Double Image - In Lands I Never Saw (1986)

Gorgeous, crystalline autumnal chimes from Double Image, in their third album.  By this time, the group that had formed in the 70s as a quartet with bass and drums (and recorded a rare, unreissued ECM LP in 1979) had slimmed down to just vibraphonist David Friedman and marimba player David Samuels.  The duo swap their instruments round on the track Dusk here, but otherwise stick to their stations for a wonderful record, that appropriately came out on Celestial Harmonies.

The pure sound of just the core instruments makes for a beautifully meditative album experience, only really raising the tempo on the opening title track and on Ki.  Everything interlocks with effortless virutosity, but never sacrificing melody.  Difficult to pick a favourite, but if I had to would be the late highlight Desert Rounds.  The eerie percussion added to Woodbell also makes it a memorable album closer.

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Previously posted on SGTG: Skylight, feat. David Samuels

Else Marie Pade - Face It (2002 compi of works rec. 1958-1970)

Danish electronics pioneer Else Marie Pade (1924-2016) featured early on in this blog with a great compilation of her work; here's another one.  Just three tracks on this collection, starting with Symphonie Magnétophonique, a 1958 musique concrete tape piece representing a typical day in 50s Copenhagen, from dawn to dusk.  Mixed in to this everday slice of life are subtle memories of Europe before the postwar peace, in sirens, screams and marching feet.

More of that later, but first the 43-minute centrepiece of the collection, a radioplay version of The Little Mermaid (1957/8).  It's narrated in Danish, but even for non-speakers there's a lot to admire in the pioneering backing track that Pade created for it.  Sampling distant sounds of music and concrete sounds to evoke the world above the sea, and processing sine waves and pure noise to represent the undersea world, Pade's soundtrack must've been pure magic to listen to when originally broadcast.  Reaching back into her childhood, when she envisioned fantastical sound-worlds from outside her room whilst ill, Pade was eminently qualified to conjure up a soundtrack like this.

She also had first-hand experience of the horrors of war to create the ominous memorial Face It (1970) that closes the album.  An incessant martial rhythm carries fragments of garbled speech, which gradually reveal their source and are processed further into distorted grotesques.  The narrated vocal loop, in Danish, translates as "We must face it, Hitler is not dead" - the final line, "...he lives on in Nixon" was censored by the record label.

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David Van Tieghem - Safety In Numbers (1987)

While I'm still in an 80s electronica kind of mood, here's something by Washington DC native David Van Tieghem.  Something of an everything-including-the-kitchen-sink percussion specialist, Van Tieghem has played on sessions for Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, Talking Heads.... the list is endless.  His first solo album appeared on Warners in 1984 and has never been reissued; this is his second, which came out on Peter Baumann's Private Music label.

There's certainly plenty of odd percussive layers mixed in amongst the synths on Safety In Numbers, which elevate it from reasonably interesting 80s electronic album to something altogether more rewarding.  Van Tieghem is credited with, among, several other things, metal ashtrays, plastic tubes, soda cans, corrugated plastic hose and suchlike.  His main hardware appears to be Fairlights, with the long list also including DX7 and DX100, Akai S900, Korg Poly800 and a LinnDrum.

Some big name collaborators pop up too: Ryuchi Sakamoto on early highlight Thunder Lizard and on Clear; Tony Levin adds his distinctive Chapman Stick sound to Night Of The Cold Noses, and there's also a piano part for "Blue" Gene Tyranny on Crystals, another of the more relaxed highlights.  Another plus point for 80s artiness is that just over half of the tracks started life as dance commissions, amongst which Future and All Safe, for the Boston Ballet, are particular highlights for me.

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Edgar Froese - Pinnacles (1983)

One more Froese/TD for now.  This would be Froese's final solo album for several years, and was recorded just prior to Tangerine Dream's final album for Virgin.  So for a clear indication of what Froese contributed to the early 80s TD sound, look no further.

The inspiration for Pinnacles came from a trip to the deserts of Western Australia that Froese took in the early 80s, with the title alluding to a group of ancient petrified rocks that stand in the desert.  So this is Froese on walkabout, and even includes a track of that name.  First though are the bright, flowing sequences and brisk rhythms of Specific Gravity Of Smile.  The Light Cone comes next, one of my favourite Froese tracks with its beautifully simple melody and a touch of vocodered voice.

Walkabout is the track that sounds closest to the TD opus that was just around the corner, with a slight Eastern feel mixed in to its darker-hued sequence.  Then, as with Hyperborea, Pinnacles ends with a side-long epic.  This finale, the title track, starts off on another upbeat section before gradually petering out after seven minutes for a brief ambient interlude and more vocoder.  Another sequence then takes over, and eventually changes down a gear for a gorgeous melodic ending.  Just like Stuntman, this is absolutely classic Froese.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Ages
Stuntman
Tangerine Dream at SGTG:
Phaedra (scroll past main post)
Encore
Force Majeure
Tangram
Logos: Live At The Dominion
Hyperborea

Bill Evans Trio - I Will Say Goodbye (rec. 1977, rel. 1980)

Posting Julia Hülsmann last week made me dive back into Bill Evans, and came up with a fresh appreciation of this album from Evans' final years.  Recorded in May 1977 with his latest trio of Eddie Gomez on bass and Eliot Zigmund on drums, I Will Say Goodbye wasn't released until 1980, when it became Evans' last album for the Fantasy label (he'd just signed to Warners).

The Michel Legrand-penned title track, performed twice on the album, would of course take on an added poignancy following Evans' death in September 1980, and it's a nice melancholy track to base this album around.  There are some great uptempo moments here, especially a fine take on Herbie Hancock's Dolphin Dance and sole original The Opener.  For the most part, though, the tight group improvisation of Evans' final trio shines best in their restrained moments, finishing on a gorgeous bit of Bacharach in A House Is Not A Home.

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Ernö Király - Phoenix: The Music Of Ernö Király (1996)

Essential introduction to Yugoslavian composer and instrument builder Ernö Király (1919-2007).  Whilst based in Novi Sad in the 60s, collecting folk music and soaking up modernist composition, Király was introduced by a friend to Edgard Varèse's Poeme Electronique.  This would be the spark that got Király into tape composition; later on, in the 70s, he would start building his own instruments a la Harry Partch, and write graphic scores for them.

Király's discography only starts in 1979, with just three Eastern European LPs appearing up until the mid 90s when ReR put out this CD that gave his music much-needed exposure.  The liner notes provide great biographical detail on Király's work and influences, which makes the omission of recording dates for these seven pieces all the more glaring - but given the aforementioned LPs, it's probably safe to say that everything here dates from the late 70s to the 90s.

The title track starts the album off with six minutes of reverberating swishing and hammering on a cymbalom (Hungarian zither), followed by Perpetuum Mobile for Király's modified version of the instrument, the zitherphone that he devised in 1974. That track's particularly interesting with what sounds like backwards tape at points - shame it's only three minutes long.  After a couple of string pieces with geometric scores, and a great voice/tape piece called Spiral, Acezantez show up (Király and Dutoni were good friends) for four Movements, the atmospheric highlights of the collection.  Another brief tape piece, The Sky, provides a memorable album closer.  Fascinating and unique stuff, and highly recommended.

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Tangerine Dream - Tangram (1980)

After the release of Stuntman (posted last Friday), Edgar Froese turned his attention back to Tangerine Dream.  A fresh lineup cemented around Froese, Franke and newbie Johannes Schmoelling, resetting the 'electronic trio' configuration that had ended on Peter Baumann's departure.  A couple of landmark concerts in East Berlin later, the revitalised group went into the studio for their first album.

The two-part Tangram was the result.  This wasn't the TD of old though, where a two-track album would mean spacey, liquid improvisation around mellotron and sequencers.  This is where, IMHO, the single most underrated TD lineup began in earnest as a sleek, melodic unit with updated electronics and much more structure to their longer pieces, almost like neoclassical movements.  Tangram Set One and Set Two move through the gears of eerie ambience to sparkling melodies and driving sequences without wasting a single note.  The version of TD that would go on to produce my absolute favourite live and studio Tangerine Dream albums was off to a flying start.

Tangram hits the record stores

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Julia Hülsmann Trio - Imprint (2011)

Bonn-born pianist Julia Hülsmann just returned with another quartet album that I've still to pick up, so been casting my mind back to when I first discovered her music.  Was browsing the ECM shelves of my favourite local haunt Record Shak, when I found myself drawn to the oddly haunting piano trio piece that was playing over the speaker.  It was (Go And Open) The Door, the midpoint highlight of the Julia Hülsmann Trio's Imprint, their newly-released second album for ECM.

Hülsmann's Bill Evans influence is much discussed, and for me this album still shows her innate harmonic impressionistic sketching at its finest, in deeply entwined improvisation with bassist Marc Muellbauer and drummer Heinrich Kobberling.  Equally at home in more uptempo tracks like Grand Canyon and the closing pair Zahlen Bitte/Who's Next and gorgeous ballads like A Light Left On and the old German showtune Kauf dir einen bunten Luftballon, Julia and partners produced a wonderful, engrossing hour of unshowy trio chemistry that's been ageing like fine wine over the last few years and will continue to do so.

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Paul Dresher - Casa Vecchia (1995)

Another Dresher collection, to follow on from his Dark Blue Circumstance disc a little while ago.  This one released by the Starkland label flips the focus of Circumstance, featuring just one work for string instruments; the three that precede it are all gorgeous, shimmering ambient drones.

Opening the album is Underground, a dance commission from 1982.  All the sounds are produced on an early Casio keyboard, fed into an equaliser and tape loop system.  The only downside of this beautiful piece is that it's only 8 minutes long - I'd quite happily listen to half an hour of it.  Other Fire (1984) that follows is a Fourth World-esque synthesis of field recordings made by Dresher in various travels across South/South East Asia a few years prior.  For this radiophonic commission, Dresher mixed his tapes using a harmonzier, EQ and the same tape loop system as Underground to great effect.

The tracks get progressively longer as the album goes on, giving Dresher's engrossing sound worlds more room to breathe.  After 11 minutes of Other Fire comes 16 minutes of Mirrors (1988-91), commissioned by bassist Robert Black.  Black performs it on double bass, electric upright bass and bass guitar, with electronic processing.  The haunting ambient drift at its outset eventually becomes a rhythmic delay tour de force that fans of Pinhas/Göttsching will absolutely love.  The title track closes the album in a string quartet that Dresher originally wrote for Kronos Quartet in 1982; this arrangement for double-quartet was the idea of Yuki Morimoto, whose Ensemble 9 group perform it here.  It's essential listening in the Adams/Reich vein, and the perfect ending to a hugely recommended collection.

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Egdar Froese - Stuntman (1979)

Following Ages (posted last Friday), Edgar Froese refocused his energies on Tangerine Dream for Cyclone and Force Majeure, then recorded his fifth solo album.  Stuntman saw a return to woozier, psychedelic electronica largely shedding the rhythmic drive of those other three albums.

The tracks were becomings shorter too, and the opening title track was a nice simple earworm that became Froese's only 7" single release.  The album then hits an early high point with the ten-minute sequencer journey It Would Be Like Samoa, and Detroit Snackbar Dreamer is just as good, bringing in the first truly percussive pulse halfway through. 

The second half of the album delves even deeper into psych-inflected atmospheres, with another multi-stage long track (Drunken Mozart In The Desert) ending more upbeat and melodic.  A Dali-Esque Sleep Fuse is another strong sequencer piece, before Scarlet Score For Mascalero ends the album on a slow, stately note with another gorgeous melody.  One of Froese's very best albums.

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Robyn Schulkowsky/Nils Petter Molvær - Hastening Westward (1995)

Here's something that goes nicely with darker and colder nights.  The starting point for this album was a reworking by American percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky of her 1991 work Hastening Westward At Sundown To Obtain A Better View Of Venus, that evocative title borrowed from Samuel Beckett.

The album contains two suites, with the three-part Pier And Ocean proving a nice overture to lead into the seven-part Hastening Westward.  As told in the liner notes, once Schulkowsky had recorded the three solo percussion sections that appear as tracks 3, 5 and 8, ECM's Manfred Eicher revealed that he just happened to have Nils Petter Molvær around, who could be a perfect partner for Schulkowsky's sound.

The trumpeter was brought in on day two of the sessions, and another in a long line of ECM's instant collaborations quickly took shape.  Molvær did indeed have the innate sensitivity to the overtones of Schulkowsky's drums, bells and bowed gongs that Eicher had anticipated, and the album pays great rewards to repeat listens.  Music for frozen fjords.

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Tibor Szemzö - The Other Shore (1999 compi, rec. 1992-97)

Hungarian musician & composer Tibor Szemzö previously featured here with his Snapshot From The Island album; this three-track collection switches out the bucolic, mellow atmosphere for a more melancholy journey.

First up is the title track, building gradually as string phrases from Szemzö's Gordian Knot Company ensemble punctuate the silence.  Chanting voices and restrained percussion enter, then a little bass guitar, to which Szemzö will eventually add bass flute.  Meanwhile, extracts of a Buddhist treatise, Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law, are recited in Japanese.  So far, so nicely mediative.

The second piece is Symultan, based around sampled voices from a Roma community and related field recordings, with a similar musical backing to the first track eventually taking shape.  It will be all the more affecting for those that understand the language - they're apparently talking about all that was lost to their community under fascism - but is still a striking work of very human melancholy without knowing the speech.  The album closes with Gull, an absolutely lovely work for string quartet and tabla.

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Edgar Froese - Ages (1978)

Epic double-length solo album from the late Tangerine Dream mainman, recorded in late '77.  TD had closed out the era of their most famous lineup with a live memento, and Ages looked forward to the late 70s, progressive rock-tinged TD with its more conventional rhythmic drive and a real drummer in Klaus Krüger.

Prior to his first appearance on a TD album, Krüger supported Froese in making this behemoth of a record, adding only a light touch of percussion in the first vinyl side.  These two tracks are Metropolis, a shimmering robot-march paying tribute to Fritz Lang, and the sequenced pulse of Era Of The Slaves.  Next up is the 21-minute epic Tropic Of Capricorn, taking in a grand opening theme, a classically-influenced section with some great piano, then a stately prog-like ending, fully backed up by Krüger.

The second LP of the orignal set is even more interesting and varied.  Nights Of Automatic Women barrels forward into the album's rockiest territory yet, anticipating most closely Cyclone-era TD, and Icarus finds Froese giving his guitar a welcome workout.  There's some sweetness and light in the album's back half too, with Ode To Granny A setting a repetitive, almost Cluster-like melody against a simple tambourine tap, and what sounds like an all-star krautrock jam in Pizzaro And Atahuallpa -  it's like a TD & Amon Düül summit played over the top of the pulse from Kraftwerk's Kristallo.  To cap everything off, Froese cranks up the guitar one more time for Golgotha And The Circle Closes.  More Froese next Friday.

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