Alternative Editions of Contemporary Music.

[mcq]

Here's another unusual Bailey collaboration (with a dancer - Min Tanaka). The site of this particular performance is a disused forge in Paris under a glass roof - there was a brief burst of torrential rain, the roof leaked - RAIN DANCE (first track). Picked this Revenant Lp up in Spindizzy ages ago (when Adrian used to work there - sadly missed too!).

Nice links you posted to some choice Derek Bailey, Dermot.  What I really admired about the man was the sense of unaffected childlike innocence in his playing.   He worked really hard to establish his own guitar vocabulary and disassemble all traces of the jazz tradition in his playing.  There is something of the punk DIY ethos about his approach which was echoed in Europe by the likes of Peter Brotzmann and Han Bennink in their rejection of any kind of classical training and in their insistence on the primacy of the primal emotion and the articulation of the unlearned musical instinct.  The way that Bailey plays his guitar is reminiscient of how a child approaches music for the very first time - there is a primal rush of discovery and the shock of the new and just how alive it makes you feel.  All of which is intuited on the most basic level before we cross the threshold of cognitive understanding.  There is the joy of striking the chords or plucking the strings purely to evoke that sense of joy and delight that a child is unable to articulate but feels deeply and profoundly in his/her heart when sounds are played and a musical pattern is detected and a reflexive twist of emotion is felt in the heart and a deep and lasting connection is made.  That is what I hear when I hear Bailey play his guitar.

[cybot]

Here's another unusual Bailey collaboration (with a dancer - Min Tanaka). The site of this particular performance is a disused forge in Paris under a glass roof - there was a brief burst of torrential rain, the roof leaked - RAIN DANCE (first track). Picked this Revenant Lp up in Spindizzy ages ago (when Adrian used to work there - sadly missed too!).

Nice links you posted to some choice Derek Bailey, Dermot.  What I really admired about the man was the sense of unaffected childlike innocence in his playing.   He worked really hard to establish his own guitar vocabulary and disassemble all traces of the jazz tradition in his playing.  There is something of the punk DIY ethos about his approach which was echoed in Europe by the likes of Peter Brotzmann and Han Bennink in their rejection of any kind of classical training and in their insistence on the primacy of the primal emotion and the articulation of the unlearned musical instinct.  The way that Bailey plays his guitar is reminiscient of how a child approaches music for the very first time - there is a primal rush of discovery and the shock of the new and just how alive it makes you feel.  All of which is intuited on the most basic level before we cross the threshold of cognitive understanding.  There is the joy of striking the chords or plucking the strings purely to evoke that sense of joy and delight that a child is unable to articulate but feels deeply and profoundly in his/her heart when sounds are played and a musical pattern is detected and a reflexive twist of emotion is felt in the heart and a deep and lasting connection is made.  That is what I hear when I hear Bailey play his guitar.

Thanks Paul. I guess that sums up my own way of listening.....to any musician who has the humility to display said characteristics. The sheer joy of discovery and to hell with the written note. Just let it burn free. That's what I hear from Jimi to Derek.....Of course, I don't (and shouldn't) expect people to understand or even like this stuff. The ultimate question I ask myself is : "Why am I drawn to this type of noise/non-music" (as some would have the right to label it) I can't honestly answer that question except to say that, for some obscure reason, it all makes perfect sense to me :) And, at the end of the day, I don't really care much for what people think ;)

[cybot]

Time to get away from the heavy stuff for a bit :)

Another stunner from the Derek sessions :) It's his first album and the only one I have of him solo! The new one with Frahm is a double set (on vinyl). I haven't got round to getting it yet....
The only other albums I have are a collaboration with a chap called Harald "Sack" Ziegler called 'Kind Kind' and a ten inch called 2x5. Both wonderful and quirky, especially the Lp....







eBay seller description of vinyl edition:

F.S. BLUMM Mondkuchen LP / NEW VINYL / MORR MUSIC 2001
In his debut LP for Morr, Frank Schültge aka F.S. Blumm presents a multitude of lovely popsongs and atmospheric soundscapes designed and constructed with an array of acoustic instrumentation, found sounds and electronic overlays. Mondkuchen seems like a colourful picture transformed into music, telling little stories in many layers. Its tension covers a wide field from crushed acoustic sound experiments to perfect pop tunes. Crafted mainly out of acoustic instruments like piano, kalimba, accordion, vibraphone and guitars, the result is so deeply mysterious and original that the usual system of description by comparison simply does not work here. It’s hard to believe that F.S. Blumm is a one-man-project. It shows the many skills of a multi-instrumentalist, somehow managing to sound like a perfectly tuned-in orchestra, homogenous and well balanced. Blumm works with melodious sound, with deep buried memories and inner-visions that are governed by a universal and archetypal rule of simplicity. Experimental ideas communicate with accessible and friendly musical constructs with an almost overwhelming sense of ease...you´ll get lost in the land of mr Blumm until you realise that the record has run out. But hey, don´t worry, you just can start it again.






- listen

http://www.discogs.com/FS-Blumm-Mondkuc ... ease/15134 - buy



His new album with Nils Frahm...

[cybot]

Triple vinyl version. If you want to experience what eternity is like listen to this :) A stone cold classic....






Tiny Mix Tapes :

Though And Their Refinement of the Decline is a work of art, it isn't a "what's it all about" kind of experience. In a way that few commercial works manage, this double album by Stars Of The Lid swims tetherlessly in the ephemeral logic coming and going. There is no point that it arrives at and no hidden themes to explore. It is the kind of art that those of us who find awe in the most mundane of situations can appreciate. Like waiting in a bus station in a sleepy state of mind and suddenly sharpening up upon noticing that dozing old timer in front of you teetering to his side just slow enough to keep apace with the changing light of dusk. This is massive music, designed not to move mountains, but the ground beneath them. It's the sound of deep sea disintegration. It's the momentousness of accomplishment tempered by an awareness of coming and going.

This restless state shouldn't fit music so perfect for snoozing, but it does. And it is. I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that this is a treasure of soporific luxury. So was Tired Sounds, for that matter. Both double albums, however, contain a haunting sort of resignation that could easily change a tuckered fade-out into a night of gazing tenuously at the green light on your stereo. I'd actually be hard pressed to tell the two albums apart. Though there is only one multi-part song this time around, I think it's pretty safe to say that if you liked Tired Sounds, you will like this. If you're unfamiliar with the record, well, you now have an opportunity for a fresh approach to ambient music. Again, it's not music that you have to make sense out of -- much like a subtle film score, it will evoke without telling you how to feel. Call it tomes to an unnamed sadness, to the itinerant spaces of disassociated blankness banking the rises of emotion. As their goofy titles reflect, Wiltzie and McBride's music works outside of signifiers and qualifiers. The best, quietly grandiose music of this sort seems to always have titles that either speak to the composing process or are pointedly tossed off. It seems to mean this is precise musicianship unencumbered by the more confectionery requirements of issuing a product.

The album's artwork could almost serve as a little joke. Say infinity chased nothingness across the spire tops, all the time allowing nothingness to keep a good lead. The seemingly free-floating sounds of Refinement are justifying their loagy ways by letting the mighty void pass undeterred. In other words, their music is as much the warm breeze caressing your face as it is the cold mist enshrouding the sinking Titanic. It is not indifferent, yet it is not attached in any way. Consequently, it becomes a difficult album to embrace. As much as you are finding yourself wooed by lushness again, you are also interacting with something elusive in its lack of viscera. So, consequently, it is a difficult product to recommend beyond calling it a hip sleep aid. But then you get into the issue of what makes this any different from a Pure Moods type of listening experience. This music is not without its meditative qualities, but I'm not sure it would work for guided meditation (as little as I know about that) due to its often stark and sparse feel. The tunes seem less appropriate to healing as they do to, well, declining.

I guess it's sick-bed music for people who didn't ask for it, but here comes your life -- its many entrances and exits and times that seemed almost still, swirling and coiling inside, when all you want to do is sleep it all off. If bitter resignation is no stranger to your life, yet you are still followed by a nagging sense of wonder, this is music that could be oddly satisfying for you. Beyond these rather elliptical qualities, I can confidently say that this is some of the most astonishingly beautiful music being made today. It feels both grounded and foggy, both chilling and soothing. It will fill you up and it will drag you down. As both The Dead Texan (Adam Wiltzie) and McBride's When the Detail Lost Its Freedom have shown in the interim, the two men of Stars Of The Lid know how to do this sort of music in a way that is as nurturing as it is rich in detail.

Disc One1. Dungtitled (In A Major)2. Articulate Silences Part 13. Articulate Silences Part 24. The Evil That Never Arrived5. Apreludes (In C Sharp Major)6. Don’t Bother They’re Here7. Dopamine Clouds Over Craven Cottage8. Even If You’re Never Awake (Deuxieme)9. Even (Out) +10. A Meaningful Moment Through a Meaningless Process}}}{{{Disc Two1. Another Ballad for Heavy Lids2. The Daughters of Quiet Minds3. Hiberner Toujours4. That Finger On Your Temple is the Barrel of My Raygun5. Humectez La Mouture6. Tippy’s Demise7. The Mouthchew8. December Hunting for Vegetarian Fuckface




Album in full :)

http://www.discogs.com/Stars-Of-The-Lid ... ase/940176 - buy

[cybot]

Ok on with the show....This time it's the turn of one Rafael Toral. I've chosen his most accessable Lp - Space Elements Vol.2. This was actually the very last Lp I bought in Road before they closed down for the last time....








The Book of Imaginary Beings

 
At first it’s unfamiliar,
Then it strikes a root.
~ Fernando Pessoa
 
 
 
 
I have been listening to Rafael Toral’s latest offering in his “space program”, Space Elements Vol. II, within the context of all four of his Taiga Record releases, and cannot shake the notion of a sonic bestiary and topography, a soundscape of forest floor creatures and fecund jungles, populated with sine tones and theremin waves. This impression points to one of several paradoxes I hear in Toral’s ambitious arc of works he calls the space program; the paradox of instruments bearing names like modified MS2 pocket amplifier feedback with light-controlled filter, delayed feedback empty circuit with joystick-controlled filter modulation and pure and filtered sawtooth oscillator pulses — you get the idea from this very partial listing of Toral’s working battery of sound sources — resulting in music being as acutely sensitive to the placement of silences and spaces as it is the strange pitches, pulses and interstices suggested by these names; and the paradox of Toral’s developing an improvised language, both gestural and vocal, sounding so organic and creaturely, far from the tonality suggested by random pulse width modulation oscillator.
 
Sure, there are occasions that evince sci-fi sound emissions and the chatter of hardware. But where Toral has realized his strongest work is in the book of imaginary beings he is writing through solo and ensemble improvisation. His sound world is both grounded, burrowed deep into the loam and silt, and filled with flights and flares of satellite sparks, calls from the deep in all directions. To these ears, taking in these four recordings together [they were actually released between 2006-2010], a language emerges, and it does not sound human.
 
Toral’s turning to language and overtly jazz-colored gestures, following a period of producing guitar-based drone works well received by fans of that area of music, is one of several risks taken. In a 2006 interview in The Wire, Toral stated he was embarking on “a projected set of six albums” exploring and articulating the space program, essentially a program of instant compositions for one or more instruments, Toral playing the aforementioned electronics. I use instant composition intentionally, to invoke the spirit of much of the jazz-based territory that is the most obvious antecedent for Toral’s work. And herein lies a risk taken — Toral has for many years been identified with both the drone, and the MIMEO ensemble, the latter a collective of a whole other nature, an entity meriting its own feature. Suffice it to say, neither drone nor the digital orchestration and electro-acoustic improvisations of MIMEO offer much overlap with the more discursive, dialogical area of the space program.
 
Look, I don’t find taxonomies useful in a substantive way when discussing music. Nonetheless, they exist as placeholders for trying to convey the elements of sound. My experience with the space program, coming to Toral’s work from MIMEO, is that [here’s that saw I grind whenever possible] more is revealed by repeated listening, more than reductive formulae like “the silences and super-consciously chosen sound placement of EAI meets the collective improvisation of EFI.” Happily, I have found Toral’s space program to be shot through with paradox, pleasurable tensions and stillness, as well as the feel of the most concentrated jazz conversations of, for example, the Jimmy Giuffre/Paul Bley/Steve Swallow trio; and, in the dimension of reinvention, Miles. Toral has reinvented his sound world, jettisoned the instrumentation and sonic palettes he was familiar with, and is stitching together elements not just of space, but of new sounds. Wrangling and arranging unstable pitches, shaping feedback and sine tones in real time.
 
So, the paradoxes in sum- a sensuality and organicity created by circuits and oscillators, the warp and woof of an explicitly language-based form of improvisation combined with elements of the post-onkyo approach to sound and silence, and Toral’s delightful menagerie of creature sounds, sometimes comic in effect. There is great range on this album, with a half dozen guests contributing to this installment of the space lexicon, as well several of Toral’s long-time collaborators; alto trombonist Fala Mariam, the gorgeous tone of the lyrical trumpeter Sei Miguel, and, always impressive, percussionist César Burago.
 
On one track of Space Elements Vol. II, guest guitarist Manual Mota works through jazz chord progressions reminiscent of the balladry of Kenny Burrell or Grant Green, while Toral skitters and spins around him, spewing and chattering like some unspecified mammalian critter. In a lovely duo with vibraphonist Stefano Tedesco, Toral offers the gravitas of deep tones and a nuanced framing of Tedesco’s brief melodic flight [Tedesco reminds me strongly of a vibes player I haven’t thought about in years, Tom van der Geld, who produced a beautiful album with Kent Carter over 30 years ago entitled Patience]. And on a septet setting for cello, pocket trumpet, Rhodes piano [!], percussion, trombone and noise bursts and sawtooth emissions, Toral explores a territory akin to In A Silent Way as imagined by Sun Ra.
 
So, to convey in elemental terms the trajectory of Toral’s work from the bliss realm of the guitar-based sheets of sound of a decade ago, to the present garden of unearthly sounds, I’d say he has moved from the oceanic to land- but a strange land of slightly unfamiliar fauna, and creatures that bring to mind Borges’ description of a child's first experience when visiting the zoo- “How can we explain this everyday and yet mysterious event?”, Borges asks. “Of course we are fully aware […] that this does not exhaust the sum total of imaginary animals.”
 
You may very well hear Toral’s space program differently — as a capitulation to jazz’ exhausted approach to improvisation, as an interesting catalog of space age sounds interacting with traditional instruments, absent the bracing, sometimes exhilarating effects of the paradoxes I referenced. What I hear is the development of a new language in a sometimes exalted, sometimes serene sound world, rooted always in both the ether and the earth. And the spontaneous whoops, cries and trills of imaginary beings, familiar and utterly strange. Once more, the poet Pessoa:
 
I sang the song of the infinite
In a poultry house.
 
Sources:
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings
Collage by João Paulo Feliciano, whose art can be seen on the covers of two Taiga releases by Toral, Space Elements, Vols. I & II
 
by Jesse Goin, Apr. 2010

[cybot]

Brand new double vinyl helping of live Budd solo piano in memory of his old mate James Tenney.
Absolutely spellbinding and heartbreaking. Beautifully recorded. Time doesn't exist in Budd's world. A Love Supreme indeed....


The world is calling, I must go.
How shall I know he did not pass
Barefooted in the shining grass?










HAROLD BUDD — "PERHAPS"
An essay by Matthew Weiner.

Reflective, simmering with a unique sense of purpose, Harold Budd's Perhaps offers 13 new piano improvisations — each expanding on the hushed, spare soundscapes that have been the hallmark of samadhisound releases from the likes of David Toop, Akira Rabelais, Derek Bailey, David Sylvian, and others . Culled from an uninterrupted 75-minute solo performance in memory of composer James Tenney, Perhaps is poised to stand alongside the ambient pioneer's most heartfelt, eloquent statements, evoking a lovely solace that is at once contemplative and alive, alternately filled with moments of joy, wonder and mischief.

With more than 30 solo recordings and collaborations to his credit, from solo piano pieces to densely orchestrated compositions, Harold Budd is accustomed to new challenges. Born in Los Angeles in 1936, his love of jazz (he briefly played drums with saxophonist Albert Ayler while serving in the Army) led Harold to get a degree in music composition, releasing his first record, the Coltrane-inspired The Pavilion of Dreams, on Brian Eno's Obscure label in 1978, before going on to great success with such piano- and keyboard-based releases as 1988's ambient classic, The White Arcades. His previous release—and first for samadhisound—was 2005's celebrated Avalon Sutra, which Harold described with his inimitable drollness as "devastatingly pretty."

Recorded live in December, 2006 before an audience at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Perhaps finds Budd brimming with ideas and sounds that will appeal to fans of the lushly textured, ruminative piano pieces he crafted alone and with the likes of Eno (The Plateaux Of Mirror, 1980; The Pearl, 1984), The Cocteau Twins (The Moon and The Melodies, 1986), and XTC's Andy Partridge (Through The Hill , 1994). Yet in contrast to much of his previous work, Perhaps resulted not from months of careful preparation as is his custom but rather a single evening's improvisation — albeit one that had been marinating for over thirty years.

Indeed, for all the emotion and reverence evident in tracks like "Templar" and the stately "Monument" (for Harold, titles are very important), this particular performance seems less a solemn tribute to an old friend than response to a long-ago challenge — perhaps made in one of the Mojave Desert cowboy bars in which Budd and Tenney shot pool in the 1970's when both men taught music composition at Cal Arts and heatedly debated the validity of contemporary music aesthetics. The official story, anyway, is a bit more dignified, with Tenney composing a series of short, "post card pieces" for friends many years earlier. "The one for me was called '(night)', as I recall," Harold writes today. He would wait three decades to return the favor, describing Perhaps as less a composition than "a provocation..." Of who or what, he does not say.

To be sure, though, what Paul Tingen once called Budd's "infallible use of space" pervades Perhaps' 70-odd spellbinding minutes, even absent the sumptuous electronic treatments and echoes provided by Eno and cohorts on earlier records. That's because his music derives its singular potency not from the new materials added to his sonic palette but from Budd's relentless process of subtraction and refinement. Such prudence was but one of the qualities that drew Harold to the jazz form — not only its rules and restrictions but also its emotional resonance of what writer and fellow samadhisound artist David Toop described as, "a forgotten dimension of free jazz, the meditational point of temporary rest where sorrow, battered optimism, devotion and spiritual ecstasy melted together."

And on Perhaps, Harold's habit of delving into these cracks in musical history is as evident as ever. Several moments call to mind Paul Bley's 1972 ECM classic Open To Love as if that record were imprinted not on vinyl but Silly Putty stretched to wrest every last resonance and glimmer from the piano's vast harmonic spectrum. In others, one can detect traces of John Coltrane's "After the Rain" if it were slowed to half-speed and performed on Balinese gamelan (he's already scored it for chamber ensemble), so delicate and melodic are Budd's signature rolling thunder piano arpeggios.

Ambient, poignant, devastatingly pretty — whatever you call it, Harold Budd's music inhabits an aesthetic all his own. It's a world Perhaps invites the listener to discover and explore — one that won't likely leave your consciousness anytime soon.

 

[Fran]

This is a lovely album - well worth picking up....




I see he has a new album out this year which I must keep an eye out for.



Fran

[cybot]

This is a lovely album - well worth picking up....




I see he has a new album out this year which I must keep an eye out for.



Fran

Nice one Fran. Another one I let slip by.... Anyway here's an interview I found. Enjoy....



http://m.spin.com/articles/ulrich-schna ... y-to-fall/ - interview

[fergus]

I will be making my way slowly through this thread to determine what appeals to me Dermot.

This album has a lovely “feel” to it, almost Irish or Celtic in undertone. It is beautifully sung and I particularly like the general arrangement with the solo violin as accompaniment but the very delicate arrangement on the penultimate track is particularly attractive.

[Ivor]

This is a lovely album - well worth picking up....

I'm loving that. Did you see it any bricks & mortar shop?