Customer Reviews

Destroy All Nels Cline

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

With Destroy All Nels Cline, Nels and friends continue to create some of the best electric music happening right now.

Based both in great composition and outrageous improvisation, Destroy gives us everything from blazingly gorgeous rock guitar (Nels' solo on Chi Cagoan) to alien robots chattering with each other as they hover overhead collecting data (beginning of Martyr).

If you already own one of Nels' other great cds, The Inkling, you also get the pleasure of hearing and comparing/contrasting the Destroy version of Spider Wisdom with the Inkling version. I prefer the Inkling version because Zeena (electric harp) is incredible on that version, but there's certainly nothing wrong or uninteresting about this version.

If for no other reason, buy this cd just so you can hear the incredible final quarter of After Armenia. Whether we're talking Chest, Interstellar Space Revisited, The Inkling or whatever else, After Armenia is one of my favorite Nels moments on record.

Guitarist Nels Cline's two group albums leading up to this release were jaw-dropping forays into some of the most difficult modern sounds imaginable: "Interstellar Space Revisited" was just that, a love letter to John Coltrane and Rashied Ali's legendary duets album performed on guitar and drums, while "The Inkling" merged Cline's mercurial out-jazz playing with spacious minimalist and modern-classical arrangements. The logical follow-up, then, is "Destroy all Nels Cline," in which the guitarist and guests -- including electric harpist Zeena Parkins, Guitarist/Scarnella member Carla Bozulich, and Nels' brother, drummer Alex Cline -- squeeze progressive-rock mega-structures, minimalist counterpoint workouts and free-jazz firestorms into a 76-minute blast through genre borders. As with "The Inkling," most of the tracks here take their sweet time to develop (this ain't casual listening); but the band members' playing is so detailed, so passionate and so damned interesting, you'll think they're cooking even when they're cooling down.

How would you like some grease rubbed over your axle, Spazzy Chassis?

BOOPEDOOP!! I am from Planet Velocoraptor and I have come to collect your tongues. Now put on these eggs and lock up the wigs for the night. Sleep in this self-imposed cage, bathing the mirror in wax eyelight.

Hey, Hawkwind! Hey, Sonic Youth! Come suck on this!

Gristle flings itself out of the inner wind, sticky as knives. Bearable confusion wafts through the room, on stilts and pumps and sprinkled with cancerous flanges, shoulders puffed up like seat rests. Bug-beaked, befudged and brimming with velocity, my army evacuates all over the oily beach, collecting pimps like stamps.

You're closing the door on the sopranos pickled in fur. Jupiter is fruit-filled. Vision retreats, a mere external distraction. And then out pops baby, alarm clock and all.

Oh, yeah, I'm like Jackson Pollock on the guitar dot dot dot slash long dash BOOM ("pluck") squueeEEEAKK!!

this is music for your soul. it is not just post-rock, non-linear, art rock or whatever, it is the world, no wait it is the song of the world--golden, glorious, foreboding, mournful, radiant--everything you can dream and feel and know and think all somehow are here without any pretension, overstatement or melodrama. i am not an instrumental musakgeek but this one got me. i'm sure if i mostly listen to sara evans and love this others will too.

Cline's abilities on the guitar are, in a word, stupendous. Within seconds, the opening cut "Spider Wisdom," displays a fusion of avant garde free jazz, no wave, and angular melody. This skillful weave of styles, along with weird ear-tickling noises coaxed out of the guitar and various electronic effects and the equally impressive improv skills of his sidemen (such as his talented percussionist brother Alex Cline) continues throughout the album, making this yet another essential for fans of Cline's guitar work.

"Destroy Nels Cline" is notable for listing 4 guitar players for every song, plus a bass player who is credited with playing some guitar, plus an electric harpist on 4 songs. In theory, you could have as many as 6 stringed instruments going at a time. In practice, you hear one or two guitars playing notes, and maybe another guitar or two making a little noise in the background. So, despite the skronky title, this CD is much easier to approach than you might think.

It starts with "Spider Wisdom", which is fairly free and clean for the first five minutes. Nels uses an overdriven tone throughout the CD, this one has a repeating motif, then the last two minutes are a barrage of feedback and screetches. "Chi Cacoan" begins with a bass riff underneath some rock strumming, then Nels tells a story with his guitar. This has some of the best guitar playing. "The Ringing Hand" is a slower, quieter song. On this CD, if I call a song quieter, it means that much of it is quieter, then there are crescendoes in parts. This is a very dynamic CD. "Talk Of A Chocolate Bed" is relatively noisy, the guitar playing seems to alternate between skipping over the fretboard and noisy parts. "After Armenia" is more of a tone poem. "Progression" is more of a typical song - of course the guitar playing is very creative. "As In Life" is a long tribute to Horace Tapscott. This song is orchestral in the sense that motifs come out, things repeat, build slowly, and so forth. It's compositionally impressive, and I like it. "Friends Of Snowman" is a tinkly relief after the ending intensity of "As In Life". "Martyr" starts off almost silently and goes abstractly for quite a while, before ending in a good riff.

I like this CD, and even though it isn't 77 minutes of unrelieved noise and guitar assault, be aware this isn't a Joe Pass CD. Nels has his noisy moments. Ultimately this is an impressively creatively played and composed CD.

Imagine if Sonic Youth had jazz chops and ditched the singing and you'd have an approximation of Nels Cline's Destroy All cd. It's wonderfully inventive guitar based jazz(?) both free and the more tonally conventional kind mixed with rock propulsive muscle and an avant-gardist's love of noise and texture. Destroy All is adventurous and creative music that defies easy categorization but is rewarding for those willing to take the ride. It's some of the most unique and interesting, yet accessable improvised music I've heard in a while. They buzz, howl and generate a lot of heat.

This one seems to pull together many of Cline's recent works. There is some stuff that would fit easily on Edible Flowers, Scarnella or Interstellar Space. Though a little Abrasive at times, there are plenty of moments of beauty. If you like Cline, this one is a must have.

I can review a Nels Cline solo album and use a word like "awful" and it would be applicable to all of them. Having said that, this album blows. In fact, I don't even know why good guitarists like Cline choose to play a "free" jazz style anyway? Could it be that his compositional skills aren't that great? Could it be that he just doesn't have any idea what good jazz music is? Chances are all the above. Random noises, vast amounts of feedback, and heavy distorted guitar doesn't constitute good music. This "music" goes against everything music stands for. No structure, no melody, no rhythm, and no harmony. Without these crucial components, then all you will have left is anarchy. Don't believe the hype about Nels Cline. Go ahead and explore the sonic worlds of Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, John Abercrombie, Terje Rypdal, and Steve Tibbetts. You can't go wrong with any of these fantastic jazz guitarists.