Evil Edna's Horror Toilet - Too much Gristle in the Blancmange,tape,1986,UK
Here's another Ozric Tentacles offshot from 1986.Total psych/space weirdness.A real must!
get it here
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Wooden Baby-Forbidden Pastures(tape)+Stuck in the Mind Cage(tape),1988,UK
Merv Pepler - Guitar, Bass, Synthesizer, Programming, VocalsCharlie - Synthesizer, Clarinet, Violin, Guitar, Vocals
Wooden Baby were an obscure Ozrics related outfit based aroundMerv Pepler, in partnership with a mysterious figure calledCharlie, who released three lengthy cassettes of extremelystrange music. For some reason, a drum machine is usedthroughout all three tapes which impairs the quality of themusic and is inexplicable considering that Merv is as good apercussionist as there is.
Despite the relentless percussive patterns, Forbidden Pasturesis a pretty good release, opening with the exceedingly spacey"Gestation Of A Koala Bear". "The Sound Of One Hand" is theclosest that the music comes to the sound of The Ozrics with itsslow, pulsing bass, oriental flourishes and assortment ofbizarre sound effects. "The Eyes Of Tammuz" has a feel ofWebcore with its laid back clarinet and spacey keys while"Wading Gannets" is more laid back still and reminiscent of PinkFloyd and a drum machine; Merv does a fair impression of DaevidAllen on the guitar as well. Although Forbidden Pastures ispredominantly an instrumental tape, there are a number of vocalpieces as well - "Table Of Existence", "Wasp Feet", "Exorcism OfAnu" - and one of these, "A Warm Sponge" is very like seventiesHawkwind, but with an Ozrics-like interlude in the middle.
Stuck In The Mind Cage was no improvement upon its predecessor.The tape is given over more to vocal tracks and Merv is not muchof a vocalist (in actual fact, he sounds a bit like BorisOrooni). There are nevertheless a few good, spacey pieces hereand there - "The Birth Of Venus" which has some lovely slideguitar and "The Light From The Nebula". The stand out vocaltrack is the lengthy "The Cellar" which sounds like a trippierHawkwind with screamed vocals. "Pawns Of Nulla" is a slow, dubbypiece but unexceptional.
Both Ed Wynne and Joie Hinton contributed to the third tape,Embalment and it is by far the best Wooden Baby release. Thereis a feel of Hawkwind on "Impossible Maze" and of The Ozrics on"Immortal Souls" and "Astral Highways". "Ominous Omness" has afeel of eighties synth pop in its backing, although not in thegothic vocals or the deft violin playing. "Bath Scum"anticipates Eat Static with its ravey sound. A number of thepieces really are quite outstanding: "False World" is very weirdand trippy with a riff lifted from Pink Floyd's "Set TheControls For The Heart Of The Sun", and "Friday The 13th" is aslightly dark song with insistent synths and nice meanderingclarinet. The best track is the very lengthy closing piece,"Cocoon", a hard rocking instrumental with superb synth andguitar work.
Stuck In The Mind Cage and Forbidden Pastures were releasedtogether as part of Crohinga Well's Myths Of The Ghandarvaseries in a hand assembled case with booklets and inserts andlimited to 300 copies. -- Christopher Williams (from Adrift In The Ether)
-------------------------------------
Wooden Baby are a combo who have released a couple of tapes in1988. Ozrics drummer Merv Pepler and friend Charlie have createdForbidden Pastures and Stuck In The Mind Cage, two sound websthat follow a similar route to that followed by Nodens Ictus,but at a much more frantic pace. The tapes collect together avaried batch of synth dominated mindscapes that at times workand at others merely function. Heavy bass rhythms, drum machinesand washes of sound mix with undecipherable lyrical passages tobewilder, and enlighten. A new line-up of Wooden Baby has justbeen born consisting of Steve Everitt (synth), Joie (keyboards),Nick (bass) and Merv Pepler (percussion), and more willcertainly be heard from this band soon. -- Richard Allen (from Freakbeat Magazine, 1990)
Wooden Baby were an obscure Ozrics related outfit based aroundMerv Pepler, in partnership with a mysterious figure calledCharlie, who released three lengthy cassettes of extremelystrange music. For some reason, a drum machine is usedthroughout all three tapes which impairs the quality of themusic and is inexplicable considering that Merv is as good apercussionist as there is.
Despite the relentless percussive patterns, Forbidden Pasturesis a pretty good release, opening with the exceedingly spacey"Gestation Of A Koala Bear". "The Sound Of One Hand" is theclosest that the music comes to the sound of The Ozrics with itsslow, pulsing bass, oriental flourishes and assortment ofbizarre sound effects. "The Eyes Of Tammuz" has a feel ofWebcore with its laid back clarinet and spacey keys while"Wading Gannets" is more laid back still and reminiscent of PinkFloyd and a drum machine; Merv does a fair impression of DaevidAllen on the guitar as well. Although Forbidden Pastures ispredominantly an instrumental tape, there are a number of vocalpieces as well - "Table Of Existence", "Wasp Feet", "Exorcism OfAnu" - and one of these, "A Warm Sponge" is very like seventiesHawkwind, but with an Ozrics-like interlude in the middle.
Stuck In The Mind Cage was no improvement upon its predecessor.The tape is given over more to vocal tracks and Merv is not muchof a vocalist (in actual fact, he sounds a bit like BorisOrooni). There are nevertheless a few good, spacey pieces hereand there - "The Birth Of Venus" which has some lovely slideguitar and "The Light From The Nebula". The stand out vocaltrack is the lengthy "The Cellar" which sounds like a trippierHawkwind with screamed vocals. "Pawns Of Nulla" is a slow, dubbypiece but unexceptional.
Both Ed Wynne and Joie Hinton contributed to the third tape,Embalment and it is by far the best Wooden Baby release. Thereis a feel of Hawkwind on "Impossible Maze" and of The Ozrics on"Immortal Souls" and "Astral Highways". "Ominous Omness" has afeel of eighties synth pop in its backing, although not in thegothic vocals or the deft violin playing. "Bath Scum"anticipates Eat Static with its ravey sound. A number of thepieces really are quite outstanding: "False World" is very weirdand trippy with a riff lifted from Pink Floyd's "Set TheControls For The Heart Of The Sun", and "Friday The 13th" is aslightly dark song with insistent synths and nice meanderingclarinet. The best track is the very lengthy closing piece,"Cocoon", a hard rocking instrumental with superb synth andguitar work.
Stuck In The Mind Cage and Forbidden Pastures were releasedtogether as part of Crohinga Well's Myths Of The Ghandarvaseries in a hand assembled case with booklets and inserts andlimited to 300 copies. -- Christopher Williams (from Adrift In The Ether)
-------------------------------------
Wooden Baby are a combo who have released a couple of tapes in1988. Ozrics drummer Merv Pepler and friend Charlie have createdForbidden Pastures and Stuck In The Mind Cage, two sound websthat follow a similar route to that followed by Nodens Ictus,but at a much more frantic pace. The tapes collect together avaried batch of synth dominated mindscapes that at times workand at others merely function. Heavy bass rhythms, drum machinesand washes of sound mix with undecipherable lyrical passages tobewilder, and enlighten. A new line-up of Wooden Baby has justbeen born consisting of Steve Everitt (synth), Joie (keyboards),Nick (bass) and Merv Pepler (percussion), and more willcertainly be heard from this band soon. -- Richard Allen (from Freakbeat Magazine, 1990)
Chrysanthemums-Is That a Fish on Your Shoulder or are You Just Pleased to See Me?(LP,1986)+Another sacred day/mouth pain (1st 7",1987?),UK
Here's another Deep Freeze Mice/Alan Jenkins offshot.Great as always and very highly recommented!Psych /Pop wierdness at it's best!48 Cameras - B-Sides Are For Lovers ,LP,1985,Belgium
48 Cameras are known as an international & musical project of variable geometry (Belgium, Monaco & United Kingdom for now). Some of its members never met the others. During the past years, this co-operative of musicians & non musicians recorded 8 official albums & welcomed guests - mostly via Internet - coming from various countries, cultures & disciplines, guests as Rodolphe Burger, Sandy Dillon, DJ Olive, Michael Gira, Tom Heasley, Gerard Malanga, Charlemagne Palestine, Vesica Piscis, etc. This methodology has led to a kind of domino theory effect creating an ever increasing network of contributors & an ever evolving series of musical accidents. Some of its members also appeared on various side-projects. Thus, David Coulter & Jean Marie Mathoul recorded an album with Charlemagne Palestine & another one with Charlemagne Palestine & Michael Gira. More on the official website : www.48cameras.com where some of the albums are still available via PayPal. Check "pics" to have access to an illustrated discography. Please note that the complete titles of these 5 songs, taken from "After all, isn't tango the dance of the drunk man?" (2006), are "This river may spring to life again", "All stories are love stories are short stories", "Try to remember a similar day", "Nine independent doors open to Selmer Close" and "Terence Stamp for a time". Oh, please also note that we do not want "comments" or so but feel free to contact us via our website or via "MySpace / My Mail". As for the "adds", we choose to privilege close friends, collaborators, personal heroes, stateless artists, "starving angels" & some "beautiful & moody walkers" met "here, there & everywhere" by accident on MySpace. "Our music could be a music written in a foreign language that we would not intend to completely manage". Thank you !http://www.myspace.com/fortyeightcameras
"48 Cameras may wear bow ties but they contain espionage equipment. B-Sides are for lovers like velvet skin tight gloves conceiling razor blades. Electronic temptation without silly haircuts". in ZigZag 1985 (UK)
get this gem here
Juicy Fruits-Drink!,LP,1980,Japan
Mor Japanese weirdness today!Very rare debout LP by this punk/weird pop Japanese group.Any help will be appreciated.
Wow!that was fast!Thanks to Hircou and the anonymous friend now we have both infos and sleeve scan!Thank you very much!
Wow!that was fast!Thanks to Hircou and the anonymous friend now we have both infos and sleeve scan!Thank you very much!
Members: Iria - Atsuko Okuno, Toshihiko Shibaya, Yuji Okiyama, Toshio Takagi
They made a debut with "Jenny Ha Gokigen Naname" based on Haruo Chikada & BEEF (Yutaka Shigeki formerly in Yoni-Bayashi was in the band while he moved out). Techno Kayo (To be accurate, it's Techno-arranged Group Sounds + Ventures Kayo ) concept was well accepted and they send techno pop which had not been for mass yet into the Japanese pop chart. "Koi No Benchseat" is a master piece though it was B-sided. The Bonchi (Kansai Comedy Duo) covered it and they built the foundation for Techno Kayou. At the same time, the momentum of techno pop as subculture started to decline since then. A hidden masterpiece album is "27-fun No Koi" that Seiji Toda supported as an arranger. In '83, they shifted and made hits covering Southern All Stars' Keisuke Kuwata works (Sonna Hiroshi Ni Damasarete). Yuji Okiyama whose glasses are cute during his time in Juicy also released a superb Eleki Kayou (like the Ventures) song called "Tokyo Kiken Yaro (Dangerous Guy)".
get it here
Bernard Bonnier - Casse-tête,LP,1984,Canada
Great electroacoustic/music concrete Lp.Very rare these days.get it here
Black Swan Network - The Late Music vol.1,CD,1997,USA/Australia
The Black Swan Network is the experimental side project of The Olivia Tremor Control.
The Late Music is an 8 track, hour long ambient CD released by the Australian label Camera Obscura in 1997. It features contributions from Julian Koster (The Music Tapes and Neutral Milk Hotel) and Jeff Mangum (also Neutral Milk Hotel).
An EP was also released with The Olivia Tremor Control. Within some of these tracks are extracts from The Black Swan Network's dream appeal - taped contributions from people as to various dreams they've had or would like to have. Musical contributions come from Kirk Pleasant (from Calvin, Don't Jump!) and Roxanne Martin (fablefactory).
In January 2001, Happy Happy Birthday to Me records released a 7" single as part of their singles club.
Other projects involving Black Swan Network members:The Olivia Tremor Control, The Circulatory System, Pipes You See, Pipes You Don't, Sunshine Fix, Frosted Ambassador .
From Elephant six web page
Camera Obscura is proud to bring you "The Late Music (Volume One)", a full-length CD of experimental/ambient tape manipulations by Olivia Tremor Control side-project Black Swan Network. In the unlikely case that you wondered what those strange interludes between the four-part harmony pop gems of OTC's "Dusk at Cubist Castle" would sound like developed into pieces in their own right, here is your chance to find out. "The Late Music" on conceptually from the two and four channel extravaganzas that can be found on the bonus disc of sound experiments shipped with early copies of the "Dusk at Cubist Castle" CD and also on OTC's "The Opera House" and "Jumping Fences" EPs.
Any attempts to describe the seven pieces that make up this release are bound to fall short of the mark, because this is not much like anything we have ever heard before. The sounds created for this release only occasionally give any kind of clue about what was used to create them. For one track, Elephant 6 collective member Eric Ledford contributes an oblique cello improvisation. For another, the voices of infants laughing and crying are brilliantly multiplied and sequenced and processed for an effect that has been observed to create near hysteria in the listener. But on most of the seven tracks here, Black Swan Network have used the source material as an abstract resource to be sculpted into dreamlike Musique Concrete.
The packaging for this disc is non-jewel case, instead coming in a gate-fold card sleeve with tri-fold insert. All art is by Black Swan Network's Will Cullen, also responsible for those amazing Olivia Tremor Control covers.
Press release from :http://www.cameraobscura.com.au/cam003.htm
get this ,long out of print, gem here
Friday, March 30, 2007
H.N.A.S.-LIVE IN HUSUM 24.05.1986, CDR, ????, GERMANY
Wonderfully damaged and as brilliantly "off" sounding as their best studio work, this 1986 live recording was released in an edition of, I believe, 7 copies (I seem to recall Flaam hawking one on ebay for $100+). As such, it's hardly even known to exist. Certainly it's not included in the brainwashed.com discography for them and yet...here it is. Or rather, here's the music with a copy of the cover image since I wasn't among the lucky 7. In a live setting here, they weave unseemly seams of lopsided electro-pop into Damenbart-ish cod kosmiche excursions amid much distended atmospheric wooze in the grand HNAS style, though I'm not sure if anyone would have anticipated the intimate scat jazz combo they morph into toward the end of this gig! Note: this lengthy CD has been divided into two parts.
Get part one Here
Get part two Here
HERBE ROUGE-COTE COUR, COTE JARDIN, LP, 1978, FRANCE
Wonderful but capital "W" wacky French jazzy prog with distinct tendencies toward both the post-Canterbury-isms of their countrymen in Moving Gelatine Plates and Rhesus O and the mutant circus jazz of Komintern and Mahjun, but always with the zaniness (particularly vocal zaniness) to the fore, their campy shrill falsetto vocal schtick in particular seemingly genetically grafted from Germany's Nine Days Wonder. Note: this is taken from the CD reissue, which included many bonus cuts and has been divided into two parts.
Get part one Here
Get part two Here
CAMIZOLE-S/T, CD, 1999 (RECORDED: 1977), FRANCE
Following up on my post of Video-Aventures, here's Dominique Grimaud's pre-V.-A. freak out outfit Camizole. One of the many anarchistic satirical improvisational action units that formed in the turbulent aftermath of the May '68 uprisings (see also Red Noise, Mahogany Brain, Barricade et.al.), in their case, it would be the combined influence of Julian Beck's confrontational Living Theater and the piss-taking post-Zappa dada improv rock of Red Noise that would direct their work toward such unruly ends. This eponymous archival CD (they never released anything in their lifetime) was recorded at at French music festival circa 1977 toward the end of their days. I won't even pretend that this is of the same godly caliber as what Grimaud was shortly to get up to with Video-Aventures but it's still a fascinating window into a disappeared Cornell-box universe of idiosyncratic real time sonic assembly. Note: this lengthy CD has been divided into two parts.
Get part one Here
Get part two Here
Klaus BLOCH-"Extrem Musik a la Ping Pong" Phase 1,LP,1980,Germany
Following Atlantis Audio Archive blog,of Phase II post,Here's Phase I. Thanks to Fillipo for this!
get it here
Note that this was posted too a few hours back in http://kraut-team.blogspot.com/, but i also post it here crediting it to Fillipo cause i think this record should appear here too!
Note that this was posted too a few hours back in http://kraut-team.blogspot.com/, but i also post it here crediting it to Fillipo cause i think this record should appear here too!
B People- Petrified Conditions 1979-1981 ,LP,1986.USA
B-People were Alex Gibson's punkwave band when he was mostly famous (and greatly envied) for being Penelope Houston's boyfriend, along with Pat Delaney (Deadbeats, Geza X, Romans) and Tom Recchion from a zillion LAFMS projects [the Los Angeles Free Music Society*]. A peripatetic figure on the Los Angeles post-punk scene, Alex Gibson first appeared around 1978 as the lead guitarist and songwriter of an unrecorded at the time local band called the Little Cripples. When that band's singer, Michael Gira, split for New York to form Circus Mort and, eventually, Swans, the remaining bandmembers regrouped, with Gibson now on lead vocals, and formed B People. (A few of those early Little Cripples songs showed up, reworked, on B People's posthumous career summation, 1986's Petrified Conditions 1979-1981.) B People only managed one EP, a self-titled release on Miles Copeland's Faulty Products label, before splitting up in 1981. Not a very rare record but a great and very omportant gem!
get it here
Augusto Klamm-Poisonous Fragrances,tape,1981-81,UK(?)
Strange self released experimental/dark industrial tape .Released in 1983 in very limited quantities.get it here
Jorge Reyes & Antonio Zepeda - A la Izquierda del Colibrí ,LP,1986,Mexico
Not unlike a Techno shaman, this Mexican artist eschews musical cliches in his deliberately elusive music. Using ancient instruments such as the clay whistle, shells, rattles, bamboo and the water drum, Jorge Reyes adds electronic textures to create a mythic pre-Columbian dreamscape. Sounds based on natural elements such as wind and rain enter like foreboding notices of the eternal, underpinning the unnerving percussion. Though mostly instrumental, the odd chant is employed to evoke the indigenous culture of the Americas from a time before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. Much of his music may be classified as Ambient, but Reyes' jazz background shows in the sophisticated compositional structures.
Robert Leaver
Mexican Space Music at its best, with influences from Prehispanic music
get it here
Jeff & Jane Hudson-complete discography,1979-1983,USA
YOU ASKED FOR IT!HERE IT IS!
World trade mini lp(1981)
Flesh LP(1983)
Burn CD(2002)
No Clubs 7"(1981)+Attack under attack "los lamos"/operating instructions" 7"(1982)
+special world 7"(1983)
Complete discography of this phenomenal legends of minimal synth sounds.All unique and amazing.
for more infos visit their official site
Iltar-ST,LP,1977,USA
Stoned progressive/jazz-rock a k a "new fusion". Fuzz, sitar, flute, sax.
This is the only info found!The LP is totally crazed out stoned psych/jazz,totally obscur and great!
any more infos would be appreciated.
get it here
Iconoclasta-Soliloquio,LP,1987,Mexico
The best of the best Mexican progressive group and the best known abroad. Probably the only group in Mexico that has survived the harsh musical scene where other groups have just disappeared or gave up for the money. Founded in 1980 with Ricardo Moreno: Guitars, Ricardo Ortegon: Guitars, Rosa Flora Moreno: Keyboards, Victor Baldovinos: Drums and Nohemi d'Rubin: Bass. Initially a concert group, they created their own studio and released their first album in 1983: The self titled Iconoclasta, a rich blend of classical music, jazz and electronic/progressive music. Their second album: Reminiscencias brought international attention to the group and their third Suite Mexicana was a conceptual album based upon mexican classical music composers blended with prehispanic sounds; the result a nice progressive sound released in 1987 for the Mexican Independence celebration. By this time Rosa and Nohemi left the group with a compilation album released as a farewell. With their departure a search for replacements started. Since Ricardo was also playing in another super group: Praxis (that broke up at the same time in 1988), he invited Praxis guitarist: Hector Hernandez to join Iconoclasta; Alfredo Rigosa took over the bass and Ricardo switch to take command of the keyboards. With the new members new format they released "Adolescencia croncia" started a european tour where they won the international progressive contest "Exposure". The next album "En busca del sentido" earned the best album award and multiple awards followed: First place in the best international act, best group, Ricardo was nominated best international composer, Victor as best drummer and Alfredo as best bassist. Alfredo leaves the group in 1990, Juan Carlos Gutierrez took his place and Iconoclasta prepared for a concert in the most prestigious theater in Mexico City which was televised and recorded and released as "En Concierto". Once again a new changes occur when Juan leaves the group and Nohemi returns for the Anniversary concert in Tlatelolco while they continue to prepare their next album. In 1991 once again Hector leaves and the group remains as a quartet releasing "La reencarnacion de Maquiavelo" a concept album which shows Iconoclasta at its best. The group releases what is their latest album in 1994: " De Todos Uno" showing a mature group that in spite of commercial pressures remains at the forefront of progressive music. On June 4, 1999 they open for Gong during their presentation in Mexico and currently are working on their new CD "La Granja Humana" (The Human Farm)
Discography:
Iconoclasta Reminiscencias (Reminiscence)
Discography:
Iconoclasta Reminiscencias (Reminiscence)
Suite Mexicana (Mexican Suite)
Soliloquio
Siete Anos (7 years, compilation)
Adolescencia Cronica (Chronic Adolescence)
Soliloquio
Siete Anos (7 years, compilation)
Adolescencia Cronica (Chronic Adolescence)
En Busca Del Sentido (In search of meaning)
En Concierto (Live)
La Reencarnacion De Maquiavelo (Machiavelo's reincarnation)
De Todos Uno (From all one)
En Concierto (Live)
La Reencarnacion De Maquiavelo (Machiavelo's reincarnation)
De Todos Uno (From all one)
get it here
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Kollektiv Rote Rübe & Ton Steine Scherben -Liebe Tod Hysterie,tape/cd-r,1979,Germany,NWW list
Here's one more by KRR&TSS,and i think that completes their discography(not including Bruhwarm LP that is going to be posted soon).Thanks to Isettal for this one.get it here
→↑→ (aka Tsk Tsk Tsk)-Kim's 21st Birthday Party 09/05/1981,CD-r,1981/?,Australia
→ ↑ →, (pronounced 'tsk tsk tsk') and moreoften written (though wrongly) as "Tsk Tsk Tsk" or "Tch Tch Tch", was an Australian experimental musical group formed in Melbourne in 1977 by Philip Brophy, Ralph Traviato and Leigh Parkhill.
Sometimes compared to Andy Warhol's Factory collective, the group produced experimental music (Brophy on drums or synthesiser), films, videos, and live theatrical performances exploring Brophy's aesthetic and cultural interests, often on a minimal budget. Musically the group touched upon a wide range of styles including minimalism, punk rock, muzak, krautrock and disco, usually with no vocalist.
Over the ten years of the groups operation it involved over sixty of Brophy's friends and acquaintances including musician David Chesworth, and visual artists Maria Kozic and Jayne Stevenson. They performed in a wide range on Australian venues including pubs, galleries, university campuses and the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre. They also performed or exhibited in Europe, including London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. Brophy dissolved the group in the late 1980s, issuing a retrospective book in 1983: "Made by → ↑ →". He continued to work with his then partner Kozic for some time, prior to her relocation to New York.
Kim's 21st birthday party seemed like a slightly staid affair even if everyone is obviously having a good time. The sound quality is excellent, once again thanks to Tim V and the band play their party style set - which they would do to good effect when they had a minor underground hit with the Nice Noise EP. So there's versions of Funky Town, Eno's Third Uncle and Gary Glitter's Rock and Roll Part I spread amidst hard drumming originals. Even if they're playing this stuff with an arched eyebrow, it still sounds pretty damned good.
For more →↑→ releases please go here .
Sorry Phil i did not mentioned this earlier,wasn't done by purpose.
get this gem here
Torso Kurten - The Fraternity of Torture,tape,1985,UK(?)
Here's a realise from a friend of this blog,Jeff Stonehouse.I liked it very much ,hope you do too.Here's what Jeff writes about it:"Torso Kurten were actually myself and a guy called Peter Smith and thisalbum was composed using found sounds (discarded cassette tapes found at theroadside and household objects like plastic coathangers), random radionoise,and broken or failing electronics. It was recorded blind, one track ata time, on a four track portastudio. (ie - Peter would record onto one trackand then bring the portastudio to me, I would then record onto track twowithout listening to what was on track one and pass it back to Peter, and soon). We did this 2 times, once for each side of the album. 'Chickens at 23'was composed in a slightly more structured way, but using the same sort ofinstrumentation."....
get this gem here
Zorch -Ouroboros,CD,2000,UK
Zorch were the UK's first "all synthesiser" band. Their live shows combined psychedelic electronic music with a mind blowing lightshow. Appearing at Stonehenge and other early free festivals, those who saw them play never forgot the experience. This is the only album ever recorded at Peter Zinovieff's EMS studio and features the classic analogue Synthi 100.
"I left my mind somewhere last night... and Zorch are welcome to it" - Melody Maker, January 1975 .
This gem is as far as i know out of print.Wonderful mindblowing synth textures in early Tangerine Dream/Klaus Schulze vein!
get it here
Syntoma-NO ME PUEDO CONTROLAR ,LP,1984,Mexico
Very rare and obscure minimal synth LP from mexico,in early Cabaret Voltaire/DAF/Transparent Illusion vein!Highly recommented!Sorry no infos found in English .get it here
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
SHINRO OHTAKE & YAMANTAKA EYE-PIPELINE-24 SMASH HITS BY 24 PUZZLE PUNK BANDS, CD & BOOK, 1996, JAPAN
Following up on yesterdays posting of the Juke/19 boxset, here's the passingly cited collaboration between Juke/19 mainman Shinro Ohtake (now much more known in the Japanese visual arts world, his delightfully messy childhood-gone-wrong visual sensibility displayed in the enclosed book) and Eye from The Boredoms. Anyone that cocked an ear to the Juke/19 will understand well that Eye's inspired infantilism schtick is as indebted to Juke/19's sound as his neon junkstore visual sense is indebted to Ohtake's fine arts output. One suspects that their coming together here is something of a pilgrimage to Mecca of sorts for Eye. As for what it sounds like...well...let's see. The year is 1996, there's a room full of childrens instruments on hand, a cockamamie thematic conceit is in place (in this instance, that the album is by a collection of "24 puzzle punk bands") and Eye is a featured performer. 3 guesses.
Note: this lengthy CD has been divided into two parts.
Get part one Here
Get part two Here
BRINKMANN-HOMAGE A BRINKMANN, TAPE, 1982, GERMANY
More stellar Neue Deutsche Welle madness, in this case of an explicitly schizophrenic cast. There is much dead sharp minimal synth action here, some of it in a submersed bloopbeat way thats very Vanity Records, some of it delivered with a toxic souring of it's candy coated melodicism that is both Tietchens-y and tumescence inducing. At other times, one can expect everything from squashed and dejected sounding spins on the Czukay/Wobble/Leibzeit collaborative aesthetic to all out retarded gooning and pie pan banging. So good.
Get it Here
HENRY COW-LIVE ON RADIO BREMEN 1978, UK, UNRELEASED
Following my posts of unreleased material by Ghedalia Tazartes along with assorted exponents of Australian underground sounds, here's a further installment of of unreleased experimental music history thats bound to astound. Anyone up for 100+ minutes of broadcast quality live Henry Cow? Thought so. I'll refrain from indulging in some extended analysis of Henry Cow and their importance, a subject thats been hashed over endlessly by now. Rather, I'll just state that this recording is nothing short of a revelation and includes reams of goosebump inducing improvisations that are of crucial importance, especially given the critical role improvisation played in the Henry Cow dynamic and how little of this side of their work has heretofore been documented (one LP of their live double and one side on the Greasy Truckers compilation). Over an hour of this is dedicated to said unreleased improvised material, making this recording something of the ark of the covenant for R.I.O. fanboys and improv geeks alike. Why oh why has this slice of musical godhead failed to receive a proper release yet? Only the R.I.O. overlords at ReR can answer that. For now though, I expect many here will be greedily supping from the teat of this fount of goodness and inspiration.
AT THE REQUEST OF CHRIS CUTLER, THESE LINKS HAVE BEEN DELETED, AS ReR ARE CURRENTLY IN THE PROCESS OF NEGOTIATIONS WITH NDR TO OFFICIALLY REISSUE THIS (ALONG WITH OTHER) LIVE HENRY COW MATERIAL.
Stone Breath - Songs of Moonlight and Rain ,CD,1997,Australia
On this release Stone Breath features Timothy and Aliseon from MD psychedelicists Mourning Cloak in a more spectral acoustic vein. Following on from the critically acclaimed Mourning Cloak CD "In Dreams You See", "Songs of Moonlight and Rain" establishes an acid-folk thread somewhere between the occult realms of Current 93, and the mantra-strum of Japanese legends Ghost, and is in the same zone as some of the more haunted moments of Alastair Galbraith's "Morse" and "Talisman" albums. Acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, penny whistles, zitherlin, chimes, tibetian bells, hand drums and many other instruments are used to infuse songs like "Perched upon the Temple Bell, the Butterfly Sleeps", "Words Written on Petals" and "To Cull Undying Flowers" with a unique poetic force that lives up to their fantastic titles. The atmosphere of this release will stay with the listener like the reverberation of water droplets in the stone cistern of a Japanese water chime.
"Songs of Moonlight and Rain" is packaged in a tri-fold textured card wallet and includes a eight page illustrated lyric booklet, all illustrated in Timothy's finest mind-altering style.
Instruments played on this record:
Acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, yule bells, whistles, chimes, harp, bowed zither, tambourine, windchimes, tarka, tibetian bells, water, blackbirds, kalimba, sitar, screech owl, sword, sheet metal and drum.
Great dark/weird darkness deep wood folk compined with acoustic experimentalism, LP ,long out of print.
get it here
Rock Critics(Luc Marianni)-TV Show,LP,1982,France
Here's one more Luc Marianni project(Rock Critics),with n LP from 1982.Thanks once more Phil.Get it here
André Almuró & Colette Magny-Avec' Poeme ,LP,1966,France
A very rare LP of Colette Magny accompanied by André Almuró,released in 1966.Fantastic music concrete accompanying Magny's poems.Saw it selling for 500 EURO!!!!!!!Thank you Phil for this rarity!
Unfortunatelly no pic sleeve scans.
get it here
Catharsis-Illuminations,LP,1975,France
Here's Another one By Catharsis.This album contained recordings from June and November 1971 featuring Charlotte's distinctive chanting on many tracks. Her academic vocal training shines through (the members were former music academy students), sometimes close to Donella Del Monaco in Opus Avantra. The musical variety was greater than before, ranging from the transcendental "Aube" via uncommon treatments of music from the 17th and 18th Century, to the childish "Mignonne allons voir". Among these short pieces are some of Catharsis finest recordings. (Code C)
get it here
Luc Marianni-Souvenirs Du Futur,LP,1980,France
Following my previous posts of Luc Marianni/Rock Critics LPs here comes another one.Amazing as always!get it here
Thanks Phil for this one!
Monday, March 26, 2007
JUKE/19-1978-1982, 5xCD BOXSET, 1996, JAPAN
Presaging the emergence of the whole Boredoms/UFO or Die mayhem-in-the-romper-room aesthetic by some 10 or so years (Juke/19 leader Shinro Ohtake would go on to collaborate with Eye on the Pipeline CD/book project in 1996, making the connection explicit) Juke/19 delights in creating willfully imbecilic universes of sound where episodes of absurdist brilliance sit jowl to jowl with passels of merely passable midrange howl, though these sudden right turns from cantankerous cacophony to gleefully cartoonish instant compositions create some gripping tension, as these ruptures in tone occur with a logic palpable only to those involved. As everything from mulched video game marching music for mongoloids to what sounds like Sally Smmit being tasered by Maurizio Bianchi emerge at unexpected intervals from the din, you begin to get the sense of some very alien minds at work here. Everything I've just said fails to adequately account for the contents of disc three here though (1981's "Pieces"), which sits at an esoteric-bordering-on-occult right angle to all the rest of the boxset's contents both in it's seriousness and eerieness and which strongly calls to mind the ceremonial, processional and very Dome-like work of the stunning Japanese outfit The Mask Of The Imperial Family before hazing out into a fathoms deep cavern of claustrophobic resonances. Strongly compelling stuff here, folks.
Get disc one (Juke/19) Here
Get disc two (Ninety Seven Circles) Here
Get disc three (Pieces) Here
Get disc four (Soundtrack) Here
Get disc five (19/Single: 4 Titles) Here
TOTO LOTTO-OHNE GEWAHR, TAPE, 1981, GERMANY
Explicitly located on the sturm und drang side of the Neue Deutsche Welle equation and fronted by the very distinctive caterwauling yelp of Christoph Anders (whom Chris Cutler would wisely later hijack for his Cassiber project), Toto Lotto were known (if at all) for their inclusion on the seminal NDW compilation LP Schau Hor Main Herz Ist Rhein. Corrosive both musically and lyrically, Toto Lotto are utterly indebted to the tabula rasa mentality that informs both their immediate peers in the Einsturzende Neubauten camp and their kissing cousins in the American no wave scene. Indeed, with Anders handing sax scree here as well, Toto Lotto's debt to The Contortions is made plain. If it were in my remit to do so, I'd switch the indexing and direct one and all to begin with side B as this is where their sound is maneuvered into a substantially more precedent free direction, specifically via the introduction of driving synthetic blooping and loud rhythm box clatter which, when set against the venomous ironic braying of Anders makes for some powerfully disorienting sound and motion. Note: this lengthy tape has been divided into two parts.
Get part one Here
Get part two Here
Catharsis-Les Chevrons,LP,1972,France
Following my previous post of their 1st LP here comes the 2nd one.get it here
Joseph Suchy - Entskidoo,CD,2000,Germany
If Clinic can be touted as "innovators of modern music" then the being that claims to be Cologne based guitarist Joseph Suchy must be some trans-dimensional hyper-entity who beamed back here from the future to show us the true path to giddy innovative heights. Herr Suchy seems intent on pushing the six strings through as much laptop grop as he can, and he can play the ass off the plank to boot. His busy soloing is still just about recognisable as such much of the time despite persistant machine deconstruction and particle accelerator bombardment. The main chunk of 'Entskidoo' is comprised of two suites of vertiginous improvised computer mangled guitar meltdown. It's a soundscape in constant flux - canvasses splattered red, quickly speckled yellow and pink and then filled in with pulsating green triangles, or at least that's how the synaesthetic analysis was testing last time I sniffed it. It'll probably appeal to fans of the rightly lauded Fennesz and laptop / concrete side of Jim 'Chicagonogood' O'Rourke, and could give both of them a powerbook diddling to remember! This ought to get anyone who drooled over 'Endless Summer' equally hot and bothered. It also marks the first Entenpfuhl release on CD, but the vinyl version has a much nicer sleeve. The alpha section of the first side opens with a cute little twang that fires slight recall of J Mascis' contribution to the 'Guitarrorists' compilation, but is somewhat more meandering and freeform. This soon takes a darker turn as it duets with ominous digital rumble and rapid click. For a fleeting partial clue, imagine Merzbow doing Hawaiian music for a few seconds. The guitar playing speeds up and cuts loose and the hard drive effects get denser and dronier as the track progresses through crisp vistas of happy noise. At the end of the first suite (vinyl side one) Suchy spews xylophone patters over churning groans. There is always some kind of abstracted melodic pull no matter how many distorted effects Suchy layers on. Some new idea springs forth every few inches and there always seem to be new sounds lurking in each listen. The second suite (side 2 of the record) builds up dense crescendos until dropping back to multi tracked clean guitar picking out a coda, as if to show the bare bones that "Entskidoo" hung it's dissonant diginoise flesh on. The last couple of tracks are self contained and appear on a 7" single in the limited vinyl edition. "Gump" sets a simple chiming riff that recalls Colin Newman's 'Singing Fish' amidst a sea of swirling off kilter digi-flotsam, and seems to be a more compact and eloquent statement of the same intent that fired the bulk of the preceding long player. "Tijovo" takes a very different tack with some unadorned sparse (presumably) improvised guitar plucking accompanied by (double?) bass and soft singing from Yvonne Cornelius. Overall I give this record an X and a Q although I'm not sure if the record can make good use of such rare letters. In case you're wondering, that's a good thing. If his three previous albums on Tonschacht, Grob and Whatness are even half this inventive then they'll be well worth investigating. - Graeme Rowland
From Braineashed
As requested!
Get this gem here
Cecil Leuter (Roger Roger) - Pop Electronique,LP,1969,France
Cecil Leuter aka Roger Roger is the pseudonym he used for his electronic productions. One of the first with Pierre Henry and Jean-Jacques Perrey to try out the Moog synth. Originally his Pop Electronique album was released in 1969. Five years after Bob Moog put his synth on the market.
get this here
NOTE!2 songs missing
Carpe Diem -En Regardant Passer le Temps,LP,1975,France
Carpe Diem was a rather short-living French band with (unfortunately) not more than two albums and though they are considered in general by Prog fans of minor significance compared to i.e. Ange, Clearlight or Pulsar they are in fact my top favourite one from that country having quite an unique sound and (at least for me) the perfect blend of progressive rock music. Actually they’re quite difficult to categorize because they revealed elements of symphonic Prog, jazz-rock fusion and space rock. Due to the latter two components of their music I’ve seen reviewers relating them in the broadest sense to the Canterbury and Space Fusion scene which might be a bit misleading. There isn’t any similarity to bands like Soft Machine or Gong in their music and I guess this tag comes from their frequent use of saxophone which has been played by them though not that much in a typical free-form jazzy vein but more based on classical symphonic music. Even to their country fellows Pulsar they’re often compared with I don’t hear much of similarity, they had a much more lively and less somniferous sound than that band. Also there’s little resemblance to Ange or Shylock since Carpe Diem revealed only occasionally (and very pleasant) vocals and a high degree of harmony in their compositions. Closest comparisons coming to my mind actually would be Clearlight, Atoll or the Franco-Canadian band Maneige in some way but Carpe Diem mainly sounded like Carpe Diem. I really prefer them to many other symphonic Prog bands not only due to the adorable combined use of flute and sax but also because they managed to never sound overblown or sappy at any moment despite all harmony in their music.Both of their albums are pretty much in a similar high quality and honestly I’d rate each of them with 90 percent. Their debut here in review opens with the short “Voyage du Non-Retour” in a rather quirky and up-tempo vein and here in fact the jazz-rock classification still fits quite well. But “Reincarnation” reveals already very obviously a sound typical for this band starting with slow e-piano which reminds of harpsichord, gentle flute play and spheric synths. The composition continously gains momentum and develops into an excellent and wonderful symphonic Prog piece with both a jazzy touch (due to the saxophone) and a slightly spacey one (due to tone modulated vocals). “Jeux du Siecle” reminds much more of classical music than of jazz and offers a very warm, gentle and harmonic sound dominated by saxophone, tasteful keyboards and Camel-esque guitar play (actually the only element this band comes to mind) with nice contributions by flute. Most of the track is kept instrumental, only in the final minute there are some vocals. The closing all instrumental one “Publiophobie” is like the introduction again more lively and represents a highly appealing hybrid between symphonic and jazz rock. Especially in its second half there are nice sections where the guitar’s coming more to the foreground for the first time.As a conclusion I must say that Carpe Diem presented on their debut a felicitous mix of traditional Prog and jazz fusion in a very dense and highly intriguing sound that fascinates the prone listener in a mesmerizing way.
get this masterpiece here
Siluetes 61-S.T.,LP,1981,Germany
Following the previous post of Siluetes 61 2nd LP here comes the first one.Sorry ,no time to seperate tracks,ripped as side1 and side2.Tracklist included though.
get it here
V/A:Sensationnel Le Journal 2+3+4,tapes,1984,France
Sensationnel N°2(1984) K7Illusion Production - IP015Tracks listing :
A01 S. Barron - Untitled
A02 Etant Donnés - Le Paradis Jaune
A03 Assassination By List - Untitled
A04 Des Traces - Une Marque En Dedans
A05 Ampzilla's Delight - Nutron Romantics
A06 Pascal Comelade - Chanson
A07 Attrition - Head Culture Rally
A08 Zwei Arbeiter - Hurrah, Youppie
A09 Ericka Irganon - In Your Bush
A10 Oficer - Swaziland
A11 Absolute Body Control - A Better Way
B01 Stabat Stable - I Can Help You You Know
B02 Abstemious Youth - No Vino
B03 A La Limite - Point De Fuite
B04 Vox Populi! - Ectoplasmik Musik
B05 Masaki - Ti Ni Mou Ryo
B06 Lady June - Well In It
B07 Unovidual - Vice Version
B08 Pacific 231 - Weissrathenian
B09 Yuca Ferdanzen - Actes Musicaux
B10 In Embrace - Blue Beach
B11 Utilisation Du Vieux Port - Ré Sistance
B12 Magthea Jr Smets - Funky Nightmare
B13 Piedro Insipiedo - Linda Enjoys Riding A ...
Sensationnel N°3 & N°4(1984) K7 x2Illusion production - IP022Tracks listing :
A01 - Lord W - The Tape After (10:58)
A02 - Kevin Harrison & Linda Novak & Steven Parker - In My Eyes (1:30)
A03 - La 1919 Spontaneo - Leptinotarsa Decemlineata (5:20)
A04 - Tara Cross - Oriental Men (2:53)
A05 - Die Kleinen Psyoniken - Une Espèce De Déperdition Du Niveau Normal De La Réalité (3:00)
A06 - Instead Of - Untitled (0:15)
A07 - Das Synthetische Mischgewebe - Verwirrt (7:40)
A08 - Xx Century Zorro - District (2:25)
A09 - N.d.e. - Projection Intérieure (2:50)
A10 - F:a.r. Prosthesis - Hint (3:00)
B01 - L'eponge Synthétique - Que Pasa? (3:00)
B02 - Twins, The - Sitting In The Back (3:00)
B03 -die Form & Nulla Iperreale - La Vocazione Sospesa (8:05)
B04 - London Different Kings, The - Melage Still Races (3:01)
B05 - K2 - Marching Into Hades (4:53)
B06 - Instead Of - Untitled (0:40)
B07 - Architects Office -hymnosis (3:30)
B08 - Kevin Harrison & Linda Novak & Steven Parker - Earth And Water (3:30)
B09 - La Stpo - Idol (1:52)
B10 - Diseno Corbusier - Comien Zo (0:55)
B11 - Fâlx Çèrêbri - The Night Ritual (2:50)
B12 - Vivenza - Matérialité Des Eléments Magnétiques (3:00)
B13 - Denier Du Culte - Les Aveux De Marthe (2:10)
C01 - Hypnobeat - Pygny Cicada Panic (2:52)
C02 - Instead Of - Untitled (1:10)
C03 - La Stpo - Ebauche (1:00)
C04 - Schlafengarten - Dismissal (2:39)
C05 - Reportage - Untitled (2:47)
C06 - Xx Century Zorro - Citoyeus (2:52)
C07 - Maddy Genets - Le Bal Des Consanguins (3:27)
C08 - Viscera - A Cruel Accident Of Mindless Nature (2:53)
C09 - Vox Paris - La Machine Infernale (2:55)
C10 - Psyclones - Stuck In A Rut (3:26)
C11 - Comando Bruno - Redentor 2 Reprise (2:43)
C12 - Atem Ten Too - Jungle Drean (4:10)
C13 - Bene Gesserit - To Beat Or Not To Beat (3:50)
C14 - Reportage - Untitled (3:48)
D01 - A Nation Mourns - Searching For Someone In A Dark Room (2:10)
D02 - Presage 84 - Reconstruction (3:00)
D03 - Tara Cross - Small Talk (2:07)
D04 - Xx Century Zorro - Phelin Phelix (2:33)
D05 - Diseno Corbusier - Victoria Mutilada (2:25)
D06 - Ora - Dcd (2:20)
D07 - Kevin Harrison & Linda Novak & Steven Parker - Radio Moscow (5:14)
D08 - Neo Zelanda - Ritmo Tropical (1:30)
D09 - Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata - Tooth (2:52)
D10 - Instead Of - Untitled (2:57)
D11 - La Stpo - Idol (1:20)
D12 - Maybe Mental - Premystrery (3:11)
D13 - Neo Zelanda - Ende (1:15)
D14 - Tara Cross - Steady Comotion (2:27)
D15 - Mystery Hearsay - Mystery H (4:48)
Here's another mega-post of one of the most important tape electronic/experimental compilations from early 80s, released through Illusion Productions .Files come with full scans of the booklets and original artwork.Very limited issues.I wish someone could provide Sensationnel N°1(1982 K7Illusion Production - IP 012)!
Sunday, March 25, 2007
VIDEO-AVENTURES-MUSIQUE POUR GARCONS ET FILLES, 10", 1979 + CAMERA (IN FOCUS), LP, 1984, FRANCE
Writing a capsule review that does justice to music that has changed your life...there's a trick. The salient fact that the debut 10" by Dominique Grimaud and Monique Alba's Video-Aventures project (band seems to formal a designation for an ensemble with such a varied and variable lineup over the years) contains contributions from some of the heaviest heavyweights from the deadliest underground scene of the 70's (Lard Free's Gilbert Artman, Jean-Pierre Grasset of Verto, Guigou Chenevier from Etron Fou among others) should clue you in that something quite exceptional is going on here. The fact that they cover Telstar on their 10" (to devastating effect) is quite telling, as the atmospheric conditions within which the suave and slightly cartoonish themes free float here seem steeped in some faux nostalgia for a never materialized vision of a better future promised by...say...The Jetsons. Guest guitarist Cyrille Lefebvre's lilting and vaguely Hawaiian slide guitar work carves a woozily languid path through much of the proceedings here and it's one of the key reasons why this record lands with such a gut punch. Within such a deliriously whimsical yet heady atmosphere now factor in a distinct edge of acid unease as only the French underground musicians of that era knew how to fabricate and you have the recipe for one of the most mind warpingly deranged (yet charming!) musical visions ever realized on this planet. I will freely admit that Camera (In Focus) is of a slightly lesser order for me, being "merely" fantastic and not life changing. Vocal based song structure owing something to to both Gilbert Arman's postpunk band Catalogue and to Ilitch's 10 Suicides is now an emergent factor inside Grimaud and Alba's destabilized electronic constructs and they're often strangely offset by a much more subdued and reflective vision of electronic composition, albeit one in which lunatic passages of zany abandon suddenly rip through the song structures' synthetic hymen. Note: both discs are extracted from CD reissues of these albums as both featured extensive bonus cuts.
Get Musique Pour Garcons Et Filles Here
Get Camera (In Focus) Here
ROWENTA/KHAN-AVANTGARDE EXPLOSION, CD, 1997, GERMANY
Easily my favorite piece of the HNAS saga, this completely bonkers dada shitstorm is comprised of protozoically pulsating lopsided dollops of tweaked and dissected electro-pop remnants luridly frottaging fragments of detourned adverts, avuncular German narrators, the THX swell and sundry other tawdy castoffs of consumer culture caca in a way that makes this sound like nothing so much as Sylvie And Babs cutting the rug at Asmus Tietchens' Aroma Club.
Get it Here
7 ELCHE-BROHR (HIRSCHGEWEIH), TAPE, 1984 (RECORDED: 1977), GERMANY, HNAS-RELATED
The spasmodic caveman sludge pummel plus burnt out electronics formula that this German mob (somehow related to HNAS, any info appreciated...) worked out way back in 1977 keenly anticipates the whole improvised noise rock sub-trajectory of the "new weird America" phenomenon that mysteriously seems to work so many hipsters into a lather. You could easily extrapolate from here to the High Rise/Mainliner/Music Transonic axis as well. Yes, this is a continuous in-the-red earboxing noise rock marathon, but it's also possessed of a certain delirious "x" factor, particularly toward the latter half, where the Ravenstine-ian synth splatter begins to suck this whole gurning churning morass into a toxic tidal pool not dissimilar to the one Australia's contemporaneous Slugfuckers were wading around in.
Get it Here
De Fabriek-Schafttijdsamba,LP,1982,Netherlands
ORIGANALLY, DE FABRIEK STARTED IN DECEMBER 1977 AS A COLLECTIVE PROJECT. THEIR GOAL WAS TO DO MINIMAL EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC. YOU COULD SEE THIS MINIMAL THING IN THE PRODUCTS THEMSELVES - LIMITED COPIES WITH SPECIAL PACKAGES.IN THE BEGINNING THEY WORKED WITH TOY INSTRUMENTS AND OTHER SELF BUILT MACHINES DOING WHAT YOU COULD CALL "MUSIQUE CONCRETE". LATER THEY STARTED USING MODERN EQUIPMENT ALSO.
DE FABRIEK ALWAYS HAS SOME STEADY MEMBERS AND THESE PEOPLE WORK TOGETHER WITH OTHER PEOPLE WHO FLOAT IN AND OUT TO DO SPECIFIC PROJECTS. AS A RESULT OF SUCH COOPERATION, YOU WILL GET DIFFERENT SOUNDSCAPES.
DE FABRIEK IS NOT INVOLVED WITH ANY STREAM, WAVE, OR TREND WHAT SO EVER. THE LAST 15 YEARS IT HAS BEEN AN INDEPENDENT LABEL FOR TAPES AND DISCS. IN ADDITION TO RELEASING THE WORKS OF DE FABRIEK, IT HAS ALSO BROUGHT OUT THE MUSIC OF OTHER MUSICIANS, FREAKS, AND MUSIC LOVERS.
This is their first amazing LP,more to come soon!
get it here
Ellen Fullman-The Long String Instrument,LP,1985,USA
Ellen Fullman was born in 1957 in Memphis, TN. She feels her devotion to a career in music was initiated at the age of one, when Elvis Presley kissed her hand and said, "Hi-ya, baby!" Since 1981, she has been experimenting with wire, resonator boxes, and tuning systems to produce an installation, the Long String Instrument, which fills her warehouse studio. Fullman currently lives and works in Seattle.She has received several awards and commissions, including a one year residency in Berlin from the Deutscher Akademisher Austauschdienst (DAAD) beginning in September 2000. Her CD releases include Body Music (XI); Suspended Music, in collaboration with the Deep Listening Band (Periplum); and Change of Direction (New Albion).
“The Long String Instrument (LSI) produces a unique almost orchestral sound, based on the overtones produced by longitudinally vibrating long strings. It is played by rubbing the strings with rosin-coated fingertips, while walking. The instrument is tuned in just intonation, a natural tuning system. The large physical scale of the installation and the way that the overtones interact with the space turn the room itself into a giant musical instrument.
Sunday Sessions [sub harmonic series] is a chamber improvisation ensemble that has met weekly since the beginning of this year. Angelina Baldoz (trumpet), Ellen Fullman (LSI), Lori Goldston (cello), Paul Hoskin (contrabass clarinet), Robert Jenkins (electric guitar), Frances Woods (violin).”
get this masterpiece here
Arrigo Barnabé-Clara Crocodilo,LP,1980,Brazil
Following vdoandsound 's post of 2 LPs by Arrigo Barnabe ,here comes his 1st LP.Weird Zappa-esque prog impro!
get it here
Christina Kubisch & Fabrizio Plessi-Tempo Liquido,LP,1979,Italy
Tempo Liquido (1974-1980)Christina Kubisch
"Tempo Liquido" is one of a series of video performances created by the visual artist Fabrizio Plessi and myself between 1974 and 1980. In these works video images were transferred live while I (and sometimes Plessi) performed on musical instruments and/or other objects. Tempo Liquido is a piece about the concept of time. The basis is the form of the circle as a symbol for continuity and timelessness, which I always was fascinated with and which I used in several compositions such as "The circle which bites its tail" for voice and percussion (1974). The idea of musical compositions without a precise beginning nor end, pieces which could go on for ever, pieces where you can enter and leave following your individual pace always fascinated me. Pieces with circular time structures somehow anticipated the idea of my later sound installations. The experience of the video concerts was a step towards leaving the stage as a performer and to create sound ambients without time limits. "Tempo Liquido" in performance was much longer than on the recording, but we were limited to the duration of an LP and the splitting into two parts. Thus we had to shorten the piece and divide it in the middle. I still regret this, because the slow and continuous development of the whole musical process had to alterated in order to fit on the record.The visual elements of the performance consisted in a projection of various images of circles out of different cultures and eras. These slides were projected without a precise order on two large sceens above the performers. There were also the continuous projections of two super 8 films, showing a toy ship swimming around in a small plastic water pool, which we had filmed ourselves.Plessi and I were sitting together behind a table with a quite sophisticated double set-up of glass panes situated vertically in a small water basin. The video cameras were directed towards the glass and transmitted the images of a continous stream of water flowing down over the outer surface of the glass. In order to realize this we explored all the aquatic shops of Milan and became quite experts about water pumps, aquarium sizes, filter systems etc. The images on the monitors gave the feeling of an ever running waterfall and it was amazing to compare it to the "real" construction made of everyday items - a contrast we had already focused on in our first video performance. At the beginning and the end of the piece there was also the image of a large clock, which we approached from the other side of the glass until the "time" was recognizable behind the water and then slowly disappeared again. All the sounds had a connection with the circle . The performance started with a four-channel ambient sound which continued throughout the whole performance. I had no sampling possibilities at that time. All the instruments were recorded solo in my studio on a Revox machine. The recordings - one channel for each instrument - were repeated several times in order to create a kind of "mega-loop" and the final result was transferred to a four-channel-tape for the performance. The superimposition of the sequences of different durations generated layers of sound with continous minimal variations: a music which could go on forever. All the instruments had a circular shape: the sho was brought from Japan by a friend, the steel-drum came from New York (we had used it already in "Two & Two") and the childrens carillon was found on a street market in Italy. The glass was the basis for the image of the running water but as well an acoustic instrument.The glass sheets were amplified by contact microphones fixed directly onto the glass and connected to the four speaker system. It was brought to resonance with metal thimbles (objects which originally I had used for a flute piece called "Emergency Solos" in 1973) placed on the index finger of the right hand. Thus I (and Plessi) traced segments of circular forms on the glass, repeating them again and again with many variations from a quarter of a circle to a complete round. Every movement of the metal on the rough surface corresponds to a direct sound. Its duration, colour and loudness depended on the velocity, pressure and form of our gestures. In a way it was like painting acoustic signals. The continuous circular movement on the glass in the middle of the performance created a loud, harsh and almost frightening sound which was in contrast to the image of the small and almost fragile object which created it. The scores show the various possibilities of tracing circles on a rough surface, thus making it audible. The four sheets show the basic idea of creating a great variety of combinations and variations using at the same time a limited reservoir of material. This is on one hand typical for the minimal music of the seventies but as well I have always liked to use reduced materials and explore it to its limits. So I used for example sound materials as the original sounds of a glass harmonica or a series of tuning forks. These scores from 1978 have never been shown and it was a surprise to rediscover them and find a lot of similarities to my actual work. Christina KubischChristina Kubisch was born in Bremen in 1948. She studied music, painting and electronics. Performances and concerts until 1980, subsequently sound installations, sound sculptures and work with ultraviolet light. Numerous grants and awards, such as Award of the German Industrial Association (BDI), composition grant of the city of Berlin, Carl Djerassi Honorary Fellowship, IASPIS Stockholm.Since 1974 solo exhibitions in Europe, USA, Australia, Japan and South America. Participation in international festivals and group exhibitions such as : Pro Musica Nova, Bremen 1976 /1980, Für Augen und Ohren, Berlin 1980, Biennale of Venice, 1980 / 1982, Gaudeamus Music Festival 1984, documenta 8, Kassel 1987, Ars Electronica, Linz 1987, Steirischer Herbst, Graz 1987, Biennale of Sydney 1990, Donaueschinger Musiktage, 1993 /1997, Prison Sentences, Philadelphia 1995, Sonambiente, Berlin 1996, in medias res, Istanbul 1997, festival d'art sonor, Barcelona 1999, Sonic Boom, London 2000, Visual Sound, Pittsburgh 2001, Singuhr-Hörgalerie, berlin 2002.Christina Kubisch is a professor of sculpture and audio/visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, Saarbrücken, since 1994 and a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin since 1987.She lives in Berlin. She belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Trained as a composer, she has artistically developed such techniques as the magnetic induction to realize her sound installations. Since 1986 the artist has added light as an artistic element to her work with sound. Christina Kubisch's work displays an artistic development which is often described as the "synthesis of arts" - the discovery of acoustic space and the dimension of time in the visual arts on the one hand, and a new relationship between material and form in music on the other.
From http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/cutandsplice/tempoliquido.shtml
Following my previous post of 2and 2 LP and after peaple's requests here comes Tempo Liquido.
get it here
Grazhdanskaya Oborona-POGANAYA MOLODEJ tape (1985)+OPTIMIZM tape (1985),Russia
Band History compiled by Jeremy Toomey, Discography by Jeremy Toomey and Pawel Malinowski
Grazhdanskaya Oborona ("Civil Defense") started in 1985 in Omsk, Siberia, after their previous band, Posev ("Sowing"), were forced to stop by the KBG. They were led by Yegor Letov, who's something of a living legend in Russia (a "punk messiah" so to speak), and were the most explicitly political band of their day. Of course, songs like "I Hate the Red Color", "Necrophilia" and "Good Tsar and the Familiar Stink" caused problems with the authorities, so stories could be told of Yegor's time spent in the state-run mental hospital, or having to go underground to avoid detection by the KGB. But musically, they released quite a few albums on cassette in the mid- to late-80's (which were later reissued on CD). Also, their last concert (recorded live in Tallinn, Estonia in April of 1990) has been issued as an album.There are a few related bands in playing in different, yet similar styles: Egor I Opizdanevshiye ("Egor and the Fuckups", a short lived project with 2 2xLPs in 1990 and 1992, respectively titled Hop-Jump (Children's songs) and 100 Years of Solitude), Communism (bizzare, avant-garde music - it is satirical weirdness using communist songs and imagery), Great October (folkie stuff playing the songs of Yanka Dyagileva, Egor's common-law wife) and solo projects.Here's the sad part: around 1993, Grazhdanskaya Oborona reformed and have now achieved commercial success as a virulent nationalist/right-wing/communist band. It's disgusting. It's pathetic. And now even the actual music sucks! Hmmm... I guess after the fall of communism, they sort of lost their reason to exist, and started to miss the system they always sang about hating...
Kirill Ivanugo
19-May-2006
Grazhdanskaya Oborona: 1982 - 1990
Grazhdanskaya Oborona (Civil Defence) is one of the leading bands of 80’s Soviet underground which has its roots in early Siberian punk movement. The band was founded in Omsk in 1982 (initially under the name Posev which means 'Sowing') by a very remarkable figure - a poet and a painter Egor Letov who became a kind of guru for both angry teenagers and intellectuals. By 1987 the band became the most popular and influential punk-rock band in USSR due to its minimalistic but powerful and highly energetic music, gravelly and fervent singing of band’s leader Egor Letov and, the last but not the least, his provocative, ironic lyrics often criticizing the society and political system. Numerous Oborona’s albums recorded between 1985 and 1990 were made by Letov himself in his home studio called GrOb Records using the unique handmade equipment largely adapted from diverse technical devices. Some of the albums were entirely recorded by Letov alone: he’s done everything from singing and playing all instruments to sound engineering and painting the cover artwork. This "do-it-yourself" attitude was one of the cornerstones of Oborona’s music.
The first three records, Poganaya Molodyozh’ (Rotten Youth), Optimizm and Igra v Biser pered Svinyami (The Glass Bead Game Before Swine) represent the first period in Oborona’s history. The former two had the group playing naοve, but smart mixture of garage rock, punk & new wave combined with witty, slightly Zappa-esque lyrics. The latter album was more experimental - entirely acoustic with guitar, flute and harmonica arrangements and strong psychedelic feel.
In 1987 Letov alone recorded five albums in a row - in a nutshell, it was angry and straightforward punk-rock with with heavy and dry sound, madly howling vocals and bitter, nihilistic, explicit lyrics. Three of them - Myshelovka (Mousetrap), Totalitarizm and Nekrophilia - are often regarded as indisputable classics of Soviet punk-rock. Krasnyi Albom (The Red Album) was nothing more than electric version of The Glass Bead Game Before Swine.
On the next three albums recorded during just 10 days in January 1988 the band tried in vain to repeat the artistic success of last year’s session: Letov’s voice sounded rather tired, the lyrics were too political, lacking wit and brilliance evident on the band’s best songs. Still, these albums weren’t bad at all sounding often more diverse, personal and even more experimental than Oborona’s classic punk works. In fact, the band was ready to move further to a more versatile and complex music.
All four albums recorded by Grazhdanskaya Oborona in 1989 helped them gain a reputation of one of the most original and creative bands of Russian underground. They moved from their punk roots to an eager, dark, experimental hardcore with strong psychedelic and industrial influences courtesy of Letov’s avant-garde side-project Kommunizm. The sound quality remains rather poor but now this is made intentionally, in accord with the band’s conception of sound production. A variety of hand-made instruments and gimmicks, largely borrowed from junkyards, was used during the recording sessions. The music covers a vast range of styles: from folk and 60’s singer/songwriter patterns to typical American hardcore and dark Joy Division-style post-punk, from soviet popular songs to Sonic Youth-esque guitar sludge and Butthole Surfers-like sonic freak-outs. The lyrics became more profound and allegorical dealing with stereotypes of Soviet mass consciousness, left-wing social ideas, and filled with literary and philosophical references. Russkoye Pole Experimentov (Russian Field of Experiments) is arguably the band’s best album mainly due to the fantastic 14-minutes eponymous track.
The first live album Pesni Radosti i Schastya (Songs of Joy and Happiness) was recorded with technical help from members of fellow band Auktyon, who often supported their Siberian friends. The band’s live sound was even more extreme and raw, sometimes closer to death or black metal. The last studio work of classic period Oborona consisted of songs written by another Siberian punk-rockers Instruktsiya po Vyzhivaniyu (Survival Tactics) whose leader decided to quit rock music and offered the rights to all his material to Egor Letov.
Soon after that the band split and Letov continued playing and recording with his new psychedelic rock combo Egor & Opizdenevshie (which translates into something genuinely obscene).
From Gnosis2000
Really great stuff! Just heard them very recently and was ammazed.Great Anarcho-punk(in Zounds/Mob/Astronauts vein) with psych/weirdness touches.HIGHLY RECOMMENTED!
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Pohjantahti-s.t.,LP,1986,Finland
After exiting Piirpauke, Saastamoinen and colleague Pekka Nylund (also ex-Piirpauke) formed the radical and influential Pohjantahti, performing the most psychedelic electric-shaman music Finland and this world have ever witnessed. Most recent output from Saastamoinen are the three shamanistic operas featuring the Pohjantahti orchestra of electric and acoustic traditional instruments, choirs and soloists: "Velho" (The Sorcerer), "Riekko" (The Snow Grouse) and "Käärme" (The Serpent).
© Phillip Page 2002
Pohjantahti are:
Ilpo Saastamoinen (electric bass)
Pekka Nylund (electric guitar)
Arto Piispanen (keyboards)
Pekka Toivanen (Irish harp, keyboards)
Seppo Heikkonen (sax, clarinet)
Rami Eskelinen (percussion)
get this gem here
Saturday, March 24, 2007
TEENAGE BOATPEOPLE-1980-81, CD, 200?, USA
Teenage Boatpeople was free improv sax meister Milo Fine's aberrant Residential post-punk unit from back in the day (though he's playing everything from drums to piano to casio here). Gone before anyone even knew this disc was around, this is a true blue monster mindfuck for those of the mindset that some of the best and most mind warping sounds ever made came as an upshot of the viral spread of the Ralph Records aesthetic throughout the world's musical undergrounds. It's specific impact in the U.S. resulted in a profusion of insular and unconnected surrealist outfits that nevertheless share many of the tell-tale DNA markers of Ralph's damaged gene pool (Steaming Coils, Bomis Prendin, The Blitzoids, To Nije Sala, Buxinrut, The Decayes...it's a list that could go on for quite a while). To this mental list of cheerful psychosis mongers you will now need to add Teenage Boatpeople. One purely Residents-qua-Residents moment aside though, it's really the aforementioned Decayes with whom Teenage Boatpeople share the most simpatico, as squashed but squirrelly sharp themes offset by much squonking situate themselves inside snarky structural non sequiturs. Astonishingly bent brilliance of a very high order here, folks!
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CHRISTOPH HEEMANN-TIME IS THE SIMPLEST THING, CDR, 2003, GERMANY
Heemann has been tracing the shady outlines of a liminal seam of diaphanous (and often desolate) atmospheric surrealism since HNAS's demise. though "Time..." is largely cut from just such elliptical materials, this actually works itself up into some chittering fanblade-on-cymbal dynamism about midway through, something that comes almost as a shock after so many years of his evanescent sound sculpting in Mirror. Beautifully heavy lidded and glazed, this blink-and-you-missed-it solo from 4 years back is a brain massaging treasure.
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HNAS-ICH KANNTE EINEN GUMMIBAUM, TAPE, 1987 + THE HUMOUR AND WIT OF..., TAPE, 1987, GERMANY
Heemann, Flamm and Co.'s desultory dadaist digressions are equally thrilling and maddening and the looser context of a tape only release really lets their arbitrary zany capriciousness reach critical mass for better or worse (or both). The continuously dissociative quality of these two tapes renders deeper parsing a bit superfluous, but both are essential pieces of the puzzle for those sold on HNAS willfully maladroit mystery school of arcane aesthetics.
Note: the lengthy "The Humour..." is split into two parts and there is unfortunately no individual track indexing on either of these. Just side A and side B.
Get Ich Kannte Einen Gummibaum Here
Get The Humour And Wit Of... part 1 Here
Get The Humour And Wit Of... part 2 Here
The New Blockaders -Changez Les Blockeurs ,LP,1982,UK
The New Blockaders (abbreviated TNB) began in 1982. The founder-members, R. and P.D. Rupenus, having previously been involved in several music/art projects since the late '70s. The New Blockaders play what they refer to as "anti-music" as opposed to industrial music. Over their career The New Blockaders have recorded with Coil, Merzbow, Jim O'Rourke and Thurston Moore among others.Some reviews:
TNB's debut is full of chaotic Dada referentialism putting in the bag cryptic Max Ernst collages on the inserts, Hegel or nihilistic Situationism on a declamatory manifesto, and disturbed tumult on their sound, to bring the corpse of art into the crematory again. And you will expect to hear overcharged electricity or deranged machinery, which is as far from that as it makes this edition an intelligent turn in retrospect. You will be tempted to think first of Erik Satie's Musique D'ameublement (Furniture Music) in a perverse manner. TNB reversed the logics that would generate muzak, 'a music which was urging you to take no notice of it and to behave (during the intervals) as if it did not exist,' according to Satie. The noises here are intrusive and sound as if the furniture is what produces them. A squawk symphony filled with rusty wheels and creaking wood floor. There's even a dog disturbed or a trombone that sings along the crawled households; so that in difference to the angst of their Industrial contemporaries (Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse) it was in Changez Les Blockeurs' case a syntax destruction, an anti-narrative in the form of a happening that would draw a sort of acoustic noise art continuity with the assemblages and environments, early sixties pre-Fluxus, of Allan Kaprow, Jim Dine, Robert Whitman or Claes Oldenburg, or in case you permit me the license to align them to something academic, John Cage's 1940 score Living Room Music which reads: 'To be played on household objects such as magazines, a table, books, the floor or using architectural objects like window frames,' will allow it. Predating the Guds Soner, TNB refurnish. e/i
TNB's debut is full of chaotic Dada referentialism putting in the bag cryptic Max Ernst collages on the inserts, Hegel or nihilistic Situationism on a declamatory manifesto, and disturbed tumult on their sound, to bring the corpse of art into the crematory again. And you will expect to hear overcharged electricity or deranged machinery, which is as far from that as it makes this edition an intelligent turn in retrospect. You will be tempted to think first of Erik Satie's Musique D'ameublement (Furniture Music) in a perverse manner. TNB reversed the logics that would generate muzak, 'a music which was urging you to take no notice of it and to behave (during the intervals) as if it did not exist,' according to Satie. The noises here are intrusive and sound as if the furniture is what produces them. A squawk symphony filled with rusty wheels and creaking wood floor. There's even a dog disturbed or a trombone that sings along the crawled households; so that in difference to the angst of their Industrial contemporaries (Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse) it was in Changez Les Blockeurs' case a syntax destruction, an anti-narrative in the form of a happening that would draw a sort of acoustic noise art continuity with the assemblages and environments, early sixties pre-Fluxus, of Allan Kaprow, Jim Dine, Robert Whitman or Claes Oldenburg, or in case you permit me the license to align them to something academic, John Cage's 1940 score Living Room Music which reads: 'To be played on household objects such as magazines, a table, books, the floor or using architectural objects like window frames,' will allow it. Predating the Guds Soner, TNB refurnish. e/i
Two untitled pieces which are actually Industrial and concrete noise performed in real-time manipulations environment. Monotonous metal scraping, chains clinking, boots tramping, dog barking, and also modified sound of wind instruments creating a very obscure atmosphere. Probably this TNB recording is the most successful interpretation of literary works from two ingenious Soviet writers, Platonov and Gastev. The first one is a well known apologist of so-called Soviet realism art, he is calling for the never-ending creation of something huge existing in infinite space (imagine virgin lands illuminated by only one electric light bulb, and a sole sheet of paper blown by wind). But the sound arrangement is rigorous and very rational - here we find the strong reference to great Futurist and labour systematization theorist Gastev. A really wonderful album. OHMs
Revolutionary nihilist manifesto from England. This LP is an excursion into the world of anti-music and anti-composition. The packaging includes no credits, notes or titles. It does include a statement of the groups' nihilistic viewpoint. This anti-composition creates dense, mechanical atmospheres. One feels propelled into a dark and mysterious workshop where every small sound is heard and felt, but not seen. Instrumentation, if there is any in the traditional sense, is undefinable. Aeon
Metalworkers unionised along the line of Anarchist-Surrealist poetics. A warehouse symphony, workers pile scrap metal in honour of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. Invisible commandos parachuting back in time on tyreless bicycles in the Paris commune, BMX stunts on the barricades, railroad hand-carts creep through loops in the alleys and anchor-chains of Kronstodt. Timeless, historical and recommended. ND
Kevin Harrison & Steven Parker - Against The Light,tape,1982,France/UK
Here's an amazing release of Illusion Productions,a collaboration between Kevin Harrison and Steven Parker(Bron Area),from 1982.Great weird minimal synth experimentation!
get it here
Pascal Comelade-Paralelo,LP,1980,France
Pascal Paul Vincent Comelade (born June 30, 1955), is a French Catalan musician.
Comelade born was in Montpellier, France. After living for several years in Barcelona, he made his first album, Fluences, influenced by electronic music and by the group Heldon.
Subsequently, his music has become more acoustic and is characterised by the sounds of toy instruments, used as solo-instruments and as an integral part of the sound of his group, the Bel Canto Orquestra.
He has collaborated with many singers and musicians from diverse genres of music including Robert Wyatt, Dani, Faust, Christophe Miossec, Toti Soler, Jac Berrocal, and P.J. Harvey to mention just a few.
From Wikipedia
This is very different from his mid 80s and forth releases.Heldon-like electronics experiments!
Amazing!
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Friday, March 23, 2007
CITIZENS FOR INTERPLANETARY ACTIVITY-C.I.A. CHANGE, ONE-SIDED LP, 2000 (REC. 1967), USA
Given that The Theater Of Eternal Music were mapping the topography of extended trance music for drug addled freaks as early as 1962, it should perhaps not be so surprising to find that the same cross disciplinary pollination that led to the collaboration of Theater Of Eternal Music percussionist (and one time Velvet Underground member) Angus Maclise with various sectors of the New York underground film world of the time would mirror many similar encounters with avant garde musicians, most of it undocumented and lost to history. One such slice of heretofore-thought-lost material of this sort is the soundtrack for Yayoi Kusama's film "Self Obliteration", with an improvised cosmic score supplied by this loosely yoked together mob of odd ducks. What is so specifically disorienting about the musical doings of both Maclise and Citizens For Interplanetary Activity during this era is that it so uncannily presages the work that krautrockers would be feted for a few years hence. If Maclise's Invasion Of Thunderbolt Pagoda sounded like early Popol Vuh in a shoebox, Citizens For Interplanetary Activity sound like they took a journey through a burning brain 3 full years before Froese, Schulze and Schnitzler would stake their claim to this fried form of psychotropic musical distention on Tangerine Dream's debut. A staggering artifact from a scene with precious little existing musical documentation.
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PLANETARIUM-INFINITY, LP, 1971, ITALY
Laden with suspended misty atmospheres that are pregnant with their own strange form of quiet suspense, Planetarium's stoned to the gills but uber restrained and stately form of proto-prog has a sort of dewy sun dappled lushness that I associate with passages of Ange's earliest work. Even when they decide to rock out, it's shot through with with a sort of sumptuous loftiness. Not 100% solid, but the best parts of this are so guilelessly sublime you'll wish they came in aerosol form...
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COCK C'NELL-LIVE IN YANEURA 81.10, CDR, ????, JAPAN
Another installment from the vast vault of Japanese underground music craziness that is the Cragale Records CDR series (101 titles available), this, like all the others documents live performances from the late 70's/early 80's that transpired in their store and performance space Muon. Cock C'Nell was another combo from the Minor Club associated axis (Minor being the space that was the launching pad for everyone from Keiji Haino to Tori Kudo to Asahito Nanjo), who released one album during their lifetime on the legendary Pinakotheca label, notable for it's silver triangular sleeve. In a live setting, Cock C'Nell have a sound as ungainly and quixotic as their name is to pronounce and their LP is to store. Shambolic rhythmic splatter, atonal piano clatter and trebly guitar chatter dance a spastic yet facile tango with accordion drones and alternately squealing and/or snake charming sax before periodically resolving into semblances of post punk song structure that touch on everything from elbows-on-the-organ early DNA to blustery three chord ramalama.
This lengthy CD has been divided into two parts.
Get part one Here
Get part two Here
GAM-GAM 1976,LP,1976,Germany
German pioneer of the echo-guitar, renowned for his classics "Samtvogel" and "Überfällig", he also worked with Klaus Schulze (in concert). Günter also ventured in to more explorative Krautrock and developed a style comparable to the early work of Achim Reichel. The GAM trio (Günter Schickert, Axel Struck, and Michael Leske) featured two guitars and drums, and is really freaked-out improvisations recalling the psychedelic space treks of Ash Ra Tempel or Pink Floyd.
get this gem here
Rune Lindblad - Predestination,LP,1975,Sweden
”Musique Concrete was scratched, scraped, howled and pounded last night in the Community Building. The audience consisted of about forty people, amongst which a few visitors voluntarily payed their admission… The ”works of art” then underwent a structural analysis by Mr Epstein. He addressed interesting phenomenon in the noise, according to different ways of acting woodpecker on sheet iron.”
”Two youngsters were officially pronunced composers. A few whistles and scrapings were percieved as interferences in the tapemachine, but it actually was the first composition, with the literary title ”Essay”… Of course it is embarrasing to recommend a visit to Gotaverken (a ship-yard in Gothenburg), but such a visit would greatly simplify the preparatory work of the noise process”.
Those were citations from two reviews; the first by Ake Engfeldt in Goteborgs-Tidningen, and the second by Bjorn Johansson in Goteborgs Handels- och Sjofartstidning (Main newspapers in Southwestern Sweden). They were published on 15 February 1957, as a reaction to the first concert in Sweden with concrete and electronic music, which took place the night before in Gothenburg. The composers presented were Bruno Epstein and Rune Lindblad (1923 – 1991).
Not so much has changed in the years since. The common audience probably share the same view today about Lindblad’s music, if by chance they would be confronted with it. The electronic and electroacoustic music, which has won global acclaim within a rather small crowd of enthusiasts, is looked upon by the common music consumer as something alienated and strange, even when it comes to the tidy and polished dilettante electroacoustics of later years, which can easily be achieved by any untalented brat with the right soft- and hardware. It is an important observation that the result naturally is empty and pointless, unless an artist with skills turn the levers. A good pen doesn’t produce a better novel. A real artist can write a masterpiece on wrapping paper with a piece of carbon.
There are many works also within the latest electroacoustics and computer music saturated with true craftsmanship and talent, but the spirit of pioneering and discovery, and the special feeling that goes along with those, is gone. It almost seems as if the abundance of digital soundmakers and editing possibilities actually aggrevate the creative process, by all to readily providing smart solutions.
An air of freshness and ingenuity hovers over early works by Bruno Maderna, Luciano Berio, Henri Pousseur, Gottfried Michael Koenig, Herbert Eimert, György Ligeti, Konrad Boehmer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Henry, Pierre Schaeffer, James Tenney, Alice Shields, Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, Folke Rabe and others. This spirit also rises out of Rune Lindblad’s music. Right off I can only think of one single modern work that shivers with that same ingenious intensity and curiousness; the monumental ”Phonia Domestica” (1988) by the Swedish occupational therapist Sune Karlsson (1946). This work is so far only available in short excerpts on a home-burned sample CD-R, and it has been heard more officially only once in a Swedish radio-program ten years ago. The sample CD has been aired on a radio station in New Jersey. Sune Karlsson, with improbable energy and stubbornness, set out to record all the sounds he could find in his tiny one-room apartment in Danderyd in northern Stockholm, and he came up with about 12 hours of sound investigations. Karlsson is an exception in the Swedish music community of today, and surely looked upon as being as odd in Stockholm today as Lindblad was in Gothenburg 1957.
Rune Lindblad, who was an engineer and a painter, and also a single father with a son in the late 1950:s, started his sounding experiments as early as the first years of the 1950:s, without prior knowledge of similar experiments being conducted in France and Germany. He kept on composing against the wind all the years up to his premature death in 1991. He also served as a teacher of electronic composition, and some of the most renowned Swedish composers of electroacoustics have had him as their primary teacher and guru.
The release of phonograms has been sparse, considering that Rune Lindblad’s output is more than 200 works. A single or EP was released in the early days with a couple of concrete works, but the first LP came in 1975 on the Proprius label, which usually, in those days, issued religious music (PROP 7799). The title was ”Predestination”, and presented a very good sample of Lindblad’s compositions of the 1970:s. This issue probably is the most important Lindblad issue so far, with weighty works like ”Termonuklearation” (1969), ”Kontorslandskap” (1974) and ”Glacier” (1971). This important LP was embellished with a woodcut by Lindblad on the front cover.
The Gothenburg label Radium 226.05 issued a double LP in 1988 with works by Rune Lindblad, just named ”Rune Lindblad” (RA 040). This release meant a sort of belated breakthrough for Lindblad, who by this was somewhat compensated for the scorn he had endured over the years from more established composers in the Stockholm in-crowd. The same year Lindblad was represented with a spectacular piece on the Phono Suecia label’s anthology of Swedish electroacoustics (PS CD 41). At this time, courtesy of Radium, Lindblad was being noticed internationally, and Pogus Productions in New York issued an LP in 1989, with the title ”Death Of The Moon” (Pogus Productions 201-3). The front cover of this LP carries the most heartening of Rune Lindblad’s woodcuts; ”Sorg” (grief) from 1959. The contents of the LP was later (1997) presented on the Pogus CD ”Death Of The Moon” (Pogus Productions P21011-2), together with some material from the Radium double-LP ”Rune Lindblad” .
In 1993 The Swedish Music Information Center Hire-Library of Electroacoustic Music issued a promotional CD (not commercially circulated), where Lindblad was represented by his work ”Worship”.
In 1998 Pogus Productions has released the rest of the material from the Radium double-LP on a CD called ”Objekt 2” (Pogus Productions P21014-29). It contains central works like ”Plasibenpius” (1969), the chilling ”Halften av nagonting” (half of something) (1970) and ”Maskinlandskap” (machine landscapes) (1975).
This release should be of interest to those favouring the early electronic idiom, as well as to those who are historically inclined, even though I, who have access to about fifteen hours of unreleased Lindblad works, copied for me by Lindblad himself shortly before his untimely death, would suggest a rather more interesting choice of pieces for a CD. Let’s hope that the collected works of Rune Lindblad, now lying dormant at the Institution for Musical Sciences at Gothenburg University, will be made available as a selection in a Lindblad CD-box in the future.
Lindblad also was socially very engaged, and he was deeply worried about the injustices of society. In one of his unreleased pieces; ”Jag vill hem” (I want to go home) (1974), he interviewed an old lady at a nursing home, and rarely is the barren bruteness of society more readily exposed than here.
When Rune Lindblad died in 1991 in a brutal war of attrition against a horrifying rheumatism, one could read the following words by Professor Jan Ling in the obituary:
”Rune Lindblad was a richly talented and original artist. He tried to convey his unique knowledge of life and man in sounds and pictures of sharp and clear contours. They mirror his personality of high ethical and aesthetical demands, for him outweighing public acclaim and convenience”.
sorry no pic sleeve scans
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Ralph Lundsten-Fadervar,LP,1972,Sweden
Ralph Lundsten is a wellknown Swedish composer of electronic music, as well as a film director and artist.He was born in 1936 in Ersnäs, in northern Sweden, and now lives on the outskirts of Stockholm, still close to the forest and the sea. His home is Castle Frankenburg, dating from 1878, a wooden fairytale mansion which also houses his famous picture and electronic music studio Andromeda.
Since 1959 he has lived an independent life in this "institution" of his own, creating his own personal musical language, and preparing original films and exhibitions. With his wide-ranging, cross-cultural artistic activities, Ralph Lundsten has had - and still has - considerable cultural significance. Every day his music is played all over the world. It serves as the signature for Radio Sweden International broadcasts - a sort of "national anthem" - making Ralph Lundsten more than ever Sweden's musical voice out in the wide world.
During 1950 Ralph Lundsten built his own electronic musical instruments and was one of the first pioneers in this field.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Lundsten"
This is an absolutely excellent record from Ralph Lundsten, the Swedish Avant-Garde Electronic musician. This one is some sort of a symphony from what I can tell about The Fall. This is some serious mind-bending electronic music with orchestra and choir. Think Nurse With Wound on EMI with strings drowning in a sea of voices and you might have some idea. This will appeal to fans of Locust, Nurse With Wound, Aphex Twin, Delia Derbyshire and any other masters that you can think of.
Robert Rutman's Steel Cello Ensemble -Zuuhh!! Muttie Mumm!! ,CD,1998,Germany
Here's another great gem by Robert Rutman,released in 1000 copies in 1998 by Die Stadt label and of course long deleted.Ma Banlieue Flasque-st,LP,1979,France
Nothing does crazy like French experimental music, but some of it wouldn't have been done in the first place if it wasn't for Frank Zappa. From the opening vocals on the album, it's evident that, vocally, the intent is satirical and humorous (although most of this is lost on me, due to the language), and the falsetto is typical of Frank and co., especially in the "Baby Snakes" days. MBF have a guitars/sax/flute/bass/drums instrumental line up and there is plenty of room for instrumentals once the initial "13'20 D'Happiness" is over. "N.S.K." shows strains of "Legend" period Henry Cow, with more falsetto vocals, and some very nice drumming. I think it's about two minutes into this track that you hear one of the first of several instrumental jams on the album, definitely what make this piece compulsory. Brilliant drumming, a chance for some really nice solos, including bass. A Canterbury-like flavor permeates, subtly similar to early Caravan's jams, a great piece of music. The album really escalates in quality from here (don't let the first track put you off.) "H.B.H.V"'s slight Happy the Man feel is quite captivating, although the scaling is slightly off-kilter, and when the lead guitar kicks in, you start to realize how much Gong is going on here as well. The last two tracks continue at an incredibly high level of energy, the music just gets better and better. No doubt there were some RIO connections going on, there's some excellent playfulness here that only the best musicians master, an interplay that is on an unusually high level. A great one-shot, no doubt, recommended to fans of RIO, Jazz, and Canterbury.
Mike McLatchey
(Originally published in Exposι # 17, p. 26, Edited for Gnosis 8/11/02)
get it here
V/A:A Cage Went in Search of a Bird,2xTape,1985,UK
Very important tape compilation of electronic /experimental music.Originally issued as a 2 cassette set:A - melodic synth and cosmic music,
B - experimental synths and electronics,
C - new-wave underground,
D - avant-garde and industrial.
Tracklist as shown on the pic above.
Tracklist as shown on the pic above.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
PROBE 10-THERE IS A UNIVERSE, LP, I975, USA
Godhead alert! This masterpiece landed in my lap a few days back, crawled up my spine like a kundalini snake and proceeded to take the top of my head off. Despite the rather late date for this sort of sound, Probe 10 are unquestionably linked to a very specifically American form of proto-prog-into-jazz-rock synthesis of the precise sort Elektra Records (under Jac Holzamn) used to specialize in, from Tim Buckley's Starsailor to David Stoughton's Transformer. Toss in trumpet fanfare laden acid psych straight out of the C.A. Quintet songbook, the riotously melodic and dense brassy arrangements of McLuhan and the ecstatic trilling songbird-isms of Sonja Kristina's work in Curved Air (specifically Phantasmagoria) and...well...hold on to your hookahs!
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KAWABATA MAKOTO-EARLY WORKS 1978-1981, 10xCDR SET, 2000, JAPAN
By turns burnt, hermetic, nihilistic, autistic and claustrophobic, this gigantic cross section of Kawabata's early doings (originally self released in an edition of 100, 4 subsequently reissued on vinyl by Qbico) really alters the "read" on his place in the lineage of maverick Japanese underground music innovators of the late 70's/early 80's. A disc by disc assessment would be a huge undertaking. Rather, I'll simply state that to these set of ears, barring a move here and there, the crucial "meat" in Kawabata's canon (at least in terms of creating precedent-free work) is tucked away in the recesses of these 10 discs. The contents are as follows:
Disc one: Dark Revolution Collective-Dark Revolution
Disc Two: Kawabata Makoto-Psychedelic Noise Freak
Disc Three: Baroque Bordello-1st Trip
Disc Four: Baroque Bordello-Ultra Trip Cat
Disc Five: Baroque Bordello-Abnormal Songs Vol. 1
Disc Six: Baroque Bordello-Kaiten, Love And Punk Rock
Disc Seven: Baroque Bordello-(title in Japanese)
Disc Eight: Kawabata Makoto-4 Tunes
Disc Nine: Kawabata Makoto-Sunday Morning
Disc Ten: Baroque Bordello-(title in Japanese)
Get Early Works disc 1 Here
Get Early Works disc 2 Here
Get Early Works disc 3 Here
Get Early Works disc 4 Here
Get Early Works disc 5 Here
Get Early Works disc 6 Here
Get Early Works disc 7 Here
Get Early Works disc 8 Here
Get Early Works disc 9 Here
Get Early Works disc 10 Here
White Heaven-Out(1991)+Strange Bedfellow(1992),LPs,Japan
The roots of Japanese neo-psych legends White Heaven date back to 1980. Originally dubbed Living End, the group was shaped from a series of jam sessions helmed by singer/guitarist You Ishihara, its sprawling, ever-revolving lineup of musicians eventually crystallizing in 1984 around You, guitarist Tetsuya Sakamoto, bassist Takayuki Nakagoshi, and drummer Ken Ishihara. After a handful of gigs, Living End added guitarist Ken Matsutani, and in late 1985 the quintet adopted the name White Heaven. Matsutani exited in mid-1986 to form his own outfit, Marble Sheep & the Rundown Sun's Children, and after adding ex-ONNA guitarist Michio Kurihara, the group issued Electric Cool Acid, a self-released cassette documenting a live appearance in Tokyo. A series of lineup changes plagued White Heaven over the next few years, and when in the spring of 1991 the band finally issued its first official LP, the P.S.F. label release Out, the lineup consisted of You on vocals, Michio on guitar, Ken on drums, and Naohiro Yoshimoto on bass. Michio and Naohiro both exited soon after the sessions wrapped, with new guitarist Souchirou Nakamura and bassist Kouji Samura signing on for the second White Heaven LP, 1993's Strange Bedfellow. Michio returned to the roster in time for 1994's Next to Nothing, with bassist Koji Shimura replacing Kouji for the follow-up single, "Threshold of the Pain." After issuing an expanded Electric Cool Acid, White Heaven toured Europe. Upon returning to Japan, Kouji returned to the lineup, this time replacing Ken on drums, with Chiyo Kamekawa assuming bass duties for what would prove to be the group's final LP, 1997's Levitation. Following an Osaka performance later that year, White Heaven dissolved, with You mounting a solo project and Michio joining Ghost. In late 1999 You, Michio, and Chiyo reunited as the Stars, recruiting drummer Yasunobu Arakawa for their 2004 debut LP, Will. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music GuideReview for OUT LP
Originally released in an edition of 500 copies on vinyl back in 1991, this monster is already worth $300.00(!). White Heaven were a traditional psych band from Japan with an earth shaking motherfucker of a guitarist. The band sounds like Quicksilver on some serious PCP on the first(and best) cut, then the record mellows into later Quicksilver/Airplane territory. The guitars are just stunning, the tremelo never seems to stop. The cosmick ooze is burning through the magenta synapse, providing furry warmth as we journey through the rubber photon funnel, knowing finally that we have arrived....
Review for STRANGE BEDFELLOW LP
All time psych classic, White Heaven’s second LP released in an edition of 700 and bound to be never ever released on CD. By this time of the recording, Kurihara was out and Nakamura was in, giving you a change to get immersed in the greasy guitar riffage of him. Nakamura is a totally underrated player but is to these ears one of the greatest ever. More filthy garage and amphetamine drenched sounds as opposed to their acidic debut “Out”, “Strange Bedfellow” is possibly the best White Heaven album ever.
Wapassou-st,LP,1974,France
Following the posts of their 2nd and 3rd LPs ,here's the first one.Here's a review:
The ancient fathers of post-rock? The least skillful prog band ever? The answer is somewhere in between: Wapassou show, through atonal and obsessive symphonies like Rien or the heartfelt noir crescendo Chatiment that there is no clear mark between depressive madness, cold fever and music. Even in a world of green giant gorgos, like the long final suite (?) Trip which sure stays up to its title of titlation.
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Von Lmo-Future Language.LP,1981,USA
Much before DEVO, and while the first man was landing on the moon, this astonishing character who adreesed himself as VON LMO was already experimenting with drums and syntethizers, way ahead of his time! His pioneering work in the destruction of musical forms and instruments spans back to the late 60s, with his combo FUNERAL OF ART, with Sal Meida (Roxy / Milk'n'Cookies / Hilly Michaels Band...). His next major contribution to culture came in the form of a band named KONGRESS during the mid 70s. Originally a synth/drums duo with erstwhile Aleister Crowley buff Otto Von Ruggins 666, the combo grew into a larger conglomerate incorporating bizarre spear-chuckin' Australian cleric Geoffrey Crozier amongst others. By 77, decided to join forces with 'antisocial' guitar shredder Rudolph Gray, to form the legendary and fire-raiser combo RED TRANSISTOR (their first gig saw Von Lmo donned a straight jacket and proceeded to chop up a lot of stuff...! A year later went on to form THE VON LMO BAND, a later incarnation of this unit recorded this "Future Language", after which Von went into 'suspended' animation for a while... From his records, you could count on a muscular kind of insect music, like Devo, Chrome, Residents, Suicide or Silver Apples, but the truth is a little louder...! Von Lmo ripped up heavy punk loops with really abrasive feedback and high-end hurting; a formula borrowed from him by Sonic Youth. He looked like George C. Scott towards the end of "Hardcore", demented and shellshocked.Sci-Fi avantgarde by futuristic punk pioneer...PLEASE NOTE THAT THE LINK GIVEN WAS WRONG.LINK FIXED NOW!
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Un Département-st,MLP,1981,France
Following previous posts here's the first Un Département ,self released 12'' Mini LP from 1981.get it here
Ton Steine Scherben & Kollektiv Rote Rube -Paranoia,LP,1976,Germany
Here's the 1976 LP by KRR&TSS,2 polit rock groups from Germany.And this time it's not the WFMU selected tracks;)
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Oscar Sala-Electronic Virtuosity(Resonanzen),LP,1970,Germany
Erdenklang Press release- translated by Franz Fuchs
The composer of the soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcock's thriller The Birds is dead. Oskar Sala died unexpectedly on February 27th, 2002 in Berlin. The physicist and musician was 91 years old. One of his greatest accomplishments was the development of the "Mixtur-Trautonium," a first-generation electronic musical instrument. Its completely new technique lied between the violin and piano: playing the "Mixtur-Trautonium," one presses a wired string unto a metal bar, whereupon a circuit closes. All sounds are created through discharge voltage [electronic discharges] and notes can be played fluently without fixed half-tone [semitone] steps.
Oskar Sala had been a pupil of Friedrich Trautwein, the inventor of an electronic instrument called the "Trautonium." But physicist Sala had musical gifts too and studied with Paul Hindemith in 1930 at the Berlin conservatory. The technical as well as the musical realm were dear to his heart and influenced him in a particular way. Therefore, Sala could develop further the instrument of his mentor Trautwein, compose pieces for it and perform them with the Berlin Philharmony under Carl Schuricht in 1940. He also played music by Paul Hindemith, exlusively written for the "Trautonium."
After the war, Oskar Sala made a breakthrough with his "Mixtur-Trautonium." For the first time in music history, it was possible to execute sounds which had been known in theory since the Middle Ages but weren't playable on classical instruments. Sala's invention opened the field of "subharmonics," the symmetric counterpart to overtones, so that a thouroughly distinct tuning evolved ("Subharmonics" can't be produced on non-electronic instruments and therefore had remained a theoretic-acoustic edifice). The "Mixtur-Trautonium's" construction within the old valve technique had been a big challenge for Sala. But finally, he presented it to the public in 1952 and would soon receive international licenses for its ingenious circuits. The same year composer Harald Gezmer, who lives today as a 93-year old in Munich, delivered the score to the first "Concert For Mixtur-Trautonium And Grand Orchestra."
Seventy years ago, electronics were still very large-scale. Sala developed a 200-pound "Concert Trautonium", which could be used for traveling. In the forties and fifties, he dedicated himself to film-scoring and helped numerous classics to gain their final musical refinement. There was hardly a German commercial at that time that didn't get its special character from his sound-constructions [A very well known expample is the spot for "HB's little man"].
In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock came knocking at Oskar Sala's door. Hitchcock had been unsuccessfully searching for an acoustic environment to his eerie bird scenes. Initially, the great director was sceptical when he heard reports about a man in Berlin who conjured up highly effective sounds from a strange machine. Hitchcock visited Sala and afterwards knew that he had reached his goal. In his eulogy on the occasion of Oskar Sala's 90th birthday, Christoph Stoelzl, Berlin's Senator for Cultural Affairs, called him "the congenial creator of bird screams that could set one's teeth on the edge."
Notable European and American directors gave Sala commissions for film scores and he received many relevant awards (the Oscar being an exception in this regard). Unfortunately, Sala couldn't realize his last dream: he wanted to visit Hitchcock's grave in England and travel to Hollywood.
As a human being, he was distinguished by his willingness to make contact with young people, despite his advanced age. He celebrated his 90th birthday with friends who were almost generally 50 years his junior. Physically, he was in best shape and could outdo younger people in climbing stairs. Until two weeks before he died, it was a daily ritual to walk from his fourth floor apartment to his studio, which was twenty minutes away. There, he continued working. Recently, he had been preparing for a perfomance in Moscow. To the very end, the virtuoso and designer sides of Sala's personality challenged each other.
[Oskar Sala was also an honorary senator of Berlin.] Lately he had been the subject of a book by the Berlin photo-artist Peter Badge, who, in association with the fromer president of the German Museum in Bonn, Dr. Peter Friess, intensively cared for Sala, arranging meetings with younger musicians. Badge traveled with him to Israel and England, where Sala gave so-called "talking concerts" [lectures]. He told his life-story accompanied by recordings of soundtracks and other performances, charming the audience for up to three hours.
The tragedy of his death: Oskar Sala didn't manage to teach anyone to play his instrument. So there was one and only one, who made music with the "Mixtur-Trautonium". The possibly un-approachable delved deep into a sound-technique world at lonely heights. He certainly was aware of his uniqueness, enjoyed it, kept it - and carried it into his grave.
One year ago, Oskar Sala had bequeathed his whole property, the film- and music-rights and the scholarly assets to the German Museum in Munich, which will preserve his lifework and establish an Oskar Sala Foundation. Sala's studio complements the Deutsche Museum's important collection of electronic music.
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Sympathy Nervous-s.t.,LP,1980,Japan,VANITY Records label.
I think many of you were waiting for this proto-electro/minimal synth/experimental Vanity recs gem!get it here
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
I.D. COMPANY-S/T, LP, 1970, GERMANY
Utterly schizophrenic in character, this krautrock masterpiece extends exploratory tendrils down two seemingly incompatible lines of investigation, each occupying one side of this LP and each fronted by a different powerhouse vocalist. Anyone initiated into the soul piercing hoodoo grammar of Dr. John's Gris Gris will find much to get emotionally wrung out over here, especially with Frumpy vocalist Inga Rumpf's uber masculine and completely wasted sounding vocals occupying center stage. Conversely, side B for much of it's length relinquishes warmth and happy wasted hoodoo vibes in favor of flinging you unceremoniously into a frequently harrowing psychic melee fronted by the hysteria tinged and Leslie cabinet shattered vocals of a young pre-Slapp Happy Dagmar Krause. Residual echoes of jazzy jamming cling to the edges of this amorphous febrile mass, but that only reinforces the deliriousness of the endeavour by offering the listener an olive branch only to yank the rug out from under your feet as you approach.
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THIS HEAT-S.P.Q.R.-THE LAST LIVE 1982, CD, 1997, UK
I'll just begin here by stating that This Heat are the very sound of my personal vision of hell and have soundtracked the darkest moments of my existence. As such, they're without question one of the greatest bands of all time but one I would be loath to try to tidily summarize in a capsule review. Suffice it to say that this bootleg CD is a vital piece of the This Heat puzzle and one whose continual unavailability is most strange considering the wealth of other archival This Heat material thats been coming down the pike for the last several years. This would be worth it's weight in gold if only for the inclusion of two otherwise unavailable cuts here, though as with all their work, it's actual "weight" seems more comprised of sulfur and napalm.
Get part one Here
PERIGEO-ABBIAMO TUTTI UN BLUES DA PIANGERE, LP, 1973, ITALY
Absent any of the blues suggested by the title, this is quintessential throat lump inducing Italian jazz rock in the Picchio Dal Pozzo/Duello Madre/Dedalus mode. On their debut here, Perigeo are operating at a pronouncedly more adventurous and deep level of of engagement than their more fusion-qua-fusion later releases would suggest. Ensconced in a fuzzy cocoon of disarmingly warm Mediterranean vibes, this entire recording seems to be hovering a few feet off the ground.
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Robert Rutman / U.s. Steel Cello Ensemble-Bitter Suites,LP,1979,USA
Robert Rutman (Berlin, 1931) went to the USA to study art in 1955. In 1975, he started building steel-metal sculptures to be played with a bow, like a violin, and founded the U.S. Steel Cello Ensemble. 1939 (Pogus, 1990) documents some of these resonating sculptures and their ghostly drones: Tabla and buzz chime, Steel cello and bow chime, Chant bow chime and horn, Three bow chimes, Song of the steel cello.
After a long hiatus, new compositions began to appear on Music To Sleep By (Tresor, 1998), Song Of The Steel Cello (Pogus, 1999), that contains the title-track, Zuuhh Muttie Mum (1999).
After a long hiatus, new compositions began to appear on Music To Sleep By (Tresor, 1998), Song Of The Steel Cello (Pogus, 1999), that contains the title-track, Zuuhh Muttie Mum (1999).
This is a recording of a concert by Robert Rutman and his steel cello's recorded sometime in the late 70's at a New York Art Gallery. If you are unfamiliar with the Steel Cello Ensemble, it's basically a few people playing large sheets of metal which produce totaly amazing, spooky, droning outer-space sounds. Very much in the same league as Bertoia's sound sculptures.
Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit-Eclipse,CD/LP,2006/1975,Japan
Masayuki Takayanagi - Eclipse (Eclipse (Japanese title: Shinshoku) has always been therarest of Masayuki Takayanagi's records. The ablum was recorded in May 1975 by hisNew Directions group just three weeks after the monemental April is the Cruelest Month set.Legendary free jazz label ESP Disk was due to release April...., so, expecting heavy demand for the overseas ablum, Iskra cut the pressing size for Eclipse from 300 to just 100. In the end, ESP went belly up and April had to wait until the nineties for a CD release. Eclipse became a holy grail for Japanese collectors with copies changing hands for up to $3000, and since the master-tapes had mysteriously vanished it seemed supremely unlikelyto ever be reissued. However, by some sort of miracle, the original masters were unearthed this year, and ordinary human beings can at last revel in the tense, explosivedynamics of the classic recording.)Fantastic free jazz of varying intensities, led by Takayanagi's searing yet supple guitar. His supporting ensemble is more than just sidemen, they skillfully create enigmatic new worlds through twisted manipulation of forms and sounds. The first song, a wandering yet lingering AMMesque sketch, is displaced by the (subtle?) forward thrust and scrambling parry of the second. Indeed, "First Session 2" feels like running a gauntlet of vaguely irritated chin-strokers aiming the whips of their guitar, reeds, bass, drums at your gut in slo-mo confusion. It all speeds up until it's all spun out, dragging the damaged undercarriage down the musical highway. Part three, "Second Session", starts as a full-on drag race for instrumental supremacy,until the electric squall of the guitar corrals the cats into a semblance of advancement. Everyone gets their blows in, but the maestro looms in the background, ready to chastise into (decidedly minimal) discipline when needed. It's a long run, so the pace is set by the flaying percussion, but the tone is measured in a strangely stuttering, energetic pace. Weirdly affecting.
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Recreation-Music Or Not Music,LP,1972,Belgium
Following the previous post of their much talked about 1st(?) LP here comes their 3rd one.
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Fusioon-s.t.,LP,1972,Spain
Great instrumental progressive with lots of mood and tempo changes. Some strange, but interesting vocal arrangements occur occasionally. In essence the music focuses around melodic guitar and keyboard interplay, but paradoxically there is always a slight dissonance or angularity lurking that gives the music a great ominous feel. To me Fusioon sounds like nobody else, but you might hear elements of Gentle Giant, Pulsar and 70's Italian art rock. The influence of Klaus Schulze or Tangerine Dream seems to be present here.(Sjef Oellers, as reviewed in Gnosis)
Followin the previous post of their masterpiece Minorisa by vdoandsound here comes their 1st LP.
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RAUL LOVISONI & FRANCESCO MESSINA-Prati bagnati del monte analogo,LP,1979,Italy
Great album produced by Franco Battiato based on Renè Daumal 'Le Mont Analogue' unfinished novel in wich the author describes a mountain of our world, so high that its summit reaches another plane of existence The music of this album is an exact compendium on such rise: drones and overtones, repetitive patterns, deep meditative feel, spaced atmospheres; a gem!From SoundOhm
Oren Ambarchi-Insulation,CD,2000,N. Zealand
Oren Ambarchi is an electronic guitarist and percussionist with longstanding interests in transcending conventional instrumental approaches. Born in Sydney, Australia in 1969, he has been performing live since 1986. He was a member of noise band Phlegm with Robbie Avenaim, with whom he now co-organises the What Is Music Festival. His work focuses mainly on the exploration of the guitar, though he also plays percussion in some of his live performances. Recently, he has toured with drone doom band Sunn O))).
From Wikipedia
REVIEW
Though comfortable in pop, punk, extreme metal, art installation, and other "conventional" settings, Ambarchi seems happiest when turning his guitar towards more expansive and exploratory means. In the spirit of such renegade axe-men as AMM’s Keith Rowe, Christian Fennesz and Kevin Drumm, Ambarchi’s solo improvisations are concerned with making a guitar sound like anything-but-a-guitar. Considering its limited source, Insulation is nothing less than a parade of sonic impossibilities. Ambarchi’s performances transcend his instrument’s apparent range, offering watery gurgle, euphonically fabricated feedback, shimmering phantom notes, wildly zigzagging piezoelectric effects, expressive chirps, and harmonic ghosts. The intimated pulse-rhythms of "Concurrents," "Lungs" and "Murmurs" imply extensive computer trickery (and, indeed, Aussie e-music vet Matthew Thomas did lend a hand), as do the pseudo-breakbeat maneuvers of "Strategem." Remarkably, Ambarchi shuns computerized contrivance or editing artifice, aside from Thomas' subtle input, relying almost solely upon technical ingenuity. That makes his execution of such showstoppers as "Study No. 1" and "Study No. 3," dizzy musique concrète-styled displays of amusing electro-acoustic noises, all the more astonishing.
Get this long out of print gem here
Though comfortable in pop, punk, extreme metal, art installation, and other "conventional" settings, Ambarchi seems happiest when turning his guitar towards more expansive and exploratory means. In the spirit of such renegade axe-men as AMM’s Keith Rowe, Christian Fennesz and Kevin Drumm, Ambarchi’s solo improvisations are concerned with making a guitar sound like anything-but-a-guitar. Considering its limited source, Insulation is nothing less than a parade of sonic impossibilities. Ambarchi’s performances transcend his instrument’s apparent range, offering watery gurgle, euphonically fabricated feedback, shimmering phantom notes, wildly zigzagging piezoelectric effects, expressive chirps, and harmonic ghosts. The intimated pulse-rhythms of "Concurrents," "Lungs" and "Murmurs" imply extensive computer trickery (and, indeed, Aussie e-music vet Matthew Thomas did lend a hand), as do the pseudo-breakbeat maneuvers of "Strategem." Remarkably, Ambarchi shuns computerized contrivance or editing artifice, aside from Thomas' subtle input, relying almost solely upon technical ingenuity. That makes his execution of such showstoppers as "Study No. 1" and "Study No. 3," dizzy musique concrète-styled displays of amusing electro-acoustic noises, all the more astonishing.
Get this long out of print gem here
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Toshinori Kondo/Paul Lovens-The last supper,LP,1980,Germany
Paul Lovens was born in Aachen, Germany, 6 June 1949; Drums, percussion, musical saw, etc.
Paul Lovens played the drums as a child. Self-taught, from the age of 14 he played in groups of various jazz styles and popular musics and from 1969 has worked almost exclusively as an improvisor on individually selected instruments. He has worked internationally with most of the leading musicians in free jazz and free improvisation, among whom have included the Globe Unity Orchestra, the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, the Schlippenbach trio, Quintet Moderne, Company, and a duo with Paul Lytton. He has undertaken concert tours in more than 40 countries, is a founder member of a musician's cooperative and has produced recordings for his own label, Po Torch Records since 1976. He has worked with painter Herbert Bardenheuer. Despite very rare solo performances, and although giving occasional concerts with ad-hoc groups and an involvement in projects with film, dance and actors, Paul Lovens' main interest and work is musical improvisation in fixed small groups. In the mid-1990s these small groups numbered around 16, of which a few were part of a special selection, called 'vermögen'.
Paul Lovens somehow epitomises the free drummer/percussionist who is not there to lay down the beat and kick everyone else into action but to listen, colour, contribute, guide, and occasionally direct, the overall cooperative sound. In concert one cannot fail to be moved by his intensity and concentration and there is an overiding feeling that even the most random events are somehow planned in time. In this respect, there is a nice irony that on the Nothing to read CD with Mats Gustafsson, Lovens describes his kit as consisting of 'selected and unselected drums and cymbals'. Miking seems to be a problem at times with some recordings giving him undue prominence and others insufficient. Good recordings are Elf bagatellen, Nothing to read, Pakistani pomade, and ,stranger than love.
Toshinori Kondo (December 15, 1948 in Ehime Prefecture) is an avant-garde and jazz trumpeter. He has lived in Japan, New York City, and Amsterdam. In college he was a member of the band "Funky Beaters" and by 1976 he was a member of an ensemble which gained some notice in his native Japan. His early influences were Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. That said, his style is quite distinct from theirs and influenced by his religious studies, among other things. In the mid-1970s his career gained new momentum on moving to NYC, where he worked with members of the 'Downtown' scene, including Bill Laswell and John Zorn; his first solo album coming out in 1979. Later he returned to Japan and after that moved to the Netherlands where he lives today. He has kept a comparatively low profile in the Netherlands and has little to no connections to the Dutch jazz scene. In 2002 he worked on an international peace festival in Hiroshima after being approached by the Dalai Lama about organizing one. He has also done musical, and possibly acting, work for Japanese crime films.
He is currently known for Free jazz and electronica music. In these, or related, capacities he has worked with DJ Krush and Tom Cora. He is also known for being avant-garde and was a former member of Praxis.
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Michael Waisvisz- Crackle,LP,1977,Netherlands
Michel Waiswisz pushes technology to its expressive limit, by creating electronic musical instruments which depend on the physical intelligence of the performer. A composer, performer and inventor of groundbreaking instruments which make electronic sound tangible (such as the Hands, the Sweatstick and the WEB – the latter in advance of the Internet), Waiswisz decided in the 1970s not to record his music, but to concentrate on live performance. He has played in concert halls and at rock festivals all over the world, and collaborated with a wide range of musicians, from Steve Lacy to Laurie Anderson to DJ Spooky. He is also the Director of Steim (the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music), the only independent electronic music centre in the world exclusively dedicated to the performance arts. Waiswisz demonstrates a resolutely human approach to technology, characterised by "extremely physical interfaces," but he has also developed software instruments (with Frank Baldé) such as Image/ine and LiSa (for live sampling). He is also the founder of the Physical Philosophy movement, which champions physical manipulation (rather than language) as the most economical and precise expression of the axioms of philosophy.
get this unique gem here
Whitehouse-Birthdeath Experience,LP,1980,UK
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Whitehouse are an industrial band formed in England by William Bennett in 1980, who's inspiration to make extreme electronic music orignated from Mute Records boss Daniel Miller. He then acquired a modified synthesiser that would shape the early sound of Whitehouse. Williamwas soon to be joined by Phillip Best and writer Pete Sotos - the act would remain a trio until 2002. From the outset, their 'music' (if it can be referred to has such) courted controversy, both due to it's lyrical content and it's extreme nature. They originally issued their music via Williams Bennet's own Come Organisation label (which also released recording by a number of other early industrial artists), but this label closed in 1985. Bennet duly formed the label 'Susan Lawly' for all future Whitehouse releases three years later, following the bands brief hiatus
The bands live performances have known to be eventful, with violence from audience members leading to the band refusing to play in the USA and the UK for a number of years - even though they've since relented on the decision, shows are still afflicted by glass-throwing and other unpleasant behaviour. Whitehouse themselves have suffered from censorship, with live performances cancelled and show that did go ahead raided by police and Christian groups alike. Despite all this, they have soldiered on, although Peter Sotos left the line-up in 2002.
This is their first LP.
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Wapassou-Messe en ré mineur,LP,1976,France
Stately chamber music with prog instrumentation (violin, keyboard, guitar). No percussion of any kind, which probably contributes to the record's mesmerizingly steady pace. One of the singers sounds like Miss Piggy for a stretch towards the middle . I'm sure much thought went into the structure of this record, and I'm slowly getting the sense of it (I'm confoundingly dumb in the face of classical/Romantic/baroque musics... one of my - honestly, most people's - greatest musicological flaws); though for now, hypnotism and sterility win the day. In short: nothing transcendent (yet); great headphone album: one for the pharmaceuticals and the starry skies through the homemade moonroof in your friend's van.
Following the previous post here is their 2nd LP.
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Reportaz-s.t.,LP,1987,Poland
Reportaz was established in 1982 in Poznan, Poland by Andrzej Karpinski and Piotr Lakomy. The group emerged from the society of young visual artists, with punk and new wave roots of the 80's. The music evolved throughout time, but never followed any specific trend or had any commercial connotations. The musical and lyrical formula of the group concentrated on creating reports from daily life, not art. During the socialist period of Polish history the group's music was promoted behind the iron curtain with some help from independent labels from Great Britain, USA, Belgium and Italy. Some of the music was recorded and is being promoted even now by Chris Cutler from Recommended Records. Reportaz performed live with the American duet Skeleton Crew. In the 80's Reportaz was the best known Polish avant-rock group in the west.
In the 90-ties Reportaz took a break from music. In 2000 there was an effort to reactivate Reportaz with a few of the original members, but they failed. Since July 2002 Reportaz exists as a "one man band" (Karpinski).
get this gem here
Rascal Reporters - Freaks Obscure MC (1980)&We´re God MC (1981),tapes,USA
The Rascal Reporters are: multi-instrumentalists Steve Gore and Steve Kretzmer. They are joined by special guest Dave Newhouse (from the Muffins) on saxophones, clarinets and flutes.
This music is dynamic and exuberant, with fancifully nimble keyboards and devious percussive threads mixing with serious woodwinds and rascal horns. Complex and rapid keyboard runs cavort through melodies at breakneck velocity, while never stumbling or giving quarter. Electronics are employed to enhance this surging quality, bestowing a sparkling edge to the fervent melodies. The percussion has a distinct sense of humor as the rhythms veer into unexpected territories in the midst of driving tempos, leaving the audience bewildered but amused. Some guitar (electric and acoustic) can be found, but their appearances are fleeting and buried in the thick mix of the whole.
This music is dynamic and exuberant, with fancifully nimble keyboards and devious percussive threads mixing with serious woodwinds and rascal horns. Complex and rapid keyboard runs cavort through melodies at breakneck velocity, while never stumbling or giving quarter. Electronics are employed to enhance this surging quality, bestowing a sparkling edge to the fervent melodies. The percussion has a distinct sense of humor as the rhythms veer into unexpected territories in the midst of driving tempos, leaving the audience bewildered but amused. Some guitar (electric and acoustic) can be found, but their appearances are fleeting and buried in the thick mix of the whole.
Sorry no pic sleeve scans...
Monday, March 19, 2007
FRANCO LEPRINO-INTEGRATI...DISINTEGRATI, LP, 1977, ITALY
Music that moves like smoke and incapacitates your defenses as only the finest smoke can, Integrati...
Disintegrati blows in on the same esoteric cosmic third stream of Italian 70's underground music that includes Franco Battiato, Pierrot Lunaire, Arturo Stalteri and Luciano Cilio (to cite four key examples) and which owes nothing to the sympho prog fixations of most of their Italian peers. Glazed systemic tides of watery acoustic guitar gently roil atop burbling pools of subtly modulating synth, occasionally graced by whispers of piano, flutes and crying infants. Leprino manages the rare feat of being simultaneously diaphanously delicate and eerily tense. My 5:00 AM acid comedown soundtrack du jour.
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WAFFELSCHMIEDE-WE ARE NOT THE RESIDENTS, TAPE, 1983, GERMANY
Completely insane sounding Neue Deutsche Welle experimentation worthy of their album title's allusion. Extended blasts of hi-speed video game soundtrack nonsense jostle elbow to elbow with Stapleton worthy dadaist atmospheres of reciting women and eerie electronic treatments. Loose limbed out rock extrapolations...melancholic piano etudes...this lunatic offshoot of The Off Band are completely off their rockers...
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TREIBEIS-ALPTRAUME, TAPE, 1981, GERMANY
Top shelf Neue Deutsche Welle insanity featuring berserk cartoonish synth splutter and tweaky effected vocals riding the rails of rhythm box clatter before giving way to a forceful D.A.F.-style sex voiced minimal thumper and ending up in Zuckerzeit-era Cluster-land with a neon lit piece of pulsating love.
NOTE: This tape is now soon to be reissued on vinyl by WSDP, so the link has been pulled. Please support this amazing label and buy this classic NDW album Here when it's released shortly.
MARTIN CIRCUS-EN DIRECT DU ROCK 'N' ROLL CIRCUS, LP, 1969, FRANCE
Prime proto prog sirloin straight from the lips of Uncle Meat, Martin Circus on their live debut are nevertheless a world away from the seamless surrealist jazz rock they'd resolve into two year on from here. 'En Direct..." is to "Acte II" (which I posted yesterday) what Daevid Allen-era Softs was to the Soft Machine of Volume One. As such, this is underrated and very endearing proto prog in the strictest sense, advanced language just beginning to coalesce around residual kernels of psychedelic compositional schema. Recorded under less than optimal sound conditions, this admittedly isn't the gut punch of Acte II, but it's nevertheless a lovely little universe of inspired vision and motion all it's own, particularly as this rip is taken from an old CD reissue that included essential studio versions of four of these tracks plus two unreleased gems as well...
This lengthy recording is split in two parts.
Get part one Here
Get part two Here
Freakowitz & Einstein - The 4th Dimension,Tape,1981,Netherlands
Great and rare tape by Dr, Freakowitz & Einstein ,released in 1981 through Trumpett tapes,and yet not reissued.Experimental minimal electronics at it's best!get it here
Francis Dhomont-Sous le regard d’un soleil noir ,LP/CD,1982/1995,France
Francis Dhomont (born Paris, France, 2 November 1926) is a French composer of Electroacoustic / Acousmatic music.
He studied composition under Ginette Waldmeier, Charles Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger. In the late 1940s he intuitively discovered with magnetic wire what Pierre Schaeffer at about the same time came to call musique concrète, consequently conducting solitary experiments with the musical possibilities of sound recording.
In 1963 he decided to dedicate his time to electroacoustic composition utilising natural sounds. Performances in public of his music are done using the French "diffusion" technique over multiple loudspeakers. His work consists exclusively of tape pieces using natural, or "found" sounds, exploring morphological interplay and the ambiguities between sound and the images it may create.
Dhomont's work has won many international awards including at the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France), the Magisterium Prize in 1988, Prix Ars Electronica in 1992 (Linz, Austria) and others. In 1997, as the winner of the Canada Council for the Arts' Lynch-Staunton Prize, he was supported by the DAAD for a residence in Berlin. He was recently awarded a prestigious career grant by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec . Dhomont is the editor of several electroacoustic music journals, and has produced many radio programs for Radio-Canada and Radio-France.
From 1978 to 2005, he divided his time between France and Québec, where he taught at the Université de Montréal from 1980 to 1996. He was a founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. He now lives in Avignon (France) and regularly presents his works in France and abroad. A great traveller, he frequently participates in juries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Dhomont
In Sous le regard d’un soleil noir, Mr. Dhomont creates an enigmatic and dreamlike atmosphere, with the subject matter centered on the self. The drama is built up as the barrier crumbles between the self and the external world. The inner being is then invaded, or better, sucked into the black hole of schizophrenia: “One is inside then outside what one has been inside. One feels empty […] to eat and to be eaten to have the outside inside and to be inside the outside. But this is not enough […] and inside oneself there is still nothing.”
This is the worrying black sunrise, as torrid as the intensity of the drama it engenders. The drama takes many forms in the work. Among others, there is an obsessive pitch, B, whose timbre serves to express a searing anguish. There is also the breakdown of the self, evoked in the Engloutissement (“Engulfment”) of Section 2 by the immersion in fluid sonorities that are driven on to an asphyxiation of the personality, until only an inarticulate shadow remains at the bottom of the abyss. Then there is the Implosion of Section 4, and the progressive Pιtrification of the personality in Section 7. The first sound of Citadelle intιrieure (“Interior Fortress”), a heavy door that suddenly slams shut symholizes the walled-in isolation of the personality. Finally, there is the vocal counterpoint at the end of the same section, spread out in space as if this distant voice, fragile and almost inaudible, symbolizes the loss of contact between the self of the individual and the consciousness of its own existence.
http://www.electrocd.com/cat.e/imed_9633.prs.html
He studied composition under Ginette Waldmeier, Charles Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger. In the late 1940s he intuitively discovered with magnetic wire what Pierre Schaeffer at about the same time came to call musique concrète, consequently conducting solitary experiments with the musical possibilities of sound recording.
In 1963 he decided to dedicate his time to electroacoustic composition utilising natural sounds. Performances in public of his music are done using the French "diffusion" technique over multiple loudspeakers. His work consists exclusively of tape pieces using natural, or "found" sounds, exploring morphological interplay and the ambiguities between sound and the images it may create.
Dhomont's work has won many international awards including at the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France), the Magisterium Prize in 1988, Prix Ars Electronica in 1992 (Linz, Austria) and others. In 1997, as the winner of the Canada Council for the Arts' Lynch-Staunton Prize, he was supported by the DAAD for a residence in Berlin. He was recently awarded a prestigious career grant by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec . Dhomont is the editor of several electroacoustic music journals, and has produced many radio programs for Radio-Canada and Radio-France.
From 1978 to 2005, he divided his time between France and Québec, where he taught at the Université de Montréal from 1980 to 1996. He was a founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. He now lives in Avignon (France) and regularly presents his works in France and abroad. A great traveller, he frequently participates in juries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Dhomont
In Sous le regard d’un soleil noir, Mr. Dhomont creates an enigmatic and dreamlike atmosphere, with the subject matter centered on the self. The drama is built up as the barrier crumbles between the self and the external world. The inner being is then invaded, or better, sucked into the black hole of schizophrenia: “One is inside then outside what one has been inside. One feels empty […] to eat and to be eaten to have the outside inside and to be inside the outside. But this is not enough […] and inside oneself there is still nothing.”
This is the worrying black sunrise, as torrid as the intensity of the drama it engenders. The drama takes many forms in the work. Among others, there is an obsessive pitch, B, whose timbre serves to express a searing anguish. There is also the breakdown of the self, evoked in the Engloutissement (“Engulfment”) of Section 2 by the immersion in fluid sonorities that are driven on to an asphyxiation of the personality, until only an inarticulate shadow remains at the bottom of the abyss. Then there is the Implosion of Section 4, and the progressive Pιtrification of the personality in Section 7. The first sound of Citadelle intιrieure (“Interior Fortress”), a heavy door that suddenly slams shut symholizes the walled-in isolation of the personality. Finally, there is the vocal counterpoint at the end of the same section, spread out in space as if this distant voice, fragile and almost inaudible, symbolizes the loss of contact between the self of the individual and the consciousness of its own existence.
http://www.electrocd.com/cat.e/imed_9633.prs.html
get it here
Floh De Cologne-Mumien,LP,1974,Germany,NWW list
(poster for mumien LP)Following the previous post by Floh De Cologne ,here comes their 1974 LP Mumien ,with cover art designed by H. R. Giger. As you can possibly guess this one is much darker ,yet fantastic LP.
OLD LINK UPDATED ,BECAUSE THERE WERE 2 SONGS MISSING...SORRY FOR THE MESS
new link here
Osanna-L'Uomo,LP,1971,Italy
This is weird and wild music played in a psychedelic and proto-prog way more than it’s played in the progressive way most of us know Osanna for. Everything on this record seems to have a mirror-side of opposites to it. If there’s a bad harmonica line – like the line in the beginning – then there’s a good one, found in “Everybody’s Gonna See You Die”. If there’s a cheesy tenor saxophone (song 2) then one might find good tenor and baritone saxes elsewhere.
Some songs are in English – the abovementioned, “Lady Power” and “Mirror Train” – for some reason unknown to me, I don’t understand why ‘cause they are rather bad, with exception for “Everybody’s Gonna See You Die”. Now, I have read somewhere I can’t remember that “L’Uomo” like “Milano Calibro 9” is a soundtrack to some obscure Italian film and maybe that has something to do with it, though I still don’t get the point of why they have three English tracks on it. The songs also float together without any pauses other than the obvious LP one. So one might guess it’s at least a concept album of some sort.
Still here are many excellent moments of music, like many parts with strong electric guitar, bass, drums, flute and on top of that often some acoustic guitars and some organ. These parts remind me of Jethro Tull. The bad parts often sound like your average 60s/70s rock band desperately trying to give life to some tired old riff or melody that weren’t even good the first time around, like the album “Ballad of a Peaceful Man” by Gravy Train, a record I find tremendously overrated.
http://www.progorgan.com/reviews-osanna-55.html
Following the post of their masterpiece ,"Palepoli",here comes their 1st LP.Not as outstanding as "Palepoli",but yet very very good!
get it here
Sunday, March 18, 2007
KULTURSCHANDER-FRANZ JOSEF AUF ABWEGEN, TAPE, 1982, GERMANY
A real high water mark of damaged Neue Deutsche Welle tape culture, Kulturschander's fucked-in-the-head muse takes in marching music for militant smurfs and lobotomized balladry beat into submission by squeaky toys while still finding time for two wonderfully awkward minimal synth etudes.
Get it Here
KEBNEKAISE-S/T, LP, 1973, SWEDEN
Possessed of much the same warmly blasted outdoorsy festival psych flavor as celebrated progenitors of this specifically Swedish musical archetype Harvester/International Harvester, Trad Grad Och Stenar and Arbete Och Fritid, Kebnekaise were however far more deeply invested in the native folk underpinnings of their sound in a way that effectively makes them the rough Swedish equivalent of prime-era Fairport Convention. To these set of ears, the yoking of this heavy lidded form of meditational psych trudge to the exultant upward thrust of haunting Swedish folk themes results in some of the most blissfully tranced music ever made.
NOTE: THIS LINK HAS NOW BEEN RE-UPPED...
Get it Here
Christina Kubisch & Fabrizio Plessi-Two and Two,LP,1976,Italy
Christina Kubisch belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Trained as a composer, she has artistically developed such techniques as magnetic induction to realize her installations. Since 1986 she has added light as an artistic element to her work with sound.Christina Kubisch's work displays an artistic development which is often described as the "synthesis of arts" - the discovery of acoustic space and the dimension of time in the visual arts on the one hand, and a redefinition of relationships between material and form on the other.
Two And Two was a live performance for two performers (Kubisch and Plessi), two video cameramen, a wall of monitors and uncommon objects and instruments. Throughout the performances, people were invited to walk around and observe the live action in real time as close up images of the performance were projected on video screens and unusual objects as sound sources -- a vibrator, water, swanee whistle, voice, contact microphone on ventilator, prepared alto flute, electronic metronome, waterjet on steeldrum -- were sonically 'blown up' through self invented systems of amplification. The resulting four pieces on this 1977 recording alternate between heavenly, rhythmically shifting drones to gamelan tinged blistering electronics that sound like distant, corrupted morse code dispatches. The entire album is an organic revelation of the discreet acoustic nature of everyday objects, intensely mechanical, startling and elemental .
get it here
Un Département - Le Album,LP,1985,France
Following the Au menu post .here's their first -great as always - LP.
Thanks to Roger 31.
Realised through Illusion Prods in 1985.
Anyone who can share their first privately released 12" and 7" from 1981-2?
get this here
Rocky's Filj-Storie di uomini e non ,LP,1973,Italy,NWW list
A band of very good musicians from Parma, Rocky's Filj (from their leader Rocky Rossi's name) gained a contract with Ricordi after a positive tour with Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, and the album was produced by Sandro Colombini, who had worked with Banco in their first albums.
The album is jazz-rock oriented, but all the tracks have vocals, and Rocky's voice is very original even if not great. Instrumental parts are very well made, all the band members could professionally play various instruments and the album is always very enjoyable. The long opening track, L'ultima spiaggia, with dramatic vocals and long guitar and sax solo parts is a fine example of their music.
A band that deserved more consideration, Rocky's Filj broke up soon after the album was recorded, as one of them was jailed, reappearing in 1979 with a commercial single recorded with help from former Acqua Fragile Pier Emilio Canavera and (probably) Franz Dondi.Rocky Rossi sadly died in 1985 in a car accident.Drummer Colasante is probably the same which appears (with the name Roby) in the records by Delta Blues Band, in 1979, and the funky-disco Midnight Band in 1980.Guitarist Roby Grablovitz has kept playing in Northern Italy with a 70's cover band, and has released a solo CD in 2005, entitled Speranze d'artista (Acid Studio RG001).
From:http://www.italianprog.com/a_rockysfilj.htm
The album is jazz-rock oriented, but all the tracks have vocals, and Rocky's voice is very original even if not great. Instrumental parts are very well made, all the band members could professionally play various instruments and the album is always very enjoyable. The long opening track, L'ultima spiaggia, with dramatic vocals and long guitar and sax solo parts is a fine example of their music.
A band that deserved more consideration, Rocky's Filj broke up soon after the album was recorded, as one of them was jailed, reappearing in 1979 with a commercial single recorded with help from former Acqua Fragile Pier Emilio Canavera and (probably) Franz Dondi.Rocky Rossi sadly died in 1985 in a car accident.Drummer Colasante is probably the same which appears (with the name Roby) in the records by Delta Blues Band, in 1979, and the funky-disco Midnight Band in 1980.Guitarist Roby Grablovitz has kept playing in Northern Italy with a 70's cover band, and has released a solo CD in 2005, entitled Speranze d'artista (Acid Studio RG001).
From:http://www.italianprog.com/a_rockysfilj.htm
get it here
Lite Storm-Warning,LP,1973,USA
Pretty obscure Cali group fronted by Johnima Bahlu. Featuring Kali Bahlu who along with Johnima recorded the great lp on World Pacific, "Kali Bahlu Takes the Forest Children on a Journey of Cosmic Rememberance"(recently posted here). Pop dreamland with Divine Mother guru love overtones. These folks went off the deep end not long after and raised carrots and had lotsa free love or whatever it is chanting, VW driving, Mother Earth reading types did on the communes. Anyways, rarer than the Bahlu lp and pretty late for this sound.
Not as freaked out as Kali Bahlu LP but yet very essential.
get it here
Saturday, March 17, 2007
SEPI KUU-RANNAN USVASSA, LP, 1980, FINLAND
Strangely ambling when it's not lumbering yet filled with all manner of lovely musical incident, Finland's Sepi Kuu are a beautifully ungainly proposition. Circular acoustic guitar patterns, spitting acid leads and lilting little synth themes seem like common enough ingredients, but the way they're hitched to extended slow-simmering percussive pilgrimages and offset by inelegant mouthfuls of Finnish vowel porridge makes them sound rather like Catherine Ribeiro's band Alpes on lithium.
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ETRON FOU LELOUBLAN-EN PUBLIC AU ETATS-UNIS D'AMERIQUE, LP, 1979, FRANCE
Gloriously spasmodic yet obscenely tight fits of Beefheartian hurly burly from one of the founding fathers of the R.I.O. movement. Their stupefying amalgam of asymmetrical foregrounded bass perambulations, rhythms that caper, scamper, trot and prance in archly whimsical fashion when they're not peppering the proceedings with cross-cutting swaths of frenzied percolations, intensely lovely and highly musical winding curlicues of circus-y sax filigree and declamatory vocalese is a wonder to behold in a live setting.
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EDWARD VESALA-SATU, LP, 1977, FINLAND
Operating at a truly blissed peak of acidy fusion experimentation, the way the drifting, autumnal slow bleeds of reverbed trumpet ripple against Terje Rypdal's teased out tendrils of elegiac acid guitar (highly reminiscent of his "Whenever I Seem To Be Far Away" album) is positively wrenching. Germany's Dzyan and Australia's Quasar are two touchstones for this species of astral jazz rock, and all are more than a touch stoned.
Get it Here
Friday, March 16, 2007
ANDERS KOPPEL-AFTENLANDET & REGNBUEFUGLEN, LP, 1977, DENMARK
Shot through with alternating currents of melancholia and festivity that are almost piercingly poignant in their evocation of some lost Scandanavian hippy idyll, this supremely beautiful solo album from Savage Rose keyboard player Koppel scratches an obscure itch ordinarily only reached by Bo Hansson and Supersister.
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GHEDALIA TAZARTES-LIVE ON FRENCH RADIO, 1977, FRANCE, NWW LIST (UNRELEASED)
Quite the rare treat for fans of this arcane French nutter, here for the first time with some of the nuts and bolts of his screwy audio contraptions laid a bit more bare in a solo French radio performance. As with much of his work, gutteral gargles, groans and chants spiral into cod-arabic wailing as tapes are run backwards, crashes and bangs looped, and peculiar detuned musical themes and incidental noises fall over themselves in the background, all in an eerily ritualistic sounding fashion that makes him sound like a devotional Costes.
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STEFAN SCHRADER-TRANCEMISSION, TAPE, 1983, GERMANY
Sounding almost like it was made as a demo to secure a contract with Sky Records, the live side A takes the perverted tonal palette of Asmus Tietchen's four album's for the label and applies it to the more naively whimsical compositional thrust of his Sky labelmates Tyndall, while the studio recorded side B tunnels a bit deeper into nebulous territory, arriving not terribly far from the comos-in-a-shoebox vibe of Australia's Violet Lightening.
Get it Here
Thursday, March 15, 2007
CONRAD SCHNITZLER-LIVE ACTION 1977, LP, 2002, GERMANY
Much of the wet splat zap attack you'd anticipate from Schnitzler's doings of this era are here in spades, but so too (at least on side A) are squashed little electropop motions struggling for air in the tidal pool of tweezing unsettling frequencies they're adrift in. Side B initially settles into a more reflective, even cosmic mood but chilly distant rhythm box clatter and the increasingly eerie dismal vibes that emerge at the halfway mark finally pull the proceedings into an entropic gravitational pit.
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THE FEAR MERCHANTS-MENTAL, TAPE, 1982, UK
Though I'm sure there was some obscure rationale for attaching the moniker The Fear Merchants to this particular Homosexuals-related session by Whelton and Co., I'll be damned if I can tell why, as much of this utterly astounding material is in close enough aesthetic proximity to the Amos & Sara recordings as to render them indistinguishable. What that means in practice is that this counts amongst the most immediately engaging of Whelton's doings. Some super memorable little pop gems are tucked away in the recesses of this crazy quilt, though it's a quilt upon which Nancy Sesay and John Gavanti are dancing a waltz.
Sorry...no cover scan or song titles are available for this item.
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YXIMALLOO-THE WORST OF 1981, CD, + THE WORST OF 1982, CD, + THE WORST OF 1984, CD, + THE WORST OF 1986, CD, 1994, JAPAN
Occupying an insular, hermetic universe (albeit a neon tinted one) wholly his own, I've perhaps overstated the similarities between Naofumi Ishimura's work as Yximalloo and the work of Kimitaka Matsumae in yesterdays posting of Matsumae's work (applicable mostly to Ishimura's more Residential sounding Worst Of 1986 material), as what he was getting up to during this early stage of his career makes him seem more like Matsumae's distant inbred autistic cousin. Inscrutable smurfy brilliance sits side by side with shrill sub-moronic gooning in a way that has the legitimate reek of mental imbalance. Only the most puny children's synths have earned the right to reside in Ishimura's tinkertoy universe, forming the undergirding for much chanting, clapping and whistling, detuned acoustic guitar fumble, toy xylophone plinking and sundry other examples of ingeniously bent malarky making.
NOTE: ITS BEEN POINTED OUT TO ME THAT ISHIMURA IS CURRENTLY SELLING THESE EARLY 90'S CD'S OFF HIS MYSPACE PAGE. THUS, I'VE DECIDED TO REMOVE THESE ALBUMS AND REDIRECT YOU TO HIS MYSPACE PAGE, SO YOU CAN SUPPORT HIS WORK. GO Here
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
KIMITAKA MATSUMAE-YOU ARE THE FOX 1-4, CD'S, 1997, JAPAN
A virtual valhalla of retardo doink action and irrepressible inspired idiocy, these four solo albums by Kimitaka Matsumae (leader of the deranged sounding Expo, who's CD I posted a few weeks back) exude much the same air of sugar shocked false good cheer as Picky Picnic's breed of perky poison. Really though, it's only the work of Matsumae's contemporary Naofumi Ishimaru as Yximalloo (a motherlode of which is coming tomorrow) that seems comparable to what is happening here, if only for the sheer scale of the respective geysers of goof they both spew. What sets Matsumae's solo work a bit apart though is his deeper investment in the grammar of noxious Japanese commercial and children's music, often rendering the proceedings questionable enough to cause a reflexive reach for the pause button, only to get slammed in the head by an apropos-of-nothing dadaist eruption that recasts said questionable moves as brilliant tactical maneuvers existing only to further befoul your already addled brain.
Note: these rather lengthy CD's have each been divided into two parts for optimum fidelity.
Get You Are The Fox 1 part one Here
Get You Are The Fox 1 part two Here
Get You Are The Fox 2 part one Here
Get You Are The Fox 2 part two Here
Get You Are The Fox 3 part one Here
Get You Are The Fox 3 part two Here
Get You Are The Fox 4 part one Here
Get You Are The Fox 4 part two Here
Note: these rather lengthy CD's have each been divided into two parts for optimum fidelity.
Get You Are The Fox 1 part one Here
Get You Are The Fox 1 part two Here
Get You Are The Fox 2 part one Here
Get You Are The Fox 2 part two Here
Get You Are The Fox 3 part one Here
Get You Are The Fox 3 part two Here
Get You Are The Fox 4 part one Here
Get You Are The Fox 4 part two Here
AGEM-SEKUNDA, TAPE, 198?, GERMANY
The precision tooled gleam and cartoonish spluttery wetness displayed on parts of this little Neue Deutsche Welle mystery item (another not included in punk-disco's kassetteographie) could almost cause you to think it was emanating from the contemporary Cologne electronica scene. Aah...but it's a ruse...just as you've begun to think that you've got 'em pegged, they pull swirling vortexes of distended tonal mulch out of their hats and send it flinging about the room. Or leave you stranded in some echoey Tolerance-like mufflebeat purgatory before lurching back into some Ata-Tak style doinkiness. Some really advanced and damaged shit here thats virtually begging for a reissue on Vinyl-On-Demand, Was Soll Das? or Kernkrach.
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FUSIOON-MINORISA, LP, 1975, SPAIN
One of the most screw-loose sounding sympho prog outfits that I can think of, Spain's Fusioon, while mobilizing numerous expected prog signifiers (in their case, from the funkily vamping side of Gentle Giant to the brooding post-Fripp pyrotechnics of their countrymen in Coto-En-Pel), nevertheless sit at a strange right angle to just about any other variety of prog that comes to mind. From sudden baffling insertions of group chant to a strange tendency to undercut escalating tension with odd abrupt digressions (not to mention a brain damaging electronic meltdown finale that comes screaming out of absolutely nowhere), Fusioon on this third and final album of theirs are alternately eerie, groovy, goofy, tormented, suave and slightly idiotic. They're also utterly unprecedented.
Get it Here
Get it Here
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
BLOGGER.COM TECHNICAL GLITCHES PREVENT POSTING TITLES TONIGHT
It seems that there is a bug in blogger.com's system that is preventing photos from being uploaded. This has been the case for the last several hours, so until they fix their system, I'll have to wait to post the goodies I had in store for you all...
vdoandsound
There will be no more posts till Sunday ,by mutantsounds,due to familly affairs(this explains yesterdays' and todays' huge posts).Although ,there will be posts by vdoandsound.Comments will be moderated though.See you again on Sunday!
V/A:Nightsoil 5 futurists,tape,1981,Netherlands
Wierd industrial/minimal synth compilation tape from
Netherlands.Bands included in the compilation : Ben Allen, Kable Truth, Datonik Poko, Loss of Head, Panacea, Der Fliessigs Feilan, The Secret People, Rentakil d .No Further info available!
get it here
V/A:Electronic Music Club,tape,1983,Australia
Great minimalsynth tape release from Australia's E-pop label,circa 1983.Features:Bobtronics,Human Backs,Modern Jazz,Donno Detti,Ollie Olsen,amongst others!
Sorry no pic sleeve scan,would appreciate if someone could provide it.
Bradford Red Light District-The New Order,LP,1981,UK,Come Org.
Here's a classic early industrial LP.Actually an offshot of Whitehouse,Come,MB.Rumours that Genesis P. Orridge was involved to!
get it here
Here are the two Raw Records compilations featuring tracks by:Killjoys,Acme Sewage Co,Users,Soft boys,Sick Things ,The Now,amongst others.2 of the best early punk compilations from the UK.Julverne-A Neuf,LP,1980,Belgium
If one was to draw a map of the Belgium prog scene (outside of the symphonic current) , all period considered and all currents considered (Zeuhl, Canterbury , RIO , Avant-prog , jazz-rock all fitting into what is called CHAMBER ROCK – but I choose to call it Chamber prog , because some of those bands are not really rock anymore) , then JULVERNE would likely be right in the centre of the story. All musicians have a link with all major bands from that small surrealist country where culture is the main gathering force but also the main dividing rift between the two major communities of the land. Members of JULVERNE have played or will play in UNIVERS ZERO , PRESENT , AKSAK MABOUL , X-LEGGED SALLY , COS , CRO-MAGNON , etc.. The group started as a bunch of music classical students wanting to reinvent the classical chamber orchestra by adding a bit of a rock twist although this will remain very discreet. But on the mood spectrum I would place them on the opposite scale of Univers Zero, the first being the extra joyful joie de vivre as opposed to the dark and lugubrious underworld of UZ. The first album actually was the oeuvre of Pierre Coulon , but the next two albums were also quite interesting as En Ballade stands a bit apart from the rest of their discography often digressing into jazzier terrain and some vocals. They recorded a last album in 86, and nothing (apart from a compilation album in 92) was heard of them until the turn of the century when they reconvened for another album celebrating the renovation of a spectacular building in Brussels that has remained open to public for exactly four hours before being closed for obscene bas-relief. Did you say Belgian surrealism? . : : : Hugues Chantraine, BELGIUM : : :
from Progarchives
Ensembles performing a chamber music variation of progressive rock often get compared to Univers Zero and Art Zoyd, but if the list is stretched, Belgians Julverne are likely to find themselves in the number three slot. Taking their name from one of the earliest speculative fiction writers, Julverne peform a classically inspired music, whose (very) occasional tangents into darker territory within this chamber sort of format undoubtedly draw comparisons to their more well known Belgian contemporaries. They included a revolving line up led by flute and sax player Pierre Coulon and violin and trombone player Jeannot Gillis.
In fact, Julverne has shared musicians with Univers Zero, including Dirk Descheemaker and Michel Berckmans. So there is really no surprise that there are similarities in style to both bands. However, Julverne is more like Univers Zero's happier, more cosmopolitan younger brother. The ensemble's first album was released in 1979, and unlike their more aggressive musical brethren, Julverne don't have any drums. In fact, they only seem to be a rock band by comparison, as this truly seems to be a chamber group performing original music with influences of Satie, Bartok, Debussy, and the less dissonant measures of Stravinksy. The instrumentation is typical of chamber music with piano, strings, horns and winds, and these are arranged in many lovely ways over Coulonneux's ten-track duration. In fact, the similarities to Univers Zero and Art Zoyd are largely the musical format, as this is never angry or strident in the least. However, Julverne was certainly considered an experimental band by the musical collective that made it up, and the compositions reflect an exploratory ethic in their use of keys, modes and arrangements. Without getting into music theory, it can still be said that most of the compositions often start out in a fresh and accessible mode before veering off into a tangent belying the 20th Century influences of the band. It's a gorgeous album and rather idiosyncratic, even in comparison to the ensemble's RIO-drafted contemporaries.
A Neuf was an even more mature effort, starting with an ambitious three-piece suite. While Julverne's chamber music approach implies a sort of serious study, musically there were bits of humor sneaking into the compositions nonetheless, such as the second part of the suite, "Un Peu Pretentieux" (A Bit Pretentious). Musically this is also true, with the ensemble's occasional tangents into sly, goofy, or zany territory. One may be listening to some beautiful arranged chamber piece before the whole group speeds off in another direction, as if Bugs Bunny was yet again leading Elmer Fudd off on another wild goose chase. In fact, if anything sets apart Julverne from cousins Univers Zero, it's this omnipresent playfulness. Only a group of skilled musicians and composers could pull off such a thing in such complex and involved compositions. Not a piece of music is anything but entertaining here, rich in ideas, spontaneity, dynamic diversity and mood. Perhaps it's more a tribute to such classy music that Julverne finds itself in such company with bands like Univers Zero in Belgium's most interesting lineage of experimental chamber music ensembles.
While the first two albums by Julverne might be considered the formative work of the ensemble, the band would release two more albums, 1983's Emballade and 1986's Ne Parlons Pas de Mahleur, before dissolving. In 1992, the Igloo label would release a retrospective of these albums (Le Retour du Captain Nemo) including a great deal of music from the early albums. Julverne also reformed recently to release 2000's Le Pavillion des Passions Humanies.
In fact, Julverne has shared musicians with Univers Zero, including Dirk Descheemaker and Michel Berckmans. So there is really no surprise that there are similarities in style to both bands. However, Julverne is more like Univers Zero's happier, more cosmopolitan younger brother. The ensemble's first album was released in 1979, and unlike their more aggressive musical brethren, Julverne don't have any drums. In fact, they only seem to be a rock band by comparison, as this truly seems to be a chamber group performing original music with influences of Satie, Bartok, Debussy, and the less dissonant measures of Stravinksy. The instrumentation is typical of chamber music with piano, strings, horns and winds, and these are arranged in many lovely ways over Coulonneux's ten-track duration. In fact, the similarities to Univers Zero and Art Zoyd are largely the musical format, as this is never angry or strident in the least. However, Julverne was certainly considered an experimental band by the musical collective that made it up, and the compositions reflect an exploratory ethic in their use of keys, modes and arrangements. Without getting into music theory, it can still be said that most of the compositions often start out in a fresh and accessible mode before veering off into a tangent belying the 20th Century influences of the band. It's a gorgeous album and rather idiosyncratic, even in comparison to the ensemble's RIO-drafted contemporaries.
A Neuf was an even more mature effort, starting with an ambitious three-piece suite. While Julverne's chamber music approach implies a sort of serious study, musically there were bits of humor sneaking into the compositions nonetheless, such as the second part of the suite, "Un Peu Pretentieux" (A Bit Pretentious). Musically this is also true, with the ensemble's occasional tangents into sly, goofy, or zany territory. One may be listening to some beautiful arranged chamber piece before the whole group speeds off in another direction, as if Bugs Bunny was yet again leading Elmer Fudd off on another wild goose chase. In fact, if anything sets apart Julverne from cousins Univers Zero, it's this omnipresent playfulness. Only a group of skilled musicians and composers could pull off such a thing in such complex and involved compositions. Not a piece of music is anything but entertaining here, rich in ideas, spontaneity, dynamic diversity and mood. Perhaps it's more a tribute to such classy music that Julverne finds itself in such company with bands like Univers Zero in Belgium's most interesting lineage of experimental chamber music ensembles.
While the first two albums by Julverne might be considered the formative work of the ensemble, the band would release two more albums, 1983's Emballade and 1986's Ne Parlons Pas de Mahleur, before dissolving. In 1992, the Igloo label would release a retrospective of these albums (Le Retour du Captain Nemo) including a great deal of music from the early albums. Julverne also reformed recently to release 2000's Le Pavillion des Passions Humanies.
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Jef Gilson-Œil Vision(1963)+Jef Gilson And Malagasy-Zao(1973/2002),LP+CD,France,NWW list
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Jef Gilson is a French jazz pianist whose career started in the sixties and was one of the first bandleaders to utilized the talents of a very young violinist named Jean Luc Ponty. This enchanting compilation comes from four sessions in 1969 and 1973. The first two datesfrom 1969 take place and employ jazz musicians from Madagascar, perhaps a first for acollaboration with musicians from the exotic island of Madagascar, some 20 years beforeHenry Kaiser & David Lindley made their way there. The first group includes 5 sax or clarinet players, plus Jef on electric piano and xylophone, an electric bassist and drummer.This is truly infectious and joyous Afropop with jumping grooves, interlocking drums and xylophone and harmonious horns, not so distant from the better parts of those 'Ethiopique'series CDs. The one cover that these sessions provide is a hypnotic version of Pharoah Sanders' "The Creator Has a Master Plan", done by a fine sextet with alto sax,bass clarinet, piano, el. bass and two drummer/percussionists. The two sessions from 1973take place in Paris and employ another sextet with both local players and some from Madagascar. What makes these units interesting is that they include two electric bassistsand an instrument called a valiha, which sounds like a kora. Both bassists play different,percolating parts, as the valiha and percussionist also lock into their grooves. It is rare to find music that is both adventurous and so much fun simultaneously.get it here
Jean-Pierre Alarcen-Tableau N° 1,LP,1979,France
The "Tableau No 1" album could've been subtitled "Concerto For a Group And Orchestra". All the three Movements that are featured on it represent nothing else but the works of Classical Academic Music. The arrangements develop constantly and there is no place for repeats. The First and Third Movements, both of which are as long as any LP's typical sidelong pieces, consist of varied structures. The alternation of the fast, powerful and hard-edged, slow, soft and quiet arrangements is typical for both of them. The arrangements of Second Movement are almost entirely slow. It contains only one powerful episode, which lasts about 50 seconds. The guitar solos are very tasteful and diverse throughout the album. However, those of them that are featured in the fast arrangements are just incredibly virtuosi. The slow arrangements consist for the most part of interplay between the 'crying' solos of guitar and 'sad' passages of string orchestra, while the fast ones feature the performance of the band as a whole. Of course, the latter are especially impressive. In fact, they represent a hard-edged Classic Symphonic Art-Rock raised to the power of Classical Academic Music. The contrasting interplay between solos and riffs of electric guitar, solos of bass guitar, organ, and electric piano, and passages of acoustic piano, Church organ, and string ensemble, frequent and unexpected changes of tempo and mood, atonalities, complex time signatures, etc. All of this is typical for both the longest compositions on the album. With the exception of orchestral cymbals, the drums are active only in the mid-tempo and fast arrangements. It also must be said that for the most part, all three of the Movements of Tableau No 1 have a dramatic feel to them, which is especially evident in the slow and mid-tempo arrangements. All the fast arrangements are penetrated with atmospheres of intensity and anxiety. Frankly, I find this music very appropriate for the planet Earth.
From:Progressor.net
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Monday, March 12, 2007
Harvester-Hemåt ,LP,1969,Sweden
International Harvester only played together for three years, the first under another name, but they were an influential group for Swedish progressive rock. While making sonic experiments and deep excursions into psychedelic rock, their biggest contribution was probably that they were the foundation on which the more famous group Träd, Gräs och Stenar was built. International Harvester started as the short-lived experimental group Pärsson Sound. The group formed in 1967 in Stockholm by guitarist Bo Anders Persson and included cello player Ericsson and violinist Yman, both with a musical education and playing on homemade electric instruments. Saxophonist Tidholm was a film student and a poet, drummer Gantz had played with the progressive dance orchestra Mecki Mark Men, and at times the band also included an extra drummer, Berger. Pärsson Sound was mainly an instrumental group and their music was not very accessible. At times they let a tape pass two tape recorders on stage, one recording and one playing, which meant the music returned, overdubbed and distorted in an increasing mass of tones and noise. They played a number of gigs at the club Filips, the main spot for progressive rock in Stockholm, and started to get more well-known after a festival in Kungsträdgården, where Don Cherry and Peps Persson also played. In 1968 they changed their name to International Harvester and abandoned the most extreme sonic experiments, instead putting the focus on folk music and psychedelic rock. Tidholm's vocals were allowed more space and in stressing the collective and improvising aspect, the band gave a hint of what would come with Träd, Gräs och Stenar a few years later. Living together in a collective, they made films and composed music, including the soundtrack for a few professional films. On Öjvind Fahlströms' Du Gamla du Fria, the band created and improvised all the music while the cameras were rolling. The debut album Sov Gott Rose-Marie was released in 1968 on Love, a Finish label, since there were no Swedish alternative labels around and no commercial labels were interested. But already in 1969 alternative labels had started to pop up, and with the name shortened to Harvester the band released their second album, Hemåt, on Decibel. Later that year, Tidholm and Yman left. Tidholm formed Hot Boys but was to become most well-known as a poet and a writer of plays and children's books. The remaining members formed Träd, Gräs och Stenar and toured Scandinavia intensely for a few years, taking the idea of interactivity one step further by involving the audience in the music making. With a climate increasingly receptive for psychedelic music Träd, Gräs och Stenar were more successful than International Harvester, but otherwise they had much in common, building on elements of psychedelic rock, blues-rock, and folk music. ~ Lars Lovén, All Music Guide
The lone album by this post-International Harvester group, originally issued in 1970, once again led by the academic tape-composer turned radical folkie psychedelicist Bo Anders Persson. Accompanied by an able body of co-conspirators including Thomas Gartz (drummer/glue of the Mecki Mark Men, whose LPs on the Limelight label are not to be missed), Torbjφrn Abelli, and let's not forget Ulla on small cymbals. Thunder-plod of magnificent tidal proportions, recalling the burnt splendor of the Trδd Grδs och Stenar Live Gardet 1970 set -- TGOS in fact were nothing more than a stripped down quartet version of Harvester! Another piece to the incestuous little jigsaw that was the 1967-1972 Swedish druggist music school dropout sector. Completely burnt, devoid of restraint, massive (some of the best sounding drums this side of Zeppelin, to boot). Blown through and through and through.
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Chris Cutler & Lutz Glandien-Domestic Stories,LP,1992,UK
Chris Cutler (born January 4, 1947) is an English percussionist, composer, lyricist and music theorist. Best known for his work with English avant-garde rock group Henry Cow, Cutler was also a member and drummer of a number of other bands, including Art Bears, News from Babel, Pere Ubu and (briefly) Gong/Mothergong. He has collaborated with many musicians and groups, including Fred Frith, Lindsay Cooper, Zeena Parkins, Peter Blegvad and The Residents, and has appeared on over 100 recordings. Cutler's career spans over three decades and he still performs actively throughout the world.
Cutler created and runs the British independent record label Recommended Records, is the editor of the music magazine unFILEd, and has written a collection of essays on music, including a book on the political theory of contemporary musicBiographyChris Cutler was born in Washington, D.C., but was raised in England. He never studied music but tried his hand at banjo, guitar, trumpet and flute while at school. He finally settled for drums "because I wanted to be in a band and drummers were scarcest." Cutler formed his first band in 1963, playing Shadows and Ventures instrumental covers, then played in several R&B and soul bands. In 1966 he joined a band called Louise which performed on the London psychedelic club circuit for three years before breaking up. Looking for work, Cutler placed a series of advertisements in Melody Maker over a period of nine months in 1970. This put him in touch with a number of musicians which led to Cutler and Dave Stewart of Egg forming The Ottawa Music Company, a 26 piece rock composer's orchestra, in 1971. Soon afterwards, Henry Cow, looking to replace the drummer who had just left them, responded to one of Cutler's adverts and invited him to a rehearsal.
Henry Cow
Henry Cow had been formed in 1968 by Cambridge University students Fred Frith (guitar) and Tim Hodgkinson (woodwind and keyboards). By 1971 the band had gone through a number of personnel changes and it was only when Cutler joined them in September 1971 that the group stabilised. Frith, Hodgkinson and Cutler became Henry Cow's permanent core until the band split up in 1978.
Henry Cow was a groundbreaking group that launched the careers of many of its members, including Cutler's. Their music was uncompromising and this eventually put them at odds with the mainstream music business, forcing the band to do everything themselves: from recording, manufacturing and releasing their own albums, to organising their own tours and being their own management and agency. All this proved invaluable experience for Cutler that would assist him greatly in his future endeavours. The group spent most of its last three years touring Europe and many of Cutler's future collaborations resulted from contact made with musicians on these tours. In Henry Cow's last few months they initiated Rock in Opposition (RIO), a collective of like-minded bands they had encountered through Europe that were united in their opposition to the music industry.
Recommended Records
After Henry Cow disbanded in 1978, Cutler created Recommended Records in London, an independent label and distribution network for RIO artists. The record label quickly filled the gap left by commercial labels and soon began to also release non-RIO bands and musicians. Recommended Records always placed the musicians first and profits second, and as a result experienced financial difficulties from time to time – but it has kept going for over 25 years, and has been one of Cutler's great success stories. There are a number of musicians whose work would never have seen the light of day had it not been for Cutler's label.
Other bands and projects
Cutler's first post-Henry Cow project was Art Bears (1978-1981), a group formed by Cutler, Fred Frith (guitar and keyboards) and Dagmar Krause (vocals, from Henry Cow) six months before Henry Cow split up (see Henry Cow for details). Art Bears was largely a song-oriented group that recorded three studio albums. Cutler's main contributions were the songs texts and (with Frith) the album productions. Art Bears (in the wake of Henry Cow) was well received by critics and further boosted Cutler's reputation in "progressive" circles.
In 1982, Cutler co-founded the Anglo-German group Cassiber (1982-1992) with German musicians Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth and Christoph Anders. Over the next ten years Cassiber produced five albums and toured Europe, Asia and North America. Their music was very experimental and often involved spontaneously improvising pre-existing structured and arranged material.
In 1983, Cutler formed News from Babel (1983-1986), another song-orientated group with core members Cutler, Lindsay Cooper (from Henry Cow), Zeena Parkins (a United States harpist) and Dagmar Krause. With guest musicians (including Robert Wyatt) they made two critically acclaimed studio albums, but did not perform live.
Cutler was a member of the United States experimental rock band Pere Ubu between 1987 and 1989. He had first encountered them in Washington DC in 1978 while exploring the possibility of Henry Cow touring America (which never materialised as Henry Cow disbanded soon after). Cutler kept in touch with Pere Ubu until they split in the early 1980s and their singer, David Thomas began a solo career. Cutler and Lindsay Cooper joined Thomas in 1982 to form David Thomas and the Pedestrians, and for the next three years they toured Europe and North America and made two albums. Over the next few years, some of the ex-Pere Ubu members began joining the Pedestrians. Cooper left in 1985 and by 1987 the group (now called David Thomas and the Wooden Birds) was effectively Pere Ubu again. As Pere Ubu, the band (with Cutler) made two albums. Cutler left in 1989.
In 1991, Cutler and German composer Lutz Glandien recorded the critically acclaimed song project Domestic Stories. Cutler wrote the song texts and played drums, while Glandien composed and performed the music with samplers and computers. The supporting musicians were Dagmar Krause (vocals), Fred Frith (bass and guitar) and Alfred Harth (saxophone and clarinet). Cutler collaborated with Glandien again in 1994 to record Scenes from no Marriage and to participate in P53, a commission for the 25th Frankfurt Jazz Festival with Zygmunt Krauze, Marie Goyette, Otomo Yoshihide.
The (ec) Nudes was a band Cutler, Wädi Gysi (guitar) and Amy Denio (vocals, bass, saxophone, accordion) formed in 1993. The trio recorded Vanishing Point, a CD of songs with texts by Cutler and music by Gysi and Denio, and toured extensively. Bob Drake later joined the group on bass and as a quartet they toured all over Europe, Canada and Brazil, but did not record. Cutler left the group in 1994.
Cutler and Yugoslavian keyboardist and composer Stevan Tickmayer formed The Science Group in 1999 to record A Mere Coincidence, an album of songs on science topics (quantum mechanics, etc.). Cutler wrote the texts, Tickmayer composed the music, with Amy Denio on vocals, Bob Drake on bass, Fred Frith on guitar and Claudio Puntin on bass clarinet. In 2003 The Science Group, as a quartet, released Spoors, an instrumental album, with Bob Drake on bass and Mike Johnson on guitars.
Other collaborations
Fred Frith and Chris Cutler, partners in time for over three decades.The ex-Henry Cow members have always maintained close contact with each other and Cutler still collaborates with many of them. Cutler and Fred Frith have been touring Europe, Asia and the Americas since 1978 and have given dozens of duo performances. Three albums from some of these concerts have been released. In December 2006, Cutler, Frith and Tim Hodgkinson performed together at The Stone in New York City, their first concert performance since Henry Cow's demise in 1978.
Other musicians and bands Cutler has performed and recorded with over the years include Tim Hodgkinson, Lindsay Cooper, Zeena Parkins, Peter Blegvad, John Greaves, René Lussier, Jean Derome, Tom Cora, Jon Rose, Aqsak Maboul, The Residents, The Work, Duck and Cover, Les Quatre Guitaristes De L'Apocalypso Bar, The Kalahari Surfers, Hail and Biota.
Solo performances
Since the late 1990s, Cutler began giving solo electrified percussion performances to audiences across the world. His first was in Tokyo in June 1998, which was recorded in a documentary film, At the Edge of Chaos, by award winning film director Shinji Aoyama. The first part of the film is equipment set-up and sound-checks, plus interviews with Cutler, while the second part is the improvised concert itself.
In 2001 Cutler released Solo: A Descent Into the Maelstrom, an album of solos on his electrified drum kit taken from live performances in Europe and the United States between August 2000 and May 2001. In 2005 he released Twice Around the World, an album of real-time recordings made from all over the world between 23.30 and midnight GMT. The material was taken from a daily half-hour radio programme Cutler ran for Resonance FM: Out Of The Blue Radio between July 2001 and July 2002. A companion album, There and Back Again, comprising 44 environmental recordings, was released by Cutler in 2006.
Electrified drum kit
Chris Cutler never studied music and taught himself drumming on make-shift drum kits assembled with whatever was on hand. He slowly developed a technique using a "top-down" approach as opposed to the traditional "bottom-up" approach used by schooled drummers. Drummers are first taught basic patterns which are later combined into more complex patterns. Cutler learned the opposite way, hearing or imagining a sound and then disciplining his hands and feet to reproduce it. This "top-down" approach resulted in a unique style of drumming that pervades all of Cutler's performances and recordings.
By the time Cutler was drumming for Henry Cow in 1971, his had become a perfectly competent, albeit unconventional, drummer. The nature of Henry Cow was to experiment and explore and it was here that Cutler developed and refined his drumming techniques. It was also here that he started to electrify his drum kit. He began by attaching old telephone mouthpieces to drums and cymbals, and connecting them to an amplifier and a reverb unit. He later added a small mixer for four independent inputs. The effect was very basic: a few low-grade inputs with only equalisation and reverberation to manipulate.
Chris Cutler's electrified drum kit.By 1982, Cutler had added another small mixer, a pitch shifter and a delay unit. He had also begun using cheap guitar transducers and a table full of additional wired objects (pans, metal trays, small tambours and egg-slicers).
Cutler experimented briefly with drum pads triggered to play sampled or synthesized sounds, but quickly dismissed this option because he found them unresponsive and inflexible. They reduced a drum to nothing more than a switch: hit it and a pre-programmed sound is emitted, irrespective of how hard or in what manner the drum is struck. Cutler preferred real-time processing: amplifying and modifying actual sounds produced by the drum, making it a kind of an electroacoustic instrument, immediate and responsive, and retaining all the qualities of an acoustic drum kit.
Cutler went on to wire his entire drum kit, using a 16 channel mixer with multi-effect processors, a "Space pedal", a "Whammy pedal", a PDS 8000 and an old Boss pitch shifter/delay unit. In addition to transducers, he also attached miniature microphones to some of the drums and sticks. Cutler introduced feedback into the mix by placing a monitor speaker near the kit.
The electrified drum kit continues to evolve and to Cutler it is "satisfyingly unpredictable", responsive to all his old techniques while continuing to generate new ones. It has a unique "voice" that Cutler still has not plumbed the depths of. This is what prompted him to start giving solo performances because it tested his skill at playing an instrument he had to treat as an equal and evolve with.
Talks
In the early 1980s, Chris Cutler became active in the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) and started giving talks and participating in symposia throughout the world. Some of the talks he has given are:
"Composing with Other People's Music - Creativity or Theft?", British Council, Belgrade. "Electrification and Experimentation, the Development of New Musical Resources in the Popular Field", Union of Composers, Moscow. "Improvisation: Motives and Methods", IASPM, University of Leeds. "Punderphonics and Postmodernism", Dissonanten, Rotterdam. "Sampling and Plunderphonics", Museum School, Boston. "Studio Composition and Visualisation - A Case Study", IASPM, Montreal. "The Recording Studio as a Compositional Instrument", The Royal College of Art, London.
Essays
Cutler has written and published a number of essays on music, including:
1990 "Necessity and Choice in Musical Forms: Concerning Musical and Technical Means and Political Needs" – an essay on the evolution of recorded music, published in The Cassette Mythos.
Cutler created and runs the British independent record label Recommended Records, is the editor of the music magazine unFILEd, and has written a collection of essays on music, including a book on the political theory of contemporary musicBiographyChris Cutler was born in Washington, D.C., but was raised in England. He never studied music but tried his hand at banjo, guitar, trumpet and flute while at school. He finally settled for drums "because I wanted to be in a band and drummers were scarcest." Cutler formed his first band in 1963, playing Shadows and Ventures instrumental covers, then played in several R&B and soul bands. In 1966 he joined a band called Louise which performed on the London psychedelic club circuit for three years before breaking up. Looking for work, Cutler placed a series of advertisements in Melody Maker over a period of nine months in 1970. This put him in touch with a number of musicians which led to Cutler and Dave Stewart of Egg forming The Ottawa Music Company, a 26 piece rock composer's orchestra, in 1971. Soon afterwards, Henry Cow, looking to replace the drummer who had just left them, responded to one of Cutler's adverts and invited him to a rehearsal.
Henry Cow
Henry Cow had been formed in 1968 by Cambridge University students Fred Frith (guitar) and Tim Hodgkinson (woodwind and keyboards). By 1971 the band had gone through a number of personnel changes and it was only when Cutler joined them in September 1971 that the group stabilised. Frith, Hodgkinson and Cutler became Henry Cow's permanent core until the band split up in 1978.
Henry Cow was a groundbreaking group that launched the careers of many of its members, including Cutler's. Their music was uncompromising and this eventually put them at odds with the mainstream music business, forcing the band to do everything themselves: from recording, manufacturing and releasing their own albums, to organising their own tours and being their own management and agency. All this proved invaluable experience for Cutler that would assist him greatly in his future endeavours. The group spent most of its last three years touring Europe and many of Cutler's future collaborations resulted from contact made with musicians on these tours. In Henry Cow's last few months they initiated Rock in Opposition (RIO), a collective of like-minded bands they had encountered through Europe that were united in their opposition to the music industry.
Recommended Records
After Henry Cow disbanded in 1978, Cutler created Recommended Records in London, an independent label and distribution network for RIO artists. The record label quickly filled the gap left by commercial labels and soon began to also release non-RIO bands and musicians. Recommended Records always placed the musicians first and profits second, and as a result experienced financial difficulties from time to time – but it has kept going for over 25 years, and has been one of Cutler's great success stories. There are a number of musicians whose work would never have seen the light of day had it not been for Cutler's label.
Other bands and projects
Cutler's first post-Henry Cow project was Art Bears (1978-1981), a group formed by Cutler, Fred Frith (guitar and keyboards) and Dagmar Krause (vocals, from Henry Cow) six months before Henry Cow split up (see Henry Cow for details). Art Bears was largely a song-oriented group that recorded three studio albums. Cutler's main contributions were the songs texts and (with Frith) the album productions. Art Bears (in the wake of Henry Cow) was well received by critics and further boosted Cutler's reputation in "progressive" circles.
In 1982, Cutler co-founded the Anglo-German group Cassiber (1982-1992) with German musicians Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth and Christoph Anders. Over the next ten years Cassiber produced five albums and toured Europe, Asia and North America. Their music was very experimental and often involved spontaneously improvising pre-existing structured and arranged material.
In 1983, Cutler formed News from Babel (1983-1986), another song-orientated group with core members Cutler, Lindsay Cooper (from Henry Cow), Zeena Parkins (a United States harpist) and Dagmar Krause. With guest musicians (including Robert Wyatt) they made two critically acclaimed studio albums, but did not perform live.
Cutler was a member of the United States experimental rock band Pere Ubu between 1987 and 1989. He had first encountered them in Washington DC in 1978 while exploring the possibility of Henry Cow touring America (which never materialised as Henry Cow disbanded soon after). Cutler kept in touch with Pere Ubu until they split in the early 1980s and their singer, David Thomas began a solo career. Cutler and Lindsay Cooper joined Thomas in 1982 to form David Thomas and the Pedestrians, and for the next three years they toured Europe and North America and made two albums. Over the next few years, some of the ex-Pere Ubu members began joining the Pedestrians. Cooper left in 1985 and by 1987 the group (now called David Thomas and the Wooden Birds) was effectively Pere Ubu again. As Pere Ubu, the band (with Cutler) made two albums. Cutler left in 1989.
In 1991, Cutler and German composer Lutz Glandien recorded the critically acclaimed song project Domestic Stories. Cutler wrote the song texts and played drums, while Glandien composed and performed the music with samplers and computers. The supporting musicians were Dagmar Krause (vocals), Fred Frith (bass and guitar) and Alfred Harth (saxophone and clarinet). Cutler collaborated with Glandien again in 1994 to record Scenes from no Marriage and to participate in P53, a commission for the 25th Frankfurt Jazz Festival with Zygmunt Krauze, Marie Goyette, Otomo Yoshihide.
The (ec) Nudes was a band Cutler, Wädi Gysi (guitar) and Amy Denio (vocals, bass, saxophone, accordion) formed in 1993. The trio recorded Vanishing Point, a CD of songs with texts by Cutler and music by Gysi and Denio, and toured extensively. Bob Drake later joined the group on bass and as a quartet they toured all over Europe, Canada and Brazil, but did not record. Cutler left the group in 1994.
Cutler and Yugoslavian keyboardist and composer Stevan Tickmayer formed The Science Group in 1999 to record A Mere Coincidence, an album of songs on science topics (quantum mechanics, etc.). Cutler wrote the texts, Tickmayer composed the music, with Amy Denio on vocals, Bob Drake on bass, Fred Frith on guitar and Claudio Puntin on bass clarinet. In 2003 The Science Group, as a quartet, released Spoors, an instrumental album, with Bob Drake on bass and Mike Johnson on guitars.
Other collaborations
Fred Frith and Chris Cutler, partners in time for over three decades.The ex-Henry Cow members have always maintained close contact with each other and Cutler still collaborates with many of them. Cutler and Fred Frith have been touring Europe, Asia and the Americas since 1978 and have given dozens of duo performances. Three albums from some of these concerts have been released. In December 2006, Cutler, Frith and Tim Hodgkinson performed together at The Stone in New York City, their first concert performance since Henry Cow's demise in 1978.
Other musicians and bands Cutler has performed and recorded with over the years include Tim Hodgkinson, Lindsay Cooper, Zeena Parkins, Peter Blegvad, John Greaves, René Lussier, Jean Derome, Tom Cora, Jon Rose, Aqsak Maboul, The Residents, The Work, Duck and Cover, Les Quatre Guitaristes De L'Apocalypso Bar, The Kalahari Surfers, Hail and Biota.
Solo performances
Since the late 1990s, Cutler began giving solo electrified percussion performances to audiences across the world. His first was in Tokyo in June 1998, which was recorded in a documentary film, At the Edge of Chaos, by award winning film director Shinji Aoyama. The first part of the film is equipment set-up and sound-checks, plus interviews with Cutler, while the second part is the improvised concert itself.
In 2001 Cutler released Solo: A Descent Into the Maelstrom, an album of solos on his electrified drum kit taken from live performances in Europe and the United States between August 2000 and May 2001. In 2005 he released Twice Around the World, an album of real-time recordings made from all over the world between 23.30 and midnight GMT. The material was taken from a daily half-hour radio programme Cutler ran for Resonance FM: Out Of The Blue Radio between July 2001 and July 2002. A companion album, There and Back Again, comprising 44 environmental recordings, was released by Cutler in 2006.
Electrified drum kit
Chris Cutler never studied music and taught himself drumming on make-shift drum kits assembled with whatever was on hand. He slowly developed a technique using a "top-down" approach as opposed to the traditional "bottom-up" approach used by schooled drummers. Drummers are first taught basic patterns which are later combined into more complex patterns. Cutler learned the opposite way, hearing or imagining a sound and then disciplining his hands and feet to reproduce it. This "top-down" approach resulted in a unique style of drumming that pervades all of Cutler's performances and recordings.
By the time Cutler was drumming for Henry Cow in 1971, his had become a perfectly competent, albeit unconventional, drummer. The nature of Henry Cow was to experiment and explore and it was here that Cutler developed and refined his drumming techniques. It was also here that he started to electrify his drum kit. He began by attaching old telephone mouthpieces to drums and cymbals, and connecting them to an amplifier and a reverb unit. He later added a small mixer for four independent inputs. The effect was very basic: a few low-grade inputs with only equalisation and reverberation to manipulate.
Chris Cutler's electrified drum kit.By 1982, Cutler had added another small mixer, a pitch shifter and a delay unit. He had also begun using cheap guitar transducers and a table full of additional wired objects (pans, metal trays, small tambours and egg-slicers).
Cutler experimented briefly with drum pads triggered to play sampled or synthesized sounds, but quickly dismissed this option because he found them unresponsive and inflexible. They reduced a drum to nothing more than a switch: hit it and a pre-programmed sound is emitted, irrespective of how hard or in what manner the drum is struck. Cutler preferred real-time processing: amplifying and modifying actual sounds produced by the drum, making it a kind of an electroacoustic instrument, immediate and responsive, and retaining all the qualities of an acoustic drum kit.
Cutler went on to wire his entire drum kit, using a 16 channel mixer with multi-effect processors, a "Space pedal", a "Whammy pedal", a PDS 8000 and an old Boss pitch shifter/delay unit. In addition to transducers, he also attached miniature microphones to some of the drums and sticks. Cutler introduced feedback into the mix by placing a monitor speaker near the kit.
The electrified drum kit continues to evolve and to Cutler it is "satisfyingly unpredictable", responsive to all his old techniques while continuing to generate new ones. It has a unique "voice" that Cutler still has not plumbed the depths of. This is what prompted him to start giving solo performances because it tested his skill at playing an instrument he had to treat as an equal and evolve with.
Talks
In the early 1980s, Chris Cutler became active in the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) and started giving talks and participating in symposia throughout the world. Some of the talks he has given are:
"Composing with Other People's Music - Creativity or Theft?", British Council, Belgrade. "Electrification and Experimentation, the Development of New Musical Resources in the Popular Field", Union of Composers, Moscow. "Improvisation: Motives and Methods", IASPM, University of Leeds. "Punderphonics and Postmodernism", Dissonanten, Rotterdam. "Sampling and Plunderphonics", Museum School, Boston. "Studio Composition and Visualisation - A Case Study", IASPM, Montreal. "The Recording Studio as a Compositional Instrument", The Royal College of Art, London.
Essays
Cutler has written and published a number of essays on music, including:
1990 "Necessity and Choice in Musical Forms: Concerning Musical and Technical Means and Political Needs" – an essay on the evolution of recorded music, published in The Cassette Mythos.
1994 "Plunderphonia" – an essay on plunderphonics, published in MusicWorks 60.
1997 "Scale" – an essay on the scale of sounds in music, published in The Gramophone Special Edition "Perspectives on Contemporary Music".
2005 "Thoughts on Music and the Avant Garde" – an essay commissioned for a book dedicated to Professor Gunther Mayer, published in Perfect Sound Forever.
Books
Cutler has also published two books:
1981 The Henry Cow Book (co-authored with Tim Hodgkinson) – a collection of documents and information about the band.
Books
Cutler has also published two books:
1981 The Henry Cow Book (co-authored with Tim Hodgkinson) – a collection of documents and information about the band.
1985 File Under Popular – a collection of theoretical and critical writings on music, also published in Polish, German and Japanese
from Wikipedia
Lutz Glandien is a Berlin based composer whose mastery of the electronic studio, and freedom to move between genres at will is confirmed by this release. Crunching sounds, repetitive driving rhythms, terrifying science fiction soundscapes, backwards voices -- there is enough here to satisfy the most hard core fan, and keep the rest of us gasping for breath. That Glandien is a contemporary classical composer just adds to the mystery, and his leaping across the genres celebrates the bizarre correlation of interests between classical electronic music and the techno underground."
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