Bill Brovold
Superstar
Eh? Audio Repository
Let me say, as a musician, record producer, and longtime feisty rock critic, putting out a cassette album in 2018 is silly, a hipster attention grab for all the wrong reasons. Good lord, stop. Having said that, if one was to do so, guitarist Bill Brovold's Superstar would be the right one to put out. It harks back to the homemade cassette culture of the '80s with a series of instrumental pieces—not quite jams, but some not quite compositions either—that veer from circus-like ("Coney Island") to dreamy ("Growth of the Soil"), from organ skronk ("Kid with the Flu") to guitar sweetness ("The Long Walk"). It's always interesting, if occasionally vexing. When Brovold, a Rhys Chatham mate, joins with horns (supplied by Johnny Evans and Gustav Brovold) on the nearly 10-minute, suite-like "Absent Friends," the effect is lovely in a meditative yet barrelhouse free jazz way. Dub one!