24->24 Music

Album Review

Of all the posthumous recordings in Arthur Russell's voluminous legacy, the Dinosaur L recordings from 1981, titled 24-24 Music on the original Sleeping Bag Records imprint, are the most delightful to listen to. While it's true in one way they are not the most musically sophisticated of his many recordings — and this is not a disclaimer, far from it — in another way they are. Who else heard then created improvisational, non-ironic, avant garde disco in 1981? The tunes here (at the time they were issued simply with numbered titles, and here are restored to their original names) are a series of preprogrammed beats, which change every 24 bars. Russell used two 24 track tape recorders (hence the title 24—>24) to capture the music which he very loosely scored and directed in a series of a five musical sketches, thereby allowing players to come in anywhere on any of the songs he created. He used the tape decks—and and ultimately the studio itself—as instruments. The studio band had to improvise everything else on top of the beats: from guitar lines, horns, vocals, keyboard vamps, basslines, etc.! The Ingram family were an established act, and had worked with Russell and Will Socolov on the Loose Joints sessions the year before and were used to Russell's inventive quirks. They are fully present here, as are saxophonist Peter Gordon, organist/vocalist Julius Eastman; tromboninst Peter Zummo, bassist Wilbur Bascomb, Jr., conguero Mustafa Khaliq Ahmed, trumpeter Rik Albani, guitarists Larry Saltzman and Ed Tomney, and vocalists Jill Kroesen, Denise Mercedes and Marie-Chantal Martin. The musical terrain is in the blurry hinterlands where disco, downtown avant improv, new music, and funk meet no wave playfulness. Many of these cuts were issued as 12" singles, such as "#1" ("You're Gonna Be Clean on Your Bean"); "#3" ("In the Corn Belt"), which has faux operatic vocals by a male baritone impersonating a tenor; "#5" ("Go Bang"), and so on. There is no way to actually describe what a blast this is to slap on the box and let it rip. In addition to the original tracks, Sleeping Bag and their parent company Traffic provided three bonus tracks on disc one: the François Kevorkian remix of "Go Bang," the Larry Levan remix of "In the Corn Belt," a strange extended edit of "Go Bang!," which is a minute longer than the orignal version. There is so much spacy groove here that this disc is simply impossible to ignore if you are a fan of either Russell, strange space funk, sci-fi disco, or simply a good time.