John Adams - The Chairman Dances, etc (1987)

If you enjoyed the John Adams piano post last month, here's some of his classics for orchestra/chamber ensembles.  This album was released as a trailer for Adams' opera Nixon In China, which would get a full album release the following year.  The title piece here remains the most famous excerpt from the opera, and chugs along nicely with its foxtrot and cabaret influences representing the dance between Mao and his wife.

The rest of this collection gives a nice overview of Adams' work from the mid 70s onward, with the gentle Christian Zeal & Activity being the oldest.  With the melancholy atmosphere and overlay of snippets from a preacher's sermon, it somewhat evokes Gavin Bryars' Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet.  Next up are 'Two Fanfares for Orchestra' from 1986, the first being the sedate pulse of Tromba Lontana and the second the more upbeat and well-known Short Ride In A Fast Machine.  Lastly, Common Tones In Simple Time (1980) stretches out for a nicely hypnotic 20 minutes, and makes plain the influence of Steve Reich on Adams' compositional style.

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George Winston - Autumn (1980)

Long overdue a solo piano Friday round here, so here's an absolutely gorgeous one whose time has come, with its titular season setting in.  The second album by Michigan native George Winston, Autumn was recorded some seven years after his 'Ballads And Blues' debut after playing some of his music to Windham Hill boss William Ackerman.  It kickstarted a hugely successful career in solo piano recordings for Winston, and helped make Windham Hill into a New Age household name.

I guess it's debatable whether this this is actually New Age music per se - to my ECM-centric mind, Winston's a more accessible Keith Jarrett/Art Lande than anything else.  This isn't exactly jazz either though, despite strong influences detectable.  But categorizations aside (Winston himself prefers 'rural folk piano'), all that really matters is Autumn's 45 minutes of utterly evocative, stunningly beautiful piano music that suits background listening or full attentiveness equally well.  Its first half features three longer tracks including two 9-10 minute suites, with the four mostly shorter pieces on side two delving deeper into Winston's formative influences of blues and stride piano, and New Orleans R&B piano.  Immersive loveliness par excellence for watching the leaves starting to turn.

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Ray Lynch - Deep Breakfast (1984)

Spied this the other week lurking in a 99p bin, and the album title and all that delightful salmon pink background made me grin and grab it.  On first glance looked either a bit jazzy or a bit synthy.  Turns out it's only one of the most successful electronic New Age albums ever produced, having initially been a private release, then reissued a couple of times including by Windham Hill, who kept it in print resulting in a platinum certification by 1994.

Ray Lynch was born in Utah in 1943, and after classical training and playing in a baroque group as a lutist, wound up in California in 1980 to switch to electronic music.  Deep Breakfast was his third album, and contrary to my thoughts of a bottomless bowl of Shreddies, the title and in fact many of Lynch's track titles came from a book by his spiritual teacher (and alleged dirty old letch) Adi Da Samraj, aka Da Love Ananda, Bubba Free John etc etc.  Anyway, the music here is all instrumental, and the titles could really be anything.  Let's listen.

Deep Breakfast is a really nice mix of analogue synth and early DX7, and the composition and arrangements definitely reflect the skill of one classically trained with a baroque affinity.  There's a good balance of sunny, poppy and upbeat tracks with more mellow, reflective material.  The first half of the album is purely electronic, and the second adds guitar, piano, flute and viola in places.  Lynch apparently disliked the New Age tag, considering his music a cut above much of the dross being produced, and he's not wrong - this is top-drawer stuff in its era.  My favourites are the gorgeous, Roedelius-like miniature Falling In The Garden and its neighbour Your Feeling Shoulders, which shows a definite Vangelis influence.  Some nice TD-esque sequencing here too, in the second and the last tracks.  Superior sounds for getting the muesli crumbs out of your futon.

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Julius Eastman - Unjust Malaise (2005 compi, rec. 1973 - circa 1981)

Some more of Julius Eastman's wonderful, singular music (previously posted: Femenine), in the first major excavation of recorded work from his lifetime.  Eastman can be heard at the end of this collection describing his style as "organic music", in which material is carried across from segment to segment before being gradually replaced by new material, in a distinctive, personalised take on the Downton NYC minimalist circle that he moved in.  Like Femenine, the six works in three hours contained here can sometimes require patience, but the payoffs are magical.

The compilation starts off in 1973 with Stay On It for voice, piano, violin, clarinet, saxes and percussion.  The central theme, sounding like an uplifting gospel/soul refrain, acts as a framing device for the increasingly abstract and improvisational sections, before the saxes start to play a more solemn reduction of the theme and piece ambles bluesily toward a quiet, reflective ending.  If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich? (1977) for a larger, brass-dominated ensemble, isn't as immediately accessible - its focus on simple ascending chromatic scales can feel a bit spartan for a while, but it's well worth sticking with.

Next we get to hear Eastman's wonderful baritone voice in his unaccompanied prelude to The Holy Presence of Joan D'Arc, as the title figure is exhorted by various saints to "speak boldly".  The rest of the 1981 work is a formidable inquisition by ten cellos, and another highlight of the collection.  Lastly, a full concert from Northwestern University in 1980 (with its spoken intro tacked on the end, for whatever reason) presents three of Eastman's most iconoclastic pieces, played on four pianos.  Eastman explains that his use of the N-word in two of the titles (apparently part of a longer series) was as reappropriation; likewise, the rhythmically strident Gay Guerilla a call to activism.  All three are absolutely stunning to listen to, and occupy a sweet spot between the tightly formalised piano work of Reich and Glass and the abstract, textural drones of Charlemagne Palestine.

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Gordon Mumma - Studio Retrospect (2000 compi of works 1964-84)

Another ear-bending and brain frying collection from Gordon Mumma, who previously featured here with Electronic Music of Theatre and Public Activity.  This CD from Lovely Music is an equally well-rounded presentation of what made Mumma's electroacoustic music so interesting - the six works here might be missing their theatrical elements, quadrophonic mixes and the like, but the pure sound is still so engrossing and often noisy and jarring that it rewards repeat listens.

Taking up the retrospective theme straight away, the opening track here is called Retrospect, a mix of earlier tracks spanning 1959 to 1982, including Chilean president Allende's quip to the New York Times on the day of his death that he'd have to be "carried out in wooden pyjamas".  This is followed by a couple of works from 1964-5, which were first released on a 1979 LP along with Megaton (see link above).  Music From The Venezia Space Theatre is a whirring, hissing piece of electronic mayhem from a live multimedia revue organised by Luigi Nono, and The Dresden Interleaf 13 February 1945 commemorates the WW2 bombing of that city with a proto-SPK grind in which the silent intervals are even more unsettling than the noise onslaughts.

From 1978, Echo-D is an extract of an evening-long dance performance, and musically is based around a pedaled D note on a harpsichord whilst a Buchla synth and other sound layers float in the space around it.  Very minimal stuff, but fascinating to listen to as it progresses over 15 minutes.  The following Pontpoint underwent a lengthy and frequently interrupted creation between 1966 and 1980.  Its eight short sequences features an instrument Mumma made frequent use of, the bandoneon, and a bowed zither, both 'cybersonically' modified by him.  The resulting sounds, that gradually mutate in pitch, timbre and rhythm, are probably my personal highlight of this collection.  There's still a four minute postscript to go though, in the nice little mix of acoustic and digital spectral sounds that makes up Epifont (1984).

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Orlando Jacinto Garcia - La Belleza Del Silencio (1991)

I'm pretty familar with electronic/electroacoustic albums that demand to be "played at maximum volume", or at very least "played loud", but this one's a nice oddity in its direction that "This compact disc should be played softly".  It's a recommendation that works just fine for these two vocal works and two percussive/tape works by Orlando Jacinto Garcia, born 1954 in Havana (emigrated to the US 1961).

First up is a choral tribute to Garcia's early mentor, On The Eve Of The Second Year Anniversary Of Morton's Death (1989).  The sole text is 'la belleza del silencio es mi inspiracion' - the beauty of silence is my inspiration - sung and whispered in little fragments.  Definitely a worthy tribute to Feldman.  In the following Improvisation With Metallic Materials (1990), the tape part is composed from piano timbres and then overlaid with sounds from a Yamaha WX7, a digital MIDI wind instrument.  As per the 'Improvisation' indication, there's a nice, almost wind-chime-like formlessness to the piece, and not always mellow - it does clang around a fair bit, even at the suggested low volume.

Avant-garde vocal legend Joan La Barbara is the performer for Sitio Sin Nombre (1990), with her synthesized voice slowed down to an eerie groan before moving on to more plaintive and meditative cooing, and a little more out-there weirdness later on.  I'd go for that piece as a really lovely highlight of this collection.  Lastly, Metallic Images (1991) samples and manipulates bells and vibraphone tones for its tape part, and has a similar ambient drift to the Metallic Materials piece, but in an overall much more gentle vein.  All in all, this is a really nice collection of Garcia's work, at any volume.

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George Crumb - Voice Of The Whale / Night Of The Four Moons (1974)

Vox Balaenae, better known as Voice Of The Whale, is probably one of the best known works by George Crumb (b. 1929, Charleston WV) - it's pretty accessible in its mostly languid, Debussyian drift, whilst still getting pretty far out there in its odd performance requirements.  Players are directed to sing into the flute, strum the piano strings with chisels, paperclips and glass rods... oh, and play under blue light whilst wearing black masks.  As the title suggests, the piece was inspired by recordings of actual whale song that Crumb heard in the late 60s, and the mysterious undersea world that it conjures up is beautifully absorbing.  Perfect for listening to whilst watching Blue Planet II with the sound off (which I've been doing for weeks with a wide selection of music).

The other work on this 1974 release was Night Of The Four Moons, which was composed during the Apollo 11 flight to the moon and is set in four sections, each taking a fragment of text by Federico Garcia Lorca (whose words Crumb frequently set to music around this time).  Musically it's as wonderfully strange as Whale, if not more, as the mezzo-soprano intones eerily over a fractured dreamscape of flutes, banjo, percussion and amplified cello.  Totally must get myself Crumbed up to the max, I love his stuff more and more every time I give it a go.

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Ralph Towner - Solo Concert (1980)

Just before heading to Oslo to meet up with Azimuth for Départ, Ralph Towner was performing solo in Europe, with dates in Munich and Zurich providing the recordings for this spellbinding live album.  Sometimes known as 'Köln for the guitar', the comparison only really works inasmuch as they're both high watermarks in ECM's catalogue of concert recordings; there's no epic improvisations here, just seven perfectly rendered compositions, four of them Towner originals.

Opening with a flourish of echoing harmonics, Solo Concert grabs the listener right from the off with its longest and most spectacular track - the shimmering 12-string waves of Spirit Lake.  The rich, reverberating acoustics of these recordings also illuminate the nylon-string performances like Ralph's Piano Waltz (one of two John Abercrombie compositions here) that follows next.

Things get more intricate and spidery with Train Of Thought, one of the best explorations of Towner's virtuoso technique here, but to be honest that could be said of the whole record.  The Miles Davis standard Nardis hits a fresh new groove, and the closing take on Abercrombie's Timeless is just... timeless.  If you only own one Ralph Towner record, make it this one.

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Robert Ashley - Automatic Writing (1979)

An absolute classic of avant-garde ambient, Automatic Writing was the result of Robert Ashley's fascination with 'involuntary speech', the mild form of Tourette's syndrome that he had.  Eventually getting some close-miked recordings of vocal sounds and phrases that he liked - more for their texture and cadences than any actual words - Ashley processed them electronically and built this 46-minute piece around them.

The result was this beautifully ghostly, formless drift in which Ashley's words are whispered back to him in French by a female voice, whilst sounds from a Polymoog chirp and click away in the background, and intermittent snatches of music from a Farfisa organ appear to be coming from an adjacent room.  Whether you listen to this on the threshold of audibility as ambient music, or turn it right up to study the details, Automatic Writing has a unique, hypnotic effect that makes it endlessly listenable.  It even inspired a 'tribute' piece by a certain SGTG regular - that'll be Wednesday's post.

For now, just enjoy one of Robert Ashley's finest ever extended recordings, plus a couple of CD bonus tracks that I've left in as they're quite interesting - both are from a 60's 'opera' project, That Morning Thing, which Ashley wrote in reaction to the suicides of three female friends.  She Was A Visitor, in which phenomes of the words are bounced around the voices of the performers, was actually featured right at the beginning of this blog.  Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon, with its tape hiss and extremely unsettling monologue (sampled at the end of Whitehouse's Ripper Territory, no less), will stay with you for a while afterwards - if you've been listening to Automatic Writing to chill out, perhaps best to hit the stop button at the end of it.

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Stars Of The Lid - The Tired Sounds Of (2001)

Two hours of modern-classical infused ambient drift at its most magnificent.  Brian McBride & Adam Wiltzie's mature masterwork came out 16 years ago, and had an almost-as-good followup 6 years later; whether they'll record another album together is anyone's guess, but at least they've both been keeping busy since.  Anyway, here's Tired Sounds, arguably the high watermark of both their' careers to date.

With the long, weightless guitar treatments that had become SOTL's stock in trade now fleshed out by judicious strings, Tired Sounds opened up a new and sophisticated landscape straight away with Requiem For Dying Mothers.  Movingly funereal in its first part, defiantly elegiac in its second, this opening piece sets the tone for the rest of the melancholy, sometimes unsettling first hour.  This reaches its darkest depths in the 12-minute middle section of Austin Texas Mental Hospital, with the strings remorselessly sawing away at the patient's psyche, although some respite does seem to come with the gentle organ-like swells of the final part.

The second disc of Tired Sounds is a slightly more relaxing, Eno-esque drift as a whole, but only once you've come through the colder-than-death Mulholland, sounding like its been recorded from within a body chiller in a morgue.  The mellower highlights of this second hour-long trip into inner space definitely include Piano Aquieu, with its Harold Budd-esque piano intro, but the melancholy still persists in huge, endless waves.  For an album that I've previously described to bemused acquaintances as "suffused with death", on digging it out today Tired Sounds does at least still live and breathe (audibly, in its final minutes) with some hopefulness towards its end.  Beyond essential.

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Conlon Nancarrow - Studies For Player Piano, Vols. 1-4 (rec. 1977)

I'd been seeing the name Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997) crop up for a while, and decided to take the plunge a little while ago.  What I've been struck by, perhaps to an even greater degree than with Harry Partch, is some of the most unique, single-minded music ever created.  There might be fewer instruments here than in Partch - just two slightly modified player-pianos - but Nancarrow's music is so stunningly original I could probably listen to it for the rest of my life and it would still sound fresh.

Starting from an early Art Tatum influence, but already with much more ambitious 'sliding' tempi, Nancarrow went on to develop an interest in the canon structures of J.S. Bach, taking them to the nth degree and far beyond the limits of human playability.  If you're interested in more detail on the theoretical side of this style of composition, the YouTube video below explains it beautifully - and/or you can just go ahead and download these four volumes of  Nancarrow's music that he supervised in 1977 and released one at a time in the next few years after.

The sequencing of each album is wonderfully effective - Volume 1 kicks off with one of the most accessible Studies, No. 3, aka the Boogie-Woogie Suite.  The sheer joy and exhilaration in this 15-minute stretch of Nancarrow's music alone was enough to get me hooked - and three hours worth, of wildly varying complexity, harmony, and breathtaking rhythm/tempo, is just sheer bliss.  Unreservedly recommended.

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Maggi Payne - Crystal (expanded edition 1991)

We've previously heard Maggi Payne (b.1945 in Texas) on this blog purely as a flautist, contributing to David Behrman's sublime On The Other Ocean.  Her own work, at least from the 80s as evidenced by this 1991 compilation (the last four tracks were released as a 1986 LP), could go on much more dark ambient journeys of treated flute sounds and pure electronics - and was never less than fascinating, essential listening.

A good case in point are the two opening tracks here.  Ahh-Ahh (ver. 2.1) (1987) was the musical part of a video-art collaboration, and alternates shimmering melodic sections with austere, rhythmic sections of treated flute noise, breathing and pure white-noise hiss.  By contrast, Subterranean Network (1985) ends with a gossamer ambient requiem after varying dynamic sections of pure, unsettling electronics, evoking its inspiration of US soldiers being forced to work as reconnaissance 'tunnel rats' in Vietnam.

On all of these seven tracks, averaging 10 minutes in length, it's clear how adept Maggi Payne is at manipulating different sound sources to come up with something truly memorable.  Phase Transitions (1989) is next up, and takes one of the most ubiquitously 'commercial' synthesisers of the era, the Roland D-50, and teases out its hidden un-commercial potential to great effect.  White Night (1984) consists of a voice speaking names that are digitally manipulated into a paranoid invocation of the restless sleeplessness intended by the title.  Like Subterranean Network, this one ends at full blast after a few deceptive sections in near silence.

I wasn't going to mention every track individually, but hey ho, only three to go.  Solar Wind (1983) manipulates a tape supplied by NASA of bow shock electromagnetic waves created by Saturn and Venus, as observed by Voyager 2.  The second half of this one in particular is stunning, sounding like a digital-era version of kosmiche Tangerine Dream.  From the same year, Scirocco is purely a flute and tape piece, but still sounds virtually all electronic, and lastly Crystal (1982) is another contribution to a video work, composed on Moog III synth.  All in all, these 71 minutes of sound-shiftings get the highest possible recommendation for late-night headphone immersion.  All the above info was taken from this great article.

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Harry Partch - The World of Harry Partch (1969)

Something truly unique today.  Californian composer, theorist and musician Harry Partch (1901-1974) not only rejected Western tonal music, but inspired by just intonation (which he considered to be the true and suppressed form in which music was organised since antiquity) he devised a 43-tone scale and an arsenal of bespoke instruments to perform his works.  This was his first major-label release - the original liner notes are worth reading in full to gain more of an insight into Partch's musical worldview, and can be found here.

Three wonderful, life-affirming examples of Partch's music are featured here.  The 17-minute Daphne Of The Dunes, originally the soundtrack to a short film called Windsong (1958), moves through multiple short segments.  Some are highly percussive and gamelan-esque, and others focus on the shimmering, resonating multiple strings of his bespoke zithers, or 'kitharas'.

Partch also believed that music, dance and theatre shouldn't be distinct specialties, and the second track here creates a Beat-era dramatic narrative in 9 minutes.  This piece, its full title Barstow: Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California, introduces each scene with a little marimba melody before each fascinating slice of life is recited and then sung.  Finally, Castor & Pollux is an absorbing 16 minutes of bell-chime melodies and various kithara and marimba workouts, and more of a rhythmic drive overall reflecting its purpose as a theatre/dance piece.  Highly recommended. 

This CD adds 16 bonus tracks of Partch demonstrating his instruments, which is worth a listen to get more understanding of the unique sounds in his works; "The Instruments Of Harry Partch" was originally included as part of his "Delusion Of The Fury" 3LP set in 1971.

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Michael Hedges - Aerial Boundaries (1984)

Second album from acoustic guitar virtuoso Hedges, who died in a road accident aged just 43; a huge loss of a true individualist.  Often filed in 'new age' bins due to his association with the Windham Hill label, there was much more to his technique and melodic sensibility that should've reached a massive audience.

Everything's instrumental here (he'd evetually record some vocal tracks later in the 80s) and perfectly produced, with an ECM-esque swathe of reverb highlighting all the hammering/pulling techniques and making for a timeless record.  Can never quite decide if I like the cover of Neil Young's After The Gold Rush, or if it misses the mark a bit (surely he could've had a stab at...anything more guitar-based from Young's catalogue, and made it shine with his brilliant technique?) - download and decide for yourself, and enjoy the rest of this gorgeous album.

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Steve Tibbetts - Safe Journey (1984)

This album came up in conversation under my last ECM post, so with thanks to Chico, I've dug it out for the first time in ages.  Guitarist and souncscaper Steve Tibbetts, a Wisconsin native who works out of of St Paul Minnesota, first appeared on ECM in the early 80s and has retained a rare degree of autonomy on the label.  He records and produces his own records in the US, rather than in the Eicher stable, giving his unique sound an even more distinctive edge.

Safe Journey, the name taken from the Ghana-Burkina Faso border crossing on the cover image, was Tibbetts' second album for ECM and fourth overall.  The sonic landscape establishes itself right from the start of opener Test - imagine Ry Cooder filtered through a Jon Hassell Fourth-World lens; Tibbetts is all about texture and atmosphere, notwithstanding the cranked-up blowouts that follow later in Test.  His sound is also heavily percussive, and four of the tracks here are co-composed with his long-term collaborator Marc Anderson, who dominates second track Climbing.

From there on in, the highlights are many - standouts for me are the echo-laden acoustic guitars on Running, and the most melodic percussion on the album on Any Minute.  The latter has a bit of a Steve Reich feel, and is underpinned with sheets of rumbling guitar, with a cavernous, low-frequency pulse in the percussive bedrock that makes me think of Aphex Twin circa Selected Ambient Works 85-92.  Something else that this album as whole brings to mind, in the tribal, insistent percussion, looped instruments and'sometimes dark ambient atmospheres is Zoviet France, of all things.  Definitely a couple of reference points that I never thought an ECM record would evoke!

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John Abercrombie - Characters (1978)

A year or so after appearing on Jack DeJohnette's Pictures, it was John Abercrombie's turn to record the only completely solo album of his career.  A masterclass in gorgeous melodies and perfectly-realised overdubbing, Characters comes across like a looser (semi-improvised at times), more fluid precursor to Pat Metheny's New Chautauqua.  Opening with a sole, echo-laden electric mandolin, tuned as to effectively be a soprano guitar (and Abercrombie staple in this era), the lengthy Parable eventually fills out into a spectacular tapestry of guitar layers.

After this memorable introduction, the meat of the album is composed of beautifully languid duets for different layers of acoustic and liquid electric guitar, plus a further two standout tracks in their use of effects.  Ghost Dance is chilly and atmospheric in its use of reverb and delay, and closer Evensong employs echo/volume pedal effects to almost evoke a small organ or harmonium, before filling out with spindly, rushing arpeggios.  This evocative soundscape closes a great album on a high, and makes you want to start right over again with the other outstanding track Parable.  The fact that there's nothing else quite like Characters in Abercrombie's catalogue makes it all the more essential listening.

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Growing - The Sky's Run Into The Sea (2003)

Much like Labradford’s Fixed::Context, this album from the Kranky stable interested me on its release.  Think I might have still been reading Mojo at the time, who weren’t/aren’t exactly an authority on droning post-rock like this, but must’ve been a good enough description to make me go out and buy it.

At the time of this album, their debut, Growing were an Olympia, WA trio of two guitarists and a drummer.  Much subtler than say, Earth or sunn o))), they began The Sky's Run…. with a few minutes of gentle echo-delay scraping across the guitars, gradually overpowered by a fog of cymbals, before everything settles down into a drone.  Suddenly, the track reaches its closing section on a burst of delayed lead guitar and very briefly the kind of more familiar crunchy, distorted drone that will become more in evidence in the rest of the album.  Don’t miss the nifty little steal from Norwegian Wood in the closing Pavement Rich In Gold, which also features some vocals, albeit largely buried in the fuzz.

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Linda Perhacs - Parallelograms (1970)

The story of how this album came about never fails to fascinate me.  Dental hygienist to Hollywood royalty happens to mention to a patient (film composer Leonard Rosenman) that she writes songs; gives him a tape and is excitedly asked to record an album straight away; album vanishes without trace but becomes a cult classic, then records another album after a 44 year gap.  All the while keeping her day job.  I haven't heard the 2014 album, The Soul Of All Natural Things, yet, and I really should sometime; but for now here's the wondrous Parallelograms.

You might be able to guess what kind of album would result from a bucolic Laurel Canyon lifestyle in 1970, but in this case you'd only be part right.  Sure, there's sunny, hazy odes to dolphins, rivers and sandy toes, all of it gorgeous in its own right, but there's other forces at work here too.  Perhacs channeled her synaesthesia into the complex, multi-layered title track, penned late one night on the road by capturing it not in simple words but in geometric shapes.  The undercurrent of strangeness on this album in fact reveals itself within its first two minutes.  After establishing a pastoral scene straight out of the Ladies Of The Canyon playbook, Chimacum Rain twists into a hallucinatory soundscape full of effects-laden xylophone tones, and, to quote the liner notes, "amplified shower hose for horn effects".  Highly, highly recommended.

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Joe Satriani - Flying In A Blue Dream (1989)

A slight guilty pleasure today, but one that never, ever fails to put a big dumb grin on my face.  Must confess I haven't bought a new Satch album in six years, as they've started to feel bit interchangeable (perhaps bigger fans can correct me on that, and let me know if the last two are worth picking up), but back in 1989 Satriani was still young, vital, and breaking his own boundaries on this, his third full-length album.

Flying In A Blue Dream is actually a significant 'first' in Satriani's career - he's periodically stepped up to the microphone ever since, but this the first time he'd attempted songs with vocals after two completely instumental albums.  And in the nicest, most sincere way possible, the vocal tracks are hilarious.  Can't Slow Down, Big Bad Moon and Ride are classic 80s hair-rawk, I Believe a rousing power ballad; Strange is more enjoyable than the Red Hot Chili Peppers' entire discography, and The Phone Call is a great novelty rock n roll groove.

There's stil plenty of room for Satch's instrumental virtuosity on this 64-minute album though, with my favourite being the double-tapping masterpiece Day At The Beach - the original and best version, notwithstanding a thousand YouTube covers (many of which are pretty good!).

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Judee Sill - Abracadabra: The Asylum Years (2006 compi of 1971-73 releases)

Taking another quick diversion now from business as usual to spotlight one of my favourite singer-songwriters.  This 2CD reissue contains Judee Sill's entire back catalogue, so thought I may as well post it all at once.  Abracadabra also adds some live recordings and fascinating demos/works in progress, making this the only Judee Sill release you'll ever need - an archive set of shelved recordings came out about a decade ago but didn't come near the magic of these two original albums.

Rather than recount the tragic lost-soul story of Judee Sill's life (plagued by addiction which would claim her life at 35), I prefer to just focus on how good her music was.  Both of these albums showcase just how unique her synthesis was of folk, blues and a dash of country with more baroque and hymnal influences from her upbringing singing in church.  Her voice carried both a homely twang and a gossamer beauty - especially when recorded in multiple overdubs on several songs.

Both albums stay in understated ballad mode for the most part, but Sill could turn up the energy too on songs like Jesus Was A Crossmaker (her best-known song, covered by The Hollies) and Soldier of The Heart from the second album, Heart Food.  Heart Food for me has an ever-so-slight edge over the self-titled debut, with slightly more adventurous arrangements (this time all handled by Sill herself), indeed much more adventurous on The Donor, seven minutes of spine-tingling overdubbed chorale.  Also on Heart Food is The Kiss, simply one of the greatest love songs ever written.

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