Tom Recchion — Sweetly Doing Nothing

Calm sounds lure you into Sweetly Doing Nothing, a peculiar album from Los Angeles musician Tom Recchion, working in avant garde circles since the mid seventies. With its tambura drone and soothing sweeps The Elephant God makes you feel comfortable and relaxed.

The second track has a higher price of admittance, actually, I don’t get in at all. Jazz 10,000 a.d., the title already suggest is, is a form of jazz, combined with ambient. The directionless nature of ambient seems to be rather incompatible with jazz. Although many like to argue jazz isn’t going anywhere too I disagree there. There are plenty examples of pointless noodling, of course, but a percentage of that comes with the territory of improvisation. The searching should have a reward though, a point where it all clicks. It might be a side effect of working alone, but in this song it doesn’t click and therefore it just pointlessly wanders about. The same effect is found in Ho Ho 66. It’s not that the music annoys, it’s too soft and gentle for that, but it comes off as rather randomly put together.

Luckily these are the only two pieces that are like that. Oozings is a dark droney thing intercut by nastier sounding electronics and soft tinglings of bells. While I can’t say there’s much more sense of direction, here the soundscape does work. Maybe it’s because jazzy elements hint at things that don’t come that makes you feel some resolution is lacking, but in the more abstract approach of this track it doesn’t feel as a letdown that there is none. The following piece The Crazy Beat continues in the same vein of abstract, ambient sounds, slightly more disturbing. Over the course of the album you’ll find bits and pieces of exotica, which is tough to pinpoint but if you heard your share of Martin Denny, Les Baxter, Korla Pandit and Yma Súmac you’ll hear some sounds that seem familiar but out of place. The majestic track Underwater Girls, closes off with calm, brassy romance and thus Sweetly Doing Nothings ends as good as it opened. Too bad this quality isn’t maintained in the stuff inbetween.

I’m not fully convinced by this album, although is sure has its moments. There’s a randomness to it that stops the album from really taking off. From the info on the sleeve I understand that there’s visuals for which most of this music was composed which may explain the feeling of something lacking.