Following my posts of Lieutenant Caramel's Et Sonner Les Couucous CD EP and their s/t CD on Metamkine, here's an equally splendid headlong plunge into Philippe Blanchard's helter-skelter surrealist universe located somewhere between Nurse With Wound and Michel Chion's preternatural and theatrically vivid electroacoustic work.
***************NEW LINK POSTED OCTOBER 2012***************
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A beautifully warped assortment of electronic/electroacoustic experimentation from a crowd associated with Philippe Blanchard (aka Lieutenant Caramel) and his group with Alain Basso, Denier Du Culte. With contributions running about 10 minutes per artist, we get tracks from all three of the aforementioned plus associated artists Bernard Donzel-Gargand (whose amazing electroacoustic CD on Plate Lunch will be posted here soon), Joseph Raguin and Philippe Moenne-Loccoz. Pride of place though must immediately go to Lieutenant Caramel's contribution (here identified as Cheb Lt Caramel) Planete Bleue", whose explicitly Sylvie and Babs-ian riot of deformed female vocals and aberrant shock edited juxtapositions make it not just an album highlight but a high water mark of Blanchard's entire Lieutenant Caramel discography. Note: this lengthy CD has been divided into two parts.
Get part one Here
Get part two Here
Richard Bone (1952) is considered one of the founding members of the New York electronic music scene. He began composing songs and improvisational pieces using the very first commercially available synthesizers as early as 1979. The exploration of electronics in underground pop and the new wave sounds of the early 1980s continued until the middle of that decade. At that point Richard's music began to reflect his admiration for the pioneering works of Harold Budd and Brian Eno. By the 1990s Bone had stopped composing and recording vocal works entirely and to this day he continues to search for new and fresh approaches to that art form now called “ambient”. Recent explorations of ethnic rhythms also have found their way into some of Mr. Bone's music. In 2003 a new ambient work, “Indium”...which was composed for the First International Festival of Electronic Music in St. Petersburg, was released on “Electroshock Records”. A new work of ambient experimentation, “The Serene Life of Microbes”, is in the planning stages with a projected release on “Electroshock Records” in late 2004 or early 2005.
From Discogs
This was an extremely limited release of 25 copies through Eurock magazine label.Not the known rhythmic electronic weirdness here,but a more experimental work.
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Continuing my previous post of Randy Grief's early tape releases here comes his 2nd tape from 1984.More droning creepy electronic wierdness here!
Giacinto Scelsi (pronounced ja-CHEEN-to SHELLsi), Count of Ayala Valva (January 8, 1905 – August 9, 1988), was an Italian composer. He is best known for writing music based on only one pitch, such as Quattro Pezzi Su Una Nota Sola ["Four pieces each on a single note"] (1959). He also wrote surrealist poetry in French.Born in La Spezia, Scelsi studied music first in Rome, and later in Vienna with a disciple of Arnold Schönberg, and became one of the first adepts of dodecaphony in Italy. At the end of the 1940s, he underwent a profound religious crisis that led him to the discovery of Eastern spirituality and also to a radical transformation of his view of music. He rejected the notions of composition and author in favor of sheer improvisation.
Scelsi came to conceive of artistic creation as a means of communicating a higher transcendent reality to the listener. From this point of view, the artist is considered a mere intermediator. It is for this reason that he never allowed his image to be shown in connection with his music. He preferred instead to identify himself with a line under a circle, a symbol of Eastern provenance. Some photographs of Scelsi have emerged after his death.
Scelsi was a friend and a mentor to Alvin Curran and other expatriate American composers such as Frederic Rzewski who lived in Rome during the 1960s (Curran, 2003, in NewMusicBox). Scelsi also "conspired" with other American composers including John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown who visited him in Rome.
Alvin Curran recalled that: "Scelsi ... came to all my concerts in Rome even right up to the very last one I gave just a few days before he died.... This was in the summer time, and he was such a nut about being outdoors. He was there in a fur coat and a fur hat. It was an outdoor concert. He waved from a distance, beautiful sparking eyes and smile that he always had, and that's the last time I saw him." (Ross, 2005).
Scelsi died in Rome in 1988.
From Wikipedia
Vytas Brenner (September 19, 1946 - March 18, 2004) was a musician, keyboardist and composer.
He was born in Tübingen, Germany. Like many Europeans after World War II, his family emigrated to Venezuela in 1949. Raised in Caracas, he started as musician in the 1970s with a combination of PROG (compositions and electric, electronic instruments, piano) with Symphonic Rock, Latin rhythms, Venezuelan genres and acoustic instruments, that were recorded in various LP's. Today at international level, these old and rare vinyl records fetch between $66 & $198.
He died of a heart attack in Salzburg, Austria at the age of 57.
Jayeche is an intriguing album, alternating dreamy synth-scapes with energetic, percussive fusion workouts. Surprisingly good, especially given the cheapness of the synth equipment.
Serious lump-in-throat jazzy prog beauty of the highest order here, people! Cos were a euphorically sublime Belgian group featuring a pre-Aksaq Maboul Marc Hollander that operated somewhere between the jazz rock magnetic poles of Canterbury and Zeuhl, taking the airy wistfulness of Hatfield And The North from the former and the ecstatic female vocal-driven rubric of early Zao from the latter, though by the time they'd arrived at this, their third album and (for me at least) definitive statement, a distinct disco component was becoming a factor, something that just pushes this from the gorgeous to the level of near-supernatural for me (after all...er...Canterbury disco-prog??), but has also managed to leave those not swayed by the (self-evident, methinks) beauty of a concept like disco-prog less than swept away. Well....phooey to them! This is one of the very pinnacles of Euro prog in my book and Pascal Son one of the greatest female progressive vocalists. Bliss awaits thee...
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Exquisite and impossibly suave French femme vox electro-pop whose dense and delirious musical confections sometimes mirror Belgium's brilliant Honeymoon Killers in the way wittily urbane musical gestures fly effortlessly off the cuff within the constraints of razor cut new wave-y snappiness.
***************NEW LINK POSTED SEPTEMBER 2012***************
Note: link removed as this has now been reissued by Medical Records, so go Here to score one of those.
A very generous fellow named a Plouck unexpectedly dropped MP3's of this hot shit 100-copy minimal synth mega-rarity in my inbox (many thanks!), so I thought I'd bypass my usual process of unfurling the contents of the vdoandsound 7" archive alphabetically and share this treasure with all of you posthaste. Futurisk were a gritty and punchy little synth pop unit of a vaguely early Ultravox stripe with Ferry-esque vocal affectations leading the way, all tempered by basement (or more accurately bathroom) recording values that give this EP it's particular rough and ready je ne sais quoi. Wonderful stuff!
Note: link removed as it's now been reissued by the folks at Minimal Wave Here
Aging proggers gone new wave can occasionally result in unexpectedly spledid results. Helicopter (which I posted some months back) are one obvious example. The uber-obscure French unit Demars (of which there exists not a peep of information on the web), while neither as zany nor as consistent as Helicopter are nevertheless a pretty tasty proposition, their energetic new wave workouts on the best cuts here lacquered with post-prog synthy overlays and driven by crisply nuanced (and I won't lie...occasionally vaguely early Police-y) rhythmic underpinnings.
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Instantly gone 50 copy edition of gorgeously dazed and glazed analogue blissouts from Acid Mothers Temple's resident knob twiddler Higashi.
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Since the mid 1970's, RANDY GREIF has been pushing the boundaries of auditory arts, often incorporating electronic, computer and concrete music with spoken word, "sound theater", and field recordings. Location recordings in places such as Amazonia, New Guinea, and Thailand have found their way, often manipulated, into some of Greif's music, branding it as "tribal" electronics. Trademark styles are dense layers of atmospherics, cut-up vocals, and shifting minimal rhythms. "Dark" and "hallucinatory" are often used to describe the overall tone of his work.
In 1983 Greif started SWINGING AXE PRODUCTIONS (SAP) to release his own work and those of like-minded artists. During the first few years a handful of cassette-only releases were available, including Controlled Bleeding, Merzbow, Illusion Of Safety, and various alias names Greif was recording under. CLEM reviewed "It's In A Box" his first cassette release as "one of the top 3 tapes to come out stateside... it rivals anything put out by Sterile or United Dairies." As for Screaming Dukduks (an early alias) which was released simultaneously with "It's In A Box" CLEM said "...a purely shocking tape...sucks you in then mesmerizes you."
The cassettes to follow were received with similar positive reviews. Besides releasing more cassettes of strictly music, Greif released more conceptual and crossover work. A collaboration with writer Alva Svoboda titled "East Green Proof" used Svoboda's disturbing poems in which his readings were manipulated and set against electronic atmospheres. The Magnetic Spine Review / Wireless Spine Review invited sound artists from around the world to call a telephone answering machine and do a 30-second performance which was amplified for a live audience.
Also released was location recordings from Papua New Guinea which featured not only indigenous music but folk stories, theater and a church meeting in Pidgin English. This was the first of several such releases, the other two being from Amazonia and Thailand.
The first album done for another label was his "Bacteria and Gravity" for the RRR label in 1987 on which the second side is one long piece filled with tribal rhythms, other-worldly voices and odd sounds such a bullfrog and car horn. Shortly after this release, Greif teamed up with Mikail Bohonus of WarWorld to form STATIC EFFECT who performed improvisationally around loosely defined musical structures. They toured North America and Canada and released a number of cassettes and vinyl before disbanding in 1990. By this time Greif had begun work on his most ambitious project to date--a 6 hour musical and textural setting for Lewis Carroll's "Alice In Wonderland". The spoken text is often deconstructed into phonemes of pure sound and then returned to recognizable words. This project took 5 years and the CDs were released serially on the Staalplaat label in special packaging. Reviewers had the following to say about the series -
"...as close to the dream experience as music ever gets."
"Disturbing and nightmarish..."
"has to be heard to be believed...I've never heard such an entertaining album..."
"Randy Greif has taken the Lewis Carroll classic and brought it to levels never before imaginable."
"All five CDs deserve to go down in history as a classic..."
......
For more visit Swinging Axe webpage
This stunning group from mid-Northern Quebec (the Chicoutimi region if I am not mistaken and therefore more likely to hang around Quebec than Montreal) is yet another one of relatively unknown groups that help Quebec’s progressive rock revolution in the 70’s. Mainly an instrumental jazz-rock group, but when actually using their vocal powers (both in scatting and in actual singing) , they actually reached peaks of beauty that makes you regret this quintet did not sing more. To describe Sloche’s sound accurately, you would have to imagine a cross of Maneige’s middle period with Opus-5’s Contre-Courant album, but if you are not familiar with Quebec’s scene, this will be tougher to describe, but this fusion of jazz rock, and classical influence is relatively unique and grabs you by your soft side no matter how thick your shell might be. These guys were incredibly tight-playing and were obviously well collaborating with each other as the songwriting is fairly well-shared (a track each except for drummer Chiasson giving space to bassist Hebert a second track) and the sound is still quite up to date some 30 years later.
From the first spacey ringings of the 9-min Pas Fin Du Monde to the last drop of Potage Aux Herbes Douteuses (“Shady” Herbal Soup ;-), every single second is pure heaven with opening track setting an incredible standard with its great scat-vocals (reminding a bit Wishbone Ash during the Argus album) and its middle section almost stopping as if the End Of The World had reached us without a proper warning, but it is a false alert and the tracks picks up in a funkier manner. Closing up the first side is the 11-min Kareme D’Eros and its lengthy piano intro (there are two KB players in the group), where the group shows us that they can be quite impressive in singing (not just scatting) with its text and harmonies being incredibly close to Ripaille’s sole album, some Martin Circus or a much better Ange. If you can imagine a cross-over of jazz-rock with Yes, you might just be able to have an idea of how the track is closing.
The second side starts on the superb (but much shorter) title track, which is also sung, while the much funkier Algebrique (Gentle Giant meeting Mahavishnu Orchestra-sounding and penned by guitarist Bérard) is almost reaching discordance, but this track is almost too technical for its own good. Closing track Potage Aux Herbes Douteuses renews with the scatting harmonies as if to bring you back in full circle to the lead-off track. Another strong pleaser, one wishes this second side of the vinyl to be slightly longer to have developed some ideas a bit further.
While Sloche only recorded two albums, these guys excelled in their craft and were a typical example of what La Belle Province had to offer in the second part of the 70’s. As equally superb (but vastly different at will also) as Maneige, Conventum or Opus-5, Sloche is one of those groups that must be investigate by every proghead, dead ort alive. Astounding and outstanding ;-)
Review by Sean Trane (Hugues Chantraine)
Together with Maneige and Et Cetera, Sloche is part of the Quebecois Holy Trinity of 70s Prog. Their debut album is an outstanding musical work that fairly deserves all the good rap that it usually gets in the Internet. Definitely, Sloche is one of those many unsung prog heroes that most prog collectors only got to know through CD technology and WWW merchandising. Their music tends to be a bit more bombastic that their aforementioned fellows, while keeping a similar fusion-oriented vein as Maneige; meanwhile, the dual keyboard layers provide a symphonic feel every now and then. The fusion facet is clearly influenced by Return to Forever and Weather Report, albeit less pompous than the former and a more uplifting than the latter. I observe some Kerry Minnear and George Duke influences on both keyboardists, but generally speaking, it must be stated that Sloche never gets derivative. The optimistic spirit that is generally spread all throughout “J’un Oeil” allows the complex compositions receive a certain air of catchiness, and also gives a frontal freshness to the musicians’ intricate interplaying - structural sophistication and warmth, all at once. ‘C’pas fin du Monde’ kicks off the album as a proper sample of the band’s style, displaying an attractive intensity and a healthy variety of moods expanded along the succession of different motifs. Things get more solemn in ‘Le Karême d’Eros’, which starts with a 3 ½ minute majestic piano solo, until a brief chorale enters along with the whole instrumental ensemble; the sung parts are accompanied by a series of voices of people partying, acting as a funnily disturbing chorus, and so the solemnity is over. But not the seriousness, as the alternate solos on synth and guitar show: things can only get better with a piece like this, specially when the string synth layers go fading out while a spatial Moog effect drags in to announce the entry of the funk-jazz closing section. Brilliant! The title track is the shortest and catchiest one, keeping things uplifting and a bit gentler… and gigantic as well, since it is the most Gentle Giant-like piece in the album. The same gentleness is carried out by the last two numbers, albeit they’re a bit more complex: ‘Algébrique’ and ‘Potage aux herbes douteuses’ contain the biggest dose of funky colours in the album, but always keeping a constant loyalty to the overall fusion-prog essence of the album. In conclusion: a masterpiece.
Review by Cesar Inca (César Inca Mendoza Loyola)
From Progarchives
A true masterpiece.Strange keyboard driven complex composition sometimes reminding King Crimson,sometimes Camel,blended with a psych feeling.
Alvin Curran makes music, with all means, anywhere and for any occasion. From rarefied string quartets to blaring ship horn concerts to Holocaust memorial installations; from Midi-Grands to computerized ram's horns - these are his natural laboratories. The sounds of places and things, real and imagined are Curran's alphabet. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1938, he studied the piano, trombone and all forms of popular music. He began composing at Brown University under Ron Nelson and completed his studies (M.Music) at Yale with Elliott Carter in 1963. Following a year with Carter in Berlin he moved to Rome - his adopted home. With Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum in 1966 Curran co-founded the radical collective Musica Elettronica Viva - a group renowned for inciting free music as well as musical uprisings. In the 70s he created a series of solo performances; "Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden", "Light Flowers/Dark Flowers", and "Canti Illuminati" for natural sounds, voice, keyboards and found objects in a lyrical post minimalist style. The 80s involved large-scale environmental works on lakes, rivers, in ports, quarries, caverns and public buildings: "Maritime Rites", "Waterworks", "Monumenti", "Tufo Muto", "Notes From Underground" (in collaboration with the artist Melissa Gould). Using the radio as a geographical music instrument Curran created concerts with musicians spread all over Europe in "1985 - A Piece for Peace" and in the Holocaust commemoration "Crystal Psalms" in 1988. "Erat Verbum", a WDR commission took this concept even further.
Gelatinous Citizen started out as a solo project by Brian Williford, AKA FERD.Originally based Arlington VA, now in Charlottesville, VA., this underground electronic one-man outfit that mixes industrial sounds with machinery and synths. Often in a pre-trance electro-pop style even while with songs about alienation, conformity and apathy. Over time other artists joined in on various sessions. Ferd was one of the earliest adopters of Digital Sampling. Given the limitations of early technology almost all samples were eight bit which accounts for the rawness that helped shaped the industrial music sound and scene. In addition all synths used were analogue which provides the melodic warmth in contrast.Ferd also formed another group known as Compound which was signed on the Dossier Record Label in Germany. The other two members were Andrew Szava-Kovats of Data Bank A fame and Lewis Francis who had a series of bands prior. This project was particularly interesting as we did not record together. We mailed multi-track tapes up and down the east coast. Each member adding a track or two until we felt the song was done. This was before the days of digital but did heavily rely on MIDI. Ferd and Francis knew were acquainted before the formation of the band but the two met Szava-Kovats for the first time at a radio station in Boston for an interview after the release of Ears to the Grindstone.
Strange totally unknown one man band from Dominican republic(!).Electronic weirdness in the best German school tradition.Sometimes scary,sometimes floating space music,sometimes traditional eastern music manipulted by synths....Excellent!Highly recommented!And if you wonder whothehell is thar Ogm Gnomegang,sorry no infos found anywhere.Seems this is a demo cd-r,but then who knows?
This groundbreaking landmark of dada rock and soundbyte collage owes a huge debt to Zappa's pioneering work on Lumpy Gravy. Mix that up with the "everybody must eat rhubarb pie" portion of Friendsound and the cut on Aphrodites Child's 666 with Irene Pappas' insane "I am To Come I Was" rant and then array amongst all the above a passel of audio snippets from a rogues gallery of rock notables circa 1968, including everyone from Brian Wilson to Grace Slick to Pete Townshend to Tim Buckley, their verbal expoundings arrayed for maximum non sequitur value and you might be getting close to grasping what Messrs. Marks and Lebzelter were getting at with this mad release. A mindbomb. Note: I debated for quite a while before deciding to post this one, as while there is not an excessive amount of surface noise here, there are however three seperate skips on side B. Due to the insane rarity and historical significance of this recording though, I've decided to post it anyway.
***************NEW LINK POSTED OCTOBER 2012***************
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Following yesterday's post of their jawdropping second release, here's THOUM's also quite excellent debut 12" EP. The lopsided fairlight fucked grooves that underpin these quizzical arrangements offer hints of the wonky ends their sensibility would ultimately be taken to with "Drop It", but here on their debut, the ingenious warpings of more overtly Downtown NY signifiers align this most closely with the work of fellow New York experimental composer David Fulton.
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Insular-bordering-on-autistic submerged lo-fi jams of a very agreeable bent that'd sound right at home on some recent 100 copy "New Weird America" CDR, but for 1984, sound very anomalous indeed.
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This mercurial Neue Deutche Welle "didactical unit" discharge thrillingly scabrous and prickly no-waveish sturm und drang, their great lungfuls of malcontent disgorged in a very Christoph Anders (Cassiber/Toto Lotto) way over a hotbed of Ravenstine-ian synth buzz, flutter and grind, sax blurt and percussive clatter. One of the best from the down-in-the-mouth wing of the NDW underground.
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Usually cited (when at all) as being Residential in tone, this solo release from Only A Mother's Frank Pahl (their album posted here by Jim a short while back) more accurately traffics in a daft admixture of blithe Amoebic Ensemble-style faux-circus camping, delicate Pascal Comelade toy instrument formulations and the cockamamie instrumental slapstick of Jad Fair's work on his Best Wishes LP over the course of this terminally wacky and terrifically fun CD. Note: this lengthy CD has been divided into two parts.
***************NEW LINK POSTED SEPTEMBER 2012***************
Get it here
Essential minimal synth LP from DDR .Sometimes more popish than the West Germany(well ex-West Germany) same acts but yet very bizzare and great.Reminds me of Fad Gadget,early Human League,Gary Numan,DAF,etc.
One of the best German synth acts of the late 70s/early 80s.Synth freakouts in the vein of Katastrophentheorie,Residents,Vice Versa.Magnificent!Highly recommented!
Very rare album by the Dutch composer Jurriaan Andriessen, brother of the famous Dutch avantgarde composer Louis Andriessen. Jurriaan didn’t compose the culturally correct modern classical music, and went his own way. Here he composed a loungy space moog suite called “The Awakening Dream”. He played all synths himself ( Moog, Mini moog, Fender rhodes, Clavinet, Organ, Schultze Phase) Trippy and surprisingly good album sometimes very OST-like. Weird keyboards & samples all over the place.
Very rare and great NDW/Cold wave LP from Germany.No much infos found in the web.In the vein of Sad Lovers and Giants,Schleimer K,English Subtitles,etc.Sorry no pic sleeve scans(any help is much appreciated).
Great Polish new wave/post punk band.Released this LP with many elements of British post punk/cold wave.In the vein of early New Model Army,Zounds,Omega Tribe,Theatre of Hate,etc. Magnificent!
