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Catholic Paws/Catholic
Pause
CD Album 2005 | Silber 037 15 tracks, 45 minutes $12 ($18 international, $5 download (256 kbps, ~105 megs)) : More info Track Listing: Quench, Erzulie, Fucker, Tipping the Tree, So This is That, Sores, Break in Your Neck, End of Young Birds, Mantis Segue, Tambien, Jack to Jac, Quad Four, Coburn, Ederlezi, Maime |
Rollerball were last featured
by Gothic Beauty in 2004 & are back with a mind-bending release.
While it is, for me, reminiscent of a soundtrack to a David Lynch film,
I don't think even Lynch could come up with something this off the wall.
The album defies description beyond, possibly, psychedelic lounge music.
The album is backed by a full band of drummers, cellists, trombone players,
electronics, you name it. This album goes as deeply into your head
as it can &, before you know it, it's gone. Rollerball are truly
for those who want to step off the beaten path to something a little...
different. Wonderful.
~ David Poseidon, Gothic
Beauty
Rollerball's 11th album (their
3rd for Silber) is entitled Catholic Paws/Catholic Pause, and is excellently
packaged in an embossed/screen printed cardboard sleeve. The eclecticism
expected of Rollerball is present here, from the arcane experimentalism
of Quench, to the absolutely brilliant jazz-pop-rock of Erzulie, to the
jazz-ambient of So This Is That?, to the demonic yowling and sinister sound
manipulation of Mantis Segue, as well as a number of tracks that bridge
the gap between song-based and experimental, such as the quirky and manically
delivered lyrics of Sores, set to a combination of jazz and homemade experimental
weirdness. Rollerball's more abstract and random moments are a bit too
much for these ears, but at their best and most tuneful, they are truly
great. Tracks like Erzulie, Tambien and End of Young Birds are especially
fantastic and are a return to the greatness found on their Real Hair album.
~ Kim Harten, blissaquamarine
Hints of modern cabaret and
free-association instrumentation make up Rollerball’s 11th album, Catholic
Paws/Catholic Pause. Jumping from genres quicker than a Southerner
can quote the Bible, this extremely eclectic quintet took only nine months
to make their new album. Some of the 15 tracks some burn with fire
and brimstone while others are pure instrumental post-modern carnival rides.
Rollerball start their album with a bang with “Quench”, “Erzulie” and “Fucker”
using instruments and electronics as aural weapons, but the Mazzy Star-meets-Thom
Yorke beauty of (suitably named) Mae Starr’s voice is quickly replaced
by what sounds like an entirely different band on “Sores” and “Break Your
Neck”. Alternating singer S. de Leon S. comes across as a less-piano-driven
Ben Folds as he jokingly sings about his girlfriend’s chicken parts.
The middle of this album slows quite considerably and at times the band
gets too wrapped up in pushing the musical envelope, sacrificing melody
and structure for their art. There is something very Tom Waits-ian about
this band’s sound and approach, but I think they would have faired better
to make two distinct albums instead of one long, droning assemblage.
There is a quip on the band’s
website about them “living” at the Ranch Rollerball and Saloon where they
dine and practice. There couldn’t be a more appropriate image of this band,
which have truly created a musical smorgasbord with Catholic Paws/Catholic
Pause. Rollerball are headed to heavy rotation on “Morning
Goes Eclectic”.
~ Vivien Weimar, SickAmongthePure
The Rollerball story dates
back to the early 90’s, 1994 to be exact where the band was formed in Portland.
Since 1997 they’ve released over ten albums already and now here in 2005
Silber Records is releasing their new album called Catholic Paws/Catholic
Pause. In the early days the band played some sort of power-pop
music (whatever that may be) and then a few years down the road they got
sick of that sound and added more members and altered their sound into
something much different. The Rollerball of today is a bit hard to describe,
but here goes. This group of five with several guest musicians plays some
sort of strange jazzy, lounge music with ambient, rock, and experimental
music influences. Strange I know, but this a strangely great album.
My favorite song without
question is the second track "Erzulie." This particular track uses a piano,
bass, light percussion, vocals, and various brass instruments. The feeling
the song has is that of a dark jazzy loungy sentiment, and well what can
I say the song is incredible, but hard to explain. Another interesting
song is "Sores," which starts out rather calm but as the song progresses
the instruments gain momentum, and the vocalist starts to use some really
wild voices. I also like "Tambien" a lot since it’s an up tempo song that
uses
an accordion, percussion, and various vocalists singing rather nicely.
Largely though the album is instrumental or just uses wordless vocals.
Most of the songs are weird mixed up jazz experimental like songs, which
really can’t be described. You’d just have to hear them to understand them.
All things considered Catholic
Paws/Catholic Pause is a rather good but definitely unconventional
album. Those that have interest in jazz, lounge, or just something different
sounding should check this band out.
~ Blackwinged, Lunar Hypnosis
Drama queens with serious
avant-garde credentials, Rollerball shapeshift with subtle grandiosity
among krout rock, jazz, drone, gypsy, & afrobeat without the taint
of dilettantism. Their great recent Catholic Paws/Catholic
Pause adds yet another layer of mysterious beauty to the Portland
ensemble's stunning repertoir.
~ Dave Segal, The Stranger
Out on the same label that
re-issued Lycia's Estrella is the 5 piece Rollerball.
With
Catholic Paws/Catholic Pause they present their eleventh
CD & their third on Silber. Soundwise Rollerball melt different
ingredients from analog jazz to digital noise. Add to this a horn
section with tuba & sax & you have a very enjoyable potpurri.
If you doubt that this combo could work, consider that David Sylvian is
the living proof that electronics should not limit their senses.
The combination naturally makes that the whole as this album swims in a
jazz atmosphere. Add to this female & male vocals that are close
to Sting going blues & you have an extra border. Not a problem
for me, perhaps it is for others.
~ Bernard Van Isacker, Side-Line
On their 11th album (the
third for Silber) Rollerball continue their sonic experimentation mixing
jazz-noise with pop sensibilities, ambient drones with surreal lyrics and
launching the whole thing deep into space. Opening track ‘Quench’ welcome
the listener in with tinkling bells and whispered vocal, as the instruments
rumble and drone underneath slowly building the tension before ‘Erzulie’
takes over sounding like big band jazz played by a bunch of talented stoners.
Further in ‘Tipping The
Tree’ is a dub torch song, the pulsing rhythm overlaid with electronic
effects and lashings of echo, whilst ‘sores’ is a jazz poem awash with
glorious percussion and driving bass the vocals dealing with a bad case
of chicken-pox.’Tambien’ adds a touch of melody to the proceedings, the
brass creating a warm ambience to the tune, which is quickly forgotten
as the instrumental ‘Jack To Jac’ disintegrates into some free-jazz noise
squalling its way through the listeners ears before ‘Quad Four’ brings
back the warm brass blanket to massage the noise away. Eventually we reach
the albums final track ‘Maime’. Beginning with eastern percussion our eyes
are torn out so that we can see, the musicians creating a brooding ambience
where the shadows hide our deepest fears, then silence, before a maelstrom
of discordant noise finally drives any sense of reality from our minds.
Managing to contain fifteen
songs within an hour of music gives this album a schizophrenic cut and
paste feel, something that is enhanced by the use of thirteen players (including
a horn section), allowing each song a chance to utilise a different combination
of sounds, creating a wide-ranging and beautifully realised body of work.
With the emphasis on rhythm and texture Rollerball have produced their
finest work so far, more complex, darker, less structured and a fantastic
ride from start to finish.
~ Simon Lewis, Ptolemaic
Terrascope
Just because Rollerball,
a quintet from Portland, Oregon, have not used any of their last ten albums
to present a coherent vision of what they may (or may not) be, it doesn't
mean that Catholic Paws/Catholic Pause will be any different.
Indeed, this 11th studio album, taking its name from a not especially edifying
homophonic coincidence, often sounds like the product of several groups.
The transit from the unstructured free jazz of "Jack to Jac" to the magnificent
sleazy progress of songs like "Erluzie" & "Tambien" is a long, long
one. But just possibly it's this journey that the listener is meant
to keep in mind.
Tracks will often incorporat
what seem like found sounds: highway ambience, engine noises, more arcane
field recordings. The chord stretching uluations on "Mantis Segue"
probably don't come from the bottom drawer of an ethnomusicologist, but
one has the feeling that they'd like to be. The one pattern that
emerges from this most catholic approach to songwriting is this: for every
ear-bending squawl of one track, you know that its successor will be a
rather good song, in the mould of Yo La Tengo or The Devics after an all
night bender. The swaying, parping brass on "Ederlezi" is a wonderful
effort in staying upright and, while pieces like "Quench" - a spoken word
intro on which Stefania Pedretti's delivery is slurred & so too is
Molly Griffith's cello - are challenging, then the thrill of Rollerball's
pounding piano on "Erzulie" or Griffith's fluid strings on "Maime" are
well worth the bewilderment.
~ Louise Gray, The Wire
I’ve never heard of Rollerball
before, but a quick glance at their biography teaches me that this is already
the band’s eleventh (!) album. It is called Catholic Paws/Catholic
Pause and is the third full-length on Silber, a record label that’s
releasing music of a wide variety of genres. Rollerball exists for over
a decade now. You might have noticed their Cochon records release in the
past.
Rollerball’s highly experimenting
with all kinds of instruments, voices and sounds on Catholic Paws/Catholic
Pause. This hodgepodge of sounds and timbres lucidly creates a
colourful album that’s very organic and diverse and stretches across genres
and boundaries. This one time the band sounds like a modern pop band, minutes
later they’re playing in the vein of Matmos, seconds later they’re sounding
like a progressive rock band or they play a Constellation type of post-rock.
It’s very hard to digest, and it doesn’t get easier to listen to when the
band’s searching it’s hail in noise and cacaphony in the meantime.
The band’s audibly not really
interested in firm song structures and a tight rhythm. They’re freejazzing
all over, with a heap of musicians playing a heap of instruments: tuba,
drums, bass, keyboards, percussion, sax, clarinet, trumpet… The result
is not a bombastic album, as one would probably expect from a band with
this instrumentation. The band’s not really using all instruments simultaneously
together to create songs that smack our heads hard down to the floor, but
creates an album that’s probably more about sounds than it is about songs.
Catholic Paws/Catholic
Pause clearly is an album that seeks interaction and needs to be
listened to actively. If not, it might drown in a mess of experiments and
noises. It’s searching for a way into your brains and looks for a place
to settle down up there. There’s some real good things on here, but there’s
equally as much low-quality passages that critically need to be waded through.
And especially the latter made me conclude that this is an album that’s
definitely interesting, but didn’t fully convince me.
~ Thomas Byttebier, Semtex
Magazine
After the slightly disappointing
Behind
the Barber (not bad, simply a bit insubstantial), Rollerball answered
with one of their best albums yet, the more song-oriented Catholic
Paws/Catholic Pause. Actually, the 15 tracks on this CD are almost
evenly split between songs and instrumentals, but Mini Wagonwheel and co.
are smoothing things down on this release.
Exit the ska-punk episodes:
the songs lean toward intelligent pop, with accessible arrangements and
moving melodies. Of course, things are not that simple and the lyrics would
not pass by unnoticed on mainstream radio (even songs like the beautiful
"Erzulie" and "Coburn" have an odd atmosphere), but Catholic Paws/Catholic
Pause contains some of Rollerball's best-written, most memorable
material. Plus, it features Mae Starr as a full-fledged singer, her deep
alto voice crooning seductively. As usual with this band, the instrumentals
shuffle the deck: odd beats, strange solos, a reggae feel here, an avant-jazz
angularity there -- they act like prisms showing different facets of what
has just been heard. Both songs and instrumentals are kept short and to
the point: no wasted time, no extra chorus repeated for the sake of duration.
Melodies are catchy enough to catch them the first time, so once they have
been exposed, the band moves on to the next transitional tune, then straight
into another song. The basic quintet receives help from a cast of regular
friends, including singer Stefania Pedretti and drummer Bruno Dorella (of
OvO), tubist Ben Wright, and maverick sax player Jacopo Andreini.
There is not a single throwaway
on this album, except maybe for the "hidden" lo-fi jam, which will definitely
not be to everyone¹s liking. But who cares, as long as we have songs
like "Erzulie", "Tipping the Tree", and "Sores"? Recommended.
~François Couture,
All Music Guide
Rollerball’s 11th album,
Catholic
Paws/Catholic Pause, is an unconventionally experimental psycho-jazz
works that is, at once, entertaining and gothic in nature. Discordantly
ambient using conventional instruments and free-style in method makes this
album a foray into the dark side of music, like an out of control acid
trip. Most of the songs like “So This is That?” can be quite interesting
in a “closed-eye” environment where you can let the music float through
you rather than as background music. However, when the next song, “Sore”
pokes its head into your cranium, it is a departure in that its free-style
psycho-jazz separates the flow.
You’ll hear sax, trumpets,
clarinets, and trombones amidst drums, bass, guitars, and keys. Mix in
the gothically ethereal vocals (the female vocalist reminds one of a Patti
Smith without borders) that permeate many of these songs and merge with
the jam-like style, and you get a highly experimental album done by Rollerball
with no audience in mind. Rollerball is music for music’s sake regardless
of its unconventionality. Having stated that concerning this album as well
as their previous works, it is important for you to know that not everyone
will be open to Rollerball’s style. It is imperative that you enjoy music
in every form for you to be comfortable and happy with this and previous
Rollerball releases. However, if you’re that kind of listener, then a solidly
relaxed atmosphere (a bit of the toke wouldn’t hurt here either), then
what Rollerball offers on Catholic Paws/Catholic Pause is
well intentioned and works under controlled situations.
Not every song on this album
is of the right grade. Their “Ederlezi” track is quite selfish and thus
is a distraction from the flow of the album. But this is a small hiccup
to an otherwise interesting album.
Remember, music is music
under many circumstances. Remove the familiar, and let the music flow on
its own. You’ll get more out of it. But also remember, Rollerball is for
open minds.
~ Matt Rowe, Music Tap
Before I received this review
copy I was unaware of the existence of this band, nevertheless Catholic
Paws/Catholic Pause is the eleventh album released by this fellowship
from North Carolina. Given the fact that their first album was released
in 1997, it's as plain as day the ladies and gentlemen of this band have
kept themselves busy the previous eight years. The cd that can be found
in the stylish cardboard packaging lets us hear music which can most certainly
be called original and even obstinate. Jazz, pop, digital noise as well
as ambient caress your ears here. To get one's hands on a cd such as this
one is not very common for a Gothtronic reviewer like me. Who knows, maybe
I've been a jazzcat in an earlier life and was it therefore predestinated
that I had to judge this longplayer. Yeah, right.
Besides the five regular
band members a total of eight(!) guest musicians have contributed to this
fifteen-track album. This adds to the diversity but fortunately the amount
of input doesn't derail the record. Nevertheless the musical arsenal featured
here is quite overwhelming: not only several male and female vocalists,
but also keyboards, guitar, bass, percussion, drums, electronic drums,
sampler, clarinets, alto saxophones, trumpets, accordion, tuba, cello and
valve trombone have been used in order to transform the band's vision into
sound. Now that's what I call an instrumentarium!
This sweltering and organic
sounding cd has several faces. Accessible, hazy, relaxing, crawling under
your skin, emotional, energetic, it all applies to Rollerball. There are
several pop songs on this disc which sound like a post punk band (think
of Wire or Lost Sounds) happily dabbling into jazz. This results in songs
such as the catchy "Erzulie," also "Tipping The Tree" and "Sores" are palatable.
However, this band likes to experiment and to explore frontiers. This leads
to odd ambient and even almost lounge-like music which reminds me mostly
of a jazz approach of the Italian act T.A.C. does or a more acoustic version
of Aphex Twin's works. Even the altfolk played by Black Forest/Black Sea
comes in mind. It's obvious that this band manages to escape a clear classification.
It won't hurt to listen to it before buying or visit a show of them first
if they're in the neighbourhood. A bit weird, yet tasty.
~ Nanhold, Gothtronic
I don't know if this is a
good thing, but I'm starting to like this free form alt jazz shit that
I've been getting in. Rollerball has me inspired to bust out some
watercolors & gauche & do some nature studies. I'm not usually
into dub or hip-hop beats, but the laid strings & horns sucked me in.
At times it sounds like the orchestral build up in "Day in the Life" by
the Beatles, but lo-fi. If you like Bablicon, Need New Body, &
OvO then you'll love this.
~ Mike Turner, The Bee's
Knees
Talk about difficult to describe.
The folks in Rollerball truly do create music that stretches across boundaries
and continents. One moment they sound like The Residents...a moment later
they sound like Yoko Ono and/or Jarboe...and a song or two later they sound
like some updated British progressive rock band from the 1970s...or a modern
classical ensemble...or even a moody modern progressive pop band. By continually
transforming themselves and their style, the folks in this band are bound
to lose almost everyone in the process. And that is something we just have
to admire. Rollerball consists of Mini Wagonwheel, Mae Starr, Gilles, Amanda
Mason Wiles, and S. de Leon S....but adding additional assistance are eight
additional musicians. Catholic Paws/Catholic Pause is so
intelligent and so difficult to digest that the album will, most likely,
only be appreciated by a few small group of people. But for that tiny group
of open minded folks...there are some really great treats to be found here.
Cool confusing compositions like "Quench," "Fucker," "Break In Your Neck,"
"Tambien," and "Quad Four" have true depth and amazing quality. Absolutely
stunning packaging on this one...
~ Babysue
You can never be quite sure
what to expect when there’s time for a new release from Portland’s Rollerball.
There’s the air-polluted jazz and fragile folk/chamber explorations of
Trail
of the Butter Yeti (still their true masterpiece if you ask me)
and the poppy and cabaret theatric side of their Silber debut Real
Hair. If we go further back in their 11 albums long discography
we’ll find all sorts of deranged, jazz streaked expeditions, drones, psychedelia,
skronking noise-beats laced with samples and there’s even some power pop
thrown in for good measure. Catholic Paws/Catholic Pause
offers a bit of all these styles although it emphasizes on the kind of
spacious, fluid and organic jazz no one but these cats ever could do. To
call Catholic Paws/Catholic Pause free jazz will give you
the wrong idea, but this is truly music that is free from any kind of constraint
and is free to wander wherever it wants to go next. It’s all fairly melodious
and at times even catchy but it’s still as much an album about sounds as
about songs. All in all another capable and inspiring addition to an already
impressive back catalogue.
~ Mats Gustafson, The Broken
Face
Well the title of Rollerball’s
latest disc is highly timely, what with the old pope dying, the conclave
shit, and the Catholic Church installing a former member of the Hitler
Youth as their new leader. We are living in fucked up times & Rollerball’s
fucked up music is entirely appropriate for them.
The packaging on this disc
is beautifully letter pressed. It has great wood block prints as inserts.
Also included are absolutely wonderful & hilarious portraits of the
band. The music itself is as eclectic as ever. On this disc they have guest
members from the crazy Italian band Ovo: they add a creepy feel to the
already far-out mix.
“Erzulie” is in the tradition
of “Wyoming,” from their earlier disc. It features the fantastic piano
and vocals of Mae Starr. Rollerball’s trademark wall of horns of Shane
& Amanda is featured. Mini-Wagonwheel has a great burping bass line
while Gilles' drums rumble and crash.
“Sores” is my favorite song
on the disc. It starts sounding like a creepy children song about chicken
pox. “Blisters and sores, blood and gore, my baby’s got chicken pox and
golden locks.” Then frenetic drum machine is added to the mix, with clattering
piano and squawking horns. The song ends with a dead chicken lying near
a fence.
I really dig the more dubby
shit on this disc like “Coburn.” Everything floats together on this jam,
with Mae’s vocal that has a weird echo on it, and the booming drum beats
and subtle electronics. It has the great line, “The scent that wraps around
like weight. The hand that fucks the taste.”
Rollerball has returned
to their roots of home recording with this disc. I feel this style of recording
well suits this band. Home recording allows Rollerball to explore the furthest
reaches of their sonic galaxy. This disc finds a balance between their
more far-out extraterrestrial dub, skronk-jazz, noise rock and their more
down-to-earth gypsy pop.
~ Dan Cohoon, Amplitude
Equals Frequency Squared
Rollerball is Mini Wagonwheel,
bass, keyboards, percussion, guitar, Mae Star, vocals, keyboard, sampler,
accordion, Gilles, drums, percussion, electronic drums, Amanda Mason Wiles,
alt sax, vocals, S. De Leon S., trumpet, clarinet, vocals, keyboard, percussion,
with Ben Wright on tuba, Italian Jacopo Andreini on alto sax, vocals, percussion,
Jamie Smith (Dang Head) on clarinet, Dylan Hinkley (Dang Head) on valve
trombone, Molly Griffith, cello, Bruno Dorella, drums, The Led, vocals.
This is already their 11th
album. And I must say it is a hard ball to break. Their music is genre
crossing rock with jazz and other elements, with an intelligent, complex
developed and matured sound. There is a variety of structures, song orientated,
theatre related, freeminded jazz improvisational, with lots of switches
and elements of experimenting, hard to describe its varied focus, because
it's always somewhere in some mix.
~ Gerald Van Waes, psychevanhetfolk
There's quite a bit to like
here. It's unpredictable, and keeps you on edge, listening for what could
possibly happen next; unfettered by traditional song structures, it's so
free and organic, exploring. At times it grabs you emotionally, but a lot
of the time it distances itself in some remote and wandering place . .
. you feel like you want to leave it alone, to sort out it's own thoughts,
because there's no possible way for you to approach or speak to it. I need
to listen to it a few dozen more times.
~ Static Signals
Catholic Paws/Catholic
Pause is Portland, Oregon based Rollerball's 11th album and their
third for the Silber label. The core of the band is a quintet, playing
guitar, bass, keyboards, drums & percussion, accordion, saxophone,
clarinet and vocals, plus numerous guests on drums, vocals, cello and a
variety of horns and winds. I've heard Rollerball's last several releases
and have learned that it's hard to know what to expect from these folks
from one album to the next. But they've never failed to at least intrigue,
and often delight, with their well crafted combination of varied and contrasting
elements into a unique and stimulating whole.
Ok, lots happening here,
and it often changes radically from one track to the next. There are 15
relatively short tracks on the CD. Among the highlights are "Quench" and
"Mantis Segue", which have the most devastating vocals on the album. "Quench"
features haunting, whispery vocals (in Italian) against an avant-garde
free-improv/classical styled rumbling of horns, strings, drums and drones.
"Mantis Segue" is similar but instead of horns we've got prominent percussion,
scratchings and electronics. "Erzulie", "Tambien" and "Quad Four" are pop
songs based in avant-prog rock with jazz elements and, particularly on
"Quench", seductive melodies. "Sores" is a fun, strange song with nutty
lyrics and vocals that are a dead ringer for Little Fyodor. "Tipping The
Tree" is a very cool mixture of sultry lounge jazz, Dub, dance grooves
and spacey atmospherics. "Break In Your Neck" is similar but based in New
Orleans jazz. Very hard to describe but pretty wild and captivating stuff.
"So This Is That?" consists of cosmic space keyboards and freaky jazz horns
swirling within a light Dub coating. This is one I would have really like
to hear further developed beyond its mere 3 minutes. "Maime" is the 16
minute closing track and starts off like it's going to be a lengthy synthesis
of everything we've heard on the album so far. But after a few minutes
we get silence. Ok fine… when bands do this you can usually predict that
at some point some secret treaty will kick in, and sure enough around the
8 minute mark the music starts again and it's a quirky, oddball kind of
jazz jam with elements of Sun Ra, free-jazz and experimental free-improv.
The sound isn't so hot and I'm guessing it's a recording of a live performance.
In summary, if these descriptions
sound like Rollerball are stylistically all over the place, they really
aren't. There's variety to be sure, but the band have set their sights
on a handful of ideas which they've developed, molded and mutated into
the enjoyable and remarkably creative set of music that Catholic
Paws/Catholic Pause has to offer. I can imagine this appealing
to a varied audience… avant-garde free-improv fans who like an injection
of melody and song, free-jazz lovers with eclectic tastes, and avant-prog/RIO
fans interested in something with a more experimental edge.
~ Jerry Kranitz, Aural Innovations
On their 11th album (the
third for Silber) Rollerball continue their sonic experimentation mixing
jazz-noise with pop sensibilities, ambient drones with surreal lyrics and
launching the whole thing deep into space. Opening track ‘Quench’ welcome
the listener in with tinkling bells and whispered vocal, as the instruments
rumble and drone underneath slowly building the tension before ‘Erzulie’
takes over sounding like big band jazz played by a bunch of talented stoners.
Further in ‘Tipping The
Tree’ is a dub torch song, the pulsing rhythm overlaid with electronic
effects and lashings of echo, whilst ‘sores’ is a jazz poem awash with
glorious percussion and driving bass the vocals dealing with a bad case
of chicken-pox.’Tambien’ adds a touch of melody to the proceedings, the
brass creating a warm ambience to the tune, which is quickly forgotten
as the instrumental ‘Jack To Jac’ disintegrates into some free-jazz noise
squalling its way through the listeners ears before ‘Quad Four’ brings
back the warm brass blanket to massage the noise away. Eventually we reach
the albums final track ‘Maime’. Beginning with eastern percussion our eyes
are torn out so that we can see, the musicians creating a brooding ambience
where the shadows hide our deepest fears, then silence, before a maelstrom
of discordant noise finally drives any sense of reality from our minds.
Managing to contain fifteen
songs within an hour of music gives this album a schizophrenic cut and
paste feel, something that is enhanced by the use of thirteen players (including
a horn section), allowing each song a chance to utilise a different combination
of sounds, creating a wide-ranging and beautifully realised body of work.
With the emphasis on rhythm and texture Rollerball have produced their
finest work so far, more complex, darker, less structured and a fantastic
ride from start to finish.
~ Simon Lewis, Ptolemaic
Terrascope
Following a bold, self-described
blend of "Tones on Tail, Miles Davis, (and) Califone", Rollerball climb
without a rope to polar opposite genres, not really caring if they hang
off a ledge (and fall) now and then. The opening bang, "Quench", draws
you in, pushing hard into experimental territories with low cello thunder,
echo-drenched female vocals, chimes and other otherworldly disturbances.
However, just like that, the band launches into a ballad ("Erzulie") that
sounds like Fiona Apple tackling Gershwin: sexy vocals soar above heavy
piano chords and horns finally explode as the band goes nuts and a cacophony
of sampled telephone voices fills the sound field. By the third track ("Fucker"),
you'll realize that their liberal approach isn't letting up; you're treated
to processed synthetic dumbek feeding back into its own rumbling voice,
an organ drone in tow.
As mentioned, Rollerball's
need to experiment sometimes outweighs what might be right for the album's
continuity. After the trip-hoppy "So This is That?", they mix it up with
"Sores", a combination of carnival barking-cum-hoedown style voice (shouting
about chicken pox, "blisters and sores, blood and gore / my baby's got..."),
fickle sax licks and hyperactive drum machine patterns. "Coburn"'s groovy
funk is interrupted by the neo-polka "Ederlezi", which finds a home somewhere
between Bartók and nursery rhyme, nonsensical falsettos blasting
alongside messy accordion and tuba. The band makes a handful of these uncomfortable
shifts, giving the disc a "various artists" aesthetic and negating the
flow established by the previous few tracks.
Though the abrupt scene
changes disrupt the album's momentum, the songs individually exhibit genuine
creativity, attentive songwriting and focused performances. In the same
way that it took a while to make it all the way through Tom Waits's eclectic
Bone
Machine and Beck's ghetto-meets-the Ozarks Odelay,
Catholic
Paws/Catholic Pause's many parts become more of a cohesive whole
with each listen.
~ Dave Madden, Splendid
You can never be quite sure
what to expect when there’s time for a new release from Portland’s Rollerball.
There’s the air-polluted jazz and fragile folk/chamber explorations of
Trail
of the Butter Yeti (still their true masterpiece if you ask me)
and the poppy and cabaret theatric side of their Silber debut Real
Hair. If we go further back in their 11 albums long discography
we’ll find all sorts of deranged, jazz streaked expeditions, drones, psychedelia,
skronking noise-beats laced with samples and there’s even some power pop
thrown in for good measure. Catholic Paws/Catholic Pause
offers a bit of all these styles although it emphasizes on the kind of
spacious, fluid and organic jazz no one but these cats ever could do. To
call Catholic Paws/Catholic Pause free jazz will give you
the wrong idea, but this is truly music that is free from any kind of constraint
and is free to wander wherever it wants to go next. It’s all fairly melodious
and at times even catchy but it’s still as much an album about sounds as
about songs. All in all another capable and inspiring addition to an already
impressive back catalogue.
~ Mats Gustafson, The Broken
Face
This is already their 11th
album. And I must say it is a hard ball to break. Their music is genre
crossing (indie post-)rock with jazz and other elements, with an intelligent,
complex developed and matured sound. There is a variety of structures,
song orientated, theatre related, freeminded jazz improvisational, with
lots of switches and elements of experimenting, hard to describe its varied
focus, because it’s always somewhere in some mix.
~ Progressive Music
Portland's Rollerball are
a schizophrenic bunch - happier exploring every available musical avenue
than getting ensnared in creative cul de sacs. Previous albums have seen
them try their hand at everything from deranged cosmic jazz and psychedelic
blowouts to fragile folk/chamber explorations and even the occasional foray
into power pop. Critics might throw the accusation of 'jack of all trades,
master of none' at the quintet (for this album they are also joined by
a host of guest musicians to augment and extend their palette), but Rollerball
handle their material with such aplomb and with a refreshing lack of pretension
that each style seems an equal component of their own equation.
Catholic Paws/Catholic
Pause showcases the band's proficiency and creative appetite -
in fact it serves as both microcosm and primer for Rollerball's 11-album
career. Free music and jazz form the foundations for their creations, allowing
them to incubate, hatch and prosper. Accordions wheeze, accompanied by
wild-eyed drumming and percussive salvos, duelling male-female vocals harmonize
over a bed of ambient whispers to create amorphous sound collages. This
album's two standout tracks, however, occur when Rollerball take to more
conventional shapes. "Erzulie" sounds like the dark gothic cabaret of The
Black Heart Procession if they were fronted by ex-Come songstress Thalia
Zedek. Elsewhere, "Tambien" captures the magickal air of a Crowly-mass
before transforming into a burlesque chant, in praise of unspeakable occult
endeavours, singing "Black claims my heart. . . Hands off the moon, its
not yours." Darkly beautiful.
It would be easy, of course,
for Rollerball to concert all their energies in this direction, churning
out melancholic, yet fundamentally cute, pop vignettes. For one it would
undoubtedly see them held fast to the bosom of alternative America. But
this would be a waste and a pity. The very reasons why Catholic Paws/Catholic
Pause is such a pleasurable body of work are its ambition and scope.
Without sounding like poor facsimiles of anyone, they manage to navigate
vast territories that, if not unchartered, have been rarely undertaken
with such persuasiveness.
~ Spencer Grady, Dusted
Onzième album pour
cette formation expérimentale américaine et troisième
à paraître sur Silber. Rollerball y explore plus que jamais
les limites floues entre structure et improvisation, expérimentation
et composition, ombre et obscurité, suivant de temps à autre
une mélodie hantée puis filant dans des ouvertures free jazz,
cabaret noir, psychédéliques, drone ou free. Unique.
~ Derives
Da quando si sono accasati
presso l’etichetta americana Silbermedia, i Rollerball non si fermano più.
Dopo varie peripezie hanno finalmente trovato in questa label il partner
ideale per le loro produzioni. Catholic Paws/Catholic Pause
segue quindi gli ultimi due dischi usciti per la Silbermedia (recensione
in archivio) e ne conferma pathos e valore. In questa occasione il gruppo
americano si presenta in un ensamble allargato a molti dei ‘soliti’ nomi
che affollano le produzioni della band. Accanto al nocciolo centrale costituito
dalla mente, Mini Wagonwheel, bassista, dal batterista Gilles e dalle splendide
voci di Mae Starr, Amanda Mason Wiles e S. de Leon (anche alle tastiere,
sampler, accordian, alto saxophone, tromba, clarinetto e percussioni),
ritroviamo così compagni di vecchia data come i ‘nostri’ Stefania
Pedretti, Bruno Dorella e Jacopo Andreini, più altri collaboratori.
Questo nuovo disco (dovrebbe essere l’undicesimo se non ce ne siamo persi
qualcuno per strada) prosegue sulla scia dei precedenti in un mix di psidechelia,
Canterbury sound, jazz, elettronica, folk e trovate originali.
A questo punto la domanda
sorge spontanea: perché recensire ogni volta un disco dei Rollerball
dal momento che la musica non si discosta poi tanto dalle precedenti uscite?
Rispondo a mia volta con una domanda: perché volersi per forza privare
di qualcosa che è indubbiamente ‘bello’? Per dire qualcosa in più,
i Rollerball scrivono da sempre grandi canzoni; ogni brano, per i quali
inventano ogni volta un arrangiamento diverso, fa storia a sé; coinvolgono,
ammaliano, inquietano, stimolano l’attenzione, in un equilibrio perfetto
tra parti strumentali senza cedimenti e timbri di voce che si rincorrono
e spiazzano (se ne distinguono almeno tre: la voce angelica e carica di
soul di Mae Starr, quella schizofrenica di S. De Leon e quella disturbata
di Stefania Perdetti, nonché il raddoppio di Amanda Mason Wiles).
Che non si dica un ascolto per soli fans.
~ Alfredo Rastelli, Sands-Zine
Rollerball sono un'istituzione
dell'universo indie degli ultimi dieci anni. Hanno attraversato tutti
gli scenari immaginabili per approdare ad una originalissima visione del
mondo in cui i generi musicali non esistono più. È
per questo motivo che sembra che cambino pella da un disco all'altro, da
un concerto all'altro, quasi da un brano all'altro di uno stresso disco.
Ma non è così, perchè i Rollerball hanno semplicemente
abbattuto alcune delle barriere musicali che a tutt'oggi misicisti e semplici
ascoltatori creano nelle loro teste. E lo hanno fatto creando un
loro stile originale, riconoscibile ed in continua evoluzione. Su
Catholic
Paws/Catholic Pause si presentano come un quintetto (basso, tastiere,
percussioni, fisarmonica, voci, batteria, clarinetto, tromba e sassofono)
aiutato da un'altra mezza dozzina abbondante di musicisti (trombone, tuba,
violoncello, e ancora clarinetto, sassofono, voci e batteria). Tra
cui troviamo Stefania Pedretti (Ovo), Bruno Dorella (Maise) e Jacoppo Andreini,
segno tangibile dell'amore dei Rollerball per il Bel Paese. Rispetto
al precedente Behind the Barber, uscito sempre per l'americana
Silber e colmo di enfasi jazz, il nuono lavoro sposta la bussola su sonorità
più psichedeliche e liquide ("Tipping th Tree," "So This Is That"),
quasi a voler rendere omaggio ai grandissimi Gong. Ed in fatto di
anarchia i Rollerball non sono secondi a nessuno.
~ Roberto Mandolini, Losing
Today
Catholic Paws,
racchiuso in una splendida confezione cartonata disenata da Mae Starr e
Shane DeLeon, è l'undicesimo album del combo di Portland (pubblicato
dalla Silber comei precedenti Real Hair e Behind the
Barber), il più compiuto dai tempi di Trail of the Butter
Yeti del 2001. "Erzulie" e "Quad Four" s;innalzano in un sublime
tripudio di fiati, "So This is That?", "Tambien" e "Coburn" sono fluide
danze nottune, dolci spirali dalle quali non vorrete uscire mai più.
Il merito è anche dei tanti ospiti dei padroni di casa: il sax di
Jacopo Andreini, la tuba di Ben Wright, il clarinetto e trombone di Jamie
Smith e Dylan Hinkley dei Dang Head, la voce e la batteria di Stefania
Pedrini e Bruno Dorella degli OVO. Composizione o improvvisazione,
canzoni o suoni. Quandi si parla dei Rollerball, queste diventano
inutili sottgliezze. Loro vogliono soltanto rubarvi il cuore.
Lasciateli fare.
~ Raffaele Zappala, Rockerilla
Solo la splendida confezione
che racchiude il nuovo lavoro dei Rollerball fa nascere una strana sensazione
di volerlo possedere, ma fermarsi al fattore visivo sarebbe una grave mancanza
di rispetto nei confronti di questa sbalorditiva band americana. I Rollerball
sono arrivati all’undicesimo album e non sembrano aver perso lo smalto
dei giorni migliori.
Già il precedente
‘Behind The Barber’ ci aveva entusiasmato grazie alla sua carica folle
e sperimentale ma con ‘Catholic Paws / Chatolic Pause’ i nostri si sono
superati.
Il nuovo disco è
splendido e racchiude ancora una volta l’insolito connubio tra musica sperimentale
e psichedelica, free-jazz ed elettronica tutto tinto da venature dark.
Difficile poter dire quale sia il loro pubblico e forse avrei potuto capirlo
nel loro recente passaggio italiano, ma ahimé me li sono persi.
Sicuramente ci troviamo
innanzi ad un sound difficilmente catalogabile e per certi versi indigesto,
ma al contempo estremamente fantasioso ed elitario. Ce ne fossero band
come i Rollerball! Nel frattempo teniamoci stretti questi cinque ragazzi
di Portland!
~ Lux, Kronic
