Challenging

Taken from an email discussion I had with Mike Llorca:

Five challenging CDs:

1. Iron Path by Last Exit-- Built on the drumming of Ft. Worth's own Ronald Shannon Jackson, these guys sounded like they improvised everything from top to bottom. And somehow it took on this frightening sound. Scariest music I ever heard, and it was all instrumental.

2. Almost anything by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Try sitting through a 20 minute song built on vocal quartertones and tabla drums... yet if you're open-minded enough, you can sense the delirium in this Pakistani holy music.

3. Ditto for Junior Kimbrough, even though he was a Mississippi blues man. Atonal here and there, repetitive, droning... but hypnotic somehow, and built on something we've all got in our very marrow.

4. Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed. I've heard differing stories about the impetus behind this double CD of overdubbed feedback. But patterns do emerge from the chaos if you sit through it. And your ears will ring all day.

5. Lady in Satin by Billie Holiday. Wrecked by addiction and disease, this was her final stab at making an old-school "big" album with strings. Her voice was shot. But somehow listening to her try is captivating, sort of like watching a train wreck (not that the CD is THAT bad). She was dead weeks later. (I rarely have the nerve to listen to the CD, now that I think about it... it's just too emotional)