama" of Richard Wagner, to be produced and recorded during Partch's own lifetime. Indeed, The Bewitched has an almost Wagnerian scale, but is wildly different in just about every other way. To what extent can be gauged simply by mentally visualizing one of Partch's characteristic scene settings: "Visions Fill the Eyes of a Defeated Basketball Team in the Shower Room." The music, played by an orchestra of 18 Partch instruments, is some of the most elaborate and complex that he ever conceived. However, Partch goes to greater extent to incorporate alien styles and ideas in The Bewitched perhaps more so than in any other work this side of The Dreamer That Remains. 

The Bewitched serves as the fourth and final volume in CRI's Harry Partch Collection. This is not performed by the Gate 5 Ensemble so often credited on Partch's Gate 5 Records, which sometimes consisted of just himself, overdubbed, playing all the instruments. For The Bewitched Partch trained two dozen musicians, dancers, and actors from the University of Illinois to realize his vision. There was never a tighter and more disciplined group of Partch musicians than these, and the album is justifiably a classic. Since CRI's demise in 2002, its Harry Partch Collection, including The Bewitched, has been taken over and greatly improved by New World Records.

Dave Lewis / AllMusic

Sean Khan, Hermeto Pascoal ‎– Palmares Fantasy (2018)

Style: Latin Jazz, Soul-Jazzy
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Far Out Recordings

Tracklist:
1.   Moment of Collapse
2.   Waltz For Hermeto
3.   Palmares Fantasy
4.   Said
5.   Montreux
6.   The Conversation
7.   Tudo Que Você Podia Ser (All That You Could Be)
8.   The Blonde
9.   Your Way Not My Way

Credits:
Mixed By – Daniel Maunick

Palmares Fantasy is the fifth album to be released by British saxophonist Sean Khan under his own name or as the leader of SK Radicals. Like its predecessors, it is a blinder, in touch with the jazz tradition while absorbing influences from beyond it and wearing its political heart on its sleeve. The music is characteristic of Khan's wide-angled aesthetic. To make it, he travelled to Rio de Janeiro to collaborate with fellow outsider, multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal, and other luminaries of the Brazilian music scene, and took the album's title from a settlement established by escaped slaves in northeastern Brazil some 400 years ago. Khan's liner note for the title track observes that while most of Palmares's population was made up of ex-slaves, many deserter conquistadors also joined the settlement, making it a rainbow-hued community of rebels. The album is a utopian jazz message for a world in crisis, spiritual jazz informed by samba's revolutionary tradition.  

Despite his talent, Khan remains strictly niche. Partly, this is of his own making. Partly, he is regarded as too subversive by Britain's jazz establishment. Khan is a largely self-taught musician. He was unable to afford his teenage dream of studying at Boston's Berklee School of Music, and was rejected by London's Guildhall School of Music for being "too raw." He became disillusioned with the exclusivity and institutionalisation of the jazz world, but his love for the music remained and he taught himself alto and soprano saxophone, clarinet and flute.  

Pascoal, who Miles Davis once called "the most impressive musician in the world," is another self-taught maverick. The two autodidacts make a dream team here and the rapport between them is brilliantly showcased on the unaccompanied, free-rhythm duet, "The Conversation." Other guests include, from Brazil, Azymuth drummer Ivan Conti, bassist Paulo Russo, nu-bossa vocalist Sabrina Malheiros and Cinematic Orchestra frontswoman Heidi Vogel and, from Britain, guitarist Jim Mullen.  

Palmares Fantasy is an instrumentally focused album, but vocals are an important element of several tracks, notably the opener, "Moment Of Collapse." Khan's meditation on the instability of modern Western civilisation, the piece is gorgeously sung by Vogel over a richly arranged string-section and Alice Coltrane-like harp. Seven of the nine tracks are Khan originals. The other two tunes are Pascoal's lovely "Montreux" and an uplifting soul-jazz take on Milton Nascimento's MPB classic "Tudo Que Voce Podia Ser," sung by Malheiros.  

Palmares Fantasy is the sound of summer—with an edge.

Chris May / All About Jazz

The Durutti Column ‎– Obey The Time (1990) (1998 Reissue)

Style: Avantgarde, Experimental
Format: CD
Label: Factory Once, London Records

01.   Vino Della Casa Bianco
02.   Hotel Of The Lake 1990
03.   Fridays
04.   Home
05.   Art And Freight
06.   Spanish Reggae
07.   Neon
08.   The Warmest Rain
09.   Contra-Indications
10.   Vino Della Casa Rosso
        The Together Mix
11.   The Together Mix
12.   Fridays (Up-Person Mix)
        Trade 2 Singles Club
13.   Kiss Of Def

Credits:
Programmed By, Engineer – Paul Miller
Written-By – Vini Reilly

For all that the previous album was called Vini Reilly, Obey the Time was in fact Durutti's most specifically Reilly-only release yet. Even percussion stalwart Mitchell only appeared on one track this time around, the fine, subtly uplifting punch of "Art and Freight," partially due to where Reilly's head was at this time around. Inspired by the late-'80s acid house revolution in England, with his native Manchester firmly at ground zero, Reilly aimed to combine that with his usual guitar approach to see what would happen. Where in nearly any other hands this would have been a pathetic crossover disaster waiting to happen, the end results are gratifyingly like what his compatriots in New Order did the previous year with Technique, synthesizing up-to-date styles to create something distinctly different. Even a title like "Spanish Reggae," which sounds like something out of world music hell, turns out to be both accurate and not a nightmare, with light flamenco snippets and other electric guitar work from Reilly fed through heavy dub echo over a slow, just menacing enough modern dancehall rhythm. While most of the percussion patterns Reilly creates aren't specifically acid in sound, reflecting more hard-slamming electro and synth-funk from earlier years, there's enough of the cusp-of-the-'90s about everything to show he wasn't dating himself. Keyboard stabs, as on "Fridays," clearly show techno's favoring of stuttering, choppy melodies, while Reilly's own knack for what suits a song best means sometimes it's more gentle acoustica and other times full-on electric shimmer and drive. "Hotel of the Lake, 1990" demonstrates his skills well, with a steady beat and clean, funky guitar and bass work accompanied by whooshing, minimal synth loops and, reappearing throughout the song, a classically Durutti five-note guitar melody with deep echo. Other numbers like the gently dramatic "The Warmest Rain" make Obey the Time another fine Durutti release. The 1998 reissue includes a 1990 dance mix by Together and, in an interesting discographical switcheroo, a moody jungle remix of "My Last Kiss" from 1998's Time Was...Gigantic album called, in a knowing nod to New Order's "The Perfect Kiss," "Kiss of Def."

Ned Raggett / AllMusic