Scott Walker - Scott 3 & Scott 4 (1969) plus BBC Proms Tribute 2017

These two classic albums from 1969, plus Scott Walker's wider discography, always find regular rotation in my listening habits in the last couple of months of the year, so here's some long overdue posting of Scott 3 & 4 - with a bonus tribute concert from three years ago.

By the time the 60s entered its final year, the former Walker Brothers idol had released two solo records of increasingly ambitious songwriting and arrangement, his own songs dotted between covers notably by Jacques Brel.  For Scott 3, the three Brel covers were placed right at the end of the album, leaving the rest to his most mature songwriting yet, including timeless classics like Copenhagen and Rosemary.  Wally Stott's string arrangements were still sumptuous and classy, but the dissonant drone at the album's outset pointed to even more ambitious music to come.

Walker released no less than three albums in 1969, the second being a contractual commitment to his TV show - but he was saving his own material for his masterpiece.  Originally released under his birth name of Engel, and probably sinking without trace for that reason on initial release, Scott 4 was Walker's first release of all-original material.

 

And seriously, what to even write about this clutch of ten songs without a single dud among them.  Starting your record with a setting of Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal to a Morricone-eseque arrangement might seem like an audacious move - following it up with nine more perfect songs with slimmed-down arrangements just makes for one of the greatest albums ever made.  If this post happens to be your first encounter with Scott 4, I envy you beyond description.

Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker is a longtime Scott Walker champion who'd worked with him in 2001, and had taken part in the "Tilting and Drifting" concert at the London Barbican in 2008.  Cocker therefore must've been an obvious choice for this BBC Proms tribute to the 1967-1970 music of Scott, which took place in July 2017.  

 

For this concert, Jarvis was joined by fellow British artist Richard Hawley, US singer-songwriter John Grant, and Susanne Sundfør from Norway.  Each singer takes two songs in the spotlight, and turn about thereafter, all coming together for the closing Get Behind Me.  Providing the sumptuous backing to seventeen of Walker's finest songs are the Heritage Orchestra conducted by Jules Buckley.

Scott 3 link

Scott 4 link

Proms Tribute link

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Nite Flights

Climate Of Hunter

Tilt

Soused

Mathias Eick - Midwest (2015)

Third album as leader for Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick, and probably one of the finest ECM albums of the last decade.  For me, it gets in to such esteemed company as Wisława for much the same reasons: having an inspired lineup playing at the top of its game on some superb compositions.

Eick's inspiration for this album was a tour of the US where he travelled through the rural Midwest.  Struck by the landscape's resemblance to his native land, he wondered if early Norwegian immigrants to the area had thought the same.  To translate this migratory concept into music, Eick scaled back the more contemporary sound of his breakthrough album Skala, and added folk violinist Gjermund Larsen.

 

The result was an inspired coupling of Eick's lyrical, Chet Baker/Kenny Wheeler inspired melodicism with an earthy folkiness that really makes these wide-open-space melodies stick in your brain, and rewards repeat plays.  Jon Balke's beautifully understated piano and the rhythm section of Mats Eilertsen/Helge Norbakken are the perfect foil to Eick and Larsen's soaring melodies.  Highly recommended.

link

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City Of London Sinfonia/Truro Cathedral Choir - The Fruit Of Silence At Truro Cathedral (2019)

Music of quiet, austere beauty, recorded a year ago this week on a tour by the London Sinfonia.  Whilst exploring the acoustics of some of the UK's legendary cathedrals, they arrived at this Gothic Revival one in Cornwall and were joined by Truro Cathedral Choir.  The ensemble and choir perform at varying locations around the cathedral, to fully exploit its natural resonances.

The programme alternates between choral music and chamber music, taking in 20th and 21st century composers from Peteris Vasks (whose twice-performed piece in different versions gives the concert its title), Eric Whitacre, and Russel Pascoe to John Tavener and Dobrinka Tabakova, whose Centuries Of Meditations suite is the stunning closer (her string quintet Organum Light is another highlight).  Even though he's just represented here by instrumental music, the influence of Arvo Pärt casts a long shadow over all the composers of the choral works.  If you like Pärt, prepare for 70 minutes of heavenly sounds.

link

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Dobrinka Tabakova - String Paths (2013)

Debut album of music by Bulgarian-born, London-based composer Dobrinka Tabakova (b. 1980, Plovdiv).  This superb ECM New Series release focuses on Tabakova's works for strings, written between 2002 and 2008.

First up is Insight, intended to blend the sonorities of a string trio so that they sound like a single instrument - it's a great opener.  Next is a concerto for cello and strings, that emphasises the lead instrument's grounded quality, like "a ship trying to anchor itself".  This is followed by Frozen River Flows, which brings Gubaidulina to mind in its use of accordion, although the inspiration was a Messiaen organ work transcribed for accordion, as well as the titular flow of water underneath ice.

Suite In Old Style, which was being performed at the Lockenhaus Festival where Manfred Eicher discovered Tabakova's music, takes in influences from baroque music and architechture; she described it as "a conversation I wanted to have... with Rameau".  To close, the string septet Such Different Paths gradually introduces the instruments in pairs, passing melodic lines around until the solo violin soars above them.  More music by Tabakova coming up on Monday.

link

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Conrad Schnitzler - Blau (1974)

Early Schnitzler in his second solo LP, comprising two side-long tracks.  Die Rebellen Haben Sich In Den Bergen Versteckt looks forward to the increasingly rhythmic electronics that Schnitzler would produce in the late 70s - early 80s, clanking its way forwards whilst other synth burbles are overlaid until a mournful-sounding guitar figure is introduced.  

 

Jupiter is more appropriately cosmic, with Schnitzler's synths floating around in a dark, gaseous echosphere, and what sounds like a wordless vocal towards the end.  According to Asmus Tietchens' liner notes, Schnitzler's old Kluster bandmates Moebius and Roedelius are featured on this album - I'm not entirely sure where though, it all sounds like classic early period Schnitzler to me.

link

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Grün
Con
Consequenz
Contempora
Con 3
Congratulacion

Con-Struct (Pyrolator)

The Quintet - Jazz At Massey Hall (rec. 1953, first 12" LP release 1956)

Recordings from a bop dream team in concert at Toronto's Massey Hall on 15 May 1953, with some later bass overdubs.  Bird & Diz, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach - what more to say, really, about a lineup like that?  The audience might have been diminished due to being scheduled against a boxing prize fight, but this a heavyweight championship in its own right.  Six classic tunes give everyone a chance to land punches, from the opening swing of Perdido, a red hot Salt Peanuts where Gillespie's clearly having fun, to a lengthy Hot House where Mingus and Roach stretch out, and more.  An essential landmark in 50s jazz.

link

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Richard & Linda Thompson - Pour Down Like Silver (1975)

A new box set was recently released taking in all of the albums (and more) by this legendary pairing in British folk, so here's my favourite album of theirs.  Just about to take a break from music, as they'd converted to Sufi Islam, Richard & Linda Thompson's new spritual embrace was encapsulated in the gorgeous centrepice of this album, Night Comes In.

Beat The Retreat and Dimming Of The Day were further sublime expressions of spiritual longing, but the sardonic wit of Thompson's songwriting up until then wasn't entirely absent.  The opening track Streets Of Paradise was particularly good on that score, and the album as a whole still features plenty of his brilliant guitar playing.  Always inspired by Scottish music, Thompson ends the album with a cover of James Scott Skinner's fiddle tune Dargai.  Pour Down Like Silver was the most stripped-down sounding of all of Richard & Linda's albums, and the bare-bones sound (filled out where necessary, most distinctively by John Kirkpatrick's accordion playing) suits these starkly beautiful songs well.

link

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Third Ear Band - s/t aka Elements (1970)

Raga-influenced free improvisation in four parts - titled Air, Earth, Fire and Water, hence the album's informal title.  With instrumentation based on percussion, oboe, cello, violin and viola, the ritualistic drones of Third Ear Band's debut album (link below) are improved upon - at their most drivingly hypnotic on Fire, and in a few places much more melodic, such as on Earth.  The more eerie, low-key drone of Water is the intriguing closer.  Unique music both of its time and also timelessly enjoyable.

 

link

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Previously posted at SGTG: Alchemy

Ljubica Marić - Threshold Of Dream (1996 compi, rec. 1958-1996)

 

Career-spanning overview of Yugoslavian/Serbian composer Ljubica Marić (1909-2003), whose style was significantly influenced by Byzantine church music.  Her earliest work is represented by the very last track on this compilation, a violin sonata written in 1928.

Most of Disc 1 is taken up by works in Marić's "Music of Octoecha" series from the 50s and 60s, inspired by the eight modes used by the Byzantine Orthodox Church.  Some of the recordings occasionally show their vintage (or perhaps inept remastering) in brief dropouts, so don't worry, it's not your headphones, but are all good enough to let this solemn, powerful music shine through, especially on the lengthy Byzantine Concerto.  The cantata that gives this collection its title is another highlight, using the fifth mode of the Octoechos and surrealist verses by the poet Laza Kostić.

 

Marić's late work is represented by the trio piece Torso from 1996, so titled as it was intended to be "reduced to its core".  Disc 2 then starts with what was the highlight of the whole collection for me, Songs Of Space for choir and orchestra, which takes its text from epitaphs found on Bogomil tombstones.  An orchestral work from the 50s and string work from the 80s round out this great introduction to Marić.  Recommended especially for anyone who likes Pärt & Górecki at their most invigorating.

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

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Kate Moore - Dances And Canons, performed by Saskia Lankhoorn (2014)

Piano music by British-Australian composer Kate Moore (b. 1979), who studied under Louis Andriessen and now lives in the Netherlands, performed by her friend and collaborator Saskia Lankhoorn (same age, Dutch born & bred).  There's lots to love here for fans of the piano music of Philip Glass, John Adams (especially the second track Stories For Ocean Shells) et al, but Moore's stamp on her work is definitely an individual one.  For these pieces, she variously took inspriation from woven patterns, nature and tectonic movement, and the writings of Sufi philosopher Hazrat Inayat Khan.

 

Khan's words were the direct inspiration for The Body Is An Ear, from an ancient legend about human ensoulment by angel song, and the two pianos are overlaid exquisitely.  Moore also writes for four pianos, in the longest track Canon, where the gentle reverberations of the piano parts made me think of Jordan De La Sierra.  Sensitive Spot calls for the same piano part to be played in multiple layers, creating gorgeous ripples of sound.  Highly recommended, beautifully evocative music.

link

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Asmus Tietchens - Spät-Europa (1982)

Spät-Europa (Late Europe) was the second in Asmus Tietchens' series of four albums for Sky Records (links to the other three below).  It took the succinct economy of Biotop to extremes, with no less than 20 tracks lasting between two and three minutes in a variety of styles, to create a kind of compendium of avant-garde synth-pop.

Despite being the first Tietchens album I ever bought, Spät-Europa took me the longest to get in to.  It is meant to be his most accesible album (although I might be more inclined to give that to Litia), and it does have zippy little melodies in spades alongside darker-hued material; I reckon it's because there's just so much of it that it took me a while.  

 

Regardless, there's tons of timeless creativity to enjoy between the bookends of the choral overture and the piano with electronic whine that memorably closes the record.  Some of the most immediate highlights include the endearingly daft samba of Lourdes Extra, the quickly-souring earworm of Schöne Dritte Welt and the Roedelius-waltz gone dark swirl of Wein aus Wien.  There's at least half a dozen tracks that would make great sci-fi themes, like the pounding Ausverkauf, nervous-sounding Passaukontrolle and the Gary Numan-like Größenwarnung.  Try it all on shuffle and see what catches your ear.

link

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Biotop

In Die Nacht

Litia

Moebius & Tietchens

and featuring Asmus Tietchens

Liliental

Cluster & Eno

Weather Report - I Sing The Body Electric (1972)

Weather Report's second album was another small step towards becoming a fusion juggernaut, and does fill out the rhythmic/percussive base more, helped in no small part by Dom Um Romão.  For the most part though, it was still pretty off-beam and experimental, even more so than their debut (link below), and swims nicely in the primoridal soup emanated from the big bang of Bitches Brew.

 

The album opener Unknown Soldier displays both Zawinul's increasingly complex compositional skill, and his first use of synthesiser, having just bought an ARP 2600.  Wordless voices and guest brass arrangements fill out the evocation of Zawinul's memories of the end of WWII.  Next up, on The Moors, is a sound unusual for any WR record - 12 string acoustic guitar, in a guest spot from Ralph Towner - before the track starts to groove.  A more obtuse composition from Miroslav Vitouš and another great Zawinul tune fill out the album's first half.

The rest of I Sing The Body Electric is recorded live, in excerpts from a January 1972 concert in Tokyo (the Japanese market also got a double-LP's worth, called Live In Tokyo).  The edits here just hint at the complex firepower that this lineup were capable of on stage, but it's enough to still be very impressive.  This was clearly a group that could take the experimental ethos of electric Miles Davis and run with it in their own unique style.

link

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Previously posted at SGTG: s/t debut

Peter Frohmader - Stringed Works (1994 compi, rec. 1982-84)

This week of lengthy explorations of sound isn't over yet - here's four more.  Peter Frohmader was one of the founder members of the obscure krautrock outfit Kanaan (sounds like a definite Amon Düül II influence) in the mid 70s - they eventually turned into the group Nekropolis in the 80s.  

Apparently otherwise concentrating on electronic music as a solo artist, Frohmader's "Stringed Works" don't refer to anything classical, but to guitars and basses - or just basses, supported by a drummer, in the opening track here.  Bass Symphony No. 2, subtitled Bass Inferno, is 22 minutes of grinding, scratchy propulsion from 4 and 8 string bass guitars, fretless bass and electric upright bass.  It works up a fair head of steam (with some atmospheric interludes), sometimes sounding like a metal band without any guitarists.

Next up is Symphony For Basses And Guitars (Outset).  Frohmader plays all the electric and 12-string acoustic guitars himself, as well as basses and electronics.  Made me think of the more rocked-up parts of Tubular Bells at times, as Frohmader puts the instruments through their paces in a prog-like suite that still has a great atmospheric production.  Atmospheres are much more the focus of the next pair of tracks, which were originally released as an LP in 1987.  Bass Symphony No. 3 (Creation) pulses and shimmers, and eventually introduces ghostly, wordless vocals from singer Birgit Metzger.  Winter Music ventures even further into dark ambience, with Frohmader playing Champan Stick through a fog of effects while Metzger's layers of voice come to the fore.

link
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