Used-Bin Bargains: Lula Côrtes and Laílson

Lula Côrtes and Laílson - Blue do Cachorro Muito Louco (Robertinho de Recife) (private press 1973, re-released Time-Lag 2005)

Lula Côrtes and Laílson - Satwa / private press, re-released Time-Lag

The lively acoustic strumming that opens up this lost 1973 classic marks a small historical milestone in Brazilian music. While all the rage these days focuses on the influences Bonde do Role have had and Vice goes trekking to find barbecue-abundant illegal baile-funk get-togethers, another, softer side of Brazil that reflects closer the work of Seu Jorge and the Portuguese influence generations deep is illuminated on this album. It doesn't sound like it has aged a day since it became the first private press full-length album in Brazil nearly 35 years ago.

Part of the reason it holds up so well is that the music seems so effortlessly played. Swaying between gentle tickling of the strings and vigorous strumming, Côrtes and Laílson created an album that's so easy to sit back and relax to. It's so easy to make up words in your head to these mostly instrumentals, but the music in itself is so gorgeous that doing so would blight the efficiency and the careful precision each note takes on this economical album.

The two artists emerged at a time when the harbor town of Recife was revealing a scene flourishing with psychedelic artists ready to demonstrate their abilities. Interestingly, these artists were returning to Brazil themselves from Africa and the United States. Though they were respected musicians in their own right, this January, 1973 collaboration brought out some of the best music in both of them for a little over a year.

While Laílson used his voice infrequently, his mastery of the guitar is all over this album on tracks like "Valsa Dos Cogumelos." What gives this album so much flavor is the sitar that Côrtes uses to back him up. This layering effect opens up the spaces and frees the sometimes austere moments that the guitar allows. It's understandable that they didn't use words and hardly any vocal texturing at all: At the time, Brazil's military government was in power (as it would remain until 1985) and if you've seen "City of God," you sort of have an idea as to how things were being run... if they were being run at all.

Even if there were overt protests being made with this album, it is hard to hear them. There is little anger present. Mostly it is an album of celebration, of relaxation, of "quiet triumph" as Bernardo Rondeau accurately put it. Thankfully, Mainer label Time-Lag was generous to re-release this in 2005. With the new package you get heavyweight sleeves, a double-sided color insert with pictures and a few notes, and all of it comes in a solid insert. I'm glad I rediscovered this through the Dusted review as I'd forgotten about it after the review was first put out in May of '05. Though baile may still reign supreme, Satwa lays in the hammock by the beach, slowly waiting for the morning hangovers and waiting to provide the gentle cure.

Used-Bin Bargains: Ed Askew

We haven't had a Used-Bin Bargain here at Audiversity since early May. After several Sundays off where we just couldn't offer an explanation for no content aside from the fact that we were really busy (which we were), we're giving it another go this week with folk singer Ed Askew. Enjoy.



Ed Askew - The Garden (ESP-Disk 1968)

Ed Askew - Ask the Unicorn / ESP-Disk

As it seems with so many other folk singers from the 60s and 70s, Ed Askew is talked about a great deal but not necessarily heard. Thanks to blogging and a number of other places (which I'm not going to pretend don't exist) , the life of Askew can be put in a proper perspective in relation to his works. This is especially rewarding for crate diggers who might already have this album but don't listen to it often and are considering a cheap sell. My advice is, don't sell it... Not because of how important it might be, but because of how good the music on this record is.

1968's Ask the Unicorn was his only proper, commercial release up until a slew of reissues earlier this decade. In some ways, this spotty history is appropriate for the mysterious soloist. Not a great deal of personal information is known, but Motel de Moka did an appropriate homage in May and here is what we know for sure: Askew grew up in Stanford, Connecticut and attended Yale for an art degree in painting in the early 1960s. When he graduated, Askew went to teach art at a private high school in the suburbs of New York. During the course of 1966-67, he was in the unfortunately named Gandalf and the Motorpickle. This psych-rock band was the inadvertent catalyst for Ask the Unicorn. When he quit the group in 1967, he developed his own music, based entirely around a scratchy voice and a ten-string, 10" Martin tiple ("treble" in Spanish). ESP-Disk's founder Bernard Stollman was interested, but while ESP-Disk was one of the most respected and established independent labels after its creation in 1963, financial troubles would eventually be both its own downfall and Askew's by proxy. Ask the Unicorn received virtually no promotion and even industry insiders were deaf to its unique sound.

So let's talk about that sound. Right from the off of "Fancy That," Askew is strumming romantically and juxtaposing it with some of the most lucid words ever put together. Like the tumultuous times in which he lived, the lyrics reflect a wide range of topics that conflict with one another, from poetic lyricism to government protests to abstractions to an allegory incorporating all of that and more - as David Shirley has noted, Askew shares in this freeform wordplay with both Robert Wyatt and Paul Goodman. His voice has a limited register, but Askew is using it to its best effect throughout this album. An example from the opening of "May Blossoms Be Praised:"

"Where is a dream and where are the lovers? / Green trees and fires protect the rain / But the water is high and the grave is too deep / And the river is white / And the lovers will seat to play on the river / But the dream will survive." On and on it meanders just as the aforementioned lovers would along this river. Unlike obscure folk artists that we've featured here before like Jan Dukes de Gray, Askew's ten-track full-length does not sell the consumer short on listening material. Several of his songs are well over three minutes, and yet still they manage to sound as if though every second were essential.

This is the mark of a great recording, and it's one of the reasons that you are starting to find more and more music and information. In the past five or six years, Askew's early work has really come to light and garnered renewed interest from ye purveyors of the bargain bins. This music is strong, timeless and does not grow old quickly. You can't quite sing along to Askew's impassioned wailing, but there are obvious melodies and there isn't a moment here where you think, "He's trying to show off here" or "That wasn't necessary." Everything is essential. This is a well-crafted album that was criminally ignored for years. No hippie BS need apply.

When Ask the Unicorn fell through the cracks following its release, Askew kept on and his second album, 1970's Little Eyes, continues down the same path with a little more piano flourish (which is, incidentally, also worth checking out). Unfortunately, this never actually got released - ESP-Disk was going through massive financial troubles and shortly afterward filed for bankruptcy in 1974. Askew himself went on to cruise between Boston and Raleigh, NC for the rest of his 70s. Thankfully, Askew did not seem to be incredibly discouraged by the experience - continuing to teach art in and around New York after moving there in the 80s, he has pursued music through the cassette medium that can still be found in all the right places.

It's his earliest works as a solo artist that draw the most attention, though. A particular quotation at the outset of the Motel de Moka article really gives the essence not just of why Askew is worth checking out, but of why we did Used-Bin Bargains for so long here: "These are the kind of stories that should be told. Songwriters who are largely unknown to the public but have managed to find their place in the history of music, changing its landscape indefinitely and inspiring other artists for many decades without ever getting the deserved recognition." Everybody has a story. This is the general gist of Ed Askew's, but in order to know every detail, well... For that, we must ask the unicorn.