Sepsis

Liturgy of Madness ...

Today's discovery ...the name suggests some grindcore/death metal outfit, but this Sepsis are from Russia and sound like three bands playing at once ...Those bands being Yes, The Magic Band and maybe Butthole Surfers ... mutant-sounds

Mad Cucumber Part 1 ...

Alexis Romanov - electric guitar, acoustic guitar
Alexander Beriozkin - bass, voices
Ivan Fedenko - drums, percussion


Summary. While music on Sepsis' only "A Liturgy of Madness" album is all instrumental, distinctly original (which is a sign of most of the USSR/CIS Prog-performers, isn't it?), and also at least slightly more complex and intricate than the music of Rush circa their famous "2112", the fans of early-to-mid Rush will most likely be the first to love and appreciate it. I think so mainly because the equipment Sepsis used in Leningrad in the early 1990s and the equipment Rush used in Toronto in the mid 1970s were of equal quality, as well as the number of members in both these bands, whose progressively aggressive purposes at the time were also in some ways similar. Incidentally, I think that not only serious Prog-Metal-heads, but all those into Classic Art / Progressive Rock, too, and also anyone who misses on some especially original and exotic progressive fruit should be overly satisfied with "A Liturgy of Madness" by Sepsis.
VM. September 9, 2001  www.progressor.net

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Lalo Schifrin

Lalo = Brilliance - The Piano of Lalo Schifrin ...

Film composer Lalo Schifrin (Bullitt, Dirty Harry) in jazzy NY mode ...

An evening in Sao Paulo ...

Sphayros ...

Lalo Schifrin (p,arr),Leo Wright (as,fl),Jimmy Raney (g), Art Davis (b), Rudy Collins (ds), Willie Rodriguez (conga, bongos)
Album："Lalo Schifrin / Lalo = Brilliance"
Recorded：New York City, 1962

Lalo = Brilliance at Trunk ...

Effectively employing much of the Gillespie rhythm section without Dizzy, Schifrin challenges each of his talented associates to reach new and unusual sounds. The jarring beauty of "The Snake's Dance" is an excellent example. It begins with a Middle Eastern flavor whose sound initially belies the instrumentation of the standard guitar, flute and percussion. In many instances, Schifrin's piano merely highlights or colors; however, his dynamic solo in "Kush" is undoubtedly the album's highlight (intriguingly anticipating some of Brubeck's style while playing with Gerry Mulligan several years after this). Schifrin's compositions "The Snake's Dance," "Mount Olive" and "Sphayros" are all worth a listen but the group excels on the more familiar material; especially "Kush," "Rhythm-A-Ning" and "Cubano Be."   
dougpayne.com 

La Düsseldorf

La Düsseldorf ( 1976 )...

"The soundtrack of the eighties" David Bowie...

La Düsseldorf... 

Klaus Dinger was Kraftwerk's drummer (briefly) ...

Ruckzuck (live)1970 ...

Then formed Neu! ...

Hallogallo ...

Which transformed into La Düsseldorf in 1976 ...

Düsseldorf ... 

Their three albums sold over 1 million copies in the late  1970s, as one of the first New Wave bands.  Disbanded in 1981, but continued by Dinger sporadically afterwards ...

Progarchives ...



Silver Cloud (hit single 1976) 

Nanu Urwerk

Irgendwo nicht weit von hier ...

Not much known about this band from Hamburg.  This was a private pressing in 1978... Very Canterburian, German fusion with hints of Zappa maybe ...

Hear and Now ...

Bengt Hambraeus

Tides & Interferenzen ...

Swedish composer Bengt Hambraeus ...
 
Tides ...Concrète and synth music (1974)

Interferenzen ... for organist with registration assistants (1961)

Bengt Hambraeus website ...

Encyclopedia entry ...

Piero Piccioni

Il Dio Sotto La Pelle ... 

Slightly sexist cover ... check.  Sultry English vocalist ...check.  Analogue synths with fuzzy guitar licks ... check.  Organ stabs with wahwah guitar ... check. This must be the wonderland of Italian soundtracks and this is one of the best from the very best ... 

Il Dio Sotto La Pelle (1972)  ...

 

Easy Tempo ...

Neil Ardley

Kaleidoscope of Rainbows ...

British jazz fusion of the 70s in all it's glory ...Theme and variations, all based on a Balinese pentatonic scale...  

Neil Ardley (director, synthesizer) : Ian Carr (trumpet, flugelhorn) : Barbara Thompson, Tony Coe, Brian Smith, Bob Bertles (saxophone, woodwind) : Paul Buckmaster (cello) : Ken Shaw (guitar) : Geoff Castle, Dave McRae or John Taylor (electric piano, synthesizer) : Roger Sutton (bass guitar) : Roger Sellers (drums) : Trevor Tomkins (percussion)

Prologue and Rainbows 1 to 4 ... 

2004 Re-issue marking death of Neil Ardley ...

"For Rainbows Ardley nodded back to Greek Variations, this time developing the suite from the basic five note pelog scale used in Balinese music. It was also the album in which he first explored proto-electronic music—there are three, count 'em, synthesisists here—which became a key interest of his in the late '70s/early '80s.

The suite's seven movements, ranging in mood from the gentle and pastoral to the fiery and urgent, are seriously enjoyable through-compositions in their own right, and also the settings for a series of glistening solos from Ian Carr, Brian Smith, Dave Macrae, Geoff Castle, Paul Buckmaster, Barbara Thompson, Tony Coe, Ken Shaw, and Bob Bertles—with Buckmaster's electric cello on "Rainbow Three," Thompson's soprano on "Four," and Coe's clarinet on "Five" approaching the sublime." ...www.allaboutjazz.com ...

Hilde Marie Kjersem

A Killer For That Ache ...

"We are happy to introduce the excellent young singer and songwriter Hilde Marie Kjersem with her first solo album. Neither a jazz album nor your typical melancholy Nordic singer songwriter album, let´s say its pop music with a twist, quite a few twists come to think of it, inviting the listener to a dramatic, beautiful, mysterious, seductive, dark, intricate and quite simply different sounding and fascinating musical ride." ... RuneGrammofon

Marie Antoinette ... 

 

But A Killer is Kjersem's show, all eleven songs written by the singer and demonstrating a wealth of ideas and breadth of scope. The title track is gorgeous, where a layered choir is all that's needed to support Kjersem's evocative vocal. "Midwest Country" is, indeed, an Americana-centric song that still manages to feel somehow skewed, while another solely vocal track, "Save Up," reflects a southern gospel influence. Kjersem's voice is remarkably malleable—soft and warm on the closing "Working Girl," where a lovely mix of Torbjørn Folke Zetterberg banjo and Kjerstem's Fender Rhodes leads into a majestic ending; understated on the electonica-centric "London Bridge"; and ethereal on the dramatic "Marie Antoinette." She rarely lets loose, as she did more consistently in performance, but it makes the rare occasion when she does here far more effective... www.allaboutjazz.com

Jääportit

Jääportit ... 'The Frostportals' ...

Frostbitten 'dark ambient' from Finland ...This mini album was a self produced CDR limited to 50 copies originally ...More may be available from their website...

Yömustaa ...from Halki Lumisen Metsan CDR ...

Spirit of metal ...

Suon Sulaessa (2009) ...

The Gates of Ice ...

Marilyn Crispell

For Coltrane (1993)...

Classically trained pianist Marilyn Crispell turned to jazz after hearing John Coltrane ...

Marilyn Crispell plays John Coltrane...

 All About Jazz piece ...

Leo Records ...

Can Live in Hanover

Can Live in Germany Volume 1 ...

This was an FM radio broadcast in April, 1976 hence the good quality of this bootleg ...excellent throughout, though the singing of Michael Cousins is a bit unnerving.  You can actually hear the words of 'Vitamin C' though ...

Can 1976 ...  

 

Steve Reich Phasing

Phase Patterns (1970) ...

One of Steve Reich's final phasing pieces, recorded live at Berkeley University Museum...

Phase Patterns for four organs, 1970 ...

Four Organs/Phase Patterns ...

Moondog

Elpmas ...

Louis Hardin, after living for decades on the streets of New York as Moondog, retired to Germany...  After being 'rediscovered' in his late 70s he produced this ...


Suite Equestria (Trail vs Road and Rail) (1992) ... 

"If some of my music sounds like Jazz of the "Swing" era, it is because Swing is North American in origin, coming right out of the drum beats and highly syncopated melodies of the Plains Indians, from the Arapaho to the Sioux. Their running-walking-running beats on the tomtom are fundamental to Jazz of the Swing era. I heard it for the first time, having been introduced to Arapaho Sun Dance music in Wyoming. I was about five years old. Chief Yellow Calf sat me on his lap and let me beat the buffalo-skin tomtom, an experience I never forgot. The Sun Dance drum beat stayed with me to the present day. I call it the Powwow beat. Later, in 1949, the Blackfoot Indians of Idaho let me beat their tomtom at the Sun Dance and invited me to play flute obligato to the chorus.

Those fast-slow-fast beats are to be heard on tracks 1 and 3, where the running beat goes right into the walking beat and vice versa.

My bass drum is hexagonal, my own design, sounding much like the tomtom." ... Moondog's Corner ...

Lots of Moondog info ...

Interview ...

John McLaughlin

Shakti ...A Handful of Beauty ...

A different kind of fusion ...this might not be the best Shakti record, but it's the one I know best ...

Lady L ... 

* Zakir Hussain -- percussion, tabla 
* John McLaughlin -- acoustic guitar, guitar, arranger, producer, 
* Lakshminarayana Shankar -- violin, arranger, vocals 
* Vikku Vinayakram -- percussion, vocals

La danse du bonheur ... 

African Head Charge

Songs of Praise (1990) ...

From Adrian Sherwood and Co ...

Hymn ... 

"The distinctive sound is still there; atmospheric synth stabs, percolating percussion, stinging, minimalist guitar lines, sturdy bass lines. AHC has progressed since the heady days of MY LIFE IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND, though. The dense, dark soundscapes of that era are supplanted here by a more celebratory air and an open, spacious feel. Several cuts feature what sounds like children chanting, and there's a more spiritual tone throughout, even reflected in song titles such as "Hymn," "Healing Ceremony," and "Gospel Train." Fear not, Sherwood and company haven't gone new age. The sonic settings are just as exquisitely textured as ever, they've just been given an added depth."

Dervish Chant ... 

"Progressive dub producer Adrian Sherwood first made his mark in the early '80s as the man behind the boards for groups like African Head Charge, Creation Rebel, and New Age Steppers. His revolutionary combination of dub reggae with a gritty, forward-looking post-punk aesthetic was a breath of fresh air. A decade later, SONGS OF PRAISE finds African Head Charge and Sherwood still fully capable of innovation.

African Head Charge includes: Skip MacDonald (guitar, keyboards); Carlton "Bubbles" Ogilvie (piano); Crocodile, Junior Moses, Martin Frederix (bass); Style Scott (drums); Sunny Akpan (percussion); Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah, Prisoner."

AHC Biography ...

African Psychedelica ... 

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Rainer Brüninghaus

Continuum (1983) ...

German jazz pianist coming from a 'Kosmische' fusion direction ...This album features Markus Stockhausen (son of Karlheinz) on trumpet and flugelhorn ...

Strahlenspur ...

Eiliff (1971) ...

"References include SOFT MACHINE, early KING CRIMSON, COLOSSEUM, NUCLEUS, VDGG as well as Miles Davis and Frank Zappa."

Aziza Mustafa Zadeh

Dance of Fire (1995) ...

Azerbaijani 'Princess of Jazz' ...?  Ok...   She's good though... daughter of musician Vagif Mustafa Zadeh.  Soviet Azerbaijani jazz pianist and composer (1940 - 1979)...

Dance Of Fire live  

azizamustafazadeh.com ...

 

Virginia Astley

From Gardens Where We Feel Secure ...

Tone poems from a summer's day ...

Afternoon ...

A summer long since passed ...

Virginia's website ...

Peter Howell

Alice Through the Looking Glass (1968) ...

How do you like your English psychedelic whimsy ... ?  This started as a village hall production in Ditchling Surrey, for which Peter Howell (of Radiophonic Workshop) and John Ferdinando produced a soundtrack ...

Dance To The Talking Flower ... 

Alice Theme ...

John Ferdinando . He was the co-writer for all four known psych folk releases. He wrote the music for Ithaca and cooperated in the other releases.

Peter Howell, writer for Alice Trough The Looking Glass and for Tomorrow Come Someday had two periods in his music. The first period were the psych folk releases (-so little were being made!-) of Alice Trough The Looking Glass, Tomorrow Come Someday, Agincourt and Ithaca. Followed by his work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, where he released a few solo albums and had several appearances. Most know appearance there is his contribution on "Dr. 'Who - The Music" with several tracks.

Alice Through The Looking Glass, made both by and for a tiny village community and with no intention or reaching a wider audience may welt be a unique document.

Our story begins (and pretty much ends) in the late 1960's in the small Sussex village of Ditchling, just a few miles from the sprawling seaside resort of Brighton, Two Ditchling residents, Peter Howell and John Ferdinando, had played in a variety of local groups (the Tudor Mood, Merlin's Spell, The Four Musketeers, etc) since the mid-Sixties. However, a change of emphasis occurred around 1967 when Howell acquired a Philips tape recorder initially as a means to demo material for the group's consideration. Howell and Ferdinando quickly became more interested in the tape deck as an instrument of creativity rather than for mere reproduction purposes, and the equipment began to exert a greater fascination for both men than the dubious pleasures of playing live with a group of limited ability and horizons. Howell end Ferdinando slowly retreated into the subterranean world of makeshift home studies, writing songs whilst improvising and experimenting with various aspects of recording techniques including bouncing tracks, tape loops and echo.

Had the duo been conducting their modest experiments from some anonymous bedsit in the heart of the city, their backroom activities would doubtlessly have passed unnoticed. In a small village community like Ditchling, however, where everybody not only knew everyone else but also their business, their dabblings became common knowledge. Thus it was that, in late 1968. they were approached by a local amateur dramatics group called the Ditchling Players to provide a musical backdrop for a stage version of Alice through the Looking Glass. The duo eagerly set to work, using Lewis Carroll's surreal verse as the bedrock for the project, although to a certain extent they were restricted by the need tot much of the music to be of ah incidental nature.

Whilst neither man would claim to be a musical technocrat, both were capable of playing a wide variety of instruments with enough proficiency to create a pleasingly varied canvas, with flageolets, glockenspiels and mandolins coalescing with more familiar late 1960s pop instruments such as organ and an assortment of guitars. Having established their broad musical template, the duo then added a bewildering variety of studio trickery - backward tapes, sound effects, distorted vocals etc - to create a uniquely English hybrid of folk and pastoral psychedelia.

The results of their endeavours met with a favourable response when unveiled at the play's rehearsals, in fact, feedback was so positive that the duo decided to press a limited edition vinyl album as souvenirs for participants and audience alike. Howell and Ferdinando edited together the songs and incidental music with extracts of dialogue from the stage production, strengthening the project with three tracks ("The Walrus And the Carpenter", "Through Looking Glass

Wood" and "Whose dream") that had been excluded from the show as surplus to requirements. Fifty copies of the album were pressed in January 1969 by a London pressing plant called SNP, who specialised in religious recordings. These quickly sold out, and the duo optimistically pressed up another 20-30 copies. As can be seen from this reissue, the sleeve artwork utilised a sketch by Sir John Tenniel (the original Alice", illustrator) of Alice encountering Tweedledee and Tweedledum, although whether this image was chosen to represent Howell and Ferdinando must remain open to conjecture!


Those who have played and sung on the Howell/Ferdinando canon of 5 Albums

Peter Howell - acoustic & classical guitars, mandolin;

piano & organ; recorder; percussion

John Ferdinando - vocals & vocalizes; electric, acoustic &

bass guitars; auto harp

Lee Menelaus - Vocals

Nature and Organisation

Beauty Reaps The Blood Of Solitude (1994) ...

An offshoot of Current 93, music by Michael Cashmore ...

The Wicker Man Song ...  Vocals by Rose McDowall

Overall a progressive folk sound (sometimes labelled 'Industrial' but much too pastoral for that) ...Hints of Spirogyra and This Mortal Coil ...

Michae Fassbender

Frank (2014) ...

What a great film ...

...and the live version of this in the movie is so much better ...

Shelagh McDonald

Album ...

A lot of time for Shelagh McDonald in these parts...  Disappeared in 1971 after two albums, but now looks like she's on the way back ... 

Mirage ...from Album

Shelagh explains what happened next in The Guardian ...

Shelagh McDonald's story

Still sounding good  ...

Camden 2013 ...

Agamemnon

Agamemnon (1981) ...

Swiss prog from Agamemnon ...their self produced album from 1981.   Pink Floydish in parts, nothing new but musically inventive ...

Dark side of the Alps ...

AGAMEMNON was a German band that recorded their only release back in 1980. There is some speculation that the band is actually from Switzerland, as that is where the original LP was privately released. Either way, AGAMEMNON S/T is keyboard dominated space/psych/prog music. The lyrics are in German. It is reminiscent of Minotaurus, Epidaurus and in some parts Kyrie Eleison. This album features the first two stories from the mythologic Greek hero. It is divided into 2 main tracks as Parts I and II . (Progarchives.com)

Dorothy Ashby

Afro-harping ...

The other jazz harpist (after Alice Coltrane) ... She became more pop and soul oriented in the 1970s ...

Soul Vibrations ...

In the 50s she was a jazz star ...

There's a small hotel ...

In the 70s she worked with Stevie Wonder ...

"This requires a keen ear, one that really has heard all kinds of jazz for years. It requires a sharp mind, one that has learned jazz outside of the formal educational system. Of course, we learned the basics of music techniques at school, but we did not study the art of improvisation. Jazz, being the product of the moment, must have spontaneous creation." She goes on to explain its instructional function, "how to create endlessly varying melodies and rhythms in a particular idiom, using a given set of chords; how to fashion continuous harmonic variations for a given melodic line in one or a multitude of forms; and how to design combinations of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic variations for this spontaneous improvisational form we call jazz."...thestranger.com ...

Matching Mole

Matching Mole's Little Red Record ...

'Machine Molle' ...a French pun on Robert Wyatt's former group Soft Machine ... 

Righteous Rumba and Brandy as in Benji ... 

Backing vocals by Julie Christie ...

833-45

Solar Cycle 23 ...

A different ambience ...listening to radio static and broken short-wave transmissions ...scanning the dial...


Solar Cycle 23 ... 

Keep spinning the dial ...

Maurice Jarre

Dr Zhivago...

Jean-Michel Jarre's father Maurice was the first to use a (prototype) Moog in his soundtrack for Dr Zhivago, along with samisen, koto, Novachord (the first true polyphonic synth), a sonovox (early vocoder), tack piano, harpsichord, zither and 24 balalaikas of course ...oh, and the full MGM studio orchestra and 40-piece choir.   The Moog was used to add bass to the orchestral sound... This was late 1965 and the Moog modular synth was just invented, and delivered to the studio by truck...

Lara's Theme (original) ...

Jean Michel Jarre

Popcorn ...

Everyone seems to have done a version of Popcorn, including an early effort by Jean Michel Jarre in 1972 ...

Jammie Jefferson is JMJ ... 

Gershon Kingsley's original from 1969

Jarrography ... 

Motion Trio

Motion Trio ... 

Acoustic accordion trio from Poland ...

From the PlayStation album... 

With the Michael Nyman Band ... 

Gabriel and Marie Yacoub

Gabriel and Marie Yacoub ...

Malicorne were a folk rock band very popular in French speaking lands in the 1970s (think acapella, Steeleye Span).  This album was recorded by Gabriel and Marie Yacoub prior to forming Malicorne, and after the Yacoubs had left Alan Stivell's band (though Gabriel Yacoub is Parisian and not Breton)...  Title track (which went on to be remade by Malicorne) is here...

Pierre de Grenoble...

More News from Babelogue ...

Gabriel Yacoub

Anthony Manning

Anthony Manning ...

Chromium Nebulae is Anthony Manning's second album and the first to use actual keyboards.  His first experiments were made painstakingly on a Roland R8 drum machine working from a graphic score.  This was an attempt at a less abstract sound but was still way outside the boundaries of mid-1990s techno-based music...  All of his music is now available at Archive.org ...

Chromium Nebulae ...

Biography...

Islets In Pink Polypropylene ... Composed entirely on a Roland R8 drum machine (above) and graph paper

Delia Derbyshire with Barry Bermange

Invention for Radio No.1: The Dreams

Produced for the Third Programme of BBC Radio, 1964, a suite of sound-art ...

"This programme of sounds and voices is an attempt to re-create in five movements some sensations of dreaming - running away, falling, landscape, underwater and colour. All the voices were recorded from life (by Barry Bermange) and arranged in a setting of pure electronic sounds." (RT) -Produced by David Thomson.

Faster and faster ...running and running and running...

Running (0.00 - 08.05)
Falling (08.05 - 16.54)
Land (16.54 - 23.55)
Sea (23.55 - 33.20)
Colour (33.20 - 42.44)

All available at Ubuweb ...