Reviews of two new releases   Various Artists Organ-Ized (High Street Records) Of related interest: Medeski, Martin and Wood, Robert Walter's 20th Congress, fruity mixed drinks The Cool Guy Mafia will no doubt place my name on the Iniquity List for praising a product of the odious Windham Hill, but so be it and God forgive me. Organ-Ized, a crash course in the sibilant Hammond B-3 organ brought to you by Windham's Quaalude-free subsidiary High Street, rings with party verve. Skittering frenetically from Philly bop veteran Joey Defrancesco to New York downtowner John Medeski to the Crescent City's own Art Neville, the comp has all the depth of a Reader's Digest condensed book, but you'll be too deep in the liquor cabinet to notice. Producer Jerimaya Grabher keeps the disc spritzed with a head-over-heels spirit of stylish debauchery, cutting bulletproof East Coast cool with a distinct Southern lope. This is a broadcast from the permanent cocktail hour. In its completely unchallenging pitch to the brain's pleasure centers, Organ-Ized feels a little like a hipster shadow of Windham's soporific New Age comps, but this low-com-denom endorphin chaser comes sopping with sweat and lousy with the Hammond's instantly recognizable fillips and surges. New Orleans looms large over the record, with Neville unpacking four decades' worth of sauce on "Micky Fick," and Galactic trying to turn lead into back-alley funk gold with mixed results. More to the point, the transnational clutch of musicians gathered here seem to vacation en masse to an overheated N'awlins of the mind, whether the track at hand is Medeski's scratched-up collaboration with DJ Logic or Tommy Eyre's run at Chuck Berry's "I've Got to Find My Baby." While there are organ-based acts deploying the ivories to much more interesting effect than those showcased here (the D.C. high-concept soul punx Delta 72, icy-cool post-acid bophead Robert Walter), Organ-Ized provides an entree to the sweat and soul that can ooze from a well-frotted B-3. Zach Dundas   Various Artists Early Modulations: Vintage Volts (Caipirinha) Of related interest: Sonic Youth's Goodbye 20th Century, the film Modulations, mad science Caipirinha's ambitious series on the history of electronic sound delves back to a time when today's blasé club kids weren't even glimmers in their G.I. grandpops' eyes. After World War II, lab-coated mad scientists like Vladimir Ussachevsky and experimental godfather John Cage used their keys to the Cold War technocracy's castle to unlock new vistas in sound. Working independently in university labs, government hideouts and avant-garde radio studios, all shared a courage that allowed them to envision music free of traditional composition and instrumentation. Through the late '40s, '50s and '60s, they bent the ungainly gear of the day to their will. The results--sometimes sinister, sometimes goofy--testify to an era when bohemian cool and intellectual adventure weren't mutually exclusive concepts. Some of Vintage Volts' nine tracks are, admittedly, more interesting for their experimental élan than how they actually sound. Ussachevsky's "Piece for Tape Recorder," which plays like an anthology of Warner Bros. cartoon bloops, drove me to the "skip" button after the second listen. The best offerings, though, escape the tyranny of the beat that grips modern electronica, reveling instead in pure sound's ability to terrify and warm. Vittorio Gelmetti's "Treni D'Onda a Modulazione D'Intensita" and Morton Subotnick's "Silver Apples of the Moon" have an orbital majesty. "Treni" rises from a forbidding hiss to a cacophony of uncontrolled keyboards, suggesting a world locked in tumult. "Silver Apples," on the other hand, finds rest at a Tranquility Base of the mind. Today, when Moby is a borderline pop star, techno never lets you forget that, ultimately, someone's trying to get rich and laid. The pioneering claimstakes on Vintage Volts, however, stand as true sounds of liberty, glimpses of a past that still sounds like the future. Zach Dundas   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published January 26, 2000