Lord Dubious
Stylistically a kinder, gentler Ceramic Dog album. Don’t get it twisted, Marc is still very much pissed off. His lyrics offer much fuel for interesting conversation. The band sounds less rigid and more elastic in their sound this time around. Maybe it was the unique method of recording this one, but it stands as their most eclectic release. Not sure why they left off the “7.83 Hz” track from the digital release, however…
Favorite track: B-Flat Ontology.
When these recording sessions began in the last week of May 2020, I hadn’t left my house to go anywhere other than the grocery store in over two months. I hadn’t taken a cab or subway. I’d lost several friends to COVID-19, and was afraid I’d also lose more thanks to the non-response of our would-be dictator/“president”, whose deliberate embrace of untruth fed tens of thousands of lives to the pandemic, and also reduced what little hope was left for avoiding global warming catastrophe.
I hadn’t seen my partner since February (our plans to fly to each other’s countries shut down) and it would be July before we finally got together. Our difficulties were nothing compared with others. When me and fellow Ceramic Dogs Ches and Shahzad figured out a way to record, we entered the studio separately, sat in separate, isolated rooms from which we couldn’t see each other, communicating through mics and headphones. We were careful to wash our hands: one of us has respiratory issues, so fuck-ups could’ve been bad. We wound up with two record’s worth of material, some released on Bandcamp in October on the EP What I Did on My Long Vacation, and the majority of the music here on this full CD-length recording.
If/when people look back on these times, maybe they’ll seem unreal... foreign, alien: the way I, as a child in the 1960’s, looked at the faded footage of the 1930’s as impossibly ancient, even though the family members who had survived those newsreels sat next to me at breakfast. In fact, my 9 year old self was closer to the burning of the Reichstag
than we are now to the release of Nevermind.
Anyway, when we went into the studio, I thought we’d come up with something that spoke to our times… a message in a bottle to our equally shipwrecked (imaginary) listeners. But once we started, it was so much fun to jam that we forgot the disasters outside. So instead, we “spoke” to each other. And to other times that we couldn’t yet see: like the day, 5 months later, when people all over Brooklyn would dance in the streets for joy.
It’s almost December now. Things are shutting down again, and I’m quarantined in Europe writing liner notes for a record that will be released in the new year--once more, speaking to another time… perhaps a future?
M Ribot (Nov 2020)
credits
released June 25, 2021
Ceramic Dog are:
Marc Ribot: guitars, vocals
Shahzad Ismaily: bass, keyboards, backing vocals
Ches Smith: drums, percussion, electronics, backing vocals
with Guests:
Darius Jones: alto sax (6,7)
Rubin Khodeli: cello (8)
Gyda Valtysdottir: cello (8)
Syd Straw: background vocals (3)
Mixed by Randall Dunn at Aleph Recording Company, Brooklyn, NY
Engineered by Shahzad Ismaily at Figure 8 Recordings, Brooklyn, NY
Except (8) Engineered by Shahzad Ismaily & Philip Weinrobe at Figure 8 Recordings
Mastering by Gregory Obis at Chicago Mastering Service
Creative Direction by Bryan Abdul Collins
Management: Mary Ho / Noise Inc
All Lyrics & Music by Marc Ribot (Knockwurst Music, ASCAP)
Except (2) (4) (5) (6) Music by Marc Ribot, Shahzad Ismaily (Wazir & Malika Music), Ches Smith (Preposterous Bee Music, BMI), And (9) by Donovan Leitch (Peer International Corp)
Ribot was born in Newark,NJ in 1954. As a teen, he played guitar in garage bands while studying with his mentor, Haitian
classical guitarist and composer Frantz Casseus. He moved to New York City in 1978. He was a member of the soul/punk Realtones, and John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards. Ribot has worked extensively with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, composer John Zorn and producer T Bone Burnett....more
Mary Halvorson is a genius composer and guitarist who has developed her own musical language, and with Code Girl she has incorporated poetry into that language. Incredible compositions and lyricism (each track is a different kind of poem). Halvorson's playing is as great as usual, and all the other members of the band sound great. Robert Wyatt's singing in particular works extremely well in the tracks he's featured. Highly, highly recommend. rat