Last Sunday, as the final bands of Hurricane Irene were still lashing Manhattan, I stepped out into the weakening winds for another walk around the neighborhood. After the maelstrom of hype and hysteria (not to mention the fact that the subways were shut down), it was curious to see which stores were riding the storm out and staying operational. Surprisingly, Other Music on East 4th was indeed open for business. Being that even on a good day, I have a very difficult time walking by a record/disc shop without feeling its tractor beam-like pull, I ducked in out of the pervasive damp and into Other Music's ever-peculiar-smelling shelter.
Evidently, I was the first potential customer to have stopped in for hours, and the two folks behind the register positively lit up upon my entry. In short order, we were chewin' the fat about this that (never mind the "High Fidelity" stigma -- not all record store clerks are insufferable knowitalls). Unfortunately, they didn't have the lone disc I'm actively searching for these days (that being the re-mastered anniversary edition of Shriekback's Oil & Gold), but I genuinely felt obligated to buy a disc from these poor folks to help validate the fact that they opened up shop for the day. And, really, whether I'm actively looking for something or not, there's always something I'm curious about.
I settled on "Shades Of...", the relatively recent collection of tracks by Jean-Michel Basquiat's old No Wave ensemble, Gray. I was honestly not that familiar with Gray's music beyond a few cuts on some compilations and the tracks featured in "Downtown `81." And while I'm tirelessly fascinated by the fleeting No Wave scene, more often than not the records spawned from that phenomenon only warrant a few cursory spins before the migraines arrive. Still, I'd always been curious to hear more from Gray, and here were a whopping 28 tracks (!!!) all collected on a single, reasonably-priced disc. Sold.
Later in the day, I ripped "Shades Of..." to my iPod and played some during some errand-running (it didn't strike me that Gray was music to put on at home while my little ones were cooped up inside, bouncing off the walls from boredom). Unlike the endearingly discordant skronk of DNA or the disarmingly shrill battery of Teenage Jesus & the Jerks (two obvious go-to, user-unfriendly No Wave bands), Gray's music is still rooted in the discernibly tuneful. What I didn’t realize at first, however, is that Shades Of… is actually mostly the work of a reunited line-up of Gray (minus Basquiat, of course – who passed away in 1988). I didn’t figure out this fact until after a few spins, alas. Prior to that discovery, I marveled at how the band was able to make such realized ambient sounds using comparatively primitive instrumentation. The fact that the clanks, rattles, mumbles, hums, hisses and fragments of melody were brought forth by comparatively primitive means (ball-bearings lightly scraped down guitar strings as opposed to, say, sophisticated modern sythesizers) made it seem all the more organic (insert obstreperous accusation of "rockism" here).
Based on the scant original recordings and the accounts of people who experienced Gray’s performances at the time, the original line-up of the band genuinely was a groundbreaking force that pushed the envelope and predated a few genres by at least a decade. The re-formed line-up here tries to pick up where the few existing recordings of Gray left off, but one can’t help feel there’s a bit of stylistic self-plagiarism at work. Perhaps that can't be helped.
Even still, the music Gray made -- and continues to make -- evokes the strange terrain of a New York City that is no longer recognizable. The urban erosion and street art of the desolate byways of SoHo and the Lower East Side of their original heyday are now covered over by oversized billboards advertising "Harry Potter" films and culturally dismal reality TV shows. The haunting nocturnal space captured in Gray's recordings no longer jives seamlessly with Manhattan's busy landscape, now fraught with jutting, priapic architecture reminiscent of "The Jetsons."
Regardless, I'm still really digging Shades Of... and recommend giving it a spin.
For more on Gray, check out Plush Safe Records, band member Michael Holman's site and this interview from the New Museum Blog.
Meanwhile, here's a small taste of the original band's work....
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gray - Drum Mode (Downtown 81) by vangogen
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