The Jazz Composer's Orchestra - s/t (1968)

A fearsome, brutal armoured tank of an album (a double album, even) from the pen of Michael Mantler, and performed by a cast of dozens of musicians topped by the cream of late 60s free jazz as listed on the cover.  This 73-minute beast contains six tracks of tightly-controlled chaos, climaxing in a 33-minute 'concerto' fronted by legendary percussive pianist Cecil Taylor.  So if last Friday's jazz entry was a melodic, accessible session, this one, well, not so much.

That doesn't mean it shouldn't be approached with the same enthusiasm, as the rewards are rich.  Jazz Composer's Orchestra kicks off with 14 minutes of Communications 8, in which ominous drones and no less than five double-bass players form the backdrop for solos by Don Cherry and Gato Barbieri.  Communications 9 then plays in with dissonant strings to set the stage for Larry Coryell's guitar blowout - whether he'd been listening to the then-new Velvet Underground album, particularly Lou Reed's performance on I Heard Her Call My Name, is an open question; Coryell certainly gives any avant-rock pioneer a run for their money here.

On the next lengthy stretch, things calm down a bit, particularly in Steve Swallow's lengthy bass intro.  Communications 10 reminds me of Mingus a bit in its writing; the soloist this time is trombonist Roswell Rudd.  It's almost time for the main event, but first a brief prelude, or Preview.  And who better to give the final-act overture than Pharoah Sanders at his most unhinged?  He's certainly a memorable palate-cleanser, as Carla Bley vacates the piano stool to let Cecil Taylor play out the two-part finale.  Mantler fires up the orchestra to full blast, and Taylor lets rip in his unique style - kinda want to write more, but this one just has to heard to be believed.  A massive (in every sense of the word) double-album that will simply blow your head off every time you give it the chance.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Michael Mantler & Don Preston - Alien
Carla Bley - Fleur Carnivore
Carla Bley - Appearing Nightly

Allan Holdsworth - Road Games (1983)

Finally got hold of something by the erstwhile Gong guitarist whose unique style I've been enjoying so much on their post-Daevid Allen records.  It's not much - a 24-minute mini-album - but it's a start.  Road Games came to be from Eddie Van Halen enthusing to Warner Bros about how much he loved Allan Holdsworth's playing.  It would be a short-lived stint at the corporate behemoth - Holdsworth and producer Ted Templeman didn't get on, and the maverick guitarist broke free of his contract shortly afterwards for pastures new.  Road Games, however, is still pretty damn good.

A top-flight jazz fusion trio was established with Zappa drummer Chad Wackerman and Bruford bassist Jeff Berlin, both of whom Holdsworth knew and liked.  Three of the six tracks also added vocals: Bluesbreakers/Juicy Lucy singer Paul Williams, who also worked with Holdsworth on either side of Road Games, sings the title track, and Jack Bruce is featured on the last two songs.  As fine as their contributions are, Road Games is really all about the music created by the core trio. 

Opening track Three Sheets To The Wind starts out with a clean, Metheny-esque chiming tone, but soon Holdsworth's overdubbed lead lines start to cook, showing just why someone like Van Halen would've admired him.  The title track is more of a straightahead rocker, and although the guitar solos are great, I much prefer the jazzier stuff, like Water On The Brain Pt. 2 (there's no Part 1) which follows, or the more laidback Tokyo Dream, which really lets Holdsworth stretch out.  If you want to listen to a really great and underrated guitarist, there's far worse ways to spend 20-odd minutes.

Original 12" cover

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Previously posted on SGTG:
Gong - Gazeuse!
Gong - Expresso II

Jon Gibson - Variations I & II / Thirties (1996 compi, rec. 1972-3)

Jon Gibson has featured on this blog before, but never as a headline artist - usually tucked away as a member of the Philip Glass Ensemble.  In fact, he was a key player in several minimalist landmarks, as the liner notes of this compilation state: no-one else played on the premieres of Einstein On The Beach as well as Terry Riley's In C and Steve Reich's Drumming.  His compositional output might have been modest, but on the evidence here it's well worth a visit.

Visitations I & II were recorded in March 1973, and released on LP that year by Glass' Chatham Square label.  If you're expecting, as I was, given the company Gibson moved in, two decent slabs of repetitive minimalism, think again.  The two Visitiations pieces, subtitled 'A 16-Track Multi-Textured Environmental Soundscape' are concerned with pure sound in vast, beatless landscapes.  Cymbals and percussion do abound, but purely as texture, with flute and other sounds, environmental and electronic, floating over the top.  Very early Popol Vuh comes to mind - a lush but alien ambient trip through the environs of some ancient civilization or far off planet.

A reissue of that on its own would've been impressive enough, but the CD adds a third piece, boosting the running time by half an hour.  Thirties was recorded at the ICES festival for experimental music in London, August 1972 - apparently AMM also recorded one of their releases at the same festival.  The recording quality is rough and ready, but this doesn't detract from the piece - in fact, the distortion in places adds a very enjoyable edge.  In contrast to the reissued LP, Thirties is highly rhythmic, and Gibson describes it as an open-ended "skeleton" that was used in many situations, the only set progression being a structure around divisions of the number 30.  On this live recording, it comes across as an engrossing percussive jam, and I'm reminded of early Kraftwerk more than once - perhaps a more driving, engaged version of their second album, or even the pre-Kraftwerk Organisation sans organ.  Julius Eastman comes to mind too - Femenine in particular. Well worth your time.

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Hank Mobley - Soul Station (1960)

Superior Blue Note session from February 1960.  I reckoned this would round out a week of otherwise avant-garde music quite nicely as it's just so much good clean fun: Hank Mobley, the "middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone" (jazz writer Leonard Feather) might not have reshaped postwar jazz as dramatically as Davis, Coltrane et al, but he could write a clutch of neat tunes and turn out a superb record that sounds fresh as a daisy when it's about to turn 60 years old.

Soul Station is bookended by two great covers, Irving Berlin's Remember and the Rainger/Robin movie song If I Should Lose You, with the four Mobley originals in between carrying the same breezy melodiousness and adding up to an album without a single weak spot.  The more I listen to Soul Station (about three times a week on average whenever I dig it out, like this month), the more I appreciate Paul Chambers and Art Blakey as a superb rhythm section, Wyn Kelly as an underrated pianist, and every spirits-lifting line from Mobley. Just dig dis.

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Iancu Dumitrescu - Galaxy (1993 compi of recordings 1971-1993)

The pattern of the early Edition Modern releases - whereby the odd numbers were new & archival works by Iancu Dumitrescu, and the even numbers were shared with Ana-Maria Avram - ended with this release; all subsequent discs would be shared, up until 2016.  Since Avram sadly died in 2017, it remains to be seen if Dumitrescu will continue writing and recording.  Galaxy, ED.MN.1005, is pure Dumitrescu at his clanking, clattering best, even if the recording vintages towards the end of this disc are a little lower-fi than would come to be expected.

The title track kicks off proceedings, and was composed & recorded in 1993, scored for three harryphones (a single-stringed instrument of Dumitrescu's design), three percussionists and computer sounds.  It starts out almost as violent as the notorious Pierres Sacreés (see links below), before calming down a bit to let the eerie strings and percussion stretch out.  Next is 18 minutes of Movemur Et Sumus III, composed 1978 and recorded 1993, for three double basses and percussion.  The legendary Fernando Grillo isn't among the bassists this time, but the three on this recording get a great slippery grinding (if that makes sense!) sound out of the layers of bass writing.

From here on in, it's vintage works and recordings all the way: Reliefs II for two orchestras and piano was composed and recorded in 1975, performed here by the Romanian Chamber Orchestra conducted by Iosif Conta.  Despite the drop in audio fidelity, it's still clear how darkly atmospheric Dumitrescu's writing was back in the 70s.  The following string quartet Memorial/Alternances (composed 1968) actually sounds clearer, despite being recorded in 1971 (at least according to the liner notes).  The disc concludes with another orchestral work, Basoreliefs Simphoniques, composed 1977 and featured here in a live performance from 1980, showing perhaps a bit of a Pendercki influence.


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Previously posted on SGTG:
ED.MN.1001 - Medium/Cogito
ED.MN.1002 - Au Dela De Movemur
ED.MN.1003 - Pierres Sacreés
ED.MN.1004 - Musique de Paroles
ED.MM.1006 - A Priori
ED.MN.1008 - Five Pieces
ED.MN.1009 - Ouranos II 
ED.MN.1010 - Meteors & Pulsars 
ED.MN.1011 - Musique Action '98
ED.MN.1014 - Orbit of Eternal Grace
ED.MN.1018 - Remote Pulsar
ED.MN.1019 - In Tokyo

Octavian Nemescu - Metabizantinirikon, Trisson, Sonatu(h)r (1992 compi, rec. 1986-1990)

By request, an hour of shimmering, mindwarping tape-based spectral music, which, when I discovered it three years ago at the sadly-no-more Spook City USA, caused a Big Bang in my listening habits that led to at least a half-dozen other Romanian composers (see links below).  One of those other composers I went so crazy for that they're about to get their 14th post here on Wednesday.  For today though, very happy to bring back into circulation this 1992 CD of Octavian Nemescu's music, which was originally released as a 1991 LP with just the first two tracks.

Nemescu, born 1940 in the Moldavian city of Pașcani, has been active from the 60s to today, and revisiting his discogs page was a handy reminder that there's still a good few releases I must get hold of.  This compilation starts with Metabizantinirikon for saxophone (the great Daniel Kientzy) and magnetic tape, produced at IRCAM in 1986.  Intended to evoke the Byzantine era via its landscapes and bird & insect life, Kientzy's lead lines float over the buzzing and fluttering of the tape-manipulated electronics for a beautifully meditative 20 minutes.

The other two pieces are purely electronics/tape.  Trisson (1987) was commissioned by and recorded at GMVL (Groupe de Musique Vivante Lyon), and Nemescu recommends that it be listened to outdoors, on a spring or summer night.  The vast rumbling soundscape that underpins Trisson brings Eliane Radigue to mind for me, but the whole track is nowhere near as minimalist; the gently pinging melodies are perhaps closer to David Behrman.  After an ear-ringing finale, it fades out and it's time for the CD-only track Sonatu(h)r, composed in 1986 and mixed 1990 at the GMEB (Experimental Group from Bourges). 

As in the first track above, in Sonatu(h)r Nemescu is interested in the dynamic between human cultures and natural animal timbres, and again recommends outdoor, rural listening at dusk in springtime.  The shrill high tones escaping from my earphones in the office one lunchtime made someone ask what the hell I was listening to - Sonatu(h)r is definitely a deep-clean for the brain, and the most strikingly alien piece among an hour's worth of phenomenal, otherworldly sounds.  Massively recommended.

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Previously posted at SGTG: Split CD Nemescu/Cazaban
Other posts featuring Daniel Kientzy: 
Berio, Stroe, Stockhausen etc
Gerard Pape
Niculescu, Marbe, Vieru
Rotaru, Taranu etc

Steve Roach, Kevin Braheny, Michael Stearns - Desert Solitaire (1989)

Sun-baked ambient/superior new-age from three masters of the craft.  Roach I know fairly well, and featured him here not long ago; Braheny and Stearns were names I'd heard, perhaps heard the odd track a while back, so was very happy to pick up this collaborative effort between all three of them the other week.  Desert Solitaire was based on the book of the same name by writer and naturalist Edward Abbey, who died shortly before the album's release and thus became its dedicatee. 

Roach, Braheny and Stearns approached recording with the intent of evoking America's natural landscapes in the same way that the first two of them had with Western Spaces three years previous, but this time with extra desert: in long, parched drones that evoked scorching, barely breathable air and exploration at the mercy of oppressive sunlight.  Given this intent, don't let the beat-driven album opener put you off - it's merely the start of the journey.  Soon the album opens up, with early highlight Specter sounding like Eno In The Mojave.

The tracklist indicates which musician(s) was/were the main composer(s) for each piece, which varies throughout, giving the album a good sense of variety, even though just 65 minutes of unrelenting drones of this quality would've been impressive enough.  Braheny's Knowledge & Dust adds flute and percussive effects to evoke Native Americans on a vision quest encountering a rattlesnake, and the low tones in Stearns' Shiprock are intended to represent the inner sounds of stones and minerals.  If that's starting to sound a bit new agey, don't worry - there's more sun-bleached, heavy-air drone still to come.

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Mick Goodrick - In Pas(s)ing (1979)

ECM's 50th Anniversary release of 50 more 'Touchstones' reissues continues at the end of this week, with the second batch of 25 albums including early jewels like Paul Motian's Tribute, Julian Priester's Love Love and Bennie Maupin's Jewel In The Lotus.  Sadly, as in January, there doesn't seem to be any that are making their digital debut: if, like me, you were holding out for a CD release of long-deleted treasures like John Clark's Faces or Hajo Weber/Ulrich Ingenbold's Winterreisse, we'll just have to keep hoping.

Anyway, here's a favourite out of a small handful that I picked up from January's tranche (see news for 18 Jan 2019) of new Touchstones.  Philadelphian guitarist Mick Goodrick made his ECM debut in Gary Burton's group, appearing on three albums - the first of which comes back into print on Friday, and the third was among the original 2008 Touchstones.  A few years later, Goodrick recorded his only ECM album as leader, with the dream team of Eddie Gomez & Jack DeJohnette on bass and drums, and John Surman on saxes and bass clarinet.

In Pas(s)ing, named as a pun on the Munich district, is an album of slow-burning, after-hours beauty.  Goodrick is such a subtle and understated player that you can at times find yourself forgetting you're not listening to a Surman album.  But whenever Surman takes a break, as on the brightest tune Summer Band Camp, the quiet beauty of Goodrick's chords and runs makes clear whose material you're enjoying.  Tonally, Goodrick is somewhere in between Metheny and Abercrombie and leaning towards the latter, but is a strong enough identity in his own right to make this an album to return to repeatedly.  A single favourite track is difficult - they're all cut from one cloth without being samey - but I'll go for the melancholy lilt of Pedal Pusher.

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Harald Genzmer - Trautonium-Konzerte (1986 compi, rec. 1950/1958)

Two concertos by German composer Harald Genzmer (1909-2007) today, mapping the development of the Trautonium.  Like the Ondes Martenot, the Trautonium was an early electronic instrument dating from the late 1920s, capable of eerie, vacuum-tube vibrato and much more: it was invented by Friedrich Trautwein, who was soon joined in the instrument's development by Oskar Sala.  The latter man would become most closely associated with the Trautonium and its developments for the rest of his life, and performed on several recordings including those collected here.

Genzmer's Concerto for Trautonium and Orchestra was completed in 1939 for performance with the slightly more portable Konzerttrautonium, and this recording was made at Radio Bremen in 1950.  What might otherwise be an enjoyable if unremarkable mid-20th century orchestral work is transformed by the leaps and twirls of the lead instrument.  Genzmer doesn't sound like Messiaen per se, but the comparison crossed my mind given the use of an ancient proto-synth; if anything, this sounds more raw and exciting than Messiaen's work with the Ondes Martenot to my ears, but perhaps that's just the limitations of the period recording quality (all the Turangalîla's I've heard have been post-1980).

By 1952, Sala had developed the Mixtur-Trautonim, capable of polyphonic chords - this would be the one that Sala played on the soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.  Inspired by the advances in the instrument, Genzmer wrote another concerto, and this recording (tracks 4-8) was taped at SD Rundfunk in 1958.  Genzmer's writing for the instrument now took advantage of the frequency inversions that the Mixtur-Trautonium was capable of, resulting in a fuller sound and blend with the orchestra.  More Sala to come in a few weeks.

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Bill Evans Trio - Everybody Digs Bill Evans (1959)

Bill Evans' second album as leader proved that he was a major emerging talent in the world of jazz piano, and came highly recommended in its testimonial-style cover.  It remains one of his most popular records, sounding crisp, clear and for the most part meditative and restrained.  It's also an important precursor in the chemical chain reaction of 50s modal jazz that led to Kind Of Blue four months later.

The opening Minority is one of the few uptempo tracks, with Joneses Sam and Philly Joe a cracking rhythm section (see also the jittering Night And Day, and a great run at Sonny Rollins' Oleo).  They're barely there in the second track though, a gorgeous Young And Foolish, and Lucky To Be Me is the first instance of Evans playing solo on the album.  The stark ending to that track gets even more minimal in Peace Piece, where Evans picks out a modal melody line from near nothingness in chordal terms.  This stunning highlight was originally based on the Leonard Bernstein showtune Some Other Time, which is included here as a bonus track.

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Previously posted at SGTG: Waltz For Debby / Undercurrent

Qluster - Rufen (2011)

Onnen Bock and the 84-year-old Hans Joachim Roedelius are still going strong as Qluster; Rufen was one of their first two releases.  A collection of live recordings from 2010, Rufen (along with Fragen - see below) set out their stall as fresh, forward-looking keepers of the Cluster flame for the 2010s, although still sampling their own past work here and there.  All the gear on Rufen is analogue, and in these four hands sounds spectacular.

Rufen's opening track is a 15-minute recording from the Roedelius-curated More Ohr Less festival in Linz, August 2010.  A vast, gaseous Vangelis-like open soundscape offers both melodic, meditative music in the Roedelius tradition and some darker moments.  Tantalizingly, it fades out just as a rhythm track gets going - wonder if the full concert will ever see the light of day. 

The remainder of the album is a three-part recording made in Schönberg in December 2010.  The first part opens in sampling mode with cut-up whispered voices, moving through piano melodies quickly submerged in whizzing electronics to water sounds and more.  The second establishes a more weightless ambience, like an update of the very earliest Cluster recordings, and the third burbles around nicely over a gentle rhythm.

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Previously posted at SGTG: Fragen / Tasten

Ana-Maria Avram/Iancu Dumitrescu - Meteors & Pulsars, etc (1998)

More music of the spheres from the late Ana-Maria Avram, and her husband Iancu Dumitrescu: where the vast emptiness of space and time becomes illuminated by various re-imaginings of it as endless varieties of spectral sound.  The title piece of this collection is a computer music suite by Dumitrescu, divided into seven brief movements that sputter into life like newborn stars.

One of his great, ominous orchestral works is next, Profondis for clarinet, bass clarinet and the Hyperion Symphony Orchestra (1973, revised 1991), where the music slides forwards as if being sucked into a black hole.  The third work from Iancu is Origo (1998), a solo cello epic that sounds pretty much how Xenakis' Nomos Alpha would sound in the hands of the composer who wrote Medium for double bass.

Ana-Maria Avram then fills out the collection in the same pattern of orchestral work, cello work.  Chaosmos for two orchestras (1998) is a fine blast of the organised chaos experience that she excelled at, and the constantly-shifting 16-minute piece is riveting to sit through.  The Hyperion Orchestra's cellist Andrei Kivu (who also performed Origo) is back for the album closer Axe (1998), the frenetic sound given extra punch by backup from percussionist Thierry Miroglio.

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Previously posted on SGTG:
ED.MN.1001 - Medium/Cogito
ED.MN.1002 - Au Dela De Movemur
ED.MN.1003 - Pierres Sacreés
ED.MN.1004 - Musique de Paroles
ED.MM.1006 - A Priori
ED.MN.1008 - Five Pieces
ED.MN.1009 - Ouranos II 
ED.MN.1011 - Musique Action '98
ED.MN.1014 - Orbit of Eternal Grace
ED.MN.1018 - Remote Pulsar
ED.MN.1019 - In Tokyo

Robert Ashley - Private Parts (The Record) (1978)

If Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing was an experiment in barely comprehensible, involuntary speech coming out of nowhere, its predecessor was a deliberate, clearly (if laidback, almost narcotically) enunciated spoken word opus on thoughts coming out of nowhere.  The two distinct narratives of Private Parts would end up bookending Ashley's landmark 'opera for television' Perfect Lives, but these original versions, on 'The Record', are the perfect way to listen to them, in what may well be his masterpiece.

Accompanied by Robert Sheff, aka "Blue" Gene Tyrrany on keyboards, and Krishna Bhatt on beautifully melodic tabla, Ashley narrates two stories that focus on the mental ruminations of two different people.  In the first one, a man on a business trip distracts himself from the loneliness of his motel room by imagining two men sitting on a nearby park bench.  In the second, a woman stands on a porch at twilight pondering her surroundings, the comforts of mindful breathing and a highly personalised numerology, and the cosmological heretic Giordano Bruno.

The music is supremely relaxing, with just a slight uncanny edge to it.  What makes The Backyard the superior of the two for me, at least musically, are Bhatt's brisker rhythm and Tyrrany's gradual introduction and swelling expansion at key points.  Ashley pours forth line after line, each potentially loaded with meaning or insignificance, depending on what mood each line catches you in and the level of attention you want to bring to each listen.

This has the great effect that no two listening experiences of the album are ever the same.  Even after spending several years with it, one particular line can just jump out at you in a way it hasn't before: in this instance, whilst having to divide my attention between listening to The Backyard whilst writing, I just caught "Behind her the great northern constellation rises in the majesty of its architecture."  But then, Ashley's very next line is the fourth-wall-leaning "Well, maybe that’s a little too much", and directs the character back into some more abstract thoughts of Bruno's martyrdom and the nature of twilight.  Prepare for many, many such bizarre moments of sudden clarity with Private Parts.

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Original LP cover

Pat Metheny - Watercolors (1977)

In early 1977, the 22-year-old Pat Metheny had a lot riding on his forthcoming second album: he'd produced a stunning trio debut with Jaco Pastorius and Bob Moses, making him the rising star to watch on Europe's premier jazz label.  The follow-up would expand his sonic palette by adding keyboards, courtesy of a musician of similar age who he'd met a couple of years back, and would spent the following decades coming back to as part of the evolving Pat Metheny Group.  That group's initial drummer, Danny Gottlieb, came into the picture here too.  With Metheny still lacking his own bassist, one of ECM's established ones sat in, bringing his unique sound: the great Eberhard Weber.

If, as some regard it, Watercolors was the first PMG album in all but name, it was a low-key start.  I've always felt it works just fine in Pat's name only, sitting better with his more intimate solo records like New Chautauqua (check some of the gorgeous 12 & 15-string sounds here) than the more immediate smash hit of the PMG debut.  The music here is mostly quiet and impressionistic, suiting its becalmed, watery art and track titles.  The more upbeat material however does ensure variety in the programme, and Lakes and River Quay in particular do arguably point the way forward to the early PMG sound.  Either way, just another stunningly beautiful early Pat Metheny record among several.

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