Thursday 3 December 2015

Sven Grünberg

Hingus (1978) ...

Soviet era electronica, recorded 1978 to 1980.  Shades of Edgar Froese, Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre.  Music from Tallinn, Estonia on hand built synths...

Hingus (full album)...





Composed in the late 1970s and released in 1981, Hingus is a fantastically grand album of astral pieces-for-synthesizer, created by Estonian musician Sven Grünberg. The Talinn resident had previously led prog outfit Mess, who were active in the late 1970s but, due to Soviet censure, forbidden from actually releasing any recordings until many years later. Mess’ music isn’t messy, per se, but it is haphazardly structured and full of proggier-than-though flights of fancy. Hingus, though, is very different – an album of ecstatic cosmic dazzle.

Played on bespoke synthesisers (built by Mess member Härmo Härm), Hingus trades mostly in mock-orchestral swells in a ‘Trans Europe Express’ mould, decorated with chimes and harmonics. Pretty ambient passages, reminiscent of Steve Hillage’s works for synthesizer, break up the bombast, but the sense of high drama rarely lets up. The album is effectively split down the middle: the A-side is a four-part suite, whereas the flip centres around a long-form piece, ‘Valgusxis’. It’s occasionally stern, but Grünberg plays with Riley-esque force and exuberance throughout... Factmag


© «МЕЛОДИЯ», 1981
ТАЛЛИНСКАЯ СТУДИЯ ГРАМЗАПИСИ, ЗАПИСЬ 1980 Г.
РИЖСКИЙ ОРДЕНА ЗНАК ПОЧЕТА ЗАВОД ГРАМПЛАСТИНОК
ТИП. РЗГ «МЕЛОДИЯ» 1981 3597 3000
APT. 36-8 

Monday 29 June 2015

Keith Tippett Group

Dedicated To You but You Weren't Listening (1971) ...

Keith Tippett's second album, channelling  George Russell and Gil Evans ...


This Is What Happend ...

The nod to Mingus on "Green and Orange Night Park" is more than formal; it's an engagement with some of the same melodic constructs Mingus was working out in New Tijuana Moods. In sum, this is an adventurous kind of jazz that still swings very hard despite its dissonance and regards a written chart as something more than a constraint to creative expression. Brilliant...

allmusic.com


Norma Winstone : voice
Mike Osborne : alto saxophone
Art Themen : tenor saxophone
Henry Lowther : flugelhorn
Kenny Wheeler : trumpet
Chris Pyne : trombone
Malcolm Griffiths : trombone
Paul Rutherford : euphonium
John Taylor : piano
Chris Laurence : bass
Tony Levin : drums


Sunday 21 June 2015

The Plastics

Welcome Back/Plastics (1981) ...

Japanese New Wave techno-pop ...this was their first album release in the UK/US ...B52s meet Rezillos and Devo.  This was a remake of their first album recorded for Island Records. 


Robots ...
  




  
Copy/Top Secret Man Live 2010 ... Plastics active in 2010, this is probably taken from Japan Jam 2010 performance ...




Tuesday 5 May 2015

Alcatraz

Vampire State Building (1972) ...

Spin off from the Faust collective, recorded early 1970's at Wümme, slightly Jimi Hendrix inspired 'krautrock' ...

Simple Headphone Mind ...




 In the annals of Krautrock, Alcatraz's debut was one of the great unknown classics. A sizzling hybrid of many influences all wrapped-up into a unique style of their own. One part Faust (it is recorded at Wümme by Faust's engineer after all), one part Frumpy, Nosferatu, Out Of Focus, Xhol Caravan, and lots that is their own. There's also a jazz standard adaptation thrown-in (also heard adapted by Nucleus on their Elastic Rock album - so coincidental it's spooky), powerful white blues, and some of the strongest hooks and grooves you could ever wish for, plus tons of sizzling solos, great vocals, and more. What's not to like? Or indeed be totally stunned by!
 Vampire State Building ... 

 "Where The Wild Thing Are" may be the most cohesive piece here, in that you've got a chunked and funked up Deep Purple-ish guitar and syncopated sax chugging along for about a minute, before a swinging Jazzy build up which goes back to the original rhythm with the guitar soloing to the end!?

The title tune is a kinda mellow Jazz Funk thing for about a minute, before a trippy synth and sax play over an almost Bolero rhythm?! At 2 minutes the electric guitar and some seriously mind blowing synth swoop in, which disappears in a flash about 45 seconds later for a Jazz drum solo for about two and a half minutes. A new section starts, made of a ghostly wind synthesizer and a twee guitar lick, which leads to a most excellent section starting around 6:15 of effected flute and cymbals for about a minute. This grows back into a trippy lounge thing with vocals, and eventual flute and guitar solos until 11:55, at which time we inexplicably return to the original Jazz Funk thing?!... Discogs ...Alcatraz...
Where The Wild Things Are ... 


longhairmusic.de/alcatrazenglish.htm 

 

Sunday 19 April 2015

Earth and Fire

Atlantis (1973) ...

Dutch prog ... female lead from Jerney Kaagman and Mike Oldfield-ish fluid guitar from Chris Koerts, with symphonic mellotron backing...

Interlude and Fanfare ... 


 The third Earth and Fire album "Atlantis" continued the symphonic progressive rock style of the previous album. The title-track was another side-long suite, but obviously pieced together from far more bits, parts and different ideas than "Song of the Marching Children". But it still hangs very well together, and the songwriting is just as strong as we now could expect from the band. The Mellotron is always present the whole way through, but a little bit more toned down and better integrated along with the other instruments than on "Song of the Marching Children". Side 2 is what makes the album in my opinion a tad weaker than the previous one. Most because of the poppy "Maybe Tomorrow, Maybe Tonight" (that was also the title of a German pressing of the album that had side 1 and 2 exchanged) and the ballad "Love, Please Close the Door". Both these tracks are good, but compared to their best stuff they just don't quite hold up. But most of the rest of side 2 is taken up by the excellent "Fanfare". This is a melodic symphonic track in the vein of "Storm and Thunder". One of the themes from the title-track is also repeated, giving the album a kind of a concept-album feel. I think this is the Earth and Fire album to get after you've got "Song of the Marching Children"... vintageprog.com
 


Jerney Kaagman - lead vocals
Ton van de Kleij - drums, percussion
Chris Koerts - acoustic & electric guitars, backing vocals
Gerard Koerts - organ, piano, flute, Mellotron, synthesizers, virginal, backing vocals
Hans Ziech - bass


Atlantis (full album) ...

 

Tuesday 31 March 2015

Tod Dockstader

Quatermass (1964) ...

Electronic suite by 'sound organiser' and electronic music composer Tod Dockstader. Originally released on Owl records in 1966, this is Dockstader's tour de force ...

Song and Lament ... 


Parade ... 


Flight ...


Second Song ... 

The 45 minutes of Quatermass were drawn out of 12 hours of recordings ...in the process two 'moons' emerged ...

Two Moons of Quatermass: First Moon ... 

Two Moons of Quatermass: Second Moon ... 

The ultimate Tod Dockstader creation however was the monu-mental 46 minute opus Quatermass (1964). Too long for an album originally, two of the surplus edited-out works made it onto the CD release as a bonus: Two Moons of Quatermass, these two 4 minute pieces offer a taster to the awesome power of Quatermass itself. To quote Tod himself 'Quatermass was intended, from the start, to be a very dense, massive, even threatening, work of high levels and energy' - it was pure coincidence that in Britain at the time there was a sci-fi TV series called "Quatermass", as this would have made the ideal soundtrack. It's scarcely believable that virtually none of the sound sources are electronic, many of the textures are created by unlikely things like balloons, vacuum cleaner hoses, toys and the like, as well as the stable selection of percussive devices. This is dark nightmarish music, of great power and phenomenally dynamic execution, with astonishingly complex rhythmic and sequential passages, crescendos of such vigour, and use of stereo panning and bouncing that's far too dizzying to listen to on headphones... Alan Freeman, Audion magazine ...  Audion#32

Dockstader's notes on Quatermass ...

Dockstader archive on Ubuweb ...  

Isnaj Dui

Abstracts on Solitude (2012) ...

Isnaj Dui (Katie English), flautist and electroacoustic composer ...

Nature of Light ... 



It Never Really Was ... 
 Katie English has released several critically acclaimed albums including 2010’s Protective Displacement (Rural Colours) and Unstable Equilibrium (Home Normal, 2009). She has appeared at venues such as the National Portrait Gallery and Union Chapel in London and has received extensive play on Radio 3’s Late Junction and BBC 6 Music. She is a classically trained flautist and has studied electroacoustic music, alternative tunings and Balinese gamelan. Working without laptop processing, Katie English uses the pure tones of concert and bass flutes alongside home made dulcimers and electronics to create immersive yet restrained textures that weave in and out of each other. As well as her solo work she also plays in LITTLEBOW and has collaborated live and on record with ORLA WREN, KONNTINENT, HYBERNATION and THE OWL SERVICE…

Abstracts On Solitude (Bandcamp) ... 

 

Tuesday 24 March 2015

Fire! Orchestra

Enter (2014) ...

Jazz progressives from Sweden on Rune Grammofon.  'The creator has a master plan' Pharoah Sanders meets Sun Ra meets Prodigy ...

Enter part 4 ... 


 The result is four sides of blissed-out transcendence, galvanised by an immediacy that anchors the ensemble to soul and free jazz even as its joyous riffing takes it in the direction of psychedelic and progressive rock. Opening with a hypnotic Fender Rhodes motif, 'Part 1' sees vocalist Mariam Wallentin (Werliin's partner in Wildbirds & Peacedrums) set out the Orchestra's vision in deep, soulful cries of "Let us all go… let them all go… let it all go… feel it all go…" Metallic sheets of electric guitar are joined by the Mellotron, no less, its distinctive frosty tone harking back to the late '60s as surely as do Wallentin's ecstatic vocals. 'Part 2' kicks in with another '60s reference, as a deranged take on the Beatles' 'Tomorrow Never Knows' morphs into a livid collision between guitar and electronics before giving way to a hymnal section for horns and brass... thequietus.com ...



Enter live at Jazzhouse, Copenhagen, 2014 ... 



Fire! Orchestra is the group Fire! (Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin) combined with other musicians from the scandinavian free jazz, noise and improvisation scenes.

Monday 23 March 2015

Sanguine Hum

Now We Have Light (2015)

Oxford based progressive band ... 'it's a double concept album!!'

Chat Show ... 
 A quality not unlike much of the music that came out of Canterbury in the 1960/70s from groups like Egg, early Soft Machine and Hatfield and the North—the latter, in particular, one of the more important of Sanguine Hum's many touchstones (along with everything from Frank Zappa and Steve Reich to Bass Communion, Mahavishnu Orchestra and ECM Records). While the members of Sanguine Hum are unmistakably accomplished musicians who live in the world called post-progressive rock, their music possesses the same lack of self-importance, excess and "look at me" attitude that some say plagued many of progressive rock's bigger names but which those Canterbury bands managed to largely avoid.

Sanguine Hum may, in fact, be based in Oxford, England, but they're Canterburians at heart...albeit Canterburians of an unmistakably modern bent with a similarly bizarre sense of humour and a belief that, no matter how complex the music gets, melody—albeit pushed to its greatest extremes—remains paramount. Sanguine Hum may have many touchstones in the past, but its music is undeniably 21st century...in the case of Now We Have Light, perhaps, even farther ahead, as its story takes place at an unidentified future time when the story's hero, Don (just Don), has been the cause of an apocalyptic event that has reduced the earth to "The Circle"—a gated community constructed by rich survivors to protect themselves from the consequences of a ravaged planet—and the nearby village of ramshackle homes that survive only due to its proximity to "The Wheel." It's in one of these homes that Don lives, with both his neighbors and those living in "The Wheel" thankfully (for him) unaware that he was the singular creator of all their woes... allaboutjazz ...

Derision ... 

Bubble trouble ..

 

Sunday 22 March 2015

Else Marie Pade

Faust (1962)

Danish composer of pure electronic soundworks, Else Marie Pade ...

Faust (1962) ... 


Prolog I Himlen 0:00
Faust Og Mefisto 4:21
Faust Og Magrethes Kærlighed 11:22
Magrethes Fordømmelse 18:46
Rejsen Til Bloksbjerg Og Valborgsnat 23:03


Listen to Else Marie Pade with Jacob Kirkegaard ...


Sunday 22 February 2015

Mica Levi

Under The Skin (2014) ...

Soundtrack to one of the very best movies of 2014, Jonathan Glazer's Under The Skin ...

Love ...


 That hovering dust-cloud of strings, which Levi referred to as "like a beehive" in her and Under the Skin director Jonathan Glazer's recent Pitchfork interview, pops up repeatedly throughout the score with minor additions and tweaks representing the journey of Johansson's character: in "Meat to Maths", there are clanging bell-like sounds behind it, while in "Mirror to Vortex" it's half-submerged in the amplified sound of its own echo. In the context of the film, these additions feel like the messiness of lived experience muddying Johansson's template, the imprint of the lives she begins to grapple with as her time on Earth extends. The hollow knock of a single drum, like a single dragging foot, is another repeating theme, giving the score a reiterative, hesitant quality. Inasmuch as you can be invited into Johansson's character's head in Under the Skin, the music does the heavy lifting. The score has the feel of a thought process, albeit one conducted by a being you have no genetic relation to.  pitchfork.com ...



Lipstick to Void ...



Drift ...
 

BFI meets Mica Levi ...



Loving the alien ...

Monday 9 February 2015

Hydra's Dream

The Little Match Girl (2014) ...

Dreampop from Swedish duo Anna von Hausswolff and Matti Bye...

The Joys of a New Year ... 



  The sound of The Little Match Girl boasts both the group’s firm grasp on the classical composing of music and a duo who wants to push “music” beyond any category in which it is currently comfortable. The title track is their sonic reimagining of the classic Hans Christian Andersen tale of finding hope only in death and the rest of the album is equally high-minded, telling a profoundly existential, and often somber, tale with each of the 9 tracks.  But while each track stands alone as a concise narrative, when strung together, as an album they would seem to serve as a broader commentary on a single theme, much like Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen.  And like Paris Spleen, that theme would seem to be the beauty that can be found in the wretchedness of the world by those who best understand the circumstances of humanity... philthymag ...



Hypothermia ... 

Saturday 7 February 2015

AC Marias

One of Our Girls Has Gone Missing (1988) ...

Angela Conway and Bruce Gilbert of Wire in cool indie experimental mode ...

One of Our Girls Has Gone Missing ... 




Just talk (live on Tony Wilson's Other Side of Midnight)...



Just Talk ... 


  
Time Was (Canned Heat) featuring Bruce Gilbert, Barry Adamson and Rowland S Howard ...



To Sleep ... 

'To Sleep’ is just a beautiful song, a carefully-crafted piece of moving electronica and euphoric guitar drifts which is mesmerising; it’s a suitably pastoral accompaniment to Conway’s poetry, which comes and goes like waves onto the shore. Entrancing and enchanting – you get the idea. ‘Looks Like’ is delivered in warped waltz time and, with its simple melodic synth pad swells could be a Vince Clarke composition were it not for the occasional intrusion of rippling guitar sounds. ‘Sometime’ is dark and edgy, a throbbing bass pulse and a ratchety sound culled straight from Wire’s ‘Advantage In Height’ offset by a pleasant strummed melody and a divine layered chorus of Conway’s voice(s). ‘One Of Our Girls Has Gone Missing’, released as a single, concludes the cassette and vinyl editions, while the CD includes the warped cover of Canned Heat’s ‘Time Was’, also released as a single... Documentary Road ...

also
The Whispered Year (Touch Meridians 1 cassette, 1983) ... 


 

Friday 6 February 2015

Spell

Seasons In the Sun (1994) ...

Dark pop from Strawberry Switchblade's Rose McDowall and Boyd Rice, paying tribute to the tragic side of Sixties and Seventies pop ...

Terry ... 



Seasons In The Sun ... 



Stone Is Very Very Cold ... 


Monday 26 January 2015

Andrew Poppy

Alphabed (1987) ...

Andrew Poppy album mixing systems music with pop-dance, from founder member and pianist with Lost Jockey ...

The Amusement ...




Goodbye Mr G ... 


More from Andrew Poppy ...
  

Friday 23 January 2015

Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Signs of Life (1987) ...

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra was a collective of performing musicians created by classically trained British guitarist, composer and arranger Simon Jeffes. Jeffes and cellist co-founder Helen Liebmann were core members throughout its life and a number of other musicians joined as the band grew and developed, many of whom appear on the PCO's six studio albums...

Heartwind ...


The idea of the Penguin Cafe came to Jeffes in a dream he had following a bout of food poisoning in 1972. It would become a sort of creative zone in which all the subconscious instincts we suppress so as to maintain order in our daily lives were allowed free and easy play. This could be a formula for chaos but, for all its unexpectedness, its juxtapositions of high classical and rustic folk, Penguin Cafe music is warm, tonal, accessible, generally brings a smile to the face in its playful and unlikely resolutions of opposites. Its benign simplicity also belies the quite astonishing lateral leaps of thinking it takes. Random example; ‘The Snake And The Lotus’ from ‘Signs Of Life’, whose main riff ascends unassumingly up and down the fretboard as if it were a flight of stairs. Yet for all its modesty, it's one of the treasures of the PCO canon. From what depths of his pysche did Jeffes pull this tiny pearl?... Quietus ...
Perpetuum Mobile ... 



  



Wednesday 14 January 2015

Arca

&&&&& (2013) ...

Remix by Venezuelan NY mutant hip-hop producer known as Arca ...

&&&&& ... 



&&&&&:
01 Knot
02 Harness
03 Fossil
04 Feminine
05 Anaesthetic
06 Coin
07 Century
08 Mother
09 Hallucinogen
10 Pinch
11 DM True
12 Waste
13 Pure Anna
14 Obelisk


Thursday 8 January 2015

Holly Herndon

Movement & Chorus (2012) ...

Debut album and EP from electronic music artist from San Francisco...

Breathe ... 


Dilato (soundcloud - baritone Bruce Rameker) ... 
The rightful hype about composer Holly Herndon is that she skips along the often-broad line between academic and accessible electronica-- that is, the music on her proper debut, Movement, suits a club as much as a classroom. On "Fade", for instance, she lattices complex vocal layers around a beat with a verifiably big bottom-end. "Dilato," the record's final piece, forces the issue with a completely unimaginable scheme, as baritone vocalist Bruce Rameker-- himself a classical crossover singer, having worked not only with direct Herndon predecessor Meredith Monk but also with conservatories and operas across the world-- intones the word "dilato," meaning to extend or dilate... pitchfork.com

Chorus (EP) ... 
For "Chorus," Herndon "sampled her daily browsing experience," using a software patch that recorded snippets of audio coming from her web browser and throw them together. The result is an anarchic jumble of sounds—pristine chords, garbled scraps of percussion and, of course, lots of voices, re-pitched and layered to form the titular ensemble. Its jump-cut logic and fleeting moments of static gorgeousness bring to mind Oneohtrix Point Never's recent R Plus Seven. But rather than presenting these sounds as abstract delights, Herndon wrings a song from them, a jumpy electro pop number that's propelled by its dense arrangement. As a conceptual exercise it's as striking as anything on Movement; as a piece of music it's quite a bit better... residentadvisor.net ...


 Home (2014) ...

Sunday 4 January 2015

Brothers Quay

Leos Janacek - Intimate Excursions (1983) ...

Steven and Timothy Quay's tribute to Leos Janacek... This film is not included in the BFI DVD collection, though possibly available on a Japanese collection ...

Intimate Excursions 1 of 2 ... 




 Intimate Excursions 2 of 2 ...



Film review ... 

Brothers Quay

Stille Nacht (1993) ...

Animators Brothers Quay, with their unique macro stop-motion surrealist puppetry, were asked to provide visuals for 4AD group His Name Is Alive.  The third film here, Dog Door is for Sparklehorse ...


Can't Go Wrong Without You ... Stille Nacht IV ... 


Are We Still Married? ... Stille Nacht II ... 


Dog Door (Sparklehorse) ...Stille Nacht V ... 

 

Thursday 1 January 2015

Nick Nicely

Hilly Fields (1892) ...

Beatles pastische from 1982 ... 7 inch vinyl only ...

Hilly Fields forever ... 




and the B-side ...

49 Cigars ...