Jack Endino
Angle of Attack

Practically impossible to attempt an appropriate definition of the creator of this album. "Godfather of the Seattle scene"...? Yes, if it weren't that the expression "Seattle scene" means nothing, and it's only useful for certain musical encyclopedias (which, let me say right away, I did not consult when writing this review). "Precursor of Grunge..."? But if Grunge is the label that puts together - let’s say - Melvins and Pearl Jam, what sense does it make to resort again to such insignificant labels? And then, "precursor" of what...? I swear the person in question would laugh hearing something like that: because everything he did in his life, he did with absolute spontaneity, to give voice to pure sensations, to make music a "release"; certainly not to pose as a "theorist" of a new musical philosophy, nor to draft the "manifesto" of what the new Rock should or should not have been. "Recognized father of all the noise aesthetics of the Nineties..."? I only know that a certain Michael Giacondino, a Seattle amateur musician and engineering graduate from the University of Washington, built himself a very crude four-track recording studio from what was merely a basement, and there he began to play and make others PLAY, in the role of producer: newly formed bands, some remaining unknown, others starting out from that room and going on to conquer the world. Yes, I think you know WHO I’m talking about.

Impossible to attempt a definition, yet something must be said about this man; not only because on the present site - in contrast to the 12 reviews of "Nevermind" - there’s not even one of his records, nor of Skin Yard, but also because we’re talking about a Great. Yes, this is a good definition: the one that befits someone who has done so much starting from so little, indeed very little. Little in economic terms: yes, later it will be said that his "experiments" paved the way in the world of "low-budget", but in those earliest days, recording a certain way was a matter of necessity, not fashion. Little in technical terms too: Endino was a modest guitarist, certainly not a virtuoso nor a master of the instrument. But he didn’t need to be. And it’s generally not needed when one has such a VISIONARY capacity.

His solo debut, printed in a limited edition of 70 copies (!) in the spring of '90, is one of the fundamental albums of the last two decades, like it or not. Fundamental, without wanting to be (naturally). Fundamental, without being the outcome of a coherent project, fully in tune with the style of the character: splashes of creativity, nothing more, fragmentary impressions of 10 years in the studio, for a masterpiece of artisanal music with few equals in history. A single person having fun playing all the instruments and then overlaying them (some interventions from colleague Greg Gilmore on drums and bass, but not much). Putting the CD of "Angles of Attack" into the player enters the small yet infinite world of Jack; who, being someone who loves to talk about his music, also reveals the background of the operation: and so we discover, for instance, that "Create What You Fear" was inspired by "Jailbait" by Motorhead, that the vaguely "free" interludes scattered here and there throughout the album were recorded using improvised percussion (i.e., household objects), that the long "Bold Leaps Of Unreason" emerged from a free "cut and paste" of separately recorded parts. But for the emotions the album knows how to convey, no, the "author’s notes" are not needed: because I find it complicated to put into words the beastly garage of "Naive Bid", the hallucinatory Hard Blues of "Find The Key", the almost Trance-Ambient of "Time Is Running Out", and Endino’s incomprehensible voice, lost amidst the noise of "Big Seth". But the peak is "Sideways Savannah": here is revealed the ethnic-experimental side of Endino the composer, for 6 masterful minutes of bass-percussion interlocks (almost Mambo rhythm) and guitar lines drawing a very strange example of "Caribbean psychedelia".

An album not easy to find, but essential.