Steve Reich - Music For 18 Musicians (1978)

Steve Reich's big break, both in terms of drawing together all his compositional ideas up until then into a masterpiece, and also in the public consciousness, this ECM release reaching his widest audience yet.  Deutsche Grammophon were actually responsible for this premiere recording, and had been sitting on it for a year or two when Manfred Eicher spotted its potential.  The 56-minute continuous piece became a hit with audiences who heard a warmth and accessibility that until then wasn't generally associated with the more austere forms of minimal music.

 

Music For 18 Musicians starts by setting out the pulse that will sustain it for the duration, as well as the sequence of eleven chords that will be slowly cycled through in its subsequent sections.  Arch forms, organum and cantus inspired by Perotin and section cues on the metallophone inspired by gamelan music all give the music its gorgeous symmetry.  Phrase lengths are determined by the bass clarinetist and human voices, dependent upon how long they can breathe for, adding to the organic feel of the music as if the whole ensemble were one living, breathing organism.  Section VI, at the 31 minute mark, is always my favourite in its joyous rhythmic/vocal focus, but Music For 18 Musicians is always best experienced as a whole.  Back in the vinyl era, this ran up against the same problem as E2-E4 later would, namely that flipping the record over temporarily broke the spell, but in the digital era there's no such drawback as it all runs in one sublime track.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Drumming, Six Pianos etc
Octet etc
Tehilim
Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards
Vermont Counterpoint / Eight Lines

The Desert Music
Sextet / Six Marimbas + bonus concert feat. Music For 18 Musicians
Nagoya Marimbas

City Life

Michael Rother - Katzenmusik (1979)

Third album by NEU!/Harmonia guitarist, and a further refinement of the melodic, cyclic music he'd established on his first two solo efforts, also collaborations with Jaki Liebezeit and Conny Plank.  Rother's increasingly clean-toned guitars (his formative influence of Hank Marvin really shining through) burn these simple, indelible melodies into your brain from the first listen, and make Katzenmusik a joy to return to over and over.

As well as the literal meaning of "music for cats", the album's title is also a German idiom for a "musical racket" - clearly an ironic choice on Rother's part for such sunny, joyous and ordered music.  Melodic material from earlier sections leads to variations in later ones, with the sparkling production adding to the constant gentle evolution as well as throwing the occasional curveball (the "everything reversed except the drums" wash of part 8 is one highlight of many).  This gorgeous record is probably the high point of Rother's post-Harmonia music, at least for me.  Anyone heard the new ambient album he put out last year?  Worth picking up?

link

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Cluster - Sowiesoso (1976)

'Evening all.  How's your year going so far?

A few old favourites this week I reckon, starting with the Moebius & Roedelius partnership at its most majestic.  Well established in rural Forst by 1976, with the sunnier, melodic edge of Harmonia increasingly feeding back in to their main project, the results on Sowiesoso were sublime.  The opening track pulses on a single chord, gradually building until it dances around your ears.  Next are a pair of beautifully mellow tracks cut from the same cloth as the more sedate material on Harmonia Deluxe, setting the pace for the rest of the album other than the oddball Umleitung (which I remember being likened somewhere or other to "the sound of drunk shepherds").

If their reunion in the late 80s ended up being called Apropos Cluster, the three tracks that make up Side Two of Sowiesoso are nothing less than Apotheosis Cluster.  The aching melody of Zum Wohl stretches across seven minutes, gradually building like the title track as the green acres of Forst turn brilliant red at sunset, with bird and animals at play.  Es War Einmal comes closest to representing the album cover, gazing out at a gently lapping lake as the evening wears on.  Finally, In Ewigkeit takes us to twlight and beyond, and the forest life turns nocturnal.

link

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Cluster & Eno 

Live In Vienna

Curiosum

Apropos Cluster

Qua

Scott Walker - Scott 3 & Scott 4 (1969) plus BBC Proms Tribute 2017

These two classic albums from 1969, plus Scott Walker's wider discography, always find regular rotation in my listening habits in the last couple of months of the year, so here's some long overdue posting of Scott 3 & 4 - with a bonus tribute concert from three years ago.

By the time the 60s entered its final year, the former Walker Brothers idol had released two solo records of increasingly ambitious songwriting and arrangement, his own songs dotted between covers notably by Jacques Brel.  For Scott 3, the three Brel covers were placed right at the end of the album, leaving the rest to his most mature songwriting yet, including timeless classics like Copenhagen and Rosemary.  Wally Stott's string arrangements were still sumptuous and classy, but the dissonant drone at the album's outset pointed to even more ambitious music to come.

Walker released no less than three albums in 1969, the second being a contractual commitment to his TV show - but he was saving his own material for his masterpiece.  Originally released under his birth name of Engel, and probably sinking without trace for that reason on initial release, Scott 4 was Walker's first release of all-original material.

 

And seriously, what to even write about this clutch of ten songs without a single dud among them.  Starting your record with a setting of Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal to a Morricone-eseque arrangement might seem like an audacious move - following it up with nine more perfect songs with slimmed-down arrangements just makes for one of the greatest albums ever made.  If this post happens to be your first encounter with Scott 4, I envy you beyond description.

Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker is a longtime Scott Walker champion who'd worked with him in 2001, and had taken part in the "Tilting and Drifting" concert at the London Barbican in 2008.  Cocker therefore must've been an obvious choice for this BBC Proms tribute to the 1967-1970 music of Scott, which took place in July 2017.  

 

For this concert, Jarvis was joined by fellow British artist Richard Hawley, US singer-songwriter John Grant, and Susanne Sundfør from Norway.  Each singer takes two songs in the spotlight, and turn about thereafter, all coming together for the closing Get Behind Me.  Providing the sumptuous backing to seventeen of Walker's finest songs are the Heritage Orchestra conducted by Jules Buckley.

Scott 3 link

Scott 4 link

Proms Tribute link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Nite Flights

Climate Of Hunter

Tilt

Soused

Popol Vuh - Hosianna Mantra (1972)

After two initial albums of moog, percussion and organ, great as they were in their own way, the run of classic Popol Vuh albums that existed in their own beautiful universe began here.  Intent on producing "a mass for the heart", Florian Fricke scaled down his own input to just piano (and a little harpsichord) and brought on board sympathetic musicians.  Conny Veit's shimmering, liquid tones are the only guitar here - Daniel Fichelscher was yet to join - and bits of oboe, tambura, and violin fill out the heavenly sound.  The magical element that raised the album above stunningly gorgeous to somewhere far beyond was the voice of Dyong Yun, never better than on the epic title track.  Beyond essential music.  More from Fricke and Veit (plus Fichelscher) next week.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Seligpreisung
Einsjäger & Siebenjäger
Aguirre
Das Hohelied Salomos
Letzte Tage - Letzte Nächte
Coeur De Verre
Brüder des Schattens - Söhne des Lichts
Sei Still, Wisse Ich Bin
Florian Fricke - Die Erde Und Ich Sind Eins

Philip Glass - Solo Piano (1989)

Been getting majorly reacquainted with this album of sublime, beautifully relaxing piano over the last few weeks, so it's well due a posting.  Just composer and instrument, nothing else.  Half an hour of gradually evolving meditations on Kafka, with some themes from his Thin Blue Line soundtrack.  Thirteen minutes of achingly gorgeous flowing waves originally written as an organ piece for the Dalai Lama's visit to New York City in 1981.  Then seven minutes of gospel-inflected loveliness written in collaboration with Allen Ginsberg (the version with his voice would appear the following year, on Hydrogen Jukebox).  I could listen to this album forever.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Music With Changing Parts
Two Pages, Contrary Motion etc
Music In Twelve Parts
Einstein On The Beach
Dance Nos. 1-5
Dance No. 4 (Christopher Bowers-Broadbent)
How Now, etc (Steffen Schleiermacher)
Glassworks (live 2017)
Symphony No. 3 (live 2020)

Hank Mobley - Soul Station (1960)

Superior Blue Note session from February 1960.  I reckoned this would round out a week of otherwise avant-garde music quite nicely as it's just so much good clean fun: Hank Mobley, the "middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone" (jazz writer Leonard Feather) might not have reshaped postwar jazz as dramatically as Davis, Coltrane et al, but he could write a clutch of neat tunes and turn out a superb record that sounds fresh as a daisy when it's about to turn 60 years old.

Soul Station is bookended by two great covers, Irving Berlin's Remember and the Rainger/Robin movie song If I Should Lose You, with the four Mobley originals in between carrying the same breezy melodiousness and adding up to an album without a single weak spot.  The more I listen to Soul Station (about three times a week on average whenever I dig it out, like this month), the more I appreciate Paul Chambers and Art Blakey as a superb rhythm section, Wyn Kelly as an underrated pianist, and every spirits-lifting line from Mobley. Just dig dis.

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Octavian Nemescu - Metabizantinirikon, Trisson, Sonatu(h)r (1992 compi, rec. 1986-1990)

By request, an hour of shimmering, mindwarping tape-based spectral music, which, when I discovered it three years ago at the sadly-no-more Spook City USA, caused a Big Bang in my listening habits that led to at least a half-dozen other Romanian composers (see links below).  One of those other composers I went so crazy for that they're about to get their 14th post here on Wednesday.  For today though, very happy to bring back into circulation this 1992 CD of Octavian Nemescu's music, which was originally released as a 1991 LP with just the first two tracks.

Nemescu, born 1940 in the Moldavian city of Pașcani, has been active from the 60s to today, and revisiting his discogs page was a handy reminder that there's still a good few releases I must get hold of.  This compilation starts with Metabizantinirikon for saxophone (the great Daniel Kientzy) and magnetic tape, produced at IRCAM in 1986.  Intended to evoke the Byzantine era via its landscapes and bird & insect life, Kientzy's lead lines float over the buzzing and fluttering of the tape-manipulated electronics for a beautifully meditative 20 minutes.

The other two pieces are purely electronics/tape.  Trisson (1987) was commissioned by and recorded at GMVL (Groupe de Musique Vivante Lyon), and Nemescu recommends that it be listened to outdoors, on a spring or summer night.  The vast rumbling soundscape that underpins Trisson brings Eliane Radigue to mind for me, but the whole track is nowhere near as minimalist; the gently pinging melodies are perhaps closer to David Behrman.  After an ear-ringing finale, it fades out and it's time for the CD-only track Sonatu(h)r, composed in 1986 and mixed 1990 at the GMEB (Experimental Group from Bourges). 

As in the first track above, in Sonatu(h)r Nemescu is interested in the dynamic between human cultures and natural animal timbres, and again recommends outdoor, rural listening at dusk in springtime.  The shrill high tones escaping from my earphones in the office one lunchtime made someone ask what the hell I was listening to - Sonatu(h)r is definitely a deep-clean for the brain, and the most strikingly alien piece among an hour's worth of phenomenal, otherworldly sounds.  Massively recommended.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Split CD Nemescu/Cazaban
Other posts featuring Daniel Kientzy: 
Berio, Stroe, Stockhausen etc
Gerard Pape
Niculescu, Marbe, Vieru
Rotaru, Taranu etc

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.

link
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Original LP cover

Manuel Göttsching - E2-E4 (1984)

Couldn't not post this at some point, despite having always thought it was too obvious a choice - it's just too good.  Around this time of year, when I start getting out and about more, nothing makes an hour's walk go by more beautifully than two Prophet 10 chords, a couple of Minimoogs, an ARP Odyssey and EMS, EKO etc and one hell of a (24-minute) guitar solo.  All in the hands of Ash Ra Tempel/Ashra's Manuel Göttsching, who came off a tour in December 1981 and casually flipped the switches on his home setup to record for an hour, with only the intention to make something for his own listening whilst traveling on future tours.

The track was eventually released on one of Klaus Schulze's labels in 1984, flipping the carefully-mastered 58-minute LP just as Göttsching picks up his guitar.  To even have to flip E2-E4 once is enough to break the spell unfortunately, and it would have to wait for its first CD pressing six years later to be presented in the uninterrupted digital format in belongs in.  In the meantime, E2-E4's influence had already begun to spread, notably in the dance track Sueño Latino, and shortly afterwards in mixes by Carl Craig and by Basic Channel.  Its afterlife as a proto-techno milestone was assured.

The original track, however, remains as fresh and immediate today as the moment it was recorded.  Much of that is due to the informal, single-pass recording session, especially in the guitar part: for me, the occasional untidy note and the moments where you can hear Göttsching pulling back and riffing for a bit while he plans his next move (in keeping with the chess theme, I suppose) are part of the charm - if he'd gone back and overdubbed a single note, it would've lost something.  The purely electronic half is a thing of wonder too, with all the minute-by-minute developments skillfully leading up to the glorious stretch from the 24th minute to the 30th.  If my Favourite Albums Of All Time had a sub-section where their desert-island status is absolutely impossible to top, only really E2-E4, Köln and Jobim's Wave make the cut.

link
pw: sgtg

Coil - ...And The Ambulance Died In His Arms (rec. 2003, rel. 2005)

Sixteen years ago today, Coil were recovering from one of their most remarkable live shows.  Intending to do "a quiet set today... we've had too much... shouting over the last year", the eerie, hushed ambience conjured up by John, Sleazy, Thighpaulsandra and vibraphonist Tom Edwards was highly improvisational and seemed to emanate from another plane of consciousness.  At its centre was a recounting of Balance's experience of being robbed of his notebook of lyrics on Marylebone Road whilst high on rohypnol.  Elsewhere, even familiar material like Triple Sun and The Dreamer Is Still Asleep was radically transformed, both musically and lyrically.  If I had a time machine that would take me to just one gig, this contribution to the Autechre-curated All Tomorrow's Parties would be the one.  It's certainly the greatest live album I've ever known.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Astral Disaster
Musick To Play In The Dark

Ralph Towner, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Slava Grigoryan - Travel Guide (2013)

Played this album daily for months when it came out, soundtracking that whole autumn and winter of 2013-4 with its gorgeous guitar trio sound, so it's been well due a fresh rediscovery by me and a posting here.  Ralph Towner had already made a trio album in 2008 with Austrian Muthspiel and Armenian-Australian Grigoryan as MGT, which I really ought to have picked up ages ago, but keep getting distracted by other things.  Anyway, here's their ECM debut, recorded in Lugano in August 2012.

Half the tracks are composed by Towner and half by Muthspiel, and all are beautiful interminglings of the latter's smooth, fluid electric tone and the various acoustics of the other two guitarists.  My absolute favourites are Amarone Trio and the slowly unfolding opener The Henrysons, but the whole album is absolutely beautiful stuff.  Highest recommendation.

link
pw: sgtg

Bill Evans & Jim Hall - Undercurrent (1962)

Simply one of the greatest and loveliest jazz duo albums of all time.  Some would say that sentence doesn't even need the "duo".  Either way, six great tracks from two absolute masters of jazz piano and jazz guitar are here to enrich your weekend.  After a cooking take on My Funny Valentine opens the album, the overriding pace is relaxed and intimate, and the interaction between pianist and guitarist is effortlessly sublime throughout.

What would my absolute favourites be... I Hear A Rhapsody? Skating In Central Park?  Just going to go for 'all of them' as it's impossible to pick.  Was going to snip out the bonus tracks as I generally tend to do, then decided against it as they enrich the album even further (as well as almost doubling its slight running time).  Essential listening, especially for rainy days and long nights - plenty of those round here now.

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Arild Andersen - Shimri (1977)

Yeah, I know... I've probably written things like 'autumnal ECM gorgeousness' a hundred times in different posts - but this is the absolute zenith, one that oozes it from every pore.  In October 1976, Arild Andersen brought this Norwegian-Swedish-Finnish group into the studio for his second album as bandleader, and came up with this mellow beauty that was released the following year.

The opening title track shimmers like a glassy lake, with Juhani Aaltonen's sax smouldering in the embers of a lakeside campfire, before a gentle breeze carries forward the slightly more upbeat No Tears with some stunning piano from Lars Jansson.  As twilight descends, Aaltonen switches to flute for the next three songs, all of them gorgeous beyond words, before the last and longest track goes back to sax.  This finale, Dedication, gets a lot more firey than the rest thanks to the momentum Aaltonen gives it, but doesn't disturb the mood of the rest of the album - rather, it just balances it out perfectly.  As if we hadn't heard enough of Andersen's bass mastery already, he takes a solo just before the end.  For me, this is the absolute highlight of his discography.  Essential peak ECM.

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Tomasz Stańko New York Quartet - Wisława (2013)

R.I.P. Tomasz Stańko, 11 July 1942 - 29 July 2018

A sad farewell to Tomasz Stańko, following his passing from cancer at the weekend.  Following the release of December Avenue a year ago, I remember wondering if the septugenarian trumpeter might have another album, or more, in him; sadly now it's a bookend to an amazing 50+ year career.  And IMHO, the absolute highlight of that career was the 100 minutes of music recorded by Stańko and his newly-formed New York Quartet in the summer of 2012, and released the following February.

The 'Wisława' of the album title was Szymborska (1923-2012), the Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet who Stańko had collaborated with in 2009, with a limited edition release of the concert appearing in 2012, in which he played solo responses to her poems (from the short excerpt I've heard).  Some of the same poem titles appear here - Tutaj, Mikrokosmos, Metafizyka, Assassins - now recast as quartet pieces in which Stańko swapped out his long-standing Polish backing group for pianist David Virelles, bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Gerald Cleaver.

The results were nothing short of magical, and well worthy of the extended running time which is bookended by takes of a 13-minute requiem for Wisława herself.  This title piece unfolds its melody at a languid, dignified pace (like much of the album) before reaching the gorgeous five-note theme that Virelles has hinted at in the intro.  Throughout the slower-paced material, like the title track, Dernier Cri and April Story, the spot-on production lets every breath from Stańko fill out the ambient atmosphere, and the upbeat tracks - Assassins, Faces, A Shaggy Vandal - show how much fire there was in this band.  Żegnaj Tomasz, dziękuję.

Disc 1 link
Disc 2 link

Previously posted at SGTG:
Jazzmessage From Poland (1972)
Purple Sun (1973)
Freelectronic in Montreux (1987)
Bluish (1991)
Polin (2014)

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.

link

Milton Nascimento/Lô Borges - Clube Da Esquina (1972)

Back to Brazil, with possibly the most stunning high water mark in MPB (música popular brasileira).  Clube Da Esquina (corner club) was a collective of musicians from the Minas Gerais state, led by Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges, the latter just 20 when this double-album was recorded.  With 21 songs in 64 minutes, Clube Da Esquina is like a fat-free White Album or stripped-down Manassas.  Over the succinct running time, it manages to take in regional folk influences, hazy, languid psychedelic pop and a huge dash of Beatlesque styling in a journey that feels more perfect with every listen.  Even the album cover has a great story behind it.

A track-by-track is pointless on an album like this; picking out highlights near-impossible for one with literally no duds - even the two tracks that don't break the minute mark are necessary, rather than jokey filler.  So here's a handful of favourites.  From Lô Borges' seven compositions, I'll go for the sun-dappled goodbyes of O Trem Azul with its gorgeous harmonies, and Trem De Doido, a poignant ode to mistreated psychiatric patients, with Beto Guedes' stinging lead guitar.

Out of Milton Nascimento's phenomenal songwriting and legendary voice... what to choose as favourites?  I'm going to plump for his more impressionistic side that comes out in the Side 3-4 split, on Um Gusto De Sol's woozy, sleepy personification of a pear in a fruit bowl, and the swirling production effects of Pelo Amor De Deus.  But then he's just as good as an interpreter, of Spanish songwriter Carmelo Larrea's bolero standard Dos Cruces, or duetting with Alaíde Costa on Me Deixa Em Paz.  Or indeed with no lyrics at all, on the near-title track or on the ode to his adoptive mother Lilia, soon to be re-recorded with Wayne Shorter (Wagner Tiso from Native Dancer is also all over Clube with his great organ style). Stay tuned for more of the near-instrumental side of Milton later this week, but for now make sure to download this perfect album.

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La Düsseldorf albums (1976-1986) - in memoriam Klaus Dinger, ten years gone

A decade ago today, one of my favourite musicians of all time passed away after a heart attack.  Klaus Dinger's last recordings wouldn't start to see the light of day for another five years, but when they did, they were great - and will definitely feature here at some point, ideally when fully released.  For today, here's the complete discography of arguably his greatest post-NEU! band (although I have almost equal affection for la! NEU? and Die Engel Des Herrn).  So Tanz auf der Zukunft mit Mir to the "sound of the 80s" (Bowie, circa 1978).

La Düsseldorf - s/t (1976)

Keeping the double-drummer lineup he'd unveiled on NEU 75 - brother Thomas, and Hans Lampe - Dinger pulled back a bit on the proto-punk thrash of that album's second side.  He refined it into something more celebratory and glamourous, befitting the "mirror glass and stainless steel" of his home city, turning the first side of this debut album into a hymn to Düsseldorf.  On the second side, the first of his great instrumentals would become La Düsseldorf's first successful single in Germany, and the more reflective and searching Time was a taste of things to come.

link

Viva (1978)

Is this the crowning jewel in Klaus Dinger's discography?  The man himself certainly seemed to think so, returning to its tracks for most of his live releases, and even reworking the full album in his final years, with the results still to emerge.  The multi-lingual title track was a celebration of not just Düsseldorf, but all of humanity, although the humourous side of La Düsseldorf swiftly brought things back down to earth, celebrating themselves in the punkish White Overalls.

Another beautiful instrumental single, Rheinita, gives an oasis of calm before Geld's rage against injustice and greed, setting the stage for the main event.  In the original 20-minute Cha Cha 2000, Dinger not just expresses utopian hope for the future, but creates the song of his career.  If Dinger was still alive today, he'd no doubt still be re-recording it every few years, holding on to the same heartfelt sentiments.  We need better leaders, who love us and don't tweet us.

link

Individuellos (1980)

The NEU 2 of La Düsseldorf, aka the one that suffers by comparison to the others due to the needs-must recycling of its material.  In this case, it was in tragic circumstances, as the suicide of pianist Andreas Schnell interrupted the making of the album and Dinger filled out the running time by recasting main track Menschen a few more times.

For all that, I have a deep affection for Individuellos.  It follows the Viva pattern at its outset (track 1 - humanity is great; track 2 - and so are La Düsseldorf) and then lets the Menschen melody run on, taking in deeply personal memories of Dinger's recently-deceased grandmother (that's her voice on answerphone) and the 'Lieber Honig' of his life Anita (that's the same 1971 recordings of them in a rowing boat that NEU! used, near the end of this album).  The Dinger brothers humour might get a bit ridiculous in Dampfriemen and Tintarella Di (although musically pointing the way to Für Mich), but the album ends on a respectful note, dedicated to Schnell whose piano is upfront on Das Yvonnchen.

link

Neondian / La Düsseldorf 4 / Mon Amour (1985)

Had its own post at the beginning of this year.  Post includes the 1983 single Ich Liebe Dich/Koksnodel.

Blue / La Düsseldorf 5 / Five Pearls And A Hammer (rec. 1984-86, rel. 1999)

In the aftermath of the Neondian release debacle, Dinger still owed one album, and after an abortive NEU! reunion submitted this album in early '87 to Virgin Records Germany, who'd taken over his Teldec contract.  They rejected it and dropped Dinger, and he started from scratch to form the band who'd become Die Engel Des Herrn.  The final La Düsseldorf album - although in reality, it was a solo album by Dinger other than the last track - was therefore shelved until the late 90s, when it was given an archival release by Captain Trip.

The album was now titled Blue, with its original name Five Pearls And A Hammer referring to the album's sequence.  First up is a gorgeous reverb guitar and rhythm track, over which Dinger contrasts his own idyllic life with the Geneva arms control summit between Reagan and Gorbachev.  On the cover picture of Blue are Mari Paas (mentioned in Arms Control Blues), Dinger's partner from the mid-70s through the 90s, with her daughter Yvi, and it's the latter who sings the cutely out-of-tune vocal on the track Blue.

After Lilienthal, a stunningly gorgeous instrumental which alone justifies getting hold of this album, are a couple of short tracks - the slight Touch You Tonight, and the poignant Für Omi, another tribute to his grandmother.  Five pearls, and a hammer - the hammer being the 18-minute rocked up version of Neondian's America, recorded during those sessions.  The track cuts in and ends in mid-flow, as if taken from an even longer recording, and fizzles with chaotic energy, thunder-and-lightning guitars and drums, and barely comprehensible vocals with whispered overdubs.  If the world wasn't ready for this in 1987 - or at least, so thought the record label - it certainly needs it now.

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Eberhard Weber - Fluid Rustle (1979)

Haven't posted an Eberhard Weber solo album yet, so it's long overdue to rectify.  This is my absolute favourite, in which the instantly recognisable upright-electric bassist pared back his unique music to just bass, vibes/marimba (Gary Burton), guitar/balalaika (Bill Frisell), and two vocalists (Norma Winstone and Bonnie Herman) adding wordless magic.

Making his ECM debut after being discovered by Weber on tour, Frisell is tentative and understated here - to a fault, in his own retrospective analysis, but his minimalist volume swells and gentle arpeggios are perfectly placed on this winter's morning walk of an album.  The side-long Quiet Departures starts off with Frisell in this zone, accompanied by Burton, before the bass and voices enter.  By the halfway mark, this pre-dawn chill has started to see some sunlight, as Frisell strums an open chord on the balalaika (with a more energetic lead guitar overdubbed), and the voices set off on a gorgeous melodic progression.

The sunlight continues to burst through on the title track, with Winstone and Herman in full voice as Burton and Weber sparkle all around them, before another subtle, fluid solo from Frisell.  The rest of the album turns colder and more desolate, with a plaintive Burton solo providing the centrepiece of A Pale Smile, and the closing Visible Thoughts ending the day back in the wintry dark as the voices turn into eerie whispers.  A highly, highly recommended standout album in Weber's peerless catalogue.

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Klaus Dinger + Rheinita Bella Düsseldorf ‎- Néondian (1985)

Happy New Year everyone!  Since I seem to have established a tradition of starting the year (and marking the anniversary of this blog) with a Klaus Dinger album, let's keep that going.  Néondian, which was intended as the fourth La Düsseldorf album, saw Dinger up against the adversities of falling out with his brother Thomas and La D. third member Hans Lampe - creatively, contractually and personally - to the point where he was blocked from using the band name.

The solution was 'Klaus Dinger + Rheinita Bella Düsseldorf ' - cheekily keeping the band name tucked away alongside the name of their biggest hit to help with public recognition, and a new set of musicians accompanying Dinger on the most electronic, and most polemical (at least until first album La! NEU?), music of his career.

Néondian first came my way via the 1995 Captain Trip reissue, onto which Dinger had daubed further ownership of the album on to its cover in his inimitable style of the time.  Mon Amour - which would've been the title track had the original concept worked out as planned - was one of those opening tracks I kept on repeat for months on end.  Jaki Liebezeit guests on drums, as Dinger unfolds one of his most majestic instrumental tracks.

As mentioned above, this album saw Dinger at his most acerbic and politicised, taking shots at German society and his contemporaries (Pipi AA) and at US foreign policy (America).  Your mileage may vary as to whether setting diatribes like these (and an update of Cha Cha 2000) to bouncy synthpop was the best idea - I still feel that the other tracks, either instrumental or mostly-instrumental, work much better.  The best thing about America might be the guest slide guitar from Bodo Staiger, who had briefly been a member of  70s Dinger protégés Lilac Angels - more from him later this week.

For a fuller review of Néondian, see this one that I wrote for Julian Cope's Head Heritage about 14 years ago.  It makes me cringe a bit now - the general tone of reviews on that site (not least Cope's) was infectious on me in a way that now feels like pretense, and it's waaay long (FFS, do some Uni work, stop sitting in the library writing album reviews!), but hey ho.  The urls I mention are unfortunately dead.

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In 2006, Warner Germany rounded off a much-needed reissue programme of the first three La Düsseldorf albums with this - a re-arranged version of Néondian finally given its original 'Mon Amour' title.  Still legally prevented by Lampe from using the band name (the contentiousness of this whole reissue in fact saw it deleted within a year, although an LP pressing did appear very recently), Dinger's workaround this time was to officially credit the album to 'la-duesseldorf.de'.  The remastering may be a slight improvement on the Captain Trip CD, according to taste.

The 're-arranged' running order saw America and Pipi AA trading places, Jag Älskar Dig promoted to the first half of the album, and the addition of three bonus tracks.  Two of these are from the last proper La Düsseldorf release, a 12" that appeared in 1983 - I say 'proper', they're not even band tracks - Ich Liebe Dich was a solo track by Klaus that became Jag Älskar Dig on Néondian with minimal tweaking (if any), and the dark and quirky Koksknödel was a solo track by Thomas Dinger - more from him next week.

Lastly, Geld 2006 (Internet Warm-Up Version) was a trailer for the release of 'Viva 2010', a reworking of La Düsseldorf's second album, with the Japanese-German musicians with whom Dinger spent his final years.  I can remember Dinger's old website first claiming that 'Viva 2000' was imminent for release, then it was to be 'Viva 2004' - it didn't appear in 2010 either, likely due to Dinger's recent death.  His heiress Miki Yui, responsible for the two Japandorf releases, is apparently still planning to release the 2000s Viva at some point.  Hopefully the finished Geld was a step up from the demo here, in which they (with guest Herbert Grönemeyer) largely seem to be singing over the original 1978 track with the addition of some Japandorf-era guitar.  Who knows when we'll find out.

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