Coil - Astral Disaster (1999)

The immediate predecessor to Musick To Play In The Dark (although this remixed & expanded version was released a few months after Musick came out), Astral Disaster was recorded over Halloween (reclaimed as "Samhain" here) 1998.  Gary Ramon of psychedelicists Sun Dial, then on hiatus, invited the new Coil to his London studio where their first proper album emerged after an six-year venture into alter-ego projects.

As mentioned above, Ramon issued the album in 1999 on his own label but in just 99 copies (until a reissue last year) - this is the Threshold House edition, resplendent in its Steven Stapleton collage cover.  Three short tracks intersperse with three epic, mind-warping journeys that showed that Coil was definitely back in business, having built on their experimental years and now fleshed out by new core member Thighpaulsandra.  The Crowleyan monologue of The Sea Priestess looks forward to the coming of Musick, and album closer MÜ-ÜR anticipates Queens Of The Circulating Library.  Late-era Coil had been born.

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Lee Spencer - The Rune Of Light (1991)

Picked up this 99p charity shop CD expecting only comedy value - no artist was credited anywhere on the front, back or spine, and it was on Tring, the British budget-budget-budget label that I had fond memories of from the 90s.  It's actually pretty solid New Age-electronic, especially on the longer tracks, and the inner page of the cover does credit one Lee Spencer as the composer & recording artist - please take a moment to enjoy his discogs picture below.

My favourite thing here is the gentle pulse of the 13-minute Ages (wonder if it was titled in homage to Edgar Froese?).  Float 1 meanders along nicely too, with some eerie high tones.  Jera One Year is interesting for being the most rhythmic track, but it doesn't break the overall meditative mood.  Really nice and relaxing stuff throughout.

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Lee Spencer

Nils Frahm & Anne Müller - 7Fingers (2010)

Before her appearance on the Stare EP, German experimental cellist Anne Müller had already collaborated with Nils Frahm on this 2009 joint venture.  First given a private release in a specially-packaged limited run, 7Fingers was reissued by Erased Tapes and US label Hush the following year.

Müller's overdubbed cello lines get a chance to shine on their own first, before the title track sets out the MO for the album: Frahm in heavily electronic mode, with the cello lines either chopped & spliced or multi-tracked and effects laden.  The Reich/Glass-esque Let My Key Be C is an early highlight that dances around your ears before the core of album heads into glitchier territory once more.

Reminds To Teeth with its mix of piano, cello and ambient sounds is a mellower favourite for me, and the album ends with a vocal track sung by Berlin artist Andreas Bonkowski.  This closer, Long Enough, does sound a bit like an end credits song for some European indie thriller, but none the worse for it.  It's actually a perfect ending for a really nice album of interesting twists and turns.

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Keith Jarrett - Expectations (1972)

Another Jarrett post with a twist: instead of the usual record label that's released his every whim over the past five decades, here's Keith with the label (CBS) that took a punt on him by releasing a double album, no less, then unceremoniously dropped him as soon as it hit the shelves.  Who knows why - poor sales?  Expectations certainly isn't a bad record - it's a hugely ambitious blueprint for Jarrett's eclectic confidence as a player and arranger, and from this distance, a cornerstone of his discography.  Oh well, CBS's loss was Manfred Eicher's gain - and Ed Michel's, as Impulse would pick up Expectations' core quartet for the rest of the 70s.

That 'American Quartet' of Jarrett, Motian, Haden & Redman are expanded here by Airto Moreira on percussion and the underrated Sam Brown on stinging, firey guitar, with occasional string and brass additions.  After a quick orchestral curtain-raiser, Expectations gets going with the latin groove of Common Mama, a mode that will be returned to in late highlight Sundance.  Hitting a looser blues/gospel groove makes Take Me Back another highlight, and the freer jams are essential too.  There's a ton of Dewey Redman on Bring Back The Time When (If), and a rare organ performance from Jarrett on the side-long Nomads.  Notwithstanding the fact that the string dubs don't always gel, Expectations is essential Jarrett from the first minute to the 77th.

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Steve Reich - Sextet/Six Marimbas (1986)

This is probably my favourite album from Steve Reich's time on Nonesuch (which continues to this day), with the much more sombre and poignant Different Trains a close second.  The five-movement Sextet, completed in 1985, saw Reich return to the smaller, percussion-based ensemble playing of his work from the previous decade. 

Reich gives this sound a fresh perspective by introducing longer, sustained tones via synth and electric organ, and also bowed vibraphone.  The writing is more chromatic than before, giving it a jazzier hue which is especially effective in the upbeat first movement.  Following Sextet, the album features a rescoring of 1973's Six Pianos for marimba.  A very enjoyable update, Six Marimbas is ten minutes shorter than its progenitor, and creates a much more meditative mood.

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Bonus Reich: London Sinfonietta concert

This performance was given last Wednesday at Birmingham Symphony Hall.  Its first half featured the early Reich piece Clapping Music and a much more recent ballet work, Runner.  The second half was given over to a fine rendition of Music For 18 Musicians.  Broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.  One mp3 file, no pw, here.

Terje Rypdal - Waves (1978)

Quintessential late-70s ECM from the label's legendary ice & fire Norwegian guitarist, Waves could almost be co-credited to Danish trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, who made his first appearance alongside Rypdal here.  On opener Per Ulv, which would become one of Rypdal's most famous tunes, a Heart Of Glass-style rhythm machine introduces the guitarist's long, fluid meanderings before the track snaps back to a funky chorus led by Mikkelborg.  This pattern continues, making a memorable track of contrasts.  Karusell, the slower piece that follows, puts Mikkelborg in the spotlight, and he's even the writer of the strangely ominous circus-like Stenskoven that closes the album's first half.

On the title track, Rypdal re-establishes that this is still very much his record, painting eerie shapes on top of the bed of synths and fuzz bass from the great Sveinung Hovensjø, before Rypdal and Mikkelborg's lines start to weave around each other.  The Dain Curse moves the energy up several notches for the toughest funk on the album, before the synths come back for closing track Charisma.  It's not a full-on mellow out to end this great record, as Rypdal has plenty of soaring, razor-sharp lines still to put out there.  Highly recommended from start to finish.

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Gong - Expresso II (1978)

Second album by Pierre Moerlen's Gong, titled Expresso II as Gazeuse! had been released as 'Expresso' in some territories.  By this point, everyone bar the Moerlens who would've been recognisable as classic Gong - Allen, Smyth, Hillage, Howlett, Malherbe - had all jumped ship, but as far as riding out their Virgin contract was concerned, this was still Gong.  And it's a blast.

Expresso II takes the mallet-percussion jazz rock template of its predecessor and turns up the funk, resulting in the catchy strut of Heavy Tune, the jittery groove of Golden Dilemma, and so on.  Allan Holdsworth (still haven't got started on his solo records, dammit) gets in plenty more sui generis widdling, with newbie guitarist Bon Lozaga and guest Mick Taylor shining too, new bassist Hansford Rowe lays down some deft lines perfectly suited to this kind of music, and everyone has tons of fun.  I love this little record.

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Louis Andriessen - De Staat (1991)

Probably the most famous and most recorded work by Louis Andriessen (b. 1939, Utrecht), this is De Staat in its 1990 recording for Nonesuch.  It was written (between 1972 and 1976) as a sort of commentary on politics in music - what if Plato had been correct that certain musical modes were 'damaging to the character'?  What if music could bring down governments?  The sung text is taken from the relevant sections of The Republic, ending with the line "Any alteration in the modes of music is always followed by alteration in the most fundamental laws of the state".

If not insurrectionist, De Staat is certainly interesting, and an absolute blast to listen to.  35 minutes of continuous music that might bring surface comparisons to Steve Reich, it's wilder, jerkier and, well, jazzier.  Andriessen had Count Basie, Stan Kenton and Charlie Parker in mind as much as anything in the classical sphere, and also favoured instrumentation beyond the regular orchestral palette - there's parts for electric guitars and bass.  Enjoy the revolution.

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extra Andriessen (and Adams)

Andriessen's De Snelheid (Velocity - written 1982-84) was based on his observations about how listeners perceive speed and acceleration in musical works.  Even more lively than De Staat, it's a wilfully gleeful 17 minutes investigating what it would sound like if you had a metronomic rhythm constantly getting faster, whilst the harmonic changes in the music kept slowing down.  In short, it sounds great.  It's accompanied on this 2002 disc from the BBC Music Magazine by some John Adams classics - Short Ride, Chairman Dances, and a really nice choral work that takes its texts from John Donne and Emily Dickinson.

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Edgard Varèse - The Complete Works (Asko/Concertgebouw/Chailly) (1998 compi, rec. '92-'97)

A supreme overview of the composer that many people now discover via one of his biggest fans, Frank Zappa (fairly sure that was my route), these two discs are the authoritative guide to Edgard Varèse (1883-1965).  His student/close colleague Chou Wen-chung, still alive today at 95, helped ensure that this 1990s recording project came as damn near to exhaustive as possible by providing original manuscripts and editing incomplete ones as close to Varèse's likely intentions as he could.

This brought a fresh nuance to one of the slimmest catalogues in composing history (under three hours' worth of music in a regular lifespan), all of it here conducted by Riccardo Chailly.  The first disc is performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and takes in full-bodied early orchestral wonders like Ameriques and Arcana, both fine examples of Varèse's attitude to composing as blocks of 'organised sounds', with recurring themes and striking scores, not least for percussion and other devices (that air siren being a bit of a trademark).  Also on Disc 1 is the remastered original tape of Poème électronique for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 World's Fair - the pavilion being constructed by Iannis Xenakis, whose Concret PH also featured on entry and exit.

On Disc 2 the Asko Ensemble perform some of Varèse's most frequently recorded pieces like Density 21:5 for flute, and Ionisation for percussion (an alternate version of the latter, by Les Percussions de Strasbourg, here).  Varèse's use of technology is also showcased on Ecuatorial, with its ondes martenots (originally intended as parts for theremins - apparently what you can hear here is a special construction with elements of both) and Déserts, his late masterpiece.

Déserts is believed to originate from an abandoned symphony about outer space, and also an unfinished tape work - it thus became the first written & performed work to feature tape music (of percussive and factory sounds) alongside live musicians.  Intending to evoke not just physical deserts, "but also distant inner space... where man is alone in a world of mystery and essential solitude", it's possibly the crowning achievement in a compact but still astonishing life's work.

Original cover, 2CD fatbox, 1998

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G.I. Gurdjieff - Sacred Hymns, performed by Keith Jarrett (1980)

Not had any solo piano from my favourite master of the art for a while, so here's something with a bit of a twist: none of the 15 pieces on this album were actually composed by Keith Jarrett.  Sacred Hymns is instead Jarrett's first emergence as an interpreter of written music by other composers, a sideline that would gather pace as the 80s progressed.

The composer in this case was Armenian mystic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (b. circa 1870, d. 1949), to whose philosophies Jarrett was sometime devoted.  The music here dates from the 1920s, when Gurdjieff wrote with the assistance of Russian composer Thomas de Hartmann.  All of the pieces bear devotional titles, and are influenced by Russian Orthodox liturgical music as well as other Central Asian religious & folk themes.  Aside from that, fellow fans of Ravel/Satie will find much to love here as well.  Beautiful stuff.

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Tomasz Stańko Quartet - Matka Joanna (1995)

After three fleeting appearances on ECM in the two decades prior, only one of them as leader, Tomasz Stańko stepped into Oslo's Rainbow Studio in the spring of 1994 to make the label his primary home for the rest of his life.  One wonders if Manfred Eicher listened to Bosonossa and heard a career renaissance in the making that he simply had to have on his roster - not least because the trumpeter's sense of space was just crying out for the sympathetic ear of Jan-Erik Kongshaug.

The Bosonossa quartet was imported intact, with Tony Oxley's eerie percussion introducing Monastery In The Dark like echoing footsteps on ancient stone floors.  The inspiration for this album was Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1961 film Matka Joanna od Aniołów (Mother Joan of the angels), for which much of this unsettling, spacious music could've made a good soundtrack.  Stańko, Stenson and Jormin all work together brilliantly, but the star turn in the quartet definitely belongs to Oxley here, right through to the closing percussion solo where the nunnery's malevolent spirits are finally exorcised.

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Steve Roach - The Magnificent Void (1996)

It's hard to think of any review that could describe this album more succinctly than its three-word title does, but nevertheless, here's a few lines on Steve Roach's journey into vast emptiness from the mid-90s.  Best known for his 1980s masterpieces Structures From Silence and Dreamtime Return, this turn into a much more darker ambient deserves to be equally celebrated.

Whether The Magnificent Void evokes for you travel through the endless blackness of space (and a lot of it would make superior sci-fi soundtrack music), or philosophical contemplation of the void of unconscious non-existence (which seems to have been Roach's intent, given the quotation from acid-psychiatrist Stanislav Grof), it's a keeper.  70 minutes of well-arranged, ice cold synth sweeps, occasional eerie voices and shimmers of an unknowable light make The Magnificent Void a journey worth taking multiple times.

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