Charlie Haden & Egberto Gismonti - In Montreal (rec. 1989, rel. 2001)

An ECM archival release where no album cover image was necessary - just the names of the two masters of their art who were involved, and an indication of the source recording: this was taped at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, on 6th July 1989, and was released 12 years later.  It's a fantastic 80 minute set of gorgeous, intimate music that showcases both bassist and guitarist/pianist for their melodic and harmonic talents.

Gismonti is heard on piano for five of these pieces, winding through some of his most beautiful tunes - I'm a sucker for a good Palhaço in any form, and the one here doesn't disappoint - and treats us to his guitar virtuosity on the other four.  Underpinning all of this is Haden's legendary bass playing, not so much framing each piece as building a rock-solid foundation beneath it, like a construction crew drilling deep into the earth.  The material is all Gismonti's apart from two Haden compositions, First Song and Silence, where the writer steps ably into the limelight as the lead instrument while Gismonti plays backup on guitar and piano respectively.  This whole album is perfect weekend contemplation par excellence.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Circense
Sanfona
Dança Dos Escravos

Om Kolthoum - Daleeli Ehtar (1974)

Mentioned this Egyptian singer in the Steve Hillage post the other week, so was very happy to subsequently find one of her albums randomly in a charity shop.  Oum Kalthoum, or apparently most correctly Umm Kulthum - there are in fact dozens of possible romanizations of the Arabic أم كلثوم‎, but I'll stick with Om Kolthoum for this post, as on the CD.  To add just one more name into the mix before moving on to the music, she was born Fāṭima ʾIbrāhīm as-Sayyid al-Baltāǧī just outside El Senbellawein, Egypt, either in December 1898 or possibly as late as 1904, and died in on 3rd February 1975 with around four million Egyptians coming out to see her funeral procession.

One thing I've learned is that it's near impossible for Westerners to conceive of the level of fame and national institution/household name status that Kolthoum achieved in Egypt; anything we can think of, eg Beatles, Elvis, just doesn't cut it.  Starting from state radio broadcasts in the 1930s, her phenomenal vocal range just grew in virtuosity and at her peak in the 1940s-50s was in peerless command of both secular and devotional songs from Egypt's premier composers & poets, at epic concerts where a single song could easily hit the hour mark.  She scaled back song length and her vocal range only slightly as they began to be limited by advancing age.

This CD I've picked up is a reissue from 2002, and the earliest matching release I could find was the LP shown below.  It was issued in 1974 as part of a series, perhaps some sort of career retrospective, so the actual recording may be quite a bit older - the song Daleeli Ehtar ("I am lost [when you are gone]") dates from 1955, and was composed by Riad El Soumbati with lyrics by Ahmed Rami.  Sounding here like it came from a radio broadcast, Daleeli Ehtar is, stylistically and tonally, a Maqam Kurd, a song of longing popular in Kurdish tradition; the Middle-Eastern maqam system is perhaps comparable to the Indian raga system if only in its range of modes and specific uses.

And what a performance.  Just listen to the rapturous applause between each verse of the 40-minute song, and you can get an inkling of how it must've been for Egyptian concert-goers to be in the presence of their greatest superstar.  The oud-led orchestra gets plenty of chances to shine, as the track rises, falls and builds back up again, but Kolthoum's voice is clearly leading the proceedings.  Spanning multiple octaves and capable of eighth-notes, the improvisations around the notes of the maqam just increase in intricacy, and you can see why she favoured such gargantuan song lengths.  It's stunning to think that this is actually a comparatively brief song of hers (or perhaps it was edited to fit on an LP).  Listen and be amazed.

Daleeli Ehtar, 1974 LP released by Sono Cairo

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Octavian Nemescu - Les États Du Temps Et De L'Espace 2 (2002)

Some more Octavian Nemescu, to follow on from the post of his earliest (digitally) available album a couple of weeks back.  As this one is obviously Volume 2 of something, it's worth quickly pointing out that Les États Du Temps Et De L'Espace 1 was a deleted late-90s CDR that's eluded my grasp ever since I first heard Nemescu, but will keep trying.  This collection was where Nemescu started releasing his 'Music Of The Hours' grand project in earnest - see this handy discogs list.  The string quartet compilation that features the initial Midnight piece is again - you guessed it - almost impossible to come by, so might as well start here.

On the previous post, I noted Nemescu's obsession with particular listening conditions that he prescribed for each piece.  Music Of The Hours was/is an attempt to take this even further, and reintroduce what he thought was missing from Western music (Indian classical music comes to mind as an obvious example where this remains): assigning specific times of day at which pieces ought to be played/heard.  That discogs list above gives an interesting summary of its ritualistic inspiration, and this extends to the how the music sounds, with the majority of the pieces topping the half-hour mark.  As the polar opposite of a night owl, I might seldom be awake to follow Nemescu's timings for the first seven pieces, but I've been enjoying the two on this disc anyway during the day.

First up here, then, is Quindecimortuorum for 1AM; it was composed in 1994, but there's no recording dates in the notes, and the wind ensemble is uncredited - odd oversights when the two pieces are explained in such intricate detail.  The woozy brass fanfares start off subtly, gathering complexity and some thunderous percussion as it progresses.  And here's the extremely odd thing about the progression of the piece, which I noticed straight away when taking the CD out its case: it's punctuated by lengthy silences, some several minutes long.  Nemescu explains that these are "offered as 'spaces' for invocation and meditation".  It can seem strange or unnecessary at first, but in the right headspace for concentration it works a treat.  Or you can just let your mind wander during the silences and then be pulled back into the piece whenever the music restarts.

The second track, Negantidiadua for 2AM (1995), for piano, sax, trombone, percussion and voice is even sparser at its outset, eventually establishing a low drone (later phased out for more pure silences) over which all kinds of sudden elements will burst onto the soundstage.  A sharp piano figure here, a blast of percussion there, a disembodied voice suddenly singing in Latin in a very odd affected manner; I've just now realised what this reminds me of in terms of the listening experience: very early Nurse With Wound, e.g. Ostranenie, The Schmurz or especially Dadaˣ.  In this case, Nemescu isn't including the surprise elements just for the sake of creating a surrealist soundscape, but invoking... something like... the tension between waking and sleeping, existence and non-existence, temporal distortions... I gave up trying to understand his weighty liner notes at this point, and just enjoyed the album for what it was: a couple of extraordinary adventures in sound & silence.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Metabizantinirikon, Trisson & Sonatu(h)r
Split CD with Costin Cazaban

The Jayhawks - Sound Of Lies (1997)

When I ran into this album like an old schoolfriend the other week, it instantly took me back 22 years, to a teenage subscription to MOJO magazine.  Their August 1997 issue I only remember as it carried Volume 2 of their new mix CD series, The MOJO Machine Turns You On - apparently a reference to a CBS loss-leader from the late 60s.  Ending the CD was a six-minute track based around an insistent, pulsing bassline, portentious fuzz guitars and a desperate air that culminated in the refrain "Babe, I'm scared of you".  Fascinated by the track, Dying On The Vine, I sought out its parent album.

Sound Of Lies was reviewed in the magazine as being something of a departure from The Jayhawks' established alt-country sound.  In the aftermath of guitarist-vocalist-key songwriter Mark Olson, and other guitarist Gary Louris' assumption of most writing duties, the review painted a picture of unsettled band chemistry and a much rawer-edged album, typified by the track on the mix CD.  I'm quoting this from memory, so it may not be the reviewer's exact words: "If [predecessor album] Tomorrow The Green Grass was Harvest, this [Sound Of Lies] is Tonight's The Night."  That was enough for this teenage Neil Young obsessive - I was sold.

So nearly 22 years on, and having picked up a cheap copy of Sound Of Lies to replace my long-lost original purchase, how does it sound?  Still pretty damn impressive.  Like almost every album of the mid-late 90s I remember buying, it could maybe have shaved off a couple of tracks for a more concise running time.  The highlights, though (and they are many) still do it for me, despite this kind of thing now being several towns' drive from my usual musical area codes.  The opening Man Who Loved Life establishes the paranoid, hounded atmosphere with some nifty turns of phrase and grungy guitars as the song eventually builds up.  There's fuzzy melodic powerpop in the Big Star vein on the track that nicks their name, and more layers of unsettling threat in the second-half trio of Sixteen Down, Haywire and of course Dying On The Vine.  And the MOJO subscription?  Cancelled circa 2001, when it no longer reflected my musical obsessions.  Maybe I should pick up the occasional copy, if it helps unearth little gems like this album.

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Les Troubadours Du Roi Baudouin - Missa Luba (1958)

Like a lot of people, my first encounter with this African choral album was watching Lindsay Anderson's if... (1968), and being captivated by the 'Sanctus' piece of music favoured by Malcolm McDowell's lead character.  Following the film's release, Philips released it as a single which entered the UK charts.  The original LP, however, dated back to 1958 when it received a limited release, and subsequent reissues throughout the 60s, and the 'Missa Luba' itself was arranged by a Belgian priest in 1957.

Father Guido Haazen (1921-2004) became director of a school in the Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1953, and established a choir that same year, featuring 45 boys and 15 adults singing and playing percussion.  The first side of this album consists of seven traditional pieces, with the Missa Luba taking up side two.

Although structured like a traditional mass with the Latin text, each section is based on African folk forms.  The Kyrie is based on a Luba mourning song, the Sanctus and Benedictus on Bantu farewell songs, and so on.  It's beautiful stuff to listen to, with the Sanctus the definite highlight.

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George Crumb - Ancient Voices Of Children/Music For A Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III) (1987 compi of LPs 1971/5)

Some more beautifully strange music from George Crumb, on a Nonesuch reissue pairing two records from the 1970s.  The first of these is Ancient Voices of Children, taking its texts from Lorca as did several other Crumb works for singers (see links below).  It's a great ear-bending example of Crumb's unusual instrumental settings, featuring  oboe, mandolin, harp, amplified piano, toy piano, and percussion, and sung by boy soprano and a soprano singing into the amplified piano for extra-weird resonance.  As this was originally an LP running only 25 minutes, it really needed to be coupled up with something else on CD, and what follows is a real treat.

Summer Evening LP cover, 1975 (orig Ancient Voices LP used 'butterfly' image at top)

Music For A Summer Evening is probably my favourite Crumb work full stop (admittedly still got a lot of his music still to discover).  It's the third volume in his Makrokosmos series, the title paying homage to Bartók's Mikrokosmos, and features two amplified pianos and two percussionists.  From its initial subtlety, the dynamic range of the work varies greatly, up to the explosive Advent section and back down again, and the variety of sounds Crumb coaxes out of the two pianos and percussion instruments is spellbinding.  There's various bells, claves, metal sheets and even brief appearances by a slide whistle and stone jug.  The most hauntingly beautiful part has to be the 11-minute finale, centred on a becalmed piano sequence around which the initially discordant accompaniment gradually falls away (and the piano notes reduce), leaving only the 'starry night' of its name.  Absolutely gorgeous stuff.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Voice Of The Whale/Night Of The Four Moons
Songs, Drones And Refrains Of Death/Quest

"Blue" Gene Tyranny & Peter Gordon - Trust In Rock (review only - brand new release of 1976 archive recordings)

Couldn't resist grabbing a copy of this when it came to my attention on Boomkat a couple of weeks back.  I knew that Robert Sheff, aka "Blue" Gene Tyranny had released his own records on the Lovely Music label as well as playing with Robert Ashley on Private Parts (The Record), and I'd heard little snippets of Tyranny's stuff; ditto for Peter Gordon, whose LP Star Jaws appears to have been the first release when Lovely Music was set up by Ashley.  Now that I've heard this archival concert recording, though, Tyranny & Gordon's debut albums make a lot more sense in context.

Both men were around in the Bay Area new music scene of the mid 70s, and as Unseen Worlds note in their explanation of this release, "by 1976, the idea of a capitalized 'New Music' had increasingly lost its punch for Tyranny and Gordon. Rock and Roll, likewise, was nearing an apparent generational expiration."  What they envisaged, and put into practice with a group of like-minded musicians, was something that would combine and refresh both genres.  As Unseen Worlds' description continues: "The way out of this impasse was trust in rock, which was both description and command. Rock, for this all-star cast of Bay Area heads, became a perpetual revolution that could be serious, playful, polemic, focused, technical, and lovely."

What is now available, then, is two hours of live music, firstly four of Tyranny's pieces, then five of Gordon's.  The opener Without Warning starts out as a normal rock song, with vocals (as on all the other vocal track) by Patrice Manget, and then just goes on and on. For 20 minutes.  There's elements of funk and jazzy touches, and a sort of minimalism that takes the small-group approach of early Philip Glass but nowhere near as repetitive.  It's maybe a kind of progressive rock, but without any pretentiousness.  Sometimes it's just absolutely lovely, with Next Time Might Be Your Time (the eventual opening track on Tyranny's first album) sounding in places like a reimagining of My Sweet Lord, had Harrison been influenced by Dale Carnegie rather than Krishna Consciousness.  

As a whole, and in a similar time frame, Trust In Rock could perhaps be compared to Henry Cow, but infinitely more accessible.  The furthest "out" this music really goes is Gordon's closing track Intervallic Exapansion, which is 27 minutes of churning minimalism, but still in a jazz-rock context.  Just have a listen at the link below, this music is absolutely wonderful - huge kudos to Unseen Worlds for making it available.  This is hands down my favourite archive release of 2019, unless something else truly stunning comes out to beat it.

Listen online and/or buy 2CD/3LP/dl here.

Cluster & Eno - s/t (1977)

The first fruits of Brian Eno's collaboration with Moebius & Roedelius to be released (Harmonia sessions from 1976 would stay in the can for two decades), Cluster & Eno took the loveliness of Cluster's maturing sound on Sowiesoso and made it even lovelier.  The album opens, like Sowiesoso, with a simple monochordal pulse, but made much more delicate and less overtly electronic, with Roedelius on piano.  Holger Czukay, who'd have been on the brink of leaving Can at the time, drops by for a relaxing busman's holiday.

The second track, Schöne Hände, is barely there at all - just a gentle breeze of synth that whispers across an open field, causing small stirrings in the flora & fauna.  Even more than on the previous Cluster album, the move to rural Forst was working wonders on Moebius & Roedelius' sonic outlook, as was the addition of Eno's unique lightness of touch. 

The album continues in this meditative mode until it picks up a little in the second half with the more rhythmic Selange and Die Bunge, before taking a turn into the more Eastern-sounding One, featuring guest appearances from Moebius' Liliental bandmates Asmus Tietchens and Okko Bekker.  The most gorgeous track is saved for last, the shimmering sunset magnificence of Für Luise.  I've often though of Cluster & Eno as a winter album, but been trying to mix things up a bit of late, and it works just the same magic at any time of year.

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Peter de Havilland - Bois De Boulogne (1987)

Sole release by a bit of a mystery musician/composer, who produced this album for Virgin's modern classical/ambient/new age imprint Venture in 1987.  Wikipedia's no help, turning up only an early 19th century Bailiff of Guernsey with the same name.  The mystery appears to have been solved with a bit of sleuthing a few years back by review blog La Voz De Los Vientos, who related their findings on de Havilland (the musician) in this post.  So, if you're wondering what sort of album a British-Canadian-Scottish-Irish teenage musical prodigy and erstwhile Vivienne Westwood model would make, well, here it is.

On Bois De Boulogne, seemingly made with a Fairlight computer, de Havilland's two main interests appear to be baroque-influenced keyboard minimalism, and ethnic-sounding new age pieces with a particular focus on Japanese shakuhachi flute.  The album begins with 10 minutes of the former mode, with the 'Escher' of the title presumably meant to be M. C. Escher.  After this comes the first of four 'Shaku' pieces, with the instrument in question presumably from samples, and then Myoho, a really nice piano and synth piece.  The latter's not a million miles away from the sound of Roedelius' Momenti Felici album for the same label - if I'm remembering it right, only had that one on cassette and must track down a CD someday.

Another two Shaku pieces follow, with the longer one a bit of a trip around the Fairlight and sounding like something Security-era Peter Gabriel might've come up with as a first draft, and the shorter, subtitled 'Chant', offering some interesting vocal manipulation.  It's time for the album's 19-minute centrepiece, Bois De Boulogne: Theme And Improvisations.  The improvisations drift around quite nicely, showing (as on the album opener) de Havilland's considerable keyboard skills, coming back now and again to the melody from the first minute and a half, which will repeat over and over in the finale.  A short reprise of Shaku (Chant) closes the album.  On initial listens, I wasn't sure what to make of this record at all, but it's really growing on me, perhaps because it's just so odd.

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Gong - Shamal (1976)

The one between You and Gaseuze! (links below), and therefore a classic transitional album.  In fact, almost all of the ingredients of what would become known as Pierre Moerlen's Gong were already in place on Shamal, recorded in late 1975.  What was previously a jazz-rock-informed psych rock band had largely shifted gear to a jazz fusion group with an emphasis on mallet percussion, and half of the tracks were instrumental.

The mellow shuffle of Wingful Of Eyes that opens Shamal was one of the vocal tracks, with Mike Howlett stepping up to the mic.  He's not a bad vocalist, but is still best off bringing that great bass sound he had to the fore, especially fuzzing it up a bit at the halfway mark.  At this point, Howlett's joined by a great guitar solo: it's one of Steve Hillage's last two appearances on a Gong album (reunions aside).  The other is on Bambooji, which closes out the album's first half after the great sax-driven track Chandra.  Highlights of the album's second half are the guest appearance from Argentinean violinist Jorge Pinchevsky, and the insistent bass groove of the closing title track.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
You
Gazeuse!
Expresso II

Christy Doran, Fredy Studer, Bobby Burri, Olivier Magnenat - Musik Für Zwei Kontrabässe, Elektrische Gitarre Und Schlagzeug (1991)

Today's dispatch from the ECM hinterland finds Dublin-born guitarist Christy Doran supported by an all-Swiss rhythm section of percussionist Fredy Studer and double bassists Bobby Burri and Olivier Magnenat (1950-2011).  It was the second appearance on the label for Doran and Studer, who'd made Red Twist And Tuned Arrow with another guitarist a few years previous.

It's a great setup, with the two basses filling out the background in various ways whilst Studer gets in various percussive acrobatics, reminiscent of early Edward Vesala in places, and Doran's scratchy, spidery guitar spirals around.  My favourite things here are opener Siren and the relentless clickety-clack of Ma Perché, with an honourable mention to the eerie glow of Seen A Man About A Dog, but the whole album is a hugely enjoyable exercise in getting the most out of the idiosyncratic lineup.  Recommended.

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Steve Hillage - Open/Studio Herald (1990 compi from 1979 LPs)

Steve Hillage had a particularly productive year to close out the 70s - a double-live album, his first ambient album Rainbow Dome Musick (see list below), and then Open - another funk-psych-prog-electronic record in the vein of Motivation Radio and Green.  That live double, Live Herald, actually ended with a studio side, and when Open came out on CD in 1990 the four 'Studio Herald' tracks were added at the beginning of the disc.  Hillage also re-shuffled the running order of the Open tracks, and added a single-only cover of Getting Better from Sgt Pepper's.  This has all since become canon on subsequent reissues, so might as well go with it.

Studio Herald, then, is likely to have been a further overspill from the two albums' worth of material that made up Radio & Green - it's in a similar ballpark, with the nine-minute New Age Synthesis (Unzipping The Zype) particularly good.  Elsewhere, Hillage attempts to go punk on 1988 Aktivator and just comes off a bit Hawkwind, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - overall, Studio Herald is a decent EP overture.  So how about Open?

As mentioned above, Hillage rejigged the track order for this release, resulting in LP closer Earthrise being the first thing from Open that we get here.  It's based on a melody by Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum, and works well in this arrangement.  The title track comes next, with a bit of nifty vocoder and the same twee-but-pleasant lyrics as on Motivation Radio.  As on the other Open tracks, the synths & sequences are well integrated with the guitars and gently funky rhythms, making this album a sort of distillation of its two predecessors, with its high point probably Day After Day (which was the original LP opener).  The Beatles cover is a bit slight but fun in a Hillage kind of way, and don't miss the muscular workout Don't Dither Do It near the end of the CD.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Motivation Radio
Green
Rainbow Dome Musick
with Gong: You
with System 7: Point 3: Water

Paul Hindemith/Oskar Sala - Elektronische Impressionen (1998 compi, rec. 1976-78)

As promised when the Genzmer disc went up, here's another venture into the sound world of the Trautonium, that early electronic instrument of which Oskar Sala was the main proponent.  This time around, there's only a short orchestral segment, giving a much closer look at the sound of the trautonium and its capabilities.  That these recordings all date from the 1970s also helps enormously, in the vastly improved sound quality over the Genzmer recordings.

Presented first are two works by German composer Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), who like Genzmer was fascinated by the new instrument and wrote for it, in close collaboration with Sala, in the early 1930s.  We start with a seven-part feature for three trautoniums, which in contemporary concert was performed by Hindemith (the top part), Sala (the middle part) and Rudolph Schmidt, a piano teacher (the bass part).  Here, Sala performs all three in overdub, left, centre and right in the stereo picture respectively.  They're nice short and melodic exercises, and must've sounded revolutionary in 1930.  Pleased with the results, a year later Hindemith wrote the brief concerto that follows, integrating the diverse tonal colours of the trautonium very well with the orchestra.

The real treasure on this collection is saved for last though, and reissues in its entirety the 40-minute LP shown at the very bottom of this post.  Elektronsische Impressionen from 1978 is composed and performed by Sala, using the more advanced Mixtur-Trautonium that he'd developed by the 1950s.  The nine tracks here utilize the full range of the instrument and the recording studio, and frequently find Sala nudging closer to Conrad Schnitzler at his most minimal/experimental than anything in the classical world.  Although this whole CD is worth listening to, Elektronsische Impressionen gets special praise from me - it's nothing short of an avant-garde electronic classic in its dark atmospherics and juddering melody lines and effects.  Highly recommended.

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Original LP covers