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The Mystery of Twilight

by Joseph Benzola

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Alpha 1 01:02
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For Jukka 00:59
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For Pharoah 01:02
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Hey Roscoe 00:37
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Lhasa 09:06
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Mu 02:59
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Nausea 09:11
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Nells Bells 02:04
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No Way Out 01:02
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Prism 08:22
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Rainforest 02:34
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Two in One 09:56

about

“Joseph Benzola views his music as being Psychedelic. He’s well aware that it’s nowhere near to being acid rock, but he does feel strongly that the music is mind expanding. With a background that runs from the Beatles through the most innovative of Jazz masters like Sun Ra, Coltrane, and Miles, and on to rock iconoclasts like Beefheart and Zappa, Benzola synthesizes his influences to produce music that rarely sounds identifiably like any of them… even when he is paying tribute to them.”

That was the opening paragraph to the review article and interview with percussionist/pianist/improviser/composer Joseph Benzola I published in Aural Innovations #9 back in January 2000 (when still a printed zine!). It’s a detailed interview that provides excellent insight into Benzola’s music and is a recommended read (See the link at the end of this review). I’ve not written about Benzola’s music since 2003’s Winter in America, so it was a pleasure to immerse myself in these two albums: 2010’s The Mystery Of Twilight, and Collected Works: 2012-2014, released late last year, and both jam packed with over 100 minutes of music.

The Mystery Of Twilight includes 25 tracks, with about half being collaborations with various musicians and the rest Benzola solo pieces. Benzola plays drums, acoustic and electronic percussion, electronics, piano, flute, shenai, keyboards, prepared piano, saw blades, copper tubes, aluminum sheet and metal pail.

Dan Stearns contributes guitar, bass and electronics to three tracks. Forces in Motion is an interesting contrast between Funk, electronica, and often acid-fried Frippoid guitar licks, with the electronics getting increasingly frantic and the atmospherics more assertive as the piece progresses. Furred Antennae is similar, and I like the seemingly chaotic though measured percussive clatter as Stearns rips off his screaming licks. Frenetic piano and clangoring percussion take the lead on Music for Prepared Piano and Electronics, as a flurry of electronic bits and pieces zip about. Benjamin Smith contributes electric piano to Metamorphosis, which starts off with a merry blend of African and Caribbean influences, but soon shifts to a moody, ambient Jazz vibe, with ethereal electric piano accompanied by energetic Free-Jazz drumming, and the overall vibe varying in levels of darkness, intensity, and even a sense of doom. Kaden Harris contributes “dark ambient music” to Prism, which aptly describes the mood of the piece, and Benzola’s lyrical drumming injects to an ever developing sense of dark intensity and cinematic surrealism, as if they were creating the soundtrack to some kind of Psychedelic horror film for the Jazz and Space-Ambient set. For Lhasa, James Ross provides processed and tuned Tibetan Bowls and Greg Hooper contributes… get this… processed Jack Hammer. Yeah, raised my eyebrows too. But it works perfectly. The foundation of the piece is hypnotic ambience, augmented by the Bowls and Jack Hammer blasts, which are swept along by robotically methodical percussion. Nells Bells is like an ambient Jazz rocking King Crimson, with the father and son team of John and Jonathan Asta on guitars and drum loops, and Brion Gysin voice samples scattered throughout. The drumming Asta also contributes to Two in One, a frenzied, drum dominated Free-Jazz workout that in parts recalls the spirit of Coltrane at his most adventurous and kept me edge-of-my-seat spellbound for its entire 10 minutes. Lee Noyes takes the drum seat on Ridgepole Crowned, which features a Jazz piano and drumming duet that is beautifully serene, but also communicates a sort of avant-garde Gershwin theme. The Golden Triangle is an interesting piece, with John Balaban providing Ca Dao recordings of Vietnamese Folk Poems which he taped in the field from 1971-1972, the recordings played to a backdrop of Jazz drumming, percussion and sundry sounds.

Voice samples are the collaborators on two of the tracks. The Mushroom Velada includes the voices of John Cage and mushroom shaman Maria Sabina. I had to Google Sabina, who I learned was a Mazatec healer, curandera, and shaman from Oaxaca, Mexico, who is known for introducing the sacred mushroom ceremony velada to the world. She passed away in 1985 at the age of 91. If you read the interview with Benzola I link to below you’ll understand his interest in mushrooms. Anyway, it’s a short piece that features a whimsically presented and jauntily grooving array of electronics and percussion, with Sabina chanting, followed by a Cage discourse. And Patti & Lenni Crash the Stage at an Electro Senegalese Bar in the Bronx features the voice of Patti Smith reciting a poem called Brian Jones, and the guitar of Lenny Kaye, taken from a recording made in NYC in 1973.

The majority of the Benzola solo pieces are short, ranging from less than a minute to around 3 minutes. We’ve got a variety of solo piano workouts and African/Carribean influenced percussion/piano/electronic experiments. I like the spacey Jazz vibe of For Pharoah. MU is a brisk percussion and flute Jazz duet with both Indian and African influences. Portraits of the Dead-Derek Bailey features quirkily metered electronics and percussion, sounding like every game at an old time carnival thrown together and electronically treated. Of the two lengthier solo pieces, Khalid’s Journey to the Alabaster Horizon is one of my favorites of the set, consisting of monstrous jamming 60s styled Free-Jazz and ethnic percussion, with killer keyboard squalls that are like a blend of Sun Ra and Mike Ratledge. And Nausea is like an Industrial music and electronica conspiracy to create a noisily edgy adventure-in-sound dirge, with a female robot voice reciting a Dadaist narrative throughout.

-Jerry Kranitz- Aural Innovations 2015

Comebacks have become common-enough events. In the case of Joseph Benzola, however, it feels like an earthquake. After six years of complete silence in musical terms, Benzola's latest effort, a digital release with roughly two hours worth of new compositions, ranks as one of 2010's most adventurous and unique albums. Highlighting a string of collaborations - involving, among others, Dan Stearns and Kaden Harris as well as fellow drummers Lee Noyess and John Asta - "The Mystery of Twilight" takes its audience on a wild ride through ecstatic improvisations, crisp microtonal Electronica, Industrial Ambient, dreamy Jazz, psychedelic collages and a couple of new entries into his ongoing "Portraits of the Dead" series. If the massive collection, published digitally and entirely for free, should sound as though the floodgates had opened for Benzola, then that impression is entirely correct. Disappointed by the music scene and drained of inspiration, he'd completely turned his back on writing, starting up his own business and focusing on his family instead. Friends would call on him to return to the limelight, but to no avail: His decision seemed irreversible. On the other hand, someone like Benzola, who still gets the same kick from hearing John Coltrane playing the opening theme to “Naima” on “Live at the Village Vanguard Again” after thousands of spins, will never be able to live without music. Sure enough, the muse returned and within a few months, "The Mystery of Twilight" was a fact. Nonetheless, Benzola doesn't consider it likely new material will surface anytime soon - one more reason to savour this comeback of the year!

-Tobias Fischer, Tokafi Magazine-

credits

released July 7, 2010

Joseph Benzola along with Dan Stearns, Kaden Harris, John & Jonathan Asta, James Ross, Benjamin Smith, Lee Noyes, & Greg Hooper.

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about

Joseph Benzola New York, New York

Acoustic and Electro-Acoustic Composer and Creative Improviser. Played in the small and big bands of Makanda Ken McIntyre in the mid 1980's. Have released many solo albums since the early 1990's on my Amanita Music label. Currently involved in further development of my solo improvised language. ... more

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