David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir - Current Circulation (1984)

Time for something droning and meditative in the wake of Monday's frenetic electronica.  David Hykes was born in New Mexico in 1953, and formed the Harmonic Choir in 1975 to explore overtone singing.  This was their second album, mostly recorded in St Paul's Chapel at Columbia University, with the brief solo opening track coming from a concert at the Chapel of St John The Divine, also in NYC a few months earlier.

Current Circulation itself is an epic 32-minute, six part work that takes influences from Tibetan Buddhist chant and Mongolian hoomi singing by holding root notes, adding harmonics, and attempting both in one voice and more.  The technical mastery of this type of vocal work speaks for itself, and you can either marvel at the accomplishments of working this into an intricate choral setting, or just let your mind drift in the gradually shifting clouds of pure sound.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Harmonic Meetings

Paul Dresher - This Same Temple (1996 compi, rec. 1981-85)

Great overview of some of Paul Dresher's earliest works, as compiled by Lovely Music.  Like Dark Blue Circumstance and Casa Vecchia, Dresher's take on Fripp/Pinhas/Gottsching guitartronics is represented, this time by Liquid And Stellar Music.  This stunning 20-minute track, which opens proceedings here, evolves from ambient drift to echo-delay tour de force, and was originally released on Dresher's debut cassette release in 1981.

Next up is Destiny, a brief dance commission from 1983.  Dresher on guitar is accompanied by a drummer, and it's a very nice polyrhythmic oddity that sounds closer to Talking Heads or even the then-new King Crimson sound than anything else I've heard Dresher do so far.  Water Dreams, an electroacoustic/radiophonic piece from 1985 follows, constructed from rain sounds and other field recordings in a similar way to Other Fire from the Casa Vecchia disc.  Lastly, This Same Temple is one of Dresher's first ever compositions from 1977, a piano duet that he admits had a significant Steve Reich influence.  A different version of it originally appeared on the aforementioned cassette release in 1981.

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pw: sgtg

Mikhail Chekalin - Meditative Music For A Prepared Organ, Vol. 1 & 2 (rec. 1979-1983)

Been absolutely fascinated by this guy for a while now, so time to start posting his music.  Mikhail Chekalin was born in Moscow in 1959, and since the late 70s has worked out of his basement studio carving out a prolific niche in symphonic electronica, with detours into shorter-form work, film music and even solo piano.  Chekalin had difficulty getting much music released in the Soviet 80s, even getting unwelcome KGB attention for having such sophisticated tech squirreled away.  His big break came in 1990/1 when a group of Moscow artists known as 'The Twenty' started featuring his music at their M'Ars Gallery, leading to a series of 12 LPs of his early work being released on the Melodiya label with the artists' paintings as their covers.

Three of these albums were Meditative Music For Prepared Electricorgan, Vols. 1-3, reissued in 2003 as the two 77-minute CDs in today's post.  Described as "electric organ with effects, solo vocal... all music was produced in one take, at a concert session, without recourse to multitrack technologies... no synthesisers [except for one track]", these releases felt like an ideal starting point for me.

The two 25+ minute tracks from LP 1 sit together on CD 1, with Meditation With Rhythm-Beating up first.  After about 10 minutes of just spacey organ fades out, Chekalin adds in his haunting wordless vocal, and the slow rhythm track only makes a brief appearance around the 20 minute mark.  Sounds Of Colour starts off more sparkly and melodic, but then things get much darker and more abstract for the rest of the epic journey.  A definite comparison could be pre-synth Klaus Schulze, and the vocal parts at their most austere and ritualistic even made me think of Jarman-soundtracking TG.

LP 2 started out with the two versions of Symphonietta Of The Air, which round out CD 1 here.  On CD 2, the seven tracks offer more variety, kicking off with the brief atmospheric Adagio (LP 2) and the almost Roedelius-esque chirpy classicism of Bucolic Tunes (LP 3).  By contrast, the more rhythmic Physiological Toccata and Ostinato-Asthenia (both LP 3) have a harshness closer to Asmus Tietchens, but the remaining tracks from LP 2 are back in the 'Meditative' zone.  The longest of these is the 19-minute Meditation With Little Bells, which is nice and spaced, almost Vangelis-like, as is the only synth appearance on the abstract Impromptu With Bells.

For all the comparisons I've noted, they're only really surface similarities, and Chekalin's sound world is very much his own, with these two collections for electric organ serving as an ideal introduction to his early work.  Will definitely be exploring further, and posting more albums here in the months to come.

Disc 1
Disc 2

Steven Stapleton & Christoph Heemann - Painting With Priests (rec. 2009, rel. 2015)

If you enjoyed the Tibor Szemző post the other day, here's the album that made me discover Snapshot From The Island, due to the samples used by Mr NWW and Mr HNAS on this concert recording.  Performed in the Ancient Synagogue in Ivrea, Turin on 21st November 2009, this one-off collaborative gig saw these two old hands at disquieting soundscaping doing what they do best.

Dark ambient throbbing, jump-scare piano, sampled footsteps and other odd noises and voices - that's just the first few minutes, but you know what to expect from then on, notwithstanding the seemingly oddly placed, but effectively recast samples of Szemző.  Occasionally, those samples will provide a fleeting rhythmic drive, or some other noise will repeat into a rhythm of sorts, but otherwise this is formless dark ambience of the highest order by a couple of masters at conjuring up this sort of thing.  Headphones, dark room - you know the drill.

Alternate cover, used for LP edition

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Alvin Lucier - Music On A Long Thin Wire (1980)

Double-album of minimal drone magnificence by composer and sound artist Alvin Lucier, b. 1931 in New Hampshire.  A founder member of the Sonic Arts Union collective along with David Behrman, Gordon Mumma and Robert Ashley, a lot of Lucier's work had a strong performance/installation element.  This included amplifying his brainwaves; creating feedback by moving through a performance space; most famously, sitting in a room and looping his voice; and in the late 70s, using a physics/acoustics experiment for the basis of the work in today's post.

performance instructions by Lucier (click to enlarge for readability)

The performance setup is explained by Lucier in the instructions above - so just a quick recap:  A piano wire gets clamped to two tables at either end of a long room (on this recording, the rotunda of US Customs House, Bowling Green NYC, on 10th May 1979), each connected to an amplified sine wave oscillator.  A horseshoe magnet is placed over the wire at one end like a giant eBow, and the resulting oscillations are put through speakers round the room.

On four sides of an album, each from a different part of the day, the visual and participatory aspects of this are of course missing, but the sound is still unique and immersive.  Tiny variations in the drones occur throughout, sometimes breaking into ghostly shapes a la Soliloquy For Lilith, with every slight change in the room's atmosphere and the movements of observers.  If you're in the time and place to completely lose yourself in this for 75 minutes, prepare to be transported.  Drone hypnosis doesn't get much more minimal than this.

original LP cover

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Nurse With Wound - Soliloquy For Lilith (1988)

Been meaning to post this one for a while now.  What to even say about one of the monumental epics of pure electronic drone, that arose from an accident of technological serendipity and remains the artist's favourite in his vast catalogue?

Simply put, the 106 minutes of Soliloquy For Lilith (now expanded to 2½ hours by outtake and/or remixed material) are an object lesson in chancing upon a simple technical quirk - a closed loop of effects pedals undergoing subtle electromagnetic changes as the air above them is disturbed - and crafting that single idea into a masterpiece.

Stapleton found that he could "play" this setup, theremin-like, to manipulate the huge, swirling soundwaves and ghostly overtones that comprise the six-part Soliloquy, and split the different sounding sections into six sides of vinyl, each 17-18 minutes in length.  In parts 1 & 2, the massive drone draws you in to its hypnotic orbit whilst the overtones stab and shriek in the vastness of space; in parts 3 & 4, the overtones have become almost melodic, resulting in an almost ambient bath in primordial sound.  Simply one of the greatest immersive listening experiences ever made.

Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3

Lumen Drones - s/t (2014)

Anyone for some nice wintry Nordic drone rock?  This collaboration between Nils Økland, specialist in the 8-string hardingfele (Hardanger fiddle), and Ørjan Haaland (drums) and Per Steinar Lie (guitar) of Norwegian post-rock band The Low Frequency In Stereo was recorded in November 2011 and released three years later.  Almost every review I've read of this album makes comparisons to an Australian band called The Dirty Three, who apparently have a very similar MO - I'm sure I'll get around to checking them out eventually (anyone in the know have any recommendations?), but for now, here's Lumen Drones.

Even by ECM's eclectic standards, this album feels like an odd thing for them to release - I'm guessing Økland's previous associations with the ECM stable helped.  In any case, the music is striking, driving and invigorating stuff that more than merited a release.  Skeletal guitar themes give way to grinding chords that move the tracks forward along with the pounding drums, overlaid with Økland's melodies, the extra drone strings of the hardingfele suiting this style of music perfectly.

The trio's sound is arguably at its most effective when they really stretch out and get lost in the groove, and the two longest tracks, Ira Furore and Echo Plexus, are accordingly my favourites on the album.  That's not to dismiss the more compact and subtle tracks in the album's second half, though (Lux, Husky and Keelwater), which show an equal talent for understatement and atmosphere.  Hope they make another one sometime.

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Organum - Volume One/Volume Two (compis rel. 1998 & 2000)

(both Volumes have plain black covers)

Had you picked up an original vinyl copy of NWW's A Missing Sense in '86 (cover art below), on flipping it over your ears would've been greeted by what sounded like 18 minutes of close-miked dental work.  This piece was called Rasa, and its grinding, hissing and vocal swishes were the work of British drone artist David Jackman, aka Organum.

A Missing Sense/Rasa, split LP between NWW/Organum, 1986

After cutting his musical teeth in Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra in the late 60s, Jackman began releasing short cassettes under his own name a decade later, and went on to use the Organum name from 1983-2010 - he appears to have since retired from music.  The two Volumes in this post gather together LP and EP material from 1985/6.

In Extremis LP, 1985

It's pretty heady stuff too - I had the 'Ambient' tag on for this post, then removed it on deciding it wasn't appropriate.  Especially not for the 1985 LP In Extremis (as in, 'close to death'), which straddles the two CDs - the 20 minute Valley Of Worms was a collaboration with fearsome noisemongers The New Blockaders.  The EP track Horii is about as relaxed as the sonic terrain gets here, and even that one's a dark, droning vocal and flute piece that does a pretty good job of evoking some lost unspeakable ritual from ancient Egypt. (Amusingly, though, it does have a cheekily rockist 1-2-3 count-in.)

Horii 12", 1986

Elsewhere, the metallic droning, creaking and clattering that underpins so much of the early Organum sound brought to mind Iannis Xenakis at his most electroacoustic, eg Bohor or Persepolis.  Much like those grand slabs of sound, Jackman's work here, from the Tower Of Silence EP right through to the 1989 bonus track that ends CD2,  might seem on the surface to be a solid, impenetrable wall, but as soon as you get into it you're transported to its hypnotic depths.  Out-of-body dronescapes of the highest order.

Tower Of Silence 12", 1985

Vol. 1
Vol. 2

Pandit Pran Nath - Raga Cycle, Palace Theatre, Paris 1972 (rel. 2006)

We're long overdue some raga goodness from the master Kirana singer on these pages.  Compared to the album release from the previous year (posted here), this brief live recording sets the accompanying instruments (played by Pran Nath's US students Terry Riley, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela) a bit further back in the mix, so that you appreciate all the better how that wonderful voice finds its way "in between the notes".

This archival release came out on Terry Riley's label in 2006, and in fact represents only a small excerpt of the ambitious Raga Cycle that the players undertook in Paris in May 1972: performing the 'night ragas' (those intended for playing at night) on a Friday night, the 'day ragas' on the Saturday, and the 'morning ragas' on the Sunday morning.  Raga Shudh Sarang and the brief Raga Kut Todi, featured here, are both late-morning ragas (from my admittedly limited research on the fascinatingly complex rules of Indian classical music), so must have been from the Sunday morning concert.  Wonder if Riley or Young have any more in their archives?

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Zbigniew Karkowski - UEXKULL (rec. 1988/9, first rel. 1991)

First album by Krakow-born Karkowski (1958-2013), an experimental musician and composer who undertook some compostion courses with Xenakis, Messiaen and Boulez  before striking out as a much more raw-edged sound-shifter.  This hour-long drone piece was recorded in the late 80s using the UPIC composing software that Xenakis had invented a decade previous, and it caught my attention whilst pottering around on discogs last week. 

Intrigued enough to add the out-of-print UEXKULL CD to my wantlist, I had the pleasant surprise shortly afterwards that it has in fact been reissued digitally by the AudioTong label, who are now offering it for free/name your price on their Bandcamp page.  So that's where the download link below leads.  Lossless formats available too!

Musically, then, UEXKULL is based around a circulating bass drone that gathers momentum by various electronic mutations for its first half hour before scaling back again.  It doesn't stay there for long though, filling out into a dizzying, brain-frying electronic wall of sound that brings to mind Merzbow or 90s Whitehouse more than Xenakis.  Karkowski did in fact collaborate with Masami Akita several times, and with many other avant-garde noisemeisters in what looks like a fascinating discography that I'll need to delve into further.  Sadly though, Karkowski's life was cut short at 55 by pancreatic cancer.  Apparently his final weeks were spent canoeing into the Peruvian jungle in search of some shamanic healers for a truly unique throw of the dice.

UEXKULL

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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Pandit Pran Nath - Ragas (1971)

Listened to this back-to-back with the Glass/Schleiermacher album (see previous post) the other day for maximum mindwarp whilst walking home in the sunshine, so made sense to close out the week by posting these two spellbinding ragas.

Pran Nath's life story is fascinating, and I highly recommend reading up - for starters, here's a short wiki article and a fascinating albeit lengthy essay.  But all I'm going to do today is share the music - an eternal twin-tambura drone (one of the players being uber-minimalist La Monte Young) reverberating through every cell in your body from the first second, and that voice... that voice.  Whether pouring down like honey around the exacting, complex notes and modes proscribed to each raga, or rising in ecstatic spiritual release towards the end of each piece, this is a voice I could listen to forever.

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