If you don't know who Dredd Foole is, think Miles Davis. But know that Foole is a white man from Vermont, born 24 years after Davis and having come of age in psychedelic high school garage bands and in the late 1970s and early 80s art-punk scene of New England. Foole doesn't play trumpet either, and what he does do-- improvise with the acoustic guitar, his pliable voice, and whatever else is convenient-- speaks far less to any sort of virtuosity than Davis, even at his most insipid.
But, as a curator and facilitator of experimental recordings under his name, Foole may be the less-prolific Davis for the modern-American improvised psychedelic sphere. He's moved through the canons (a soul, folk, and punk devotee who's played all sorts of out-rock) to arrive at something peculiar and individual. He's done this by securing the aegis of better musicians. The Din, his backing band for two LPs in 1985, were a Mission of Burma variation. When he began performing as Dredd Foole & the Din again-- and when he recorded the texturally fascinating The Whys of Fire in 2003-- he reached out to Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Matt Valentine, Erika Elder, and Jack Rose. On Daze on the Mounts, a newly remastered reissue of a 2004 short-run, CD-only release, Valentine and Elder (known best as MV & EE) support him. It's not Davis' Coltrane, Evans, Adderley, Chambers, and Cobb, but it'll do.
Foole isn't just a magnet for out musicians, though his legendary status as "Vermont's free-folk poet laureate" (as described by Family Vineyard proprietor Eric Weddle in a 2005 Dusted review) might suggest otherwise. Foole works under such impressive auspices because his improvisations are interactive canvases, simultaneously absorbing and reflecting sound to give him and his collaborators new, invigorating frameworks. He's not a sponge.
With MV & EE along for the ride, the Foole of Daze sounds like a shaman for tonality. His bleating, stop-or-slur syllabics languish in the same reverb-soaked pool as Valentine's guitars. On the opening "Two Faces", Elder's birdcall loop suggests an invocation to deliverance or an aubade for sunrise. It's a prickly, 11-minute drone in stark contrast to "Feed the King", the album's most sonically aggressive and limber track. Elder plays trumpet and Valentine plays moon flute. Foole loops the title phrase, layering his processed and plain invocations. It evokes the polyrhythms of South Africa and the soar of spirituals in one unhinged moment.
But Daze is at its finest when Foole's words are decipherable, or at least familiar enough to allow for context and interpretation. The covers take that bait: Foole's trip on Love's "Signed D.C." was recorded in 2003, a full three years before Arthur Lee died from leukemia. Its inclusion here feels like tribute. When Lee wrote the song in 1966, it was an ode to Don Conka, whose struggle with heroin wrote him out of Love's debut. Conka wasn't dead when Lee recorded it, and Lee wasn't dead when Foole recorded it. Foole treats it like a dirge-in-waiting, distending the first cares in the line "Nobody cares for me" until it's like slow strangulation. He grabs the thought and wrestles it for two minutes. Valentine resurrects fragments of Lee's 1966 harmonica line, rising above Silvertone guitar improvisation that wobbles from murky pings to ghastly slides. Lugubrious, it's Lee's agony, free in hyperbole.
Similar exaggeration applies to "Freedom", a variation on J Mascis & the Fog's "Someone Said". "Someone said my freedom is gone," Foole sings, tripping over all of the syllables through nine minutes. It's not an anthem as much as it is evidence: Believe your freedom is gone and stand still, or hurdle beyond the bounds of your past at age of 57. And bring your friends with you. Now that's cool.
