Share CITADEL YEARS - Deniz Tek (Citadel)
Even if Radio Birdman were the sum of its parts, the solo output of its members surely deserves more than the cursory consideration many have been prepared to give. Case in point is this album. Deniz Tek has built a formidable body-of-work outside the framework of the band he's best known for, the two-disc "Citadel Years" collection compiles many of the highlights.
It's by no means the whole picture; the clean and lean "Take It To The Vertical" and its calculatingly lethal follow-up, "Outside", were out-of-bounds because of licensing complications. It is cleverly tracked to both deliver maximum impact and smooth out the inevitable sonic variations that come from drawing songs from half a dozen albums and two EPs. Most of "Citadel Years" is out-of-print or hard to find so pulling the pieces together isn't such a bad idea.
As well as the "Equinox", "Le Bonne Route" and "Got Live" albums, selections come from the fringes of the Tek solo oeuvre with the East Coast garage outfit Deep Reduction, Detroit alumni super group Dodge Main and raucous power trio Golden Breed. Tek's contribution to hardcore punk band The Last Of The Bad Men is overlooked and would have been out of place. Also MIA is his two albums with fellow Ann Arbor old boy Scott Morgan.
You probably know what you're going to get. If not, this is a good place to start to catch up on the Tek story, outside the confines of Birdman. There's some wickedly powerful guitar-playing, while Deniz's workmanlike guitar player's voice (or "the damaged instrument" as he's called it) holds the fort adequately. Tek's natural turf is over-driven guitar rock and ther's only as handful of contemporaries who can hold a candle to the playing on this collection.
The lesser-heard gems are the supercharged "2 Pam Chloride", recorded in front of an audience with the mercurial Godoy brothers on board, a stupendous "Steel Beach" and a re-worked live "Hand of Law." The surprise is a "Zeno Beach" pre-production demo of a song called "Photo Album", by Radio Birdman. Tek takes the vocal on an "Exile"-styled ballad that's worthy but ultimately probably wasn't obtuse or dark enough to have made the final cut.
At the core of "Citadel Years" is the two-album combo of Tek-Dickson-Rieth-Steedman and the group's recordings recall what a powerful force of nature they were. Some of Deniz's ventures have been criticised for being hastily committed to tape but this version of the Deniz Tek Group never put a foot wrong.
"Doom-laden" is a term that's been applied ad nausueum to Deniz Tek compositions and there's a lot of those descending chord progressions in evidence, but to characterise all his music that way sells it short. There's a deft lyricism in "Heavy Air" with its descriptions of childhood's senses while "Imaginary Man" tries to get inside human consciousness.
The other inevitability - Stooges comparisons - gets left at the door at the get-go. "Christmas Eve" leads off and owes more to Hendrix than being real o-mind, while Johnny Winter's "Meantown Blues" shows the Tek influences go much wider. The early Deep Reduction tracks ("Black Tulip", "Last Flight of the Owl") reside in jangly '60s territory, but of course there's plenty of the harder stuff if you want it. - The
Barman
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GLASS
EYE WORLD - Deniz Tek & The Golden Breed (Career
Records)
A change
of direction is this, the teaming of Radio Birdman's Deniz Tek and his West
Coast (geographically, not musical genre speaking) band of the Godoy twins,
Art (bass and occasional guitar) and
Steve (drums). Recorded at studios in Vancouver and Montana, with one track
from a live-in-front-of-a-garage-audience session, it's the first release
on the label established by Deniz and business partner Ron Sanchez, the latter
a studio owner and leader of psychedelic band Donovan's Brain (who, incidentally,
recently recruited Deniz into their ranks). This disc is unbuffed rock with
a straight-ahead, punk undercurrent that's almost English in parts.
Its predecessors in the recent Tek canon were varied. They ran the gamut from
tough garage rock (Deep Reduction's "2" and its eponymous, if slightly less
focussed, forerunner), studio-buffed rock-pop with psych leanings ("Equinox"),
a spirited and rough live disc ("Got Live") to an eclectic, experimental outing
("Le Bonne Route"). That's ignoring the Birdman live-studio disc "Ritualism",
the great but sonically flawed "Dodge Main" project and the more recent (and
wonderful) live set "Ann Arbor Revival Meeting", where Dr Tek guests with
Scott Morgan's Powertrane.
This is no less varied and like most of those albums, marks a sharing of the spotlight with collaborators, most notably Art Godoy who takes centre mic for four songs. Of those cuts, "Let's Go" is the pick, with its anthemic, singalong chorus and double-tracked vocals. "Out of Action" is a spikey rocker with the vocals buried and "Wild Card" is a ragged stop-start thumper with a dirty surf undercurrent. "1 Eye Sam", from whence the album draws its title, is all bristling guitars and attitude.
Deniz's own songs are terrific. One of them, "Always Out of Reach", is reckoned to be, by Ron Sanchez's reckoning, the best Tek toon since 1978. Dunno if I'm going that far but I concur with the sentiment that is is a hell great song. Good 'nuff by recently demo'd by Radio Birdman- hear it here first. Then there's "2 Pam Chloride". Planted squarely in the middle of the disc, it was recorded at an invite-only show in the Billings, Montana, shed of Tek calibrator Dave Weyer and absolutely powers, all hook-laden chorus chant and paint-stripping guitar. This one made an appearance on a hard-to-find Japanese compilation ("Rawk 'n' Roll Revolution" on Myrmecoleo) but sounds better here. The other outstanding song to these ears is "What It's For", a deft rocker that burns itself into the mind after just a couple of spins.
"Dreaming Clifford Possum" is a menacing slow(er) guitar burn, (very) loosely in the style of Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer" if only for its similar theme of cultural imperialism. This one's told through the eyes of Australia's most notable dot painter. "Flight 19" has lyrics that can only be Dr Tek's, touching on doomed flights and similar happenings in the Bermuda Triangle. We all need to disappear now and then, maybe not so permanently. "Baja Confidential" is the closer and an exception, a quiet, almost resigned instrumental that serves as a wind-down from all that's gone before.
Excuse the enthusiasm (and, by way of declaration, I have been spruiking this, in an honorary capacity, to various journos around the place) but it's an album that's grown with repeated spins. You'll not find any choirboys on "Glass Eye World". By his own admission, Deniz has "guitar player's vocals" and Art's from the belt-it-out-and-see-ya-at-the-other-end school, but if you came looking for Mantovani, you clicked on the wrong link. What might be of more interest is the fact that the Godoys run a ship-shape engine room with nary a wasted note or fill out of place. For once the term "power trio" is not a misnomer. Dr Tek operates without an anaesthetic to apply his usual sharp guitar incisions.
The whole package
is enhanced by clear and sympathetic production. Having been lucky enough
to hear an earlier mix of the unmastered version some time ago, I have to
say the final product is a street or two ahead. - The
Barman
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