Steve Hillage - Green (1978)

In early 1977, Steve & Miquette had two albums planned: one was to be The Red Album, the other The Green Album.  The former became Motivation Radio, from last Friday's post, but the latter kept to the original theme in its final title.  Whether it was the original intention or a later evolution, the distinction is clear - where Motivation Radio was rockier and more song-based, with only one instrumental, Green is over 50% instrumental, and points the way forward to Hillage & Giraudy's future direction.

Nick Mason was an apt choice for producer, as you can definitely draw more obvious parallels between Green and the classic Floyd sound.  Again, though, the lyrics are much more upbeat than Roger Waters' glass-half-empty world, and although very much of their time are accessible and heartfelt rather than just stoned ramblings (which I think is where I struggle with Gong, only really warming to them when Pierre Moerlen takes over.  But anyway, back to Hillage and Green.)

As mentioned above, with the exception of Unidentified Flying Being, which feels like more of a Motivation Radio track, this album is much spacier and atmospheric.  Most of the tracks flow into each other, and UFB segues into a stunning instrumental suite that will only be broken by one more minute of singing for the rest of the album.  Miquette and Steve really come into their own here as masters of ambient sequencing and other synth wonders, and this is also uniquely the album where Hillage favours guitar synth over regular guitar, further broadening the electronic palette.  Ending with a reworked Gong theme, Green really is space rock par excellence, and certainly my most enduring favourite in its genre.

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Tomasz Stańko 1942-2018

Aw, crap.

Tomasz Stańko, one of my favourite jazz artists, has died after a lung cancer diagnosis earlier this year.

Will post an album in tribute in the next couple of days, in between the scheduled posts for this week.

Steve Hillage - Motivation Radio (1977)

Back to Steve Hillage, with his third solo album.  Appearing after two solid slabs of psychedelic prog, this is where Hillage reshaped his sound around the funk and proto-disco music he was unashamedly enjoying at the time (despite fans who spoke to him carping about it, which only spurred him on).  The result was a massively fun record of eight tightly arranged shorter songs, and a cute little cover of Not Fade Away to finish.

Motivation Radio's lyrics can seem a bit dated (however, is it just me that finds Radio quite prescient, given the rise of the internet/social media as an admittedly imperfect counter to mainstream media?) and hippy-dippy, but at their heart just boil down to self-confidence/self-discovery platitudes and other messages of positivity.  Which is kind of nice; there's a great line in the AMG review of the album, although I suspect they won't have been the first to use it, about Motivation Radio being "the light side of the moon" in comparison to the largely downbeat Pink Floyd MO of the era.

Floyd are a vaguely useful musical comparison too; the album has a great 70s rock production with a generous dose of synth, both courtesy of Malcom Cecil of Tonto's Exploding Head Band, and there's also lingering traces of Hillage's time in Gong (see Octave Doctors).  Miquette Giraudy's synth talent, pointing the way to the future, is worth mentioning too.  What really elevates Motivation Radio, though, are Hillage's great guitars, energising the whole record with driving riffs and blistering leads.  When this coincides with the more purple lyrics, the result is a nice balancing act that stops the songs seeming too twee - Light In The Sky and Saucer Surfing are perfect examples.  With a tight rhythm section wrapping all this up, the result is just a wonderful album.

More to come on Monday! ;)

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Ben Lukas Boysen - Spells (2016)

It's shaping up to be a great summer for Erased Tapes, with Masayoshi Fujita (previously featured here) releasing a new album this weekend, and Michael Price (recently featured here) following suit a month later.  To celebrate, here's another very fine album from the label, by Ben Lukas Boysen, a Berlin-based musician/composer, friend of Nils Frahm (who mixed/mastered Spells), and erstwhile electronic artist under his Hecq alias.

The marketing for Spells featured a quote from Nils Frahm - "From now on, if anyone asks, this is a real piano" - in reference to Boysen's spare but perfect touch on his central instrument here.  On the opening pair of tracks, everything develops at a glacial pace, before the next pair, Sleepers Beat Theme and Golden Times I pick up pace for the album's stunning centre.  Both are beautifully crafted pieces of soundtracky evocative atmosphere - Sleepers Beat Theme was in fact composed for a documentary short.  The highlights keep coming on Spells' second half, from the most 'electronic' and dramatic track Nocturne 4 to the piano-only closer Selene.  Massively recommended, from start to finish.  Oh, and that album cover doesn't half remind me of something... could it be the record that kickstarted my other favourite record label?

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System 7 - Point 3: Water Album (1994)

Steve Hillage & Miquette Giraudy - what can I say.  Legendary power couple of UK psychedelia and electronica, like a version of Chris & Cosey where their hippy roots didn't take a turn for the extreme in the 70s but stayed largely sunny and upbeat.  Their music always cheers me up when necessary, and was planning some posts when by happy coincidence, got a request in the comments last week.  On Friday there'll be some classic 70s Hillage, but for today, here's my favourite album by System 7, Hillage & Giraudy's electronic umbrella project formed in the late 80s out of their friendship with Alex Paterson of The Orb.

Point 3 was released in October 1994 in two versions: the more uptempo Fire, which I'm not as much a fan of; and Water, which is possibly my favourite album of 90s ambient/trance.  With a 74 minute album that just flows so perfectly with featherweight synths and Hillage's keening lead guitar, it's hard to pick out favourites.  Nevertheless, I'm going to go for the 14 minute Coltrane, with its Balinese frogs, and the 13 minute Alpha Wave - the extended running times all the better to hypnotise you with - and Dr Livingstone I Presume, with its vocal sounds.  Everywhere though, there's gorgeous music, great sound effects, and top-notch collaborators like Derrick May, Laurent Garnier and Youth helping out with the production.  The glide goes on forever.

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Geraldo Azevedo - s/t (1977)

Hailing from Petrolina, Pernambuco, Geraldo Azevedo started out as a songwriter and a player in a few minor groups, which included crossing paths with Nana Vasconcelos early on.  This was his first solo album, following a collaborative release with Alceu Valença five years earlier at the height of the Udigrudi underground movement.  Cross-fertilizing MPB with folk styles from Northeastern Brazil proved to be a good combination on this album, allowing Azevedo's fingerpicked guitar talent to shine.

There's a good balance in these ten songs between string arrangements (and occasional synth) and earthier guitar sounds - lead guitarists Robertinho do Recife & Ivinho are particularly well featured on the 8-minute medley in the first half, and on the following Domingo De Pedra E Cal and Em Copacabana.  That stretch of the album contains its strongest highlights for me, and it's arguably the style that fits Azevedo best: languid and contemplative, but with just enough fire to drive the tracks forward.

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Orbital - s/t [aka The Brown Album, or Orbital 2 in the US] (1993)

Dug out this album thanks to Acid Brass from last week - went on a wee nostalgia trip of late 80s/90s dancey electronica.  An hour of classic Kraftwerkian techno bookended by a couple of jokey nods to Steve Reich's early tape work - seems ideal for posting here.

By 1992, Orbital's Hartnoll brothers had broken on the dance scene with a home cassette-deck recording (the immortal Chime) and released a solid first album.  The second was produced with a new level of confidence and skill, from the introductory tape-phase looping of Worf from Star Trek TNG (introduced on their 'Green' debut) to the more fully-realised album coherence and buildup of each track's elements.

There's enough acid squelch on the likes of Remind and Lush 3-2 to link to Orbital's roots,  but throughout the Brown Album lots of other details reward deep listening.  The sitar colourings on Planet Of The Shapes, which also has a sample from Withnail & I synced in perfect rhythm; on Walk Now, the only time I've ever enjoyed listening to a didgeridoo.... it's an album offering great variety.  My absolute favourite thing here is the 20 minute stretch that takes in the gradually-mutating Lush 3-1/3-2 and melodic highlight Impact (The Earth Is Burning), but the lovely Halcyon + On + On isn't far behind.  A hugely recommended album to anyone wanting to hear a classic of 90s electronic music that continues to age well.

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See also at SGTG: Underworld - Everything, Everything / Polygon Window - Surfing On Sine Waves

Julius Eastman - Unjust Malaise (2005 compi, rec. 1973 - circa 1981)

Some more of Julius Eastman's wonderful, singular music (previously posted: Femenine), in the first major excavation of recorded work from his lifetime.  Eastman can be heard at the end of this collection describing his style as "organic music", in which material is carried across from segment to segment before being gradually replaced by new material, in a distinctive, personalised take on the Downton NYC minimalist circle that he moved in.  Like Femenine, the six works in three hours contained here can sometimes require patience, but the payoffs are magical.

The compilation starts off in 1973 with Stay On It for voice, piano, violin, clarinet, saxes and percussion.  The central theme, sounding like an uplifting gospel/soul refrain, acts as a framing device for the increasingly abstract and improvisational sections, before the saxes start to play a more solemn reduction of the theme and piece ambles bluesily toward a quiet, reflective ending.  If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich? (1977) for a larger, brass-dominated ensemble, isn't as immediately accessible - its focus on simple ascending chromatic scales can feel a bit spartan for a while, but it's well worth sticking with.

Next we get to hear Eastman's wonderful baritone voice in his unaccompanied prelude to The Holy Presence of Joan D'Arc, as the title figure is exhorted by various saints to "speak boldly".  The rest of the 1981 work is a formidable inquisition by ten cellos, and another highlight of the collection.  Lastly, a full concert from Northwestern University in 1980 (with its spoken intro tacked on the end, for whatever reason) presents three of Eastman's most iconoclastic pieces, played on four pianos.  Eastman explains that his use of the N-word in two of the titles (apparently part of a longer series) was as reappropriation; likewise, the rhythmically strident Gay Guerilla a call to activism.  All three are absolutely stunning to listen to, and occupy a sweet spot between the tightly formalised piano work of Reich and Glass and the abstract, textural drones of Charlemagne Palestine.

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Disc 2
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Sensations' Fix - Fragments Of Light (1974)

Great cult album of floaty and burbly synths galore, recorded - depending upon which sources are correct - either by Italian musician/producer Franco Falsini alone during a short period in Virginia, or as the first album proper by Falsini and new Sensations' Fix bandmates after he returned to Italy.  Yep, even researching this album was weird.  Odder still are the Amazon/iTunes downloads of the handful of Sensations' Fix albums available, with atrocious remixing and track shortening, even cack-handed overdubbing.  I've therefore had my eye on this long-deleted Polydor CD for a while, and finally got one that wasn't going for silly money.

Whether recorded by Falsini alone or not, Fragments Of Light is a gorgeous little oddity of 11 short tracks based around guitar and Eminent and Minimoog synths, all instrumental bar two tracks.  To deal with those two first, Space Energy Age is a cute little piece of space-pop with an early drum machine, and Do You Love Me sounds oddly out place, with a more tuneless vocal and what does seem like a full band (could still be Falsini overdubbing everything, dunno).

The rest of the album is a quite lovely trip through accessible, melodic electronics, basic rhythm guitar and little bits of psych-influenced lead guitar.  Squint a little and it could occasionally be Heldon without the darkness, or a more succinct, clear-eyed Cosmic Jokers session. Falsini was a definite Fripp fan too, with the LP including the message "Dear Robert, you'll be glad to know that the heavenly music organisation has branches here too".  Brilliant, evocative track titles abound - my absolute favourite is Music Is Painting In The Air, with its basic four chords and an echoey lead guitar over a floating bed of synth clouds.  Space Closure is the longest and most prog-like at 6 minutes, and Telepathic Children the perfect kosmiche closer.  Highly recommended.

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Ensemble Belcanto - Come Un'Ombra Di Luna (2001)

As mentioned last month, German mezzosoprano Dietburg Spohr founded this vocal ensemble in 1986, and this was their first ECM New Series release.  Spohr formed Ensemble Belcanto to fill a gap that she saw, that of a group of female voices concentrating on new music.  They'd go on to delve way back into the medieval on a 2013 album of Hildegaard von Bingen's music, but before that came this July 2000 recording of four 1990s works that had been written for the group.

The first of these is a four-part suite by Haim Alexander (1915-2012), of settings of poems by Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945), who Alexander had met when both were German-Jewish exiles in Jerusalem.  The complex wordplay of these four excerpts from Lasker-Schüler's final published volume, Mein blaues Klavier, is rendered in wonderful dramatic shapes by Alexander and by Ensemble Belcanto's voices and percussion.

Next up are two short pieces: Konrad Boehmer (1941-2014), who was posted here way back in electroacoustic mode, contributes a great exercise in minature polyphony, set to the text of Un Monde Abandoneé des Facteurs by Michel Robic.  Fabrizio Casti's (b. 1960) mournful, acapella setting of Cesare Pavese's post-apocalyptic desolation gives this album its title.  Closing the album in memorable style is the 18-minute Séraphin-Stimmen by Wolfgang Rihm (b.1952).  Influenced by Artaud, the clave-punctuated wordless piece is a madrigal of sorts, with haunting gaps of virtual silence.  Séraphin-Stimmen was by far my favourite piece here, but the whole album hangs together very well and makes for rewarding repeat-listens.

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Williams Fairey Brass Band - Acid Brass (1997)

Picked up a classic charity shop find the other week.  And yep, it's exactly what the cover says - acid house anthems performed by a brass band.  This was the brainchild of London artist Jeremy Deller, who intended the project not to be a comic novelty, but a serious endeavour in drawing commonalities in British working class culture.  Deller went as far as including an elaborate flowchart in the CD booklet, with 'acid house' at one side and 'brass bands' at the other; the various links sometimes interesting, sometimes perhaps a bit spurious in driving his point home.  But enough sociocultural high-concept - as always, I'm more interested in the music.

Deller eventually found a brass band that were game for the challenge in Stockport's Williams Fairey Brass Band, formed in 1937 (I'm guessing this isn't the original lineup on Acid Brass).  Arranging Deller's chosen tracks was composer/arranger Rodney Newton, who also gets an interesting liner note about the challenges of the material, for instance, getting a group of brass band blokes to chant 'voodoo ray' in "low, guttural voices".  A live performance in Liverpool followed, seemingly well received by an audience of all ages.  A limited edition recording of the concert, also titled Acid Brass, was followed by this studio album.

So what does it sound like?  Well, to be honest, mostly like a cod-Mission Impossible/Austin Powers film score (What Time Is Love made me laugh out loud), but no less entertaining for that.  Newton does capture well the main themes and the tension-and-release of the originals, and purely from a melodic standpoint, A Guy Called Gerald's Voodoo Ray and 808 State's Pacific 202 sound lovely, proving their durability as highly original pieces of dance music.  The success of the arrangements can vary - I do like the tuned percussion (glock? marimba?) on those two tracks, and on Nitro Deluxe's Let's Get Brutal.  Derrick May's Strings Of Life doesn't translate quite as well, with its immortal string stabs rather weakly rendered - if anything, a testament to what a stunning work of genius the original was and still is.  Regardless, Acid Brass is a fun listen, especially in the summer sunshine.

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Chick Corea - Children's Songs (1984)

A year before setting off on his wondrous Voyage with Steve Kujala, Chick Corea recorded this beautiful, intimate solo piano album.  The concept was to tie together several short compositions that he'd been accumulating since the early 70s into a suite that would "convey simplicity as beauty, as represented in the spirit of a child".  The result was 20 pieces covering a wealth of different moods in just over half an hour, the many subsequent comparisons to Bartók’s Mikrokosmos well justified.

Longtime Corea fans will recognise earlier appearances of a few of the pieces: Nos. 1, 3  and 6 are reworked Return To Forever themes, Nos. 5 & 15 appeared (with those titles already in place) on 1978's Friends, and No. 9 is Pixieland Rag from 1976's The Leprechaun.  On this album they all find their ideal home alongside the others, to the point where everything runs together so perfectly it's hard to pick out favourites.  Perhaps it's even counterproductive to do so (although 4, 6, & 10 always come to mind for me, for starters), as Children's Songs is best enjoyed as a suite.  And it's a suite with a great postscript on CD editions, in the five minute Addendum for piano, violin and cello.

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Milton Nascimento - Milagre Dos Peixes (1973)

Milton Nascimento's follow up to Clube Da Esquina was this, his most experimental album.  Even the presentation of the original release was out of the ordinary - an elaborate fold-out sleeve and colour-coded inserts for each track, and eight of the album's 11 tracks on LP, the final three on an accompanying 7".  This was a good three years before Songs In The Key Of Life - anyone know of any other precedents, or was Milton the first to do the LP+single package for an album?

The music was much more exploratory, earthy and percussive (Nana Vasconcelos is on fire throughout) than Milton's previous releases.  Highlighting this was the complete absence of lyrics on all but three tracks, the result of censorship from Brazil's military dictatorship of the time.  What remained were repetitive incantations from the vocalists, reaching their most primal on A Chamada, and just exhilarating and celebratory elsewhere.  The jazziness of Native Dancer is prefigured on the longest track Hoje É Dia De El-Rey, and that album would of course see a reworking of the Milagre Dos Peixes title track.

One of three tracks here left with its lyrics intact, the title track remains one of Milton's most enduring and gorgeous songs.  The other two are Pablo, sung by Lô Borges' youngest brother Nico (13 at the time), and a cover of Nelson Angelo's Sacramento, but this album is primarily about the music.  The uplifting rhythms and chants; the occasional string arrangements on Hoje É Dia De El-Rey and the title track; the barroom atmosphere created on A Última Sessão De Música - Milagre Dos Peixes is, in spite of the circumstances in its home nation at the time, a joyous experience, and unique in its creator's lengthy discography.

Alternate cover for European reissues - some with altered running order.

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Milton Nascimento/Lô Borges - Clube Da Esquina (1972)

Back to Brazil, with possibly the most stunning high water mark in MPB (música popular brasileira).  Clube Da Esquina (corner club) was a collective of musicians from the Minas Gerais state, led by Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges, the latter just 20 when this double-album was recorded.  With 21 songs in 64 minutes, Clube Da Esquina is like a fat-free White Album or stripped-down Manassas.  Over the succinct running time, it manages to take in regional folk influences, hazy, languid psychedelic pop and a huge dash of Beatlesque styling in a journey that feels more perfect with every listen.  Even the album cover has a great story behind it.

A track-by-track is pointless on an album like this; picking out highlights near-impossible for one with literally no duds - even the two tracks that don't break the minute mark are necessary, rather than jokey filler.  So here's a handful of favourites.  From Lô Borges' seven compositions, I'll go for the sun-dappled goodbyes of O Trem Azul with its gorgeous harmonies, and Trem De Doido, a poignant ode to mistreated psychiatric patients, with Beto Guedes' stinging lead guitar.

Out of Milton Nascimento's phenomenal songwriting and legendary voice... what to choose as favourites?  I'm going to plump for his more impressionistic side that comes out in the Side 3-4 split, on Um Gusto De Sol's woozy, sleepy personification of a pear in a fruit bowl, and the swirling production effects of Pelo Amor De Deus.  But then he's just as good as an interpreter, of Spanish songwriter Carmelo Larrea's bolero standard Dos Cruces, or duetting with Alaíde Costa on Me Deixa Em Paz.  Or indeed with no lyrics at all, on the near-title track or on the ode to his adoptive mother Lilia, soon to be re-recorded with Wayne Shorter (Wagner Tiso from Native Dancer is also all over Clube with his great organ style). Stay tuned for more of the near-instrumental side of Milton later this week, but for now make sure to download this perfect album.

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