Astrud Gilberto / Walter Wanderley - A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness (1966)

Light and uplifting bossanova pop from the genre's legendary vocalist, backed on this occasion by organist/pianist Walter Wanderley's trio.  The two title tracks are up first, with A Certain Smile serving as a brief overture, and A Certain Sadness featuring an uncredited guitarist who may or may not have been João Gilberto.  From there, a breezy twenty-odd minutes goes by in lovely, classy style, staying true to the album's concept-of-sorts in contrasting downbeat ballads and frothy poppy numbers, with the emphasis on the latter.  Instant musical refreshment.

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Getz/Gilberto

The Astrud Gilberto Album

Look To The Rainbow

I Haven't Got Anything Better To Do

Gilberto With Turrentine (scroll past main post)

Frank Zappa - Wazoo (recorded Sept. 1972, released 2007)

One from the vault, in the concert that wound up a still-recuperating Zappa's brief tour with the 'Grand Wazoo' big band, recorded in Boston Music Hall on 24 September 1972.  Band introductions come first, along with an unfortunate tale of squashed instruments under a falling speaker cabinet.  The beginning of this appears to not have been captured by the soundboard tape: apparently the missing words are "Well, here we are in Boston, ladies and gentlemen. Just to fill you in on some of the zaniness that took place earlier this afternoon."

 

That out of the way, we first get an extended blast of The Grand Wazoo title track.  If you love that album as much as I do, this is a treat to hear, as is Big Swifty from Waka/Jawaka.  In between is Zappa's improvisational vehicle from the era, Approximate.  Apparently there's a bit of shifting around in the running order to get a good fit for double-CD, so Disc 2 centres on an early version of The Adventures Of Greggery Peccary, without vocals but with specially-arranged sections for more improvisation (no mean feat with so many musicians).  A couple of short encores close proceedings: it's particularly interesting to hear an embryonic Regyptian Strut, here titled Variant I Processional March.  So much great stuff here from the Zappa albums I love best - the sound might be spotty in places but this is a wonderful concert to have.

 

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

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Frank Zappa at SGTG:

Lumpy Gravy

Waka/Jawaka

The Grand Wazoo

Roxy & Elsewhere

One Size Fits All

Orchestral Favourites

Sleep Dirt

Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar

Boulez Conducts Zappa - The Perfect Stranger  

Jazz From Hell

You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2: The Helsinki Concert

Road Tapes, Venue #2: Finlandia Hall, Helsinki 1973

The Perfect Stranger (live 2018)

Jacob Druckman - String Quartets Nos. 2 & 3, Dark Wind, Reflections On The Nature Of Water (1998)

A sample of the chamber music composed by Philadelphia-born Jacob Druckman (1928-1996).  The most avant-garde piece here, from Druckman's experimental 1960s, is the String Quartet No. 2.  Placed last on this collection, the single-movement work calls for the wildest playing techniques, and contrasts nicely with the album opener, the lengthy light-and-shade of 1981's String Quartet No. 3.  In between are Reflections On The Nature Of Water (1986), a solo marimba suite performed by the composer's son Daniel Druckman, and another pensive, dramatic string piece Dark Wind (1994).

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The Group For Contemporary Music at SGTG:

Morton Feldman: String Quartet

Paul Haslinger - Future Primitive (1994)

Since the Tangerine Dream posts ended in the Haslinger era, thought some of you might enjoy (or at least be mildy amused by) his debut solo album.  Picked this up in a charity shop a few months ago, and in the spirit of that Christoph Franke album from ages ago, decided that whether for comedy value or genuine enjoyment, it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

Well, it's definitely not as bad as that Christoph Franke album.  But it is still an ex-member of TD, whose 90s forte was most definitely film soundtrack work, deciding to make a sample-heavy solo album.  Haslinger in this case sticks to shorter, beat-driven tracks, so Future Primitive would at least have sounded vaguely contemporary in 1994.  From this distance it's a listenable enough time capsule of the kind of 'tribal' electronica that dozens of people were doing better, but it's definitely not an 'old shame' dud either.  See what you think.  I've just noticed that Haslinger put out a fairly well-received ambient record (and follow-up of sorts) just a couple of years ago, so I wouldn't mind giving that one a listen.

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pw: sgtg

BBC Proms 2022: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - From 8-Bit To Infinity (31 July 2022)

The first of its kind for the BBC Proms - a concert given over to video game music, from the 80s (the opening piece) to the present day.  The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra brought this music off the monitor screen and on to the stage in fine style, in a roughly chronological journey showing the maturation of gaming soundtracks through the 90s to the early 21st century.  Having not really been a gamer since the early 90s, pretty much all of this music was new to me, and really brought home the wide scope and ingenuity of these (mostly Japanese) composers.  

 

A couple of composers featured here were familiar to me: soundscaper CHAINES has been previously featured on SGTG, and here pays tribute to Pokémon, Ecco The Dolphin, and Secret Of Mana in a premiere setting.  Hildur Guðnadóttir I also knew from her Chernobyl soundtrack, and her Battlefield 2042 music is one of the definite highlights of this thoroughly engrossing programme.

 

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Tangerine Dream - Livemiles (1988)

So here it is, the last TD post, and an album that marked another departure - this time of Chris Franke, who'd been a constant in the lineup since the early 70s.  In the grand tradition of Tangerine Dream's official live albums occasionally containing live music, Livemiles features half an hour of edited and studio-polished highlights from Franke's final concert in August 1987, but before that, features half an hour purporting to be from a concert in Albuquerque in June 1986.

Alternate cover art used on some reissues

When asked why the first side of Livemiles shares absolutely no music in common with audience tapes from the Albuquerque concert, Froese only ever deflected along the lines of "well, we did play that music at some point on that tour".  Whatever the source though, Livemiles: Albuquerque is still a good four-section piece of music.  Starting from a fourteen-minute buildup and ending on a stately, anthemic melody, it finds this short-lived trio lineup on fine form, but Livemiles: Berlin is better.  In three sections of around nine minutes apiece, the lovely Caspian Sea section gives way to the more rhythmically driven Velvet Autumn/Sunnyvale (these titles were announced during a concert broadcast, so I think are canon), then Dolphin Dance from Underwater Sunlight draws it to a close.  So the Berlin track is a very good patchwork of a few highlights from Franke's last concert, but there's more...

 

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Bonus post: Tangerine Dream live at Reichstagsgelände, West Berlin, 1st August 1987

...here's the whole thing.  As mentioned above, the open-air concert in West Berlin with which Franke bowed out was broadcast in full, so recordings made for an excellent quality source to use in the Tangerine Tree fan project.  The Livemiles: Berlin sections can be heard in their rawer form, the band's recent albums are all touched on (including instrumental versions of Tyger tracks - yay, listenable Tyger!), some of their film and video music is featured, and Haslinger's solo piano spot takes in themes going right back to Richocet and Pergamon.  Sure, the sound might be a bit slick and everything segues just a bit too perfectly (long-standing rumours of backing tapes abound), but I love this recording as a two-hour deep dive into the sound of mid-late 80s TD.

 

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pw: sgtg

 

Previously posted at SGTG:

Electronic Meditation

Alpha Centauri  

Zeit

Atem 

Phaedra (scroll past main post)

Rubycon & Richochet

Stratosfear
Encore

Cyclone
Force Majeure
Tangram

Pergamon

Thief 

Exit

White Eagle 
Logos: Live At The Dominion
Hyperborea

Poland

Le Parc

Underwater Sunlight

BBC Proms 2022 - Hebrides Ensemble Play Xenakis, Messiaen & Ravel (Proms in Belfast, 18 July 2022)

This year's first post from the Proms actually comes from the Waterfront Hall Studio in Belfast, and is an hour-long chamber concert marking Iannis Xenakis' centenary.  To offer up something special for the occasion, the programme starts with an unpublished early piece by Xenakis: a piano fragment from 1949.  Lasting under a minute, it's nice to hear something so rare by Xenakis.  Straight afterwards, the Hebrides Ensemble dive in to the composer's late period with Akea (1986) for piano and string quartet, with the dramatic sonorities making his signature unmistakeble.  Ittidra, one of Xenakis' final works from a decade later, features ghostly, queasy strings, and the Ravel homage À R. (1987) for piano highlights his formative influences, as do the Ravel and Messiaen pieces that fill out a well-chosen programme.

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pw: sgtg

Tangerine Dream - Underwater Sunlight (1986)

Jumping five years this time in TD history from the last post, to land squarely in the 'blue' years on Jive Electro.  The departure of Johannes Schmoelling in 1985 was for a long time my cut-off point for enjoying Tangerine Dream, but uncritical listening to this 1986 release reveals lots still left to love.  Froese plays more guitar on this one, Franke was still around for another year or two to bolster the sound, and of course Schmoelling had a replacement in the 23-year old Austrian pianist Paul Haslinger.

A classically-trained pianist who'd been playing jazz in Viennese clubs, Haslinger soon acclimated to the electronic trio and its armoury of new equipment.  There was still room for Haslinger's considerable piano talents, with an early highlight of this album's first side suite being his gorgeous solo at the halfway point.  The 19-minute Song Of The Whale may be the highlight of this aquatic-themed record, but the more uptempo tracks are fun too, even if we're well on the way from the 'electronic rock' TD of the early 80s to comfortably new age territory.  Some fine guitar work from Froese prevents things from ever becoming bland.  The final deep-sea ambience of Underwater Twilight rounds off the album well.

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pw: sgtg

Bonus post: Tangerine Dream live at WDR Sendsaal, Cologne, 29 March 1986

Just prior to recording Underwater Sunlight, the new TD lineup undertook a month-long European tour, almost all of it in the UK followed by a single show in Cologne and one in Paris.  From the Cologne concert, the first hour exists as a radio broadcast recording, so makes for a nice short entry in the Tangerine Tree series that gives a flavour of the pre-album tour.  Material that wouldn't be included in Underwater Sunlight is particularly interesting here, such as the lengthy Akash Deep and its coda Beneath The Waves, Coloured Rain and The Cool Breeze Of Brighton (I understand at least some of these titles were fan-assigned and have since become semi-canon).  The opening re-work of the Stratosfear title track is good to hear too, as is a Haslinger solo piano spot which includes his eventual Song Of The Whale bridging section.

 

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pw: sgtg

 

Previously posted at SGTG:

Electronic Meditation

Alpha Centauri  

Zeit

Atem 

Phaedra (scroll past main post)

Rubycon & Richochet

Stratosfear
Encore

Cyclone
Force Majeure
Tangram

Pergamon

Thief 

Exit

White Eagle 
Logos: Live At The Dominion
Hyperborea

Poland

Le Parc

The Gil Evans Orchestra - Out Of The Cool (1961)

Here's something that sounds particularly good in a sweltering summer.  Coming hot on the heels of Gil Evans' Sketches Of Spain collaboration with Miles Davis, Out Of The Cool was one of the first batch of LPs released on the new Impulse! label.  

 

Trading some of the tightly-written arrangements that were Evans' stock in trade for a slightly looser, more rhythmic groove, the album hits cooking temperature right away with the 15-minute La Nevada, the insistent rhythm an ideal base for soloing.  A pair of refreshed standards follow, with a lovely trombone-led Where Flamingos Fly then a languid Bilbao Song.  An extended take on George Russell's Stratusphunk highlights more great solos over a walking strut, and the album closes on a pensive note with another Evans composition, Sunken Treasure.

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Arrangements by Gil Evans at SGTG:

Miles Davis: Miles Ahead, Sketches Of Spain, Quiet Nights

Astrud Gilberto: Look To The Rainbow