Jonathan Kane: February (Table of the Elements, 2005)

From our own, Mr. Jim McHugh:

“Killer old/new sealed ‘deadstock’ acquisition from Georgia’s Table of the Elements — the debut solo LP from Gargantuan Downtown Presence Jonathan Kane, red-blooded bestower of vast drumming for too many giants to list neatly: La Monte Young, Rhys Chatham, Tony Conrad, The Kropotkins (alongside Moe Tucker and sometimes Otha Turner!) to name a few, and, before that, Koko Taylor, James Cotton, Willie Dixon and Muddy f’n Waters.

He was the force that slowed Swans to depths tectonic, inaugurating a concept of tempo that continues to define them, even as their beige ropers mope toward gentle pastures far less elemental than when JK quit in 1983. Like a boat whose ballast evaporated, Swans’ unmooring can be seen as unavoidable; I’m here to testify, as a lucky collaborator, to JK’s elemental understanding of rhythm, its applications and its manifestations: he knows how the good stuff ‘starts from the neck down,’ settles hard in your gut, then moves outward on ganglia warm through your undercarriage to spark the squirming gyre of your hips and feet.

Satisfying as sandwiches are his stacked, thickening harmonies — idiomatic of the large ensembles and durational compositions he powered for decades. Minimalism made from the Essence of Rock is fundamentally reliant, in equal measure, on an astute command of the tonalities and timbres of the electric guitar and on a longform conception rooted in the work of Conrad, Young, et al: specific intervallic stasis and/or movement; disciplined, honed repetition;structural crescendoes of volume and density baring overtures often highly melodic, purely gestural, or conceptual to a point of not-there-ness; sprawling noise activated by the energy of novel creation.

An adulthood world-touring this music gave Kane a worker’s insight into its architecture and processes. His own novel mixture adds the muscular strut of his first true love: the electric blues he learned as a ballsy teen drumming behind its truly mythic creators. The droning harmonics forge ringing mirages redolent of tambouras or gamelan, but it’s Kane’s mastery of tension and release within the dynamics of swing that propels these pieces. Nearly imperceptible is his keen control of the familiar grooves, but that’s how we get pantsed: the way a drumfill puts vague brakes on the ensemble then explodes back to precise speed, right atop the beat, feels linked by real tissue to human impulse: an intake of breath before the howl.

Made entirely by JK in his subterranean Long Island City practice-space with help on the boards from Igor Cubrilovic, direct descendent of the dissident assassin of Archduke Ferdinand, this is hewn from apt material and sounds like it. John Lee Hooker’s immensity can only be conjured down in some dank basement; where else could the vibe feel both stone-circle-ancient and as humid up- your-nose as a Cramps show? Would you rather stand in a MOMA queue for Chatham’spioneering chestnut Guitar Trio, or shake and shimmy as JK shoves it into a minor key andswings it by its ass til its a dance number — dragging and dripping and PG-13 on a slow night?

This stock’s about as dead the blood boiling in your neck, and mine, so grab this sucker now, Ace.”