Tuesday, August 16, 2011

JIM FRENCH WITH DIAMANDA GALAS AND HENRY KAISER-IF LOOKS COULD KILL, LP, 1979, USA



No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you and this really is that impossible to find first Diamanda Galas improv recording that's been tucked away on the B side of this obscure debut LP by Jim French and that you've always heard about but never thought you'd actually get to listen to. The powerhouse avant vocal terror that is Ms. Galas would probably prefer that you continued not to though, as she's on record savaging this recording and bitterly mocking Henry Kaiser for cajoling her into joining into this improv freakout when she was sick with a serious cold. I do believe she even referred to the results as a piss-take. Well, if that's the case you might want to develop a taste for Ms. Galas' golden showers, as this is every bit the twisted bloodletting and lesson into the most extreme ranges of advanced vocal technique you'd been hoping for and all the more fascinating for being able to hear the mistress of the dark unencumbered by the nocturnal shrouding of her own music and in wild dialogues with Jim French's brittle wheedlings and left field wind instrument frivolity and Kaiser's spidery post-Derek Bailey scrabble.That melee is hardly the only reason to afford this album a space in your life though. French's solo A side of the disc is a whole other kettle 'o fish entirely and worth analyzing on its own terms, as he works his way through interpretations of "the classics". French's handling of his array of small wind instruments (Sopranino and soprano saxophones, recorders, pibcorns and panpipes) is nothing if not unique, with an approach that's at once satirical, salacious and cut with a lemony tart wit; his work here as both builder of medieval and renaissance instruments and outwardly bound improvisor with a evident sense of humor placing him on a roughly parallel path to that of German improvisor/luthier Hans Reichel.

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23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you, I always loved this album, especially the Scot Joplin tune, I used it in many mixes, slowed down and speeded up with my multispeed recordplayer.I thought to get a fresh sounding rip, for mine is now hardly playable. Unforunately Megaupload gives me the message that it is not available, well I try later. again Thank You


Richard

Raardvarks said...

I love you all for doing this!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks Eric-I did not know of this LP. Victor.

Gardenhead said...

people mostly comment here about the music you post and it is wonderful, but I want to also pay you a compliment on your style of writing. You have a twisted way with words that always makes me smile.

Anonymous said...

hanx very very much :)

Anonymous said...

love it, fantastic stuff! thx thx thx

Anonymous said...

Wow!
Wanted this for years, eventually gave up the search.
Thank you very much! Mutant Sounds has once again proved to be the best blog for music on the whole internet.

Anonymous said...

the best and the most inspirational

WillardsWormholes.com said...

GREAT! Thanks.
Willard

Anonymous said...

I've been a fan since the first posts on Mutant Sounds (Peter Frohmader), but I don't comment as much as I should.

This blog has been the standard bearer for many years, providing me with more great music than I can remember.

I also haven't made any requests, so here goes. I would love to hear Ohm's "Voices" and/or "Raw Ohm."

ALways good to hear some of the rarer works of the aforementioned Mr. Forhmader or the late Connie Schnitzler if you can't accommodate with Ohm.

Regardless, thanks for the music. And, to echo a previous comment, yes, you do write well.

Dave

Anonymous said...

thank you, have been looking for this record for twenty five years now.

Faustino Goyena said...

you are awesome, is the firt time that i enter this blog lookin for a Kawabata Makoto album and i found that amaizing tapes, i rarely give the hold blog a chance, but i said this guy has to have something grate, and this is the record that i found as your last post, awesome

Anonymous said...

http://leloveimage.blogspot.com/2011/08/you-turned-my-life-into-something.html

Audiozobe said...

Holy Grail Batman! Thank you, this is like a national treasure or something!

Brad Laner said...

Eric

Didja know that Jim French plays on the "Music from the Island of Anaphoria" Cd I did with Kraig Grady back in '96 ? A genuinely wild and somewhat dangerous character !

Brad

vdoandsound said...

Hi Brad,

I had no idea about that! I'll have to pull that album out again after all this time and check that piece out. Thanks for the info!

E.

Tingis said...

hi there great work. my comment has nothing to do with this post (but i din't find your email) to tell you that "go back to your precious wife and son" of the 1st march 2007 download has been removed by Media fire as they use to do. Could you upload it again please?
visit my blog you can find some free downloads of the music I make. under Tingis, Ayahuasca Mindnet, Anasazi and more
Thanks! great work!
Tingis

yyesod9 said...

Hi
Thanks for sharing this great album !
friendly
Yyesod9

Anonymous said...

This is great ...
Thanx at all and your blog is the most best I never knew before !

Anonymous said...

I believe that Ms. Galas began her disparaging comments about this recording, sometime after the recording, when she broke up with Mr. French; who was her boyfriend at the time the recording was made.

It's certainly great to hear her vox NOT drenched in reverb and echo, as it is on almost all of her later recordings....;

Anonymous said...

http://www.mediafire.com/?bzo5rdh4wn36kdr

DannyBoy said...

Oh my Goddess! Thank you so much for this! It is, by far, rarer than any of my Diamanda Galas rarities (and I've got Galas that's rarer than hen's teeth!). Un-friggin'-believable. Blessings be upon your ones and zeroes, you beautiful soul. ;)

Anonymous said...

Galás hated the record before doing it only because she had bronchitis
and she knew it would not be the work she aspired to do.
She and French had broken up months before she did the record
and he was sore about it, so she had to goad him at the session
in order to get anything out of him.