Music For The Gods: Indonesia

The Fahnestock South Sea Expedition (1994) ...

 Recorded direct to aluminum/cellulose acetate disc in 1941, by brothers Bruce and Sheridan Fahnestock ...

Taboehgan/Gamelan Semar Pegulingan. Ubud [Teges], Bali, 1941 ...

Music For The Gods is the second release in the Endangered Music Project, a series curated by Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart featuring material from the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center. This album captures the musical traditions of the Indonesian archipelago as it existed in 1941, when brothers Bruce and Sheridan Fahnestock recorded the indigenous musics of Bali, Java, Madura and Arjasa with (then) state-of-the-art Presto disc-cutters. The album preserves cultural traditions as they were prior to the westernization brought by WWII and presents a marked achievement in the restoration of deteriorating cellulose-acetate discs. Tracks feature the sweet and delicate sounds of the gambuh orchestra with its four bamboo flutes, the interlocking rhythms of the gamelan gong, the distinctive humming of the krejing harp, and vocal choruses performing ritual ceremonies with song and dance. Music For The Gods: The Fahnestock South Sea Expedition: Indonesia was issued in 1994 as part of “THE WORLD” series (now part of the Mickey Hart Collection made available by Smithsonian Folkways)... folkways.si.edu ...

 frugalfun.com article ...

Fire Engines

Lubricate Your Living Room (1980) ...

Minimalist Magic Band meets jangly post-punk pop music ...from Edinburgh on the Indie pop:Aural label and produced by Bob Last, early Human League manager ...

Lubricate Your Living Room part 1 ... 

Get Up and Use Me ... 

Their debut release for the label was Lubricate Your Living Room, an eight track album of discordant, funky-rhythmed, improvised pieces of music/muzak; no lyrics whatsoever discounting the screams and yelps on Discord. Music to go out to, to put you in the mood for ”action and fun'; this entire concept was Last's albeit with Fire Engines playing the role of willing accomplice. Lubricate had more in common with the instrumental Dub albums coming out of Kingston, Jamaica, and the extended instrumental disco-mixes coming out of clubs like Danceteria in downtown Manhattan. It sounded like nothing else; Fire Engines were then occupying a completely different hemisphere to that of their contemporaries... A history of Fire Engines ...

New Thing In Cartons ... 

Sympathetic Anaesthetic ... 

 

The Monochrome Set

Love Zombies (1980) ...

Monochrome Set are an English 'pop' band formed in London in 1978 ...This was their second album. 

405 Lines ... 

R.S.V.P. ... 

Love Zombies ... 

 "Once this record is in the house two's company and four is a party. Roll back the carpet, switch out the light and dance in the glow of the firelight as 'The Monochrome Set' provide your very own music far from the maddening crowd of the dance halls." LP sleevenotes

Apocalypso ... 

Adeste Fideles ... 

themonochromeset.co.uk 

Les Frères Déjean

L'univers (1977) ...

Haitian band ... Les Frères Déjean came out of the Mini-jazz movement (light rock bands playing in a local style) and went back to a big band sound with keyboards and horn section with intricate rhythmic guitar work.  This was still called méringue-compas, but here has a quite African feel, with a free jazz sound in places ...

L'humanité ... 

Conviction ... 

FRED DEJEAN   Maestro, saxophone alto, ténor
ANDRE DEJEAN   Trompette, trombone
HAROLD JOSEPH  Chant
ISNARD DOUBY   Chant, trompette
LESLY DOUBY   Chœur
DIEUJUSTE POLINICE NOZILE   Guitare solo
DURCYS DUBUISSON   Guitare accompagnement
ERNST VINCENT   Guitare basse
ULRICK BOUZI   Batterie
CAMILLE DEJEAN   Percussions
ROBERT NOZILE   Percussions, congas
PHILIPPE DEJEAN   Percussions, tambour
Artistes invités
LUCIEN CERAN Jr.  Saxophone
JACQUES LHERISSON   Piano
 musique.haiti.free.fr ...

Nayide ...

L'Univers ...  

Brian Eno

Making Space (2006) ...

Released to accompany an exhibition at Lumen London Gallery, and only available there... a compilation of instrumentals, some written with and featuring Leo Abrahams ...

Making Space ... 

lumenlondon.com ... 

Proyecto A

Proyecto A (1971) ...

Concept prog album from Spain, in a library music vein, but with overtones of Frank Zappa brass (actually Madrid municipal band).  Produced by Frank David...

Proyecto A ... 

Arranged By, Directed By, Producer, Vocals -- Frank David
Bass -- Aaron
Drums -- Rooby Dayand
Guitar -- Georges I
Organ -- Kisgay
Percussion -- Jean Marc
Recorded By -- J. Cobos*, J.A. Alvarez*
Tenor Saxophone -- Ortex
Trombone -- Louis R. Nator

 

Proyecto A (they didn't let me call it Proyecto Apollo) was a simple and heartfelt tribute to the historic and heroic achievement of a human being stepping on a celestial body beyond Earth.

The musical and rhythmic styles of the songs were not really anything new and ranged from Rock, Soul, Funky etc. that were fashionable at that time with the intention that they could be danced to in the emerging Dance Clubs. The unique and original novelty was that the melodies and harmonies used scales and tones which the Impressionist Claude Aquiles Debussy had already used to describe musically the endless to and fro of the sea waves in his Suite "La Mer". I tried to capture the cosmic weightlessness with the help of sound effects, handmade with a Binson Echo. 90% of melodies and harmonies were made ​​on tonal scales that produced an amazing feeling, a little uncomfortable for some.

We did not have synthesizers or other technologies so I went the old fashioned way, I went to the beach to record the sounds of the waves, I submerged a mic protected with a plastic bag into a bucket of water and blew through a hose to create bubbles, the launching of the rocket was the recording of a heating kettle starting up...

The musicians in the recording were: Kisgay (real name Joan Giralt, Hammond), Aaron (real name Jose Antonio Muñoz, bass), Nator (* real name not given, trombon), Ortex (real name Jose Ortega, sax), George I (real name Jordi Camp, brother of Manel Camp from Fusioon, guitar), myself as composer and vocals, and an emergency session drummer (alias Rooby Dayand) who covered for Jordi Colomer from Iceberg who finally was unable to move to Madrid for the recording sessions. Brass was played by some musicians from the Madrid municipal band... Frank David ...

Edward Artemiev, Vladimir Martynov & Yuri Bogdanov

Metamorphosis (1980) ...

Russian LP of electronic interpretations of 'classical' pieces, by Claude Debussy and Monteverdi among others ... Yuri Bogdanov features on every track, on some tracks together with Edward Artemiev, composer for Andrei Tarkovsky and others.  Other tracks feature Vladimir Martynov...  All recorded with the famous EMS Synthi-100 synthesizer and released on Melodya...

Metamorphoses (1980) ...

Since the Synthi 100 is perhaps the most versatile synthesizer ever build (at least that's what Karlheinz Stockhausen once said) and given the lack of recordings with it (I remember Stockhausen's Sirius, some early Rolf Gehlhaar stuff and Bruno Spoerri's Toy Planet) this record might also appeal to the vintage gear fetishists... orpheusrecords.blogspot.co.uk

John Bull (Arranged By - Vladymir Martynov , Юрий Богданов) ...


Motion (Edward Artemiev & Yuri Bogdanov) ...

Michael Nyman

The Kiss and Other Movements (1985) ...

Michael Nyman, English composer... best known for movie soundtracks, such as Jane Campion's The Piano,  and for Peter Greenaway.  This album is mainly derived from soundtracks for short films and video art...

Water Dances: 1, Stroking ... Original soundtrack from Peter Greenaway's film of synchronised swimmers 'Making A Splash' ...This was later expanded to an eight movement concert work ...

Images Were Introduced (From Memorial) ... 'Images were Introduced was assembled from materials loosely disposed in Peter Greenaway’s documentary 26 Bathrooms'.  Sung by Sarah Leonard, for whose voice it is written ...

Tango Between The Lines ... 


Nose List Song (fourth section of Nyman's unfinished opera, Tristram Shandy) ...

Never saw such a nose in my life 'Tis a nose of parchment It is six times as big but 'tis a nose like my nose I heard it crackle I saw it bleed What a pity we didn’t both touch it What a nose 'Tis as long as a trumpet And of the same mettle as you hear by its sneezing 'Tis as soft as a flute 'Tis brass 'Tis a pudding's end 'Tis a brazen nose...

 Water Dances: 3, Synchronising ...

 The Kiss (Dagmar Krauss & Omar Ebrahim) ...

The text is an assemblage of extracts from various 15th [century texts, keeping phrases such as] “Images were introduced because people cannot retain what they hear but they do remember if they see images”, deliciously open to misinterpretation: I deliberately and ironically wanted to give the erroneous impression that I believed that the visual images that are frequently combined with my music are stronger that the musical images; whereas in fact the text referred to the introduction of painted religious images which were provided for the unlearned, who were unable to understand or remember biblical texts... michaelnyman.com

 

Walt Dickerson & Sun Ra

Visions (1979) ...

Released on Danish label Steeplechase LP originally ...

Utopia ... 

Walt Dickerson - Vibes
Sun Ra - Piano ...

Astro
Utopia
Visions

Constructive Neutrinos
Space Dance ...

Composed by Walt Dickerson ...

Constructive Neutrinos ...

“Philosophically we had nothing in common [laughs], strangely enough; that’s why I enjoyed his company. Sun Ra was a teacher, and sometimes teachers need to be fed other than what they teach; that’s where I came in. That’s why I used Sun Ra on several of my recordings. He did a marvelous job; I wanted that difference; I wanted that uniqueness that he brought to the table.” ... Walt Dickerson ...

musica en espiral review ...


Astro ...

Jennifer Warnes

Famous Blue Raincoat (1987) ...

Jennifer Warnes 'tribute' to Leonard Cohen ...

Bird On A Wire ... 

Famous Blue Raincoat ... 

Warnes, who used to sing back up on Cohen’s albums before recording this disc in 1987, takes a much different approach that mirrors his own. She generally sings in a non-affected, low range that gives the songs a cool, Brechtian feel. For example, she vocalizes the dark lyrics of “Bird on a Wire” such as “Like a baby stillborn / Like a beast with his horns / I have torn everyone who reached out to me” over a martial beat as if she were reciting a grocery list. One can hear and understand every carefully annunciated word, but it’s the listener’s job to figure out how to take them... popmatters.com ... 

Joan of Arc (duet with Leonard Cohen) ...

Rip Rig and Panic

God (1981) ...

Debut album from post-punk-funk freeform scat-jazz group, derived from the Pop Group, featuring a young Neneh Cherry and Ari Up (of the Slits) on vocals ...Lots of fun and recently released digitally for the first time ...

HOWL! Caged Bird ... 

The Blue Blue Third ... 

  Debut-album God features track-titles that range from the bizarre (Constant Drudgery Is Harmful To Soul, Spirit and Health) to the bawdy (Knee Deep In Shit), many (most) of which reveal little about the anarchic contents on offer. It isn't easy-listening but it is enthralling in places with the pick of the bunch being the extra tracks Bob Hope Takes Risks and Go Go Go (This Is It), both issued as singles. Change Your Life boasts a neat little Latin American piano-powered groove and The Blue Blue Third almost passes for lounge in its own lilting, but ultimately discordant, way. If you dig Blurt, Beefheart and Bush Tetras, you'll want to discover God... flipsideflipsidereviews ...

God! album ... 

thedigitalfix.com review ...

cherryred.co.uk ... 

Symphony in Dave's flat (John Peel Session) ... 

Name taken from Roland Kirk album ...  

Vangelis

Beaubourg (1978) ...

Expressionist solo synthesiser tone poem unlike Vangelis's earlier work of the 1970s ...

Beaubourg ... 

You have interpreted Beaubourg – when did you go there?

I went there two years ago. I visited the entire area and I was very impressed. I returned to London and I recorded my album ‘Beaubourg’ quickly, spontaneously. So I ‘felt’ Beaubourg, but that does not mean that Beaubourg is only this: I can redo ‘Beaubourg’ in 30 different ways.

The key, it seems to me, is to hear this electronic music.

Yes. I needed courage to release this record. It is interesting to see this album in context with my previous ones. This album created a scandal: some people returned the disc to me and others praised me. It was very important to distribute it in shops that specialised in ‘contemporary’ music.

I have the impression that memory plays an important role in listening to this composition: I tend, more and more, to identify with the track and narrow down the track, to bring the beginning closer to the end. Perhaps this is because of the unusual brevity of the ‘melodies’?

That is certainly the case. I will ignore the ‘ideal’ way of listening to the music: each person has his or her own way. I have seen people unable to listen to this record who now appreciate it more and more, but I do not regard this as a compliment. It is a record that can be played in the background. (He smiles) I cannot force anyone to listen to it and I cannot force myself to record it!.. Interview 1979 ...

Beaubourg part 1 ...

 For me however, the work this album most closely resembles is the ground breaking soundtrack to the 1956 Sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet by Louis and Bebe Barron reputed to be the first all-electronic score for a major Hollywood movie. Likewise, when immersed in Beaubourg's otherworldly sounds it's not difficult to conjure up similar mental images such as a small group of astronauts stranded on a remote planet being stalked by an unseen menace. There is even a droning sound near the beginning that could readily pass for a landing spacecraft. Incidentally, just 4 years later Vangelis would create his own music for a sci-fi film with the (underrated) soundtrack to Ridley Scott's much debated Blade Runner which, by the way, sounds nothing like Beaubourg... Geoff Feakes review ...

Toolshed

The Toolshed Album (2005) ...

An anthology of Toolshed ...808 State meets Magma downtown ... this is a collection of sessions by various line-ups of the experimental Manchester club night/ laboratory led by Graham Massey (Biting Tongues, 808 State, Bjork, Massonix) ...

Mathematica ... 

 In 1998, Graham Massey (808 State) wanted to create a night out he himself might leave his instruments at home for, and invented the Toolshed night in Manchester. In the time since, Toolshed has been hailed as one of the most expansive and ambitious attempts to leave the planet.

Each month The Toolshed Allstars perform a freeform set with equally unhinged guest musicians. Initially it was just Graham alone on computer, guitars and wind instruments. He was quickly joined in subsequent months by like-minded Manchester luminaries such as Paddy Steer (Homelife) Dick Harrison (Spaceheads) Graham Clark (jazz violinist extraordinaire) James Ford (Simian) and the unique multi-octave voice of Seaming To.

A storming 4 drummer, 6-piece horn section line-up of Toolshed forms the cornerstone of the debut album on Twisted Nerve - together with studio recordings and home sketches...  discogs.com ...

Love in Outer Space (Sun Ra cover) ... 

NANANANANAANAA.13-09-2003.as part of"In The City"
Seaming To (vocals)Graham Massey (alto Sax,;)Paddy Steer(Bass) Pat Illingworth,Richard Harrison &James Ford (Drums) Graham Clark (Violin) Howard Jacobs,Enrico Marcessi,Lara James,Roger Wickham,Gareth Beckwith,

Session 72 documentary ... 

Toolshed Big Band live at Futuresonic 2002 ...

Wok & Giblet live at QEH, London ...
                                                              Watusa ...

Argumenta ...live at Band On The wall 1999...

Luc Ferrari

Interrupteur / Tautologos 3 (1970) ...

Orchestra with tape pieces from French composer Luc Ferrari ...

Conductor Konstantin Simonovitch
Orchestra  Ensemble Instrumental de Musique Contemporaine

Interrupteur ...

Ferrari has time and again ranged far afield of musique concrète, and Interrupteur/Tautologos 3 is one such foray into instrumental music. These particular realizations came about through Ferrari's directed improvisations of Konstantin Simonovitch's ensemble, and the recordings were originally released in 1970 by EMI in their 'Perspectives Musicales' series. 'Interrupteur' is largely static music, a music of long tones periodically interrupted by aleatoric events. If it references musical minimalism (particularly Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Robert Ashley), this surely counts as an intuitive, very personal result.

Tautologos 3 (Part 5) ...

'Tautologos 3' pursues the idea of the superposition of cycles of different lengths that, once set into motion, will continually result in new events. 

'Interrupteur' is from 1967 and features the following instrumentation: English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, French horn, trumpet, violin, viola, cello, two percussions, two electric organs. It is one of the most outright powerful and devastating recordings within the avant garde realm. "Tautologos 3" is from 1970 and features: flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, viola, cello, double bass, electric guitar, electric organ & vibraphone... boomkat.com ...

Buy Stuff !! ...

"Tautologos 3" from 1970 is going to be reissued by David Grubbs. Is he going to re-record the piece or use Simonovic's original performance?
They're going to reissue the original. Which isn't bad, actually... it's fun. "Tautologos 3" is another story, one which inevitably puts me in line with the American minimalists. I think I already knew their music-around 1970 I went to the States and met Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma... I like these guys a lot. Maybe the idea was already there. When was "In C"? 1964? I couldn't say I was a minimalist at the time, but I was always interested in repetition: I just didn't know how to tackle it. I was tied up in serialism in the 60s, but even so I was experimenting with loops which repeated in cycles which never met up-that was also the idea of the "Music Promenade" installation we talked about: Musical events where you perceive the idea of repetition without them being necessarily repetitive themselves.
What interested me was looping the events in such a way that each time they reappeared, they created new musical objects. The idea of tautology. The first "Tautologos 3" was a written score, a text-score (like many others at that time), where I explained the rules of the tautology; it was a score which gave individual players the freedom to choose their action. We did this version a lot, in instrumental and theatrical contexts. Well, what with mixing up other people's instrumental and theatrical actions, after a while I wanted to do my version of the piece! (Laughs) So I wrote an instrumental score which respected the demands of the text-score. From time to time I taught workshops where I did "Tautologos 3" very often, with the students having to follow the score quite closely-so when I showed them my own version they said: "You're cheating! You're not following the rules!" And I said: "I am free, you know..."
The other piece on the CD is "Interrupteur". What were you trying to do with in that work?
I wanted to write the most static music possible. I suppose it didn't work out, as it's quite a busy score! (Laughs) The idea was to have instrumental continuities which went from beginning to end. One instrument goes up for ten minutes and comes down for ten minutes, while another goes up for three minutes and comes down over the next seventeen, and so on. Each instrument had its plan and there were lines which crossed, and each time that happened there was a special event. That was the basic idea. What interested me was to decide on a duration and to see what each instrument was going to do, in a conceptual way. I'm starting to work with durations again, trying to organise them in a completely aleatoric way interms of the composition; it's all written out, but the compositional information is all generated by chance. I take the duration and use it as a painter would, like a canvas... Interview with Luc Ferrari (doc, Dan Warburton, 1998) ...

Cherry Wainer

It's Hammond Time ! (1965) ...

Cherry Wainer, South African Hammond organist with 1950s TV pop group Lord Rockingham's XI, on her own (with husband drummer Don Storer) ...Lord Rockingham's XI were the house band for early British TV pop show Oh Boy! and were mostly session musicians...

It's Hammond Time ! LP A-side ... 

Its Hammond Time ! Lp B-side ... 


A bit of history ... 



 

Unthanks

Last (2011) ...

English vocal group singing traditional songs mostly from North East of England, plus cover versions of King Crimson, Tom Waits and others ...

Starless (King Crimson cover) ...

Last ...

No One Knows I'm Gone (Tom Waits cover) ...

Queen of Hearts ... 

Radiohead

The King of Limbs (2011) ...

Radiohead's eighth and most recent album, self released as download and CD album, and later as a special 'Newspaper' edition on twin clear vinyl 10 inch discs ...

The King of Limbs ... 

Lotus Flower ... 


A live version of the album (Live From The Basement) ... 


Morning Mr Magpie (Austin City Limits) ... 

Codex ... 

Supercollider ... was recorded at the same time but not included in the original album ...

There was also a cover version of the album released 24 hours after the original, by Robotanists ...

 

Camberwell Now

All's Well (1992) ...

Group formed by Charles Hayward of This Heat... This album is a compilation of most of their releases ...

Daddy Needs a Throne ... originally released on Touch cassette Ritual ...

The songs - nostalgic, scary, quietly desperate - peer into the future to find harbour but confront only fragments of ruin. Debris and disturbance eat away at the root and corrode each shiny surface (this is mostly the musical work of the cassette switchboard). The juxtaposition of powerful, virtuosic playing and the eerie, often unidentifiable keenings, chords and constant motion of the cassettes is one of the things that make Camberwell Now so expressive of its time - when the whole social and political fabric of a no-longer-great Britain was unravelling... rermegacorp.com ...

Working Nights ...

 
Speculative Fiction ... from the album Ghost Trade ...

Following groundbreaking work with Quiet Sun and This Heat, the '70s the '80s saw Haward's songs developing in a direction not dissimilar to those of Robert Wyatt of the same early-'80s period. That is, a highly intellectual, experimental rock music that, while it has roots in the avant-garde, it relates directly to the British folk traditional song. Charles Hayward's later solo work started to return to the abstract with Survive the Gesture, Skew-Whiff, and Switch On War. These experimental and improvised albums, plus the posthumous attention This Heat received in the '90s, may have shrouded Charles Hayward's extraordinary songwriting skills, which are displayed here in their most focused and pure form... allmusic.com ...

Green Fingers ... 


factmag.com review of The Ghost Trade ...

Philip Glass Ensemble with Linda Ronstadt

1000 Airplanes on the Roof (1989) ...

A one act science fiction chamber opera by Philip Glass featuring vocals by Linda Ronstadt ... Commissioned by The Donau Festival Niederösterreich, The American Music Theater Festival, Philadelphia and by Berlin, Cultural City of Europe - 1988. World Premiere on July 15, 1988 at the Vienna International Airport in Hangar #3.

1000 Airplanes On The Roof ...

For one thing, it contains more chord changes than the usual Glass stage or work. Another reason is that this is the last score Glass recorded exclusively with electric keyboards and woodwinds. The composer blends his numerous motifs into one galactic "Grey Cloud Over New York," rendered without a moment's hesitation by PGE vets Martin Goldray,Jack Kripl, Richard Peck, and Jon Gibson. They immediately reprise the nervous title overture into the relaxed schmaltz of "A Normal Man Running." With the sinister voice sampling in "Labyrinth" as a lone reminder that this is a piece for the stage, this it's one of Glass' superior stand-alone works. allmusic.com

Girlfriend ...

The Encounter ...

Red Note Ensemble ...clip from 1000 Airplanes (performed in the Concorde hangar at Museum of Flight, East Fortune, Scotland) ...

• July 15, 1988, saw the world premiere of a radical new form of music theatre at the Vienna International Airport Hangar #3. Throughout its subsequent North American tour, 1000 Airplanes on the Roof has astonished audiences and sent critics scrambling for new descriptive vocabulary.
Michael Walsh (Time) called it "part Freud, part Kafka, and part Steven Spielberg" and declared that "operatic design may never again be the same." Peter Goodman (New York Newsday) said, "the powerfully hallucinogenic musical monodrama ... is a child of the '80s in every way." Michele May (Potomac News) called it "a light show, a ballet, a spoken opera, an art exhibit, a lesson in Zen. Above all, it is a totally innovative entertainment form."

1000 Airplanes recreates the original production with color photographs of Jerome Sirlin's holographic set projections accompanied by David Henry Hwang's compelling script. It is the story of "M.," a New Yorker who is apparently abducted by aliens, probed and questioned, then returned to Earth and told to forget the event. The ambiguity of M.'s experience - was it real or hallucinated? - is never fully resolved; it is a parable on contemporary's man's search for identity in a bewildering world. Philip Glass, David Henry Hwang and Jerome Sirlin stage a vivid, intense journey through M.'s world - inner and outer - which challenges our very notions of reality and sanity. We experience the full force of M.'s dilemma: no place could be as alien as the world has become... glasspages.org ...