Thursday, March 27, 2008

JOHN KING-ELECTRIC WORLD, CD, 1989, USA





This largely tremendous but occasionally cringe worthy Downtown NY funk pop/art rock mutation is alternately pinned down and shrapnel shredded by the powerhouse rhythm section of David Moss (here restraining his vocal improv psychobabble to a few brief tracks) and Florida bassist Jean Chaine, who's solo album and work with Dimthings I've posted previously. King, who would go on to record a set of similarly addled tunes opposite Otomo Yoshide, Kato Hideki and Hoppy Kamiyama for Kamiyama's God Mountain label some 3-4 years later is an adept string squaller with a vaguely blues-based undergirding to his avant attack thats sometimes reminiscent of Elliott Sharp. Alas, he's also a songwriter that occasionally displays a dismaying penchant for tempering his more adventurous instincts with dopey late-model Zappa juvenilia. If you can take that sorta thing in stride, there's much wild creativity at work here. If nothing else, Electric World proves what a shit hot drummer Moss can be in a non-improv setting, effortlessly spinning on a dime between blistering free Centazzo-like runs across his modified kit and trickily dense funk grooves.

Get it Here

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

another treasure from the all too rare ear-rational catalogue, i guess! thx for this, vdo - never heard s'thing from king, but chaine and to a large degree moss were my eye-catchers here. thx also for your interesting review!

Calisan said...

Excelente!! Nunca habia escuchado de este artista pero es muy saludable conocer por donde iba el funk/avant-garde a finales de los ochenta para darse cuenta de donde proviene mucho de lo nuevo q' hay en la blogsfera!
Esta rareza nunca la voy a ver por mis tierras jeje!!
Gracias una vez mas! Mutant