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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"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.

Robert Ashley - Private Parts (The Record) (1978)

If Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing was an experiment in barely comprehensible, involuntary speech coming out of nowhere, its predecessor was a deliberate, clearly (if laidback, almost narcotically) enunciated spoken word opus on thoughts coming out of nowhere.  The two distinct narratives of Private Parts would end up bookending Ashley's landmark 'opera for television' Perfect Lives, but these original versions, on 'The Record', are the perfect way to listen to them, in what may well be his masterpiece.

Accompanied by Robert Sheff, aka "Blue" Gene Tyrrany on keyboards, and Krishna Bhatt on beautifully melodic tabla, Ashley narrates two stories that focus on the mental ruminations of two different people.  In the first one, a man on a business trip distracts himself from the loneliness of his motel room by imagining two men sitting on a nearby park bench.  In the second, a woman stands on a porch at twilight pondering her surroundings, the comforts of mindful breathing and a highly personalised numerology, and the cosmological heretic Giordano Bruno.

The music is supremely relaxing, with just a slight uncanny edge to it.  What makes The Backyard the superior of the two for me, at least musically, are Bhatt's brisker rhythm and Tyrrany's gradual introduction and swelling expansion at key points.  Ashley pours forth line after line, each potentially loaded with meaning or insignificance, depending on what mood each line catches you in and the level of attention you want to bring to each listen.

This has the great effect that no two listening experiences of the album are ever the same.  Even after spending several years with it, one particular line can just jump out at you in a way it hasn't before: in this instance, whilst having to divide my attention between listening to The Backyard whilst writing, I just caught "Behind her the great northern constellation rises in the majesty of its architecture."  But then, Ashley's very next line is the fourth-wall-leaning "Well, maybe that’s a little too much", and directs the character back into some more abstract thoughts of Bruno's martyrdom and the nature of twilight.  Prepare for many, many such bizarre moments of sudden clarity with Private Parts.

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Original LP cover