[music, albums] November 17, 2005 at 11:16:00 PM CET

On repeat on my CD player

The guitar loops of Jan Jelinek's Kosmischer Pitch. Cycling the cycles. Rotation to the power of two. Who needs sedatives with this music in the background? Jelinek to Boards of Canada is what life is to dream. Like an adult who lives now compared to adults who live in their childhood past. Serenity versus emotion. Slowly electronic music starts making sense to me. It must have to do with the organic feel, I guess. Is it because of the guitar which is the nucleus of that kind of electronica?

Listen to Lithiummelodie 1 from the new Jelinek album over at one faint deluded smile. Or to three older Farben (his pseudonym) tracks off Textstar at the EuroRanch.

 
link (no comments)  ... comment  
 

[music, albums] November 10, 2005 at 6:49:00 PM CET

XL: 1973 Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

The famous untitled cover picturing a light beam hitting a prism and being dispersed into a spectrum, many beams in the different colours of the rainbow. One of the more astonishing experiments in physics showing that white light is a mixture of different frequencies which can be visualised as the spectral colours.

I listened to this album for the first time in 1975, I guess, probably in November. Chez my best friend. In his room under the roof with the oversized drawing of Che Guevara's face on the wall. He was the handsome good-looking guy the girls liked. I was the outsider who was into chess and other stuff girls were not interested at all in. It was dark in his room when he put the record on. I didn't know about concept albums or anything but the music really hit me. It wasn't like anything I had heard and liked before like Abba, the Bee Gees, the Sweet etc. There was something universal about it. Until a couple of years ago I had never thought about DSotM as having different songs. It was just one song with different parts segueing seamlessly into another. I didn't understand what this album was about but I felt that it was something special, something bigger than life.

The cry which starts Speak to Me Breathe. A song which can make you forget everything bad about this world. The tenderness, the love, Dave Gilmour's guitar. When they started their Live8 performance this year with this song I could hardly hold back my tears. This was the better part of my youth, fuck.

The dooming atmosphere of the beginning of Time preshadowing goth. Turning into something quite funky, with those background girls vocals, I usually hate but which make sense to me here. As they are only used as an element, they are just an extra flavour which give the song some extra life.

The Great Gig in the Sky has more of this kind of women's singing. It's soulish stuff, it's great.

The sound of cash registers bring us back to profanity. Money. Considering that this is supposed to be the second best selling album of all-time (see Wikipedia) there is a lot of ex-post irony hanging around here. Played to death, but still an amazing song. The saxophone is reaching for some incredible heights. That tremolo! And the guitar as well. Like Santana but better. I can't imagine a cover of this which could convince me.

Us Against Them. Apparently the longest track. The saxophone again. Fitting perfectly. Isn't this song about a fight? So calm and sovereign.

A prog-rock piece follows. Okay in the course of things.

And then we have Brain Damage. That must refer to Syd Barrett. He didn't make it to the stardom of Pink Floyd. But he is looming there, in the background. How to cope with losing the main band member. Pink Floyd and Joy Division. Two of the most important bands in rock music.

Further Reading

• Wikipedia
• Songmeanings: Pink Floyd

This was the concluding post of the the series 40 years, 40 albums.

 
link (no comments)  ... comment  
 

[music, albums] October 31, 2005 at 6:40:00 PM CET

XXXIX: 1965 John Coltrane - Ascension

This was a difficult choice but considering the contenders in my discotheque it is the only possible one, I think. The two other records I was contemplating about, Rubber Soul and Highway 61 Revisited are just too ubiquitous to be my personal faves. Like a Rolling Stone may be the rock song with the highest nostalgy value and George Harrison's sitar on Norwegian Wood opened a new world for us Westerners but the two albums they are on are by no means flawless. Lots of average songs are packed in between the jewels. I like those records but I don't love them. They lack the spark of Ascension, the ecstasy.

Ascension is a totally different thing than A Love Supreme. Which as I said before never did anything for me. I really dislike the motif which to me is dull and annoying. What is going on around it may be quite exciting but the repetition of the theme every two or three minutes kills that record for me. Ascension does only have a small motif which is mainly played in the opening and the concluding ensemble. It is a collective improvisation on a loose composition by Coltrane.

It was certainly inspired by Ornette Coleman's seminal Free Jazz from 1961 which is responsibe for the genre name of improvised jazz. Ascension to me is largely superior as Free Jazz lacks its intensity and to my ears almost sounds conventional in comparison. It isn't as dense as my 1965 pick which may also be due to the smaller band. On Ascension we have 5 saxophones, two trumpets, two basses plus piano and drums.

Ascension surely is a challenging listen but it is by no means cacophony. There even is a structure in the 40 minutes piece. In between the ensembles almost everyone has got a solo and the others provide a background "carpet of sound" (Klangteppich). I get the impression that the collective lifts up the soloist who slowly emerges from the crowd, stands in the centre for two to three minutes and then returns back into the womb of the band after. Especially the overblown sax solos are outbursts of pure energy. Altogether a perfect equilibrium of the community and the individual. In this sense Ascension does not only stand for a spiritual experience but also for a shared experience.

There are two versions of this piece. Coltrane preferred edition II because of more variety concerning the successive solos. That's the one I listened to most. On the 2000 reissue CD there are both versions, first #2, then #1. The first take has the advantage that in a way it is more complete as Elvin Jones on drums also has a solo. On both editions the basses only duet.

Personnel:

• John Coltrane, tenor saxophone
• Freddie Hubbard, trumpet
• Dewey Johnson, trumpet
• Marion Brown, alto saxophone
• John Tchicai, alto saxophone
• Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone
• Archie Shepp, tenor saxophone
• McCoy Tyner, piano
• Art Davis, bass
• Jimmy Garrison, bass
• Elvin Jones, drums

Links:

• Marcello's analysis
• Listen to two realaudio excerpts totalling about 17 minutes over at Aquarius Records.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part XXXIX was this post.

 
link (7 comments)  ... comment  
 

[music, albums] October 30, 2005 at 9:01:00 PM CET

Giant Sand has a new brother

Three songs (AAA2, Baby It's Cold Outside and Loretta and the Insect World) of Howe Gelb's latest project Arizona Amp and Alternator can be streamed at the BBC collective site. The first two songs evoke Crazy Horse at their most electric and Billie Holiday at her most glorious (Scout Niblett). They feature of course Howe Gelb's usual deadpan voice and his unpredictable twists and turns. By the way Grandaddy and M Ward are also present. I had to order the album a second ago.

 
link (one comment)  ... comment  
 

[music, albums] October 21, 2005 at 7:48:00 PM CEST

When music eats everything else including the words

I am totally overwhelmed by The Campfire Headphase. It gets better with each listen. And already my first aural encounter was mesmerising. I think I made it through six complete listens in the last four days. No. 7 is about to finish. There is no other album I can put on. The Boards have eaten my entire music collection and I don't care about it.

TCH is much better than its predecessor which had some corny almost cheesy tracks on it. And it is even better than the first album as there is not one dud track on the new one. The dreamy bucolic mood holds from the beginning to the end. The inclusion of guitars was a great idea. They add an extra warm acoustic flair to their music. Amazing how tired they sound. The band probably got that effect by rerecording the recording of the guitars many times.

I am not sure which track I like most. Maybe Dayvan Cowboy which in the beginning has got that late My Bloody Valentine quality where distortion is used to make a simple repetitive melody even more appealing. After two minutes it takes off to another, a slower, a riper universe. Where words are superfluous.

TCH is my fave album of this year so far and it is definitely much too beautiful for the disgusting rotten world I live in.

 
link (3 comments)  ... comment  
 

[music, albums] October 18, 2005 at 7:17:00 PM CEST

Not again

Okay then I guess I have to interpret Ascension as a 1965 live concert then. According to some sources the some people in the audience were screaming during the recording as the music was so intense.

 
link (no comments)  ... comment  
 

[music, albums] October 10, 2005 at 10:00:00 PM CEST

i can't put into words how much i hate the first two sugary, marshmellow songs on playing with fire. they must be by mr. spiritualized.

starts the album for me.

 
link (no comments)  ... comment  
 

[music, albums] October 9, 2005 at 8:04:00 PM CEST

XXXVIII: 1964 Tony Scott - Music for Zen Meditation (and other joys)

Erroneously I put John Coltrane's A Love Supreme into the 1964 poll. That so often lauded record never left any impression on me. Probably it has to do with disappointed expectations. I always thought there would be something highly spiritual going on in that music. Maybe there is but it has not yet reached me. Tony Scott's Music for Zen Meditation on the other hand I discovered on my own without having read anything about it beforehand. It became one of my favourite records to calm down and concentrate.

Around 1960 the clarinettist Tony Scott was the ambassador of jazz in the Far East. He spread jazz to Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In Tokyo he collaborated with the koto (a zither) player Shinichi Yuize and the shakuhachi (bamboo flute) player Hozan Yamamoto to create one of the first and most original albums of world music, Music for Zen Meditation. It is extraordinary as it is totally improvisational (this could be seen as its underlying jazz vibe which you actually can't hear) on one hand and traditional sounding on the other hand. In the Japanese classical music everything is composed, there is hardly any room for the performer to express himself. The result of this liberation is a naturally flowing peaceful record which to me almost sounds more classic and universal than the classical Japanese music itself. Which I am not very familiar with, I must admit though.

The album can be broken up in three parts. The first piece called Is Not All One? is the only track where the full trio of koto, shakuhachi and clarinet is featured. Which makes it the fullest sounding piece.

The other titles of the first side of the album all conjure up nature scenes.

On The Murmuring Sound of the Mountain Stream the dominating koto is responsible for the sound of the flowing water whereas the clarinet mumbles in the background.

Adequately A Quivering Leaf, Ask the Winds is a wonderful flute solo. In the shakuhachi I hear the musicality of the wind which arises when it touches the leaf.

After the Snow, the Fragrance is a duet of koto and clarinet. The waterdrops of the melting snow can be heard in the strings of the koto, the more profound clarinet provides the scent.

The koto and shakuhachi duet To Drift Like Clouds finishes the first side. A short and light piece.

All titles on the second side are linked to zen meditation. This makes them more abstract, there are no direct connections to natural phenomena. There is another reason why this side is more challenging to listen to, I think. The last three pieces are all koto-clarinet duos. Therefore there is less variation in sound. Which makes sense for meditation purposes, I guess, but I find my aural attention sometimes wandering away especially during the last two pieces Sanzen and Satori.

The first track Za-Zen though is a phantastic albeit much too short duet of shakuhachi and clarinet. It is quite amazing how Tony Scott on the left channel succeeds in mimicking the leading shakuhachi on the right channel. If you turn off the right speaker so that you don't have a reference the clarinet could be taken for a flute in places.

On the second piece, the instrumental chant Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya Sutra Tony Scott mainly plays in the lower registers and the clarinet has its typical soft and brumous sound.

The greatest thing about this album to me is that I never get bored by it. There are no melodies which can ever get used up. Every listen purifies the mind of the mundane distractions like a cup of clear green tea.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part XXXVIII was this post.

 
link (no comments)  ... comment  
 

[music, albums] September 30, 2005 at 8:15:00 PM CEST

XXXVII: 1978 Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance

Lyrics

Nonalignment Pact Pere Ubu start their debut LP with a shrill ringing feedback sound on the right channel. A couple of staid soothing bass guitar notes form the melodic antithesis to that noise and are then followed by a pushing rockabilly guitar riff on the left channel. The avantgarde meets garage punk via impressionism. When David Thomas unique high-pitch nasal voice joins in just after the feedback turns into the whinnying of horses which are about to be set free things get psyched out.

The Modern Dance On the propulsive trippy title track Thomas bleats the words at the end. In the background Tom Herman, the guitarist sings Merdre, Merdre. The word that almost started a riot at the beginning of the premiere of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi in 1896. And then the music halts and we suddenly find ourselves within a group of people whispering, talking and laughing. It could have been like that when King Ubu first saw the light of day in Paris.

Laughing The first two minutes have got a very relaxed almost folkish feel due to David Thomas musette which sounds a little like a Scottish bagpipe. There is also a jazzy vibe here with the saxophone free-style play. After Thomas vocals come in the song morphs into something entirely different though. He sings on shooting and/or laughing at the devil. This song reminds me a lot of Jeffrey Lee Pierce. A devil who has had his last dance some time ago.

Street Waves I hear Lou Reed's cool guitar (or was it Sterling Morrison's) from the golden times of the Velvet Underground. But there is also Maimone's dubby bass which is beautifully underlined by Ravenstine's synthesized storm sounds. This is the new age.

Chinese Radiation Not sure if this is a song about the promised land of communism. The red guard, the red book, the big wall and the new world seem to point into that direction. Musically it is quite listener-friendly and almost catchy. It starts slowly with the laid-back guitar riff, then there are some nice otherworldly synthesizer sounds and the bass giving the song more weight. David Thomas voice is that of a drunken hippo. After the accelerating middle part with the live atmosphere and the Hooray shouts the piano finishes this song off on a slow and grave note.

Life Stinks A leftover song from Rocket From The Tombs, the blues rock meets punk outfit heavily influenced by the Stooges which preceded Pere Ubu. It is by Peter Laughner who had already died when TMD was recorded. A simple riff and typical punk throwaway lyrics. This version is much subtler than the original.

Real World A great start with what I hear as the horns of a ship which arrives in a harbour. The chorus I don't like too much. Too stomping or something. What Pere Ubu build around it is fascinating though. A little bit of a mess but a very controlled mess. The real world finishes with bells and a forced laughter.

Over My Head Thomas whispers on this one. A spooky track which never rocks out. The line "And how I pray that I never should sin again" fits quite well. Something is going on here which cannot be proven by science.

Sentimental Journey I think this is the longest song on the album. Lots of people don't like it. It is meandering along after the glass bottles have been smashed on the floor. I love it. It has got that improvised performance feel. "Window. My size." That should give a lot of light.

Humor Me A reggae is about as good to end an album as a joint is to finish a day. Relax and smile. Even if you don't get the joke. The funniest ones are the ones without a punchline anyway.

Further reading: Vinyl Mine on The Modern Dance

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part XXXVII was this post.

 
link (7 comments)  ... comment  
 

[music, albums] September 5, 2005 at 8:35:00 PM CEST

Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band - Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)

Not my album of 1978, I have changed my mind. I started writing on it as if it was though. Here is the beginning of that futile attempt.

This is definitely not the most adventurous album by Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart. That would probably be the mythic double album Trout Mask Replica from 1969. Where the delta blues meets the avantgarde. I have never passed the litmus test of listening to that album attentively in one sitting. It's very far out, I did appreciate 1970's Lick My Decals off, Baby more. Maybe because of the shorter songs. Shiny Beast is more varied and more listener friendly than both these innovative experimental albums.

Why did I choose the Captain over Pere Ubu who debuted in 1978 with The Modern Dance? First there is the voice. It is extroverted. And it has got the blues. A blues rooted in the deep sunny south. Don van Vliet sings like a demon on acid coming from the desert. Whereas David Thomas muted vocals sound like from outer space. Someone (in the Spin record guide) compared his voice to a cry of a bird. It must be a huge bird. An albatross who has landed in the industrial winter landscape of Cleveland.

Then there is the music. Shiny Beast is full of trombones, slide guitar and percussion. The songs are ragged, change direction in the middle, stop and go on somewhere else. The Modern Dance is dominated by that powerful sound of the bass. Which I like but which hasn't got the life-affirming sprawling playful energy.

And the lyrics. Something like

on the wonderful calypsoish Tropical Hot Dog Night - a perfect song for a summer party - is a bold statement I cannot not love.

What else? On the instrumental Ice Rose the trombone and the marimbas meet for an impressionist still which turns into an expressionist havoc. The almost conventional ballad Harry Irene is the starting point for many successful Tom Waits songs. Sorry Tom but the Captain was first. And he could whistle as well! When I See Mommy I Feel Like a Mummy is rocking this house.

 
link (one comment)  ... comment