David Fanshawe - African Sanctus / Salaams (1989 compi, rec. 1973/77)

Nice little oddity today that very much reflects its late 60s-early 70s spirit of freewheeling experimentation.  African Sanctus is the most successful work by David Fanshawe (1942-2010), Devon-born ethnomusicologist and composer who was responsible for over thousands of recordings of indigenous music from around the world.  When I found this CD in a charity shop some time ago, I assumed it was another kind of Missa Luba - a gorgeous piece of music I must post some time - an African choral work.  Turns out African Sanctus is way much more eclectic and pleasingly strange than that.

Fanshawe's raw material for the work was the tapes he'd been accumulating in North and East Africa, as well as Arabia, in the late 60s.  He hit upon the idea of using these vocal, instrumental and percussive recordings as backing tapes to use in a Western-style Mass setting, and completed African Sanctus in 1972.  The work would undergo revisions over the years, but this June 1973 recording captures the original 54-minute version that was released as an LP that year.

Along with the indigenous recordings, African Sanctus uses bits of traditional choir and rock instrumentation of piano, electric guitar & bass and organ.  And frankly, it's all over the shop to listen to, in the most enjoyable way possible.  Far from watering down his source tapes into an insipid kind of world music, Fanshawe just let them burst into life in a kitchen sink approach of wildly varying tempi and dynamics.  It's an initially bewildering listen, but just about hangs together on its own internal logic, and not quite knowing what's coming next becomes part of the fun: whether that's African drumming, singing from both Christian and Islamic traditions, pop/rock music or environmental sounds (yep, there's frogs).  This multi-genre collage becomes something very likeable in its intention, and enduringly listenable.

Added on to this CD reissue is a 1977 recording of Fanshawe's 1970 piece Salaams, which again uses tapes (largely of pearl divers in Bahrain) against live instrumentation and singing.  It's a worthwhile inclusion, showing the development of the African Sanctus style on a smaller scale.

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Steve Hillage - Green (1978)

In early 1977, Steve & Miquette had two albums planned: one was to be The Red Album, the other The Green Album.  The former became Motivation Radio, from last Friday's post, but the latter kept to the original theme in its final title.  Whether it was the original intention or a later evolution, the distinction is clear - where Motivation Radio was rockier and more song-based, with only one instrumental, Green is over 50% instrumental, and points the way forward to Hillage & Giraudy's future direction.

Nick Mason was an apt choice for producer, as you can definitely draw more obvious parallels between Green and the classic Floyd sound.  Again, though, the lyrics are much more upbeat than Roger Waters' glass-half-empty world, and although very much of their time are accessible and heartfelt rather than just stoned ramblings (which I think is where I struggle with Gong, only really warming to them when Pierre Moerlen takes over.  But anyway, back to Hillage and Green.)

As mentioned above, with the exception of Unidentified Flying Being, which feels like more of a Motivation Radio track, this album is much spacier and atmospheric.  Most of the tracks flow into each other, and UFB segues into a stunning instrumental suite that will only be broken by one more minute of singing for the rest of the album.  Miquette and Steve really come into their own here as masters of ambient sequencing and other synth wonders, and this is also uniquely the album where Hillage favours guitar synth over regular guitar, further broadening the electronic palette.  Ending with a reworked Gong theme, Green really is space rock par excellence, and certainly my most enduring favourite in its genre.

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Orbital - s/t [aka The Brown Album, or Orbital 2 in the US] (1993)

Dug out this album thanks to Acid Brass from last week - went on a wee nostalgia trip of late 80s/90s dancey electronica.  An hour of classic Kraftwerkian techno bookended by a couple of jokey nods to Steve Reich's early tape work - seems ideal for posting here.

By 1992, Orbital's Hartnoll brothers had broken on the dance scene with a home cassette-deck recording (the immortal Chime) and released a solid first album.  The second was produced with a new level of confidence and skill, from the introductory tape-phase looping of Worf from Star Trek TNG (introduced on their 'Green' debut) to the more fully-realised album coherence and buildup of each track's elements.

There's enough acid squelch on the likes of Remind and Lush 3-2 to link to Orbital's roots,  but throughout the Brown Album lots of other details reward deep listening.  The sitar colourings on Planet Of The Shapes, which also has a sample from Withnail & I synced in perfect rhythm; on Walk Now, the only time I've ever enjoyed listening to a didgeridoo.... it's an album offering great variety.  My absolute favourite thing here is the 20 minute stretch that takes in the gradually-mutating Lush 3-1/3-2 and melodic highlight Impact (The Earth Is Burning), but the lovely Halcyon + On + On isn't far behind.  A hugely recommended album to anyone wanting to hear a classic of 90s electronic music that continues to age well.

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See also at SGTG: Underworld - Everything, Everything / Polygon Window - Surfing On Sine Waves

Williams Fairey Brass Band - Acid Brass (1997)

Picked up a classic charity shop find the other week.  And yep, it's exactly what the cover says - acid house anthems performed by a brass band.  This was the brainchild of London artist Jeremy Deller, who intended the project not to be a comic novelty, but a serious endeavour in drawing commonalities in British working class culture.  Deller went as far as including an elaborate flowchart in the CD booklet, with 'acid house' at one side and 'brass bands' at the other; the various links sometimes interesting, sometimes perhaps a bit spurious in driving his point home.  But enough sociocultural high-concept - as always, I'm more interested in the music.

Deller eventually found a brass band that were game for the challenge in Stockport's Williams Fairey Brass Band, formed in 1937 (I'm guessing this isn't the original lineup on Acid Brass).  Arranging Deller's chosen tracks was composer/arranger Rodney Newton, who also gets an interesting liner note about the challenges of the material, for instance, getting a group of brass band blokes to chant 'voodoo ray' in "low, guttural voices".  A live performance in Liverpool followed, seemingly well received by an audience of all ages.  A limited edition recording of the concert, also titled Acid Brass, was followed by this studio album.

So what does it sound like?  Well, to be honest, mostly like a cod-Mission Impossible/Austin Powers film score (What Time Is Love made me laugh out loud), but no less entertaining for that.  Newton does capture well the main themes and the tension-and-release of the originals, and purely from a melodic standpoint, A Guy Called Gerald's Voodoo Ray and 808 State's Pacific 202 sound lovely, proving their durability as highly original pieces of dance music.  The success of the arrangements can vary - I do like the tuned percussion (glock? marimba?) on those two tracks, and on Nitro Deluxe's Let's Get Brutal.  Derrick May's Strings Of Life doesn't translate quite as well, with its immortal string stabs rather weakly rendered - if anything, a testament to what a stunning work of genius the original was and still is.  Regardless, Acid Brass is a fun listen, especially in the summer sunshine.

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Trevor Wishart - Journey Into Space (1973)

Described as an "audio movie" on the original self-released vinyl labels, Journey Into Space was the first release by English electroacoustic composer Trevor Wishart (b. 1946, Leeds).  The charming DIY-ness of the double-LP's back cover is reproduced in this CD reissue, with sleevenotes very much of their time (see below), and advice that copies of the album could be obtained directly from the composer at his York University department for £3, plus 40p P&P - not exactly a bargain! - but fair play to Wishart, he'd completely self-financed the album.

One of those copies (or a subsequent release) may well have found its way into the hands of a trio of teenage sound-hounds in London, as Wishart features on the original Nurse With Wound list.  The massive amount of tape manipulation involved in Journey Into Space is a clear precursor to NWW, but in the early 70s Wishart appears to have been much more interested in making the mundane and everyday gradually warp into a fantastic dreamscape, as opposed to Stapleton's full-on surrealism.

"Journey-into-Space is the allegorical journey of a man towards self-realisation.  It begins in a strange landscape of Birth from which emerges the cry of a baby.  The man, as if waking from a dream, sets off in his car with the sounds of a space-rocket launch on his car radio.  The two journeys coalesce in his mind as he continues through many strange musical landscapes, eventually arriving at a doorway. 

On passing through the entrance-hall he emerges once more into the birth landscape, but now the music develops in an entirely new direction as the threads of the dream are drawn together."                                (from original LP liner notes)

The LP release just had four untitled sides, but this has been tidied up for CD to make Birth Dream the 13-minute introductory piece.  Comparisons to Throbbing Gristle's Medicine are perhaps inevitable, but Wishart's evocation of birth is far less, well, medical.  The main meat of the work follows - The Journey on CD runs for an uninterrupted 47 minutes, as the character's journey progresses as above from the mundane to the magical.  The 'music' as such was derived from blown bottles, children's toys and many other found objects, as well as the occasional brass honk and lots of evocative vocal sounds.  Lastly, the 18 minute Arrival does indeed draw the dream together in style, pulling together the various sound sources into a mindbending finale with an abrupt ending.  In short, fellow NWW fans will love this one - but it's also well worth anyone's time for the ingenuity in sound manipulation that Wishart was conjuring up in his University of York Electronic Music Studio.

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League Unlimited Orchestra - Love And Dancing (1982)

I've had a genuine affection for The Human League most of my life, from taping their singles off the radio as soon as I was old enough to operate a tape recorder, to discovering the much darker wonders of their first album in my teens.  Later on, Reproduction lost my interest a bit on discovering that Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle et al were what I was really looking for in that direction, but getting into Dare as a complete album made me realise what a true classic it was from start to finish.

Love And Dancing, though, is in a different league altogether (pun very much intended) and has become my absolute favourite thing associated with the band.  Taking on a different guise - one whose name was apparently in homage to Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra - Oakey and crew pulled together nearly-instrumental versions of seven Dare tracks and one B-side into two continuously mixed sides that made their electronic pop genius shine all the brighter, burnished by Martin Rushent's immaculate mixing & production.

The result on the perfect first side sounded like Kraftwerk circa Man Machine taking time out of a UK tour to stumble into a Northern Soul club and feeding the sheer euphoria into three new songs.  The Human League had of course been influenced by Kraftwerk from day one, but this is almost like a full-on homage (is that a cheeky little Europe Endless tribute at the start of Love Action?).  I've almost no words to describe the 7-minute version of Don't You Want Me - just sheer perfection in every second, turning a nowadays over-exposed pop evergreen into peerlesss dancefloor magnificence.

On Love And Dancing's second half, the darker tones of Dare mostly hold sway - the tracks that were most obviously a progression from their first two albums.  The JFK-assassination inspired Seconds and The Things That Dreams Are Made Of sound particularly ominous here, although the latter does drop in some of Oakey's most humourous lyrics ("Norman Wisdom, Norman Wisdom" dub-style almost makes me crack a smile).  Following up Seconds with the bright, chirpy melody of Open Your Heart was yet another stroke of genius.  I haven't used the 'favourite albums of all time' tag for a while now, but Love And Dancing sure as hell deserves it.

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Fred Frith - Guitar Solos (1974)

Solo debut from guitar/prepared-guitar legend Fred Frith, who'd go on to become an institution in the British (and worldwide) avant-garde, playing on hundreds of records.  Back in 1974, when he was a member of Rock In Opposition pioneers Henry Cow, Frith stepped into the studio alone for four days and recorded Guitar Solos - no overdubs, and only a couple of vague ideas with which to shape these eight improvised pieces.

After a short bouncy introduction, the album moves into more muted, atmospheric territory with the hovering-UFO feel of Glass c/w Steel.  The overall mood of the album largely stays there, bar two brief outings for the fuzz pedal.  If I had to pick favourites on this great little record, they're both in its second half - Hollow Music, perhaps the most recognisable as an instrumental guitar piece with lots of nice harmonics; and the epic closer, No Birds.  Over 12 minutes, a shimmering halo of sound builds up into a great atmospheric space, as Frith uses two guitars laid side by side, using his bespoke extra pickups and an echo unit to make it sound so unique.

CD reissue cover

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Steve Hackett - Please Don't Touch (1978)

For the title track of his first post-Genesis album, and second overall, Steve Hackett gave the following directions: "For maximum effect this track should be listened to as loudly as possible with as much treble and bass as your system can muster - not to be played to people with heart conditions or those in severely hallucinogenic states of mind."  And the track in question definitely packs a punch, framed perfectly as the centrepiece of a three-part instrumental suite.

Please Don't Touch, the full album, is a curious thing - almost like a series of picture frames that don't quite make for a coherent gallery, but still form a satisfying collection.  I've been listening to this album for more than any other in the last six weeks, so seemed obvious to feature it here.  Hackett set out his stall here with a great mix of his strengths in playing, composing, and full-on songwriting, with a well-picked supporting cast.

The vocal talents of Richie Havens, Randy Crawford and Steve Walsh (from Kansas) gave the album an oddly transatlantic feel right from the start, as Walsh sings lead on the C.S. Lewis-inspired Narnia (specifically, Lucy and Edmund's respective discoveries of the land beyond the wardrobe).  This is followed up by another literary tribute, this time to Agatha Christie - Hackett obscured his own vocals à la Laughing Gnome, which grates a little, but the track is musically brilliant with its memorable organ motif.  You could imagine this more English-sounding, whimsical track appearing on a Genesis record (like the title track nearly did).  From then on, the gear shifts into Racing In A, a solid piece of AOR with Walsh on lead vocal again.

A heavy 'and don't miss...' quotient for this great little record: the brief instrumental Kim (Hackett's then-wife), showing the writer's debt to Erik Satie; the gorgeous soul ballad Hoping Love Will Last fronted by Randy Crawford; and Richie Havens' two great contributions.  Think I've now covered every track actually, so I'll wind up there.  I love this album.

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Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album (1996)

4th album by Richard D. James under his most familiar moniker - presumably why it starts off the quite wonderful '4'.  As well as pushing the limits of his interest in jungle breakbeats skittering all over the place, this is a nice, compact little record bursting with melody, sweetness and freshness - the Pet Sounds of 90s UK electronica perhaps?  Certainly on the gorgeous plucked strings of Goon Gumpas and Girl/Boy Song.  A thoroughly satisfying way to spend 32 minutes - nothing outstays its welcome, and there's always tiny little details that grab you on repeated listens.

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Previously posted on SGTG: Surfing On Sine Waves

Brian Eno - Another Green World (1975)

Sitting at the crossroads between Eno's earliest art rock offerings and this first ambient explorations,  Another Green World always makes me smile.  There's still a handful of his off-kilter pop songs scattered throughout, with random sung syllables developed into nonsense (but weirdly charming) lyrics.  For the most part, however, this album is composed of gorgeous proto-ambient minatures that prefigure Eno's work with Cluster/Harmonia.  Eno's guitar playing, with that long sustain from all his unique experiments, is possibly my favourite aspect of this album.  Listen to the all-too-brief title track for example, then think of Michael Rother's guitar style in the late 70s - wonder who was really influencing who?

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Underworld - Everything, Everything (2000)

‘Imagine Bowie working with Kraftwerk – not in the past, but round about now’ was how Underworld was pitched to me in the late 90s by a fan who was trying to get me to see beyond ‘Born Slippy’s breakthrough on the Trainspotting soundtrack.  So imagine I did – sleek, precise electronica that still feels organic, still gets played live by human beings; and a cut-up surrealist, darkly poetic stream of consciousness over the top – pretty much on the nose for summing up Underworld in this purple patch of their career, which regrettably didn’t entirely survive the departure of DJ/producer/programmer Darren Emerson shortly afterwards.

But this phase of Underworld definitely ended in style – witness this brilliant live document of a May 1999 performance in Brussels.  Karl Hyde’s electrifying presence as frontman is very much in evidence, and all the songs sound great, with an extra freshness from being performed live; the only minor tradeoff being a slight loss of some of the subtleties of the studio albums.  Jumbo, from 1999’s Beaucoup Fish, is my favourite here, possibly as it’s the most understated track, and thus gets more room to breathe.  The concert movie that was released shortly afterwards adds a few more tracks, and shows even more plainly what a great live band Underworld are.  In a note from the CD sleeve that just dates it perfectly, the concert was to be ‘available on DVD and VHS in October 2000’.

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Autechre - Confield (2001)

A massive watershed moment for one of my favourite British electronic artists.  We've touched on Richard D James' catalogue early on in this blog, and no doubt will again; but today, from the same stable of early 90s Warp-ed electronica comes an album from Sean Booth and Rob Brown at the time when they reached far beyond those roots to definitively stake out their cold, clinical universe of alien machine music.

Ever since Confield's 2001 release, Autechre have become notorious in some critical quarters for pursuing circuit-bending inaccesability for its own sake.  If Cluster's Qua was described as a sketchbook, your average latter-day Autechre album can be more like an afternoon-long slog round an art gallery full of giant, multi-faceted metal sculptures that take about 7 or 8 minutes on average just to walk round each one once, let alone take in a meaningful impression.  Whether this is actually a bad thing, or, if you're like me, something to be relished, is purely a matter of taste.

What actually strikes me about re-listening to Confield now for this writeup is that it's actually not nearly as difficult and unapproachable as a lot of critical reviews would have you believe.  There's a gentle start of sorts, with what sounds like lots of little metal balls rolling around, over which we do get an actual melody, albeit a minor-key one that floats around in aloof isolation.  For such a supposedly anti-melodic record, the second track, Cfern, has even more recognisable reference points, with a winding melody set over a loping groove.  From Pen Expers onwards, we're into the album's solid core, as the synths gradually become increasingly buried and twisted into the unearthly sculptures.  If you make it all the way to the end of Lentic Catachresis to exit the gallery through the gift shop, I highly recommend just starting all over again. And again.

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Arnold - Hillside Album (1998)

Some albums are instantly evocative of a time and place in your life, no matter how much time goes by; the effect can be compounded if it was an album you remember being released at the time.  This is my 'leaving home at 18' album; posting it now as I recently dusted it off and was surprised how good it still sounds, and also as a bit of self-commiseration now that I'm officially twice that age.

Arnold, named after the bassist's dog, were a three-piece from London who came to my attention through a magazine compilation of Creation Records artists.  Fleas Don't Fly stood out a country mile from the more ordinary indie fodder surrounding it - sounding off-kilter and woozy, full of wistful regret but coated in gorgeous vocal harmonies (a big plus for a Byrds/CSNY-nut like 18-year old me) - it was like a hangover in a song.

Hillside Album (released internationally as just 'Hillside') came out mid-summer '98 and soundtracked everything I did for months afterwards.  Hearing it now for the first time in years, it's still undeniable what a solid album this is.  From a core of pastoral psych-folk-pop, there's constant twists and turns throughout; songs that start with a gentle twang and suddenly morph into full-throttle powerpop (Ira Jones), lo-fi minatures (Country Biscuit), and tracks that aren't really songs at all, but collages of studio weirdness (Rabbit).  There's two extra tracks tagged on the end of track 14 - in a pisstake of the 90s obsession with CD 'secret tracks', the album notes helpfully point them out with the advice that 'these can be found easily, just leave the CD running for a minute'.

And there is Windsor Park.  Oh yes, there is Windsor Park, all propulsive lead guitar, weirdly buried samples of conversation, and elegaic images of student girls in the rain; this clear album highlight still gives me goosebumps.  If pre-OK Computer Radiohead had lightened up a bit and spent a stoned afternoon with a frisbee in the park, they might've sounded half as good as this.

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