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) ...