A Winged Victory For The Sullen & Nils Frahm - Live At The Albert Hall, BBC Proms 2015

Some nice juicy repeats of older concerts in this year's BBC Proms broadcast programme - for obvious reasons, the live schedule had to be significantly downsized.  Here's a stunning event that I missed when it first happened, with another one to be posted next Monday.

As both main artists allude to, this Proms concert was in large part thanks to BBC Radio 6 Music DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, who'd been promoting their music on her show and ended up introducing them live here at the Royal Albert Hall.  A Winged Victory For The Sullen appear first, performing two mini-suites from their Atomos album (see links list below), the languid, melancholy sound given some extra heft by the London Brass.  There was also a visual dimension with the dancers of Studio Wayne McGregor.

After a seamless transition that features a short collaborative improvisation, AWVFTS leave the stage in the hands of Nils Frahm and his pianos, synths & toilet brushes (see image above).  Frahm performs an equally spellbinding set of his Spaces-era (in links list below) material, moving from the sequencer-based Says to a couple of piano pieces, then finishing up with his epic Toilet Brushes/More medley.

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AWVFTS at SGTG:
s/t debut
Atomos
Nils Frahm at SGTG:
The Bells
7Fingers
Felt
Spaces
Collaborative Works

Ragnar Grippe - Ten Temperaments / Situation I / Ur Underns Tid (1994 compi, rec. 1975-81)

Great collection of electronic music by Ragnar Grippe (b. 1951, Stockholm), featuring all of his 1982 album Ten Temperaments and most of his 1977 LP Electronic Compositions.  The former, in ten parts plus a Prelude and Postlude, was a commission from the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, and Grippe's intention was to contrast the "temperaments" of symphonic-style composition with more modern electronic pop styles.

It's a fantastic, highly listenable suite performed on a Synclavier II, a Buchla synth, percussion and radio.  Some parts are more dark and unsettling, whilst others positively sparkle with upbeat sequencing and melody.  Fans of 80s Tangerine Dream et al definitely need to hear this.  Neat little production touches, like the choral overlay on part II (also used in a previous ballet by Grippe, and intended to evoke tuning into unfamiliar radio stations on childhood holidays), keep the surprises coming.

The two long tracks at the end of the disc are, as noted above, from an earlier LP, and delve deeper into electronic composition and musique concrete.  Both were recorded at Luc Ferrari's Paris studio in the mid 70s.  Situation I was composed after Grippe took a trip to Morocco, and was used as part of a co-operative work in a Malmö art gallery.  Using voices, guitar, organ, recorder, percussion and a tone generator, it's a wonderful journey into audio weirdness.  Ur Underns Tid (From The Age Of Miracles) is even better: again based on organ and percussion, with overlaid voices, shortwave noise and orchestral music, fellow Nurse With Wound aficionados should enjoy the production and scattering of odd sounds.

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Caetano Veloso - Transa (1972)

One more stopoff in Brazil for this summer - although it's really a stopoff in London, where Caetano Veloso (along with Gilberto Gil) was spending the early 70s in political exile.  He was able to return home shortly after completing this album, and the homesickness is palpable in the lyrics, many of which are in English.  I've always wondered if the Portuguese expletive of the album title was cheekily chosen by Veloso to rile the censorious establishment who'd booted him out of Brazil, or likely to fly over the heads of Anglophone audiences, or both.

The out-of-sorts ennui is never more succinctly expressed than in the album opener You Don't Know Me, which comes across like an MPB version of Neil Young's On The Beach title track.  Veloso switches in and out of Portuguese as the emotion rises in the song.  Nine Out Of Ten is even more evocative in time and place, with an echo of the same downer exile vibe coming later in It's A Long Way.

Veloso also roots the album in Brazilian authenticity, with an update of an old samba classic in Mora Na Filosofia, and also in the album's longest track.  Over nine minutes, Triste Bahia takes a poem by 17th century poet Gregório de Matos and riffs on it with surreal non-sequiturs and even rooster crowing (if you ever wanted to know the Brazilian-Portugeuse equivalent of "cock a doodle doo", well, it's "cocorocô" - thanks to lyrictranslate.com for that gem).  One of the definite highlights of a beautifully melancholic, sometimes warmly funny record.

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Weather Report - s/t (1971)

A low-key start for one of jazz fusion's most high profile groove machines, especially considering the Bitches Brew alumni involved.  Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter's decade and a half as WR mainstays began here with fellow founder Miroslav Vitouš, drummer Alphonse Mouzon and percussion from Airto Moreira, Don Alias & Barbara Burton.

Weather Report's still striking debut is a journey into the possibilities of group improvisation and sound manipulation, right from the ambient shimmer of Milky Way, which Robert Christgau memorably likened to "a carrilon approaching a time warp".  Next, Vitouš' distorted bass underpins the first rhythmic drive of the album, with Zawinul's effects-laden electric piano prefiguring his all-consuming adoption of synths.  Other highlights include Zawinul's Orange Lady, also recorded with Miles, and the spacious grooves of the last three tracks that would point the way forward for Weather Report.

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Conrad Schnitzler / Pyrolator - Con-Struct (2015)

"Con-Struct" is a series of albums whereby Conrad Schnitzler's archive of sounds was opened up to contemporary German musicians, with releases beginning in 2011 (the year Schnitzler died).  This one I probably picked up around the same time as those two early Pyrolator albums featured at the start of this blog (links below), and it's Kurt Dahlke's latter-day sound that takes the Schnitzler building blocks here and gives them a sleek techno sheen.

After a tantalising ambient drift of an introduction, Pyrolator's Con-Struct album takes a few tracks to warm up into something genuinely special, but then hits cruising altitude with a series of winning con-structions.  Some of these could almost sit comfortably on a contemporary Ostgut Ton album (now my absolute favourite label for new electronic releases).  All the tracks have numerical titles, as per late-period Schnitzler's general practice, and my personal picks are the minimalism of 316-2, the pleasantly bouncy 287-13, and the club-ready sequences of 316-16.

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Conrad Schnitzler at SGTG:
Grün
Con
Consequenz
Contempora
Con 3
Congratulacion
Pyrolator at SGTG:
Inland
Pyrolator's Wunderland

Miles Davis with Gil Evans - Quiet Nights (1963)

Whilst not up to the standard of their previous collaborations (see Miles Ahead and Sketches of Spain links below), Miles Davis and Gil Evans' final album is still an enjoyable slice of summer-night loveliness.  The compromised nature of Quiet Nights is generally thought to have been due to pressure from CBS to make a more commercial bossanova cash-in, which Davis and Evans eventually grew frustrated with after months of sessions.  They abandoned the project with just 20 minutes of music completed.

The paltry runtime was filled out with an outtake from Miles' previous album and released by Teo Macero against the artist's wishes, causing a three-year rift in their working relationship.  When remastered for a Columbia Legacy CD, it was bulked up a little more with 12 minutes of music intended for a theatrical project.  For all its limitations, I've got a definite soft spot for Quiet Nights - not just because I love Miles Davis/Gil Evans and Brazilian music, but because it's a sweet, languid little record perfect for sitting with the windows open in August watching the sun set.

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Miles Davis at SGTG:
Conception
Walkin'
Blue Moods
Bags' Groove
Miles Ahead (with Gil Evans)
Sketches Of Spain (with Gil Evans)
On The Corner
Agharta

Alexander Nemtin (after Alexander Scriabin) - Universe (1973)

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (1872-1915) had big plans for his magnum opus Mysterium.  The week-long work was to be held in a kind of ampitheatre venue, preferably in the foothills of the Himalyas, and the proto-multimedia spectacle would overwhelm the audience with sound, coloured lights, smoke, incense and dance.  Scriabin, heavily into theosophy, wanted this extravaganza to bring about an apocalyptic raising up of humanity to a new consciousness.  Then he died, having only completed some sketches for the "Prefatory Action", in itself to be a three-part, hours-long overture.

Alexander Nemtin (1936-1999) became fascinated by Scriabin's insane concept and unfinished drafts, and over three decades realised his version of Prefatory Action from educated guesswork at Scriabin's intentions.  The first part, running to 40 minutes and given the title Universe, was completed in the early 70s and recorded in 1973.  It's a wonderfully bonkers labour of love that drifts and shimmers in space; sometimes not quite sure whether it wants to be a Messiaen-like psychedelic symphony, or a piano concerto where the score's come through a wonky fax machine.  Eventually it builds to an epic choral finale - a false ending, in fact, as it does so again for the closing minutes.

Nemtin would eventually complete all three parts, apparently with diminishing returns as he'd already used almost all of Scriabin's material in the first.  Universe is definitely worth hearing though, as a small insight into what could've been truly magnificent had Scriabin lived, transformative apocalypse or not.  On this CD reissue, it's accompanied by two shorter orchestral works that he did complete in his lifetime: a nice full-bodied Symphonic Poem finished in 1897 but only published posthumously, and a sweet-sounding Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra from 1889.  No recording dates for these, but the 1980s or early 90s can be assumed as the recording quality is noticeably sharper than for Universe.

Original LP cover, 1973

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Pat Metheny, Dave Holland & Roy Haynes - Question And Answer (1990)

Sunny (even though it was recorded just before Christmas) and swinging single-day session from a trio of absolute masters of their craft, effortlessly turning in five Metheny originals, three jazz standards and an Ornette Coleman cover.  It's a well-sequenced hour of uptempo material and some gorgeous ballads, in classic guitar trio format until the album closer - which oddly sounds like it's jumped in from a Pat Metheny Group record, but it's still a great tune so it doesn't jar with the rest of the material.

Pat's on fine form, Dave Holland rock solid and nimble, and the legend that is Roy Haynes.... just.... wow.   Sometimes I feel like this album should've been credited to Haynes first followed by the others, he's just so on point with every single beat and trademark cymbal/hi-hat flourish.  So well recorded, too - if a lover of jazz drumming was ever to tap me for a recommendation, they'd be pointed straight in the direction of this album.

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Pat Metheny at SGTG:
Watercolors
New Chautauqua 
American Garage
As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls
Offramp
First Circle
Song X
The Way Up
and featuring Pat:
Dreams So Real
Shadows And Light
The Sound Of Summer Running

Gong - Angel's Egg (1973)

Psychedelic adventures with Pothead Pixies, Octave Doctors and more from Daevid Allen, Steve Hillage & co.  This album by the classic Gong lineup starts with a spacey introduction, which segues into a great piece of jazz rock with some wonderful lead guitar from Hillage, and continues on in this vein for the rest of the album.

Many of the tracks are short connecting pieces which give the various band members a turn in the spotlight: more Hillage on Castle In The Clouds, Didier Malherbe on Flute Salad, Pierre Moerlen on Percolations.  Allen's "mystical histories of an undiscovered planet... for children of all ages" keep the narrative tied together among all these various interludes, and the three songs that close the album (including Hillage's I Never Glid Before) are among Gong's very best.

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Gong at SGTG:
You
Shamal
Gazeuse!
Expresso II
Daevid Allen at SGTG:
Dividedalienplaybax80
Steve Hillage at SGTG:
Motivation Radio
Green
Open/Studio Herald
Rainbow Dome Musick
Point 3: Water

Kenneth Gaburo - Five Works For Voices, Instruments And Electronics (2002 compi, rec. 1968-87)

Collection with self-explanatory title, giving a nice overview of the compositional and linguistic interests of New Jersey-born Kenneth Gaburo (1926-1993).  The first track here, Antiphony IV (Poised) from 1967, takes us straight into Gaburo's concept of "compositional linguistics", taking fragments of a poem by Virignia Hommel and contrasting the timbres of voice, piccolo, trombone and double bass, over a bed of electronic sounds.

A single-movement string quartet then briefly highlights Gaburo's early work (it was written in 1956), before we're back into more incredibly strange vocal sounds, this time sung through a trumpet in Mouth Piece (1970).  Another Antiphony piece follows, again using words from a Hommel poem.  Antiphony III (Pearl-White Moments) (1962) structures the pure sung phonemes in counterpoint with taped versions, electronically modified versions, and pure electronics for 16 ear-bending minutes.

The best is saved for last, though.  The Flow Of (u) (1974) might just consist of "one note sung by three singers for 23 minutes", but the hypnotic effect of the drone is transcendent.  Incredibly soothing, like a deep-brain head massage.

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Harald Grosskopf - Oceanheart (1986)

Second solo album from Wallenstein/Cosmic Jokers/Ashra drummer turned synthesist, which came six years after his debut.  Oceanheart kicks off with the pleasantly propulsive sequencer-based track Eve On The Hill, and continues in a mostly upbeat vein of 80s electronics.  The title track gives a nice change of pace in its suitably aquatic ambience.  The tabla on Pondicherry Dream adds a nice extra colour to the track, then the album ends as it began with a lengthy workout, appropriately titled Minimal Boogie.  Of its time, sure, but in the nicest possible way.

Original LP cover

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Rzewski, Eastman, Furrer, Haas - London & Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festivals 2016

Still digging through some radio broadcasts that I never got around to using, so here's a pair of back-to-back episodes from BBC Radio 3's Hear And Now programme that aired in early 2017.

Covered first is the opening night of the London Contemporary Music Festival 2016, which was titled "In Search Of Julius Eastman".  The new music ensemble Apartment House turn in a great performance of Eastman's hour-plus, gradually unfolding Femenine - see below for the vintage recording that they used to help piece together the basic score.  It's paired in this concert with Frederic Rzewski's propulsive (then reflective) memorial to the Attica uprising, Coming Together.

At the Huddersfield festival, Klangforum Wien perform Beat Furrer's Intorno Al Bianco, a stunning, at times ear-splitting work for clarinet and string quartet.  Trombone Unit Hannover are also featured in Georg Freidrich Haas' subtle blending of multiple trombones, aus frier Lust... verbunden.  In between, the programme returns to London for a special setup to allow the London Sinfonietta to perform Furrer's epic FAMA.  Taking inspiration from Ovid's Metamorphoses, where the title refers to "a place where every sound in the world is heard", Furrer's sound-world simply has to be heard to be believed.

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Julius Eastman at SGTG:
Unjust Malaise
Femenine (live 1974) 
Georg Friedrich Haas at SGTG:
In Vain

Egberto Gismonti & Nana Vasconcelos - Duas Vozes (1984)

ECM's two Brazilian masters came together for their second duo recording in June 1984, and started the album in a way that was certainly memorable.  It's probably one of the most avant-garde renderings of Ary Barroso's Aquarela Do Brasil ever attempted - see here for a more recognisable version.  This one only reveals itself about halfway through, and features a small amount of the lyrics at the end.

The rest of the material is mostly Gismonti's, and showcases his typically nimble multi-string guitar technique in both lightning fast runs and percussive attacks.  There's also a traditional tune, the atmospheric Tomarapeba, and the closing track is by Vasconcelos.  His percussive range is as striking as ever, adding up to an inspired collaboration.

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Egberto Gismonti at SGTG: 
Academia Da Danças
Sol De Meio Dia 
Circense
Sanfona
Dança Dos Escravos
In Montreal (with Charlie Haden)