A certain grouchy state of mind this morning almost compelled me to break my own if-you-can’t-say-anything-nice-don’t-say-anything-at-all rule for the blog and post a list of disappointing albums of 2011. Instead, though, I figured it’d be much more constructive to round up a few things worth investing in. First up, as I may have said before, I’ve probably played Terry Riley’s music more than that of any other artist over the past few years, so the appearance of a legal bootleg from him on www.wolfgangsvault.com is a big deal. “Great American Music Hall (San Francisco, CA) Apr 23, 1983” is a group performance that hooks up Riley with frequent collaborator George Brooks on sax, plus a bassist and sitar player, with Riley on synths and singing in his best approximation of Pandit Pran Nath’s just intonation. The closest reference point in Riley’s discography that I can think of is maybe the “Lifespan” soundtrack, with its explicit Indo-fusion vibes, but the long unravelling contemplation is also happily close to “Persian Surgery Dervishes” and “Descending Moonshine Dervishes”. Not the worst place to start, either, if you’re just embarking on an exploration of Riley’s music. I’ve alluded to Tim Hecker’s “Ravedeath 1972” a bunch of times over the past few weeks, so God knows why I haven’t written something proper about this excellent record. Perhaps because Hecker’s particularly billowing take on ambience is hard to write about and pin down, not least since his music seems relatively unanchored: there’s no easy list of kosmische antecedents to deploy here, for instance. Last time I blogged on Hecker, around “An Imagined Country”, I wrote some about Fennesz and claimed, “Hecker achieves a tremulous, devotional atmosphere, using some reverberant organ tones.” On “Ravedeath 1972”, that idea is even more pronounced, since many of the tones in these atmospheric pieces originated from him playing an old church pipe organ. The resulting music, as a consequence, has the signifiers of ritual and requiem, while at the same time being pretty abstract. Still struggling a bit here, as you may have deduced, but I really can’t recommend this one enough – possibilities, even, that it may end up as one of the albums of the year. Moving unsteadily on to more music that’s tough to write about, I received a fantastically austere-looking boxset last week of Autechre’s “EPs 1991-2002”. I must admit my interest in Autechre has waned a little over the past few years, but listening back to these consistently amazing tracks makes me want to dig out the whole album catalogue from home and revisit it all. The biggest revelation, I guess, has been rediscovering just how ravey and direct their early singles sound; these self-consciously ‘futuristic’ workouts that still - in the wake of IDM, braindance and apparently infinite meaningless sub-genres of electronic music – sound progressive the best part of 20 years down the line. Here, on the likes of “Cavity Job” and “Basscadet”, is the hip-hop influence they’ve always talked about writ large, or at least much larger than in the days of granular synthesis (a quick check on the ATP website has just reminded me that their massively stimulating All Tomorrow’s Parties lineup included Public Enemy as well as Bernard Parmegiani and most of the early 21st Century Mego roster). Great stuff, anyhow, and I’m currently stuck on the immense “Second Peng”. There we go: always better to accentuate the positive.

I’ve never played guitar, so may not be the best person to judge, and I’m generally averse to wild comparatives and superlatives in music reviews. Watching Arbouretum last night, though – it was somewhere in the last quarter of “Song Of The Nile”, to be specific – I started to think that, just maybe, Dave Heumann might be one of the best guitarists I’ve seen play in years. We’ve been here before, of course: this is a link to my piece on Arbouretum’s wonderful recent album, “The Gathering”, which in turn links to some other stuff I’ve written on them, including a review of their 2009 Club Uncut show. For this return visit, the second guitarist has been replaced by a keyboardist, which deprives us of the fearsome Television-style face-offs, and consequently fixes the spotlight with even greater intensity on Heumann. Evidently, he can handle the attention; he’s the solo constant member of this gravitational Baltimore band, after all. Heumann’s solos tend to be intricate and precise freakouts, which operate within narrow margins until – as at that point in “Song Of The Nile” – he leans back and begins to shred. It’s an unflappable-looking virtuosity which drives solos like the straight-up astonishing one in “Waxing Crescents”. For an encore of “Pale Rider Blues”, he tones down the effects a little and comes on like a discreet successor to Jimmy Page. By this point, you suspect he could play just about anything, with the minimum of fuss. Heumann’s bandmates maintain a rigorous, locked-on drone backup for his excursions; in a set built mostly around “Gathering Songs” (“The White Bird”, “When Delivery Comes”, the Jimmy Webb cover, “The Highwayman”), they create a thicker, heavier sound than last time round (the tribal thud of “Waxing Crescents” climaxes, happily, with a drum solo). But to imply that Arbouretum’s songs exist merely as launchpads from which Heumann can embark on one expansive solo after another would be misleading. These are sturdy, thoughtful and resonant songs, rooted in English folk, their elaborate melodic complexities riding mystically over the stoner heft of the rhythm section. It reads like an awkward mix, but as these songs roll out with a heroically dogged, almost motorik momentum, it works superbly. Thanks to Arbouretum for playing, anyhow, and thanks too to Alexander Tucker for his support set: a more restrained and song-based affair (in keeping with his new “Dorwytch” album) than this last Club Uncut showing.

Strange to think that, when the first UK White Denim single turned up, they seemed to be more or less like a garage rock band. I was just re-reading my blog on their UK debut, “Workout Holiday”, and was amused to see some discussion in the comments about their relationship or otherwise with The Hives. Not much chance of that happening nowadays, especially with “D”. “D” is just about the fourth White Denim album in a confusing discography, which has encompassed different releases for the US and UK (“Austin’s Newest Hitmakers!”) and a download only album from last year, “The Last Day Of Summer”, that, embarrassingly, I only found out about last week. “The Last Day Of Summer” signalled a relatively softer, poppier shift in the band’s music, following 2009’s tremendous “Fits”. But while “D” reflects that to some degree (on “Drug”, in particular), White Denim’s modus operandi remains to hybridise radically clashing styles of music at an often bewildering speed. Certain elements and influences are played down this time: there’s less vintage Detroit rock, less Hendrix and Funkadelic. Instead, White Denim have never sounded more like a band from Texas, with an enhanced quotient of southern rock and country, among other things (check the beautiful closing Western Swing baroque of “Keys”, with its prancing steel solo). But at the same time the newly-expanded four-piece have never sounded more modern and experimental. A fair bit of “D”, then, could just about be classified as Southern fried math-rock: the amazing “Burnished” being a case in point, not least when it evolves into the instrumental “At The Farm”, which exists in an elevated jamming space about halfway between The Allman Brothers and The Boredoms circa “Vision Create Newsun”. It’s an amazing trick, facilitated by the loose/intense virtuosity of the players, and it’s one they fire up a few more times as “D” rolls on, culminating in the cycling, syncopated peaks in the second phase of “Bess St” – a song which begins at a manic chug, like some tooled upgrade of the 13th Floor Elevators (if only Roky Erickson had recruited these neighbours as his backing band instead of Okkervil River…). White Denim have been in this space before, briefly, on “Mirrored And Reversed” and, especially, the end section of “Say What You Want”. But “D” is a technical tour de force: “Anvil Everything” even resembles, I’m told, Yes’ “Relayer”, while “River To Consider” begins like a Fania jam, plus jazz flute, and also faintly recalls Stereolab’s “Percolator” (and/or, possibly, their cover of “One Note Samba”). I’m pushed to think, however, of a record where proggish/post-rockish tendencies are handled with such zip and joy, so that it sounds anything but uptight. “Is And Is And Is” starts off as kind of dappled psych, before ramping up into a stadiumish chorus in which James Petralli switches back to the deeper soul-rock bark that used to be his default tone. Soon enough, the systems-like, rippling patterns begin pulsing beneath the melody, so effectively that it seems as if White Denim have found a way to cross anthemic rock and Terry Riley in a way which recalls, but doesn’t exactly copy, The Who around “Baba O’Riley”. It sounds fantastic but, as ever, White Denim never hang around in one place for long. “Keys” lopes in, amiably, to take its place and, too quickly, this exciting, stimulating, quite brilliant album is over. A while ‘til it comes out, I’m afraid, but “Anvil Everything” is on White Denim’s website. Give it a go and report back, if you have a chance?

Sad news reaches us this morning about the death of Elizabeth Taylor, aged 79, from congestive heart failure. It's been a pretty grim year so far, with the passing of actors like Pete Postlethwaite and, last week, Michael Gough. Taylor's death, though, feels like the closing of a specific chapter in movie history. I suppose the fascination the media, and the general public, had with Taylor's relationship with Richard Burton prefigured our own obsession with celebrity culture. Of course, Laurence Olivier's off-screen relationship with Vivien Leigh had been a major pre-occupation for the papers in the 1930s and '40s. But Taylor and Burton seemed emblematic of a more glamorous and unattainable lifestyle; Vogue magazine covers, the 33.19 carat Krupp diamond, yachts, Swiss homes, royal friends. Along with John and Jackie Kennedy, the Burtons were arguably the most famous couple in world. The public interest in their private lives was constant, the media circus was unrelenting. The Burtons' decade long marriage, divorce, remarriage and final divorce gave us "Liz and Dick", the vulgar tabloid shorthand precursor to "Branjelina". But the Burtons seemed, to some extent, happy to channel their private lives onscreen: their initial courtship in Cleopatra (1963), the very public affair in The VIPs (1963), "the battling Burtons" in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? ((1966) and, wryly, The Taming Of The Shrew (1967). Taylor had been a child actress -- Lassie Come Home (1943) and National Velvet (1945). During the 1950s, she began developing a credible body of work -- A Place In The Sun opposite Montgomery Clift, Raintree County (her first Oscar nomination), Giant with James Dean and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof with Paul Newman. She started the 1960s well, with a Best Actress Oscar win for Butterfield 8, and then played opposite Burton in Cleopatra. Of course, it's impossible to know, had she not met Burton, where her career would have gone, what kind of work she'd had done, particularly as old Hollywood, of which she was such so emblematic, gave way to the New Hollywood of the Easy Rider generation. Her best work, certainly, was in the 1950s and 1960s; her best film, I'd say, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, a vivid, powerful performance as blousy Martha, barely suppressing the anguish and bitterness of her relationship with her husband, George, played brilliantly by Richard Burton. [youtube]nInE5TITzE8[/youtube]