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 ...
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
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…
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 ...
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 ...
