Another break, plus Mingus '59

Time for SGTG to take another break.  Will probably be back in the Spring like last year, and more than likely feature fewer posts each month - still enjoying the blog, but to be honest I'm just running out of stuff I want to post at the moment.  That may change again in future years, will see how things go.  And of course, thanks again for all your comments - that's what really makes SGTG a pleasure to do.  For now, happy new year to you all when it comes, hope it's a good one.  Here's some top-drawer Mingus to play out 2021.

Mingus Ah Um became Charles Mingus' Columbia debut in October 1959, having been recorded in May of that year.  The album's become such a cornerstone-classic in retrospect it's difficult to think what to actually write about it, other than it's a beautifully-composed and brilliantly-played synthesis of all Mingus' influences leading up to this watershed point in his career.  Formative influences of gospel electrify the joyous Better Git It In Your Soul; Duke Ellington, Lester Young and Jelly Roll Morton are paid tributes, and Mingus' composing and arranging talents make every single track a classic.

Widely regarded as a companion piece to Mingus Ah Um, and even bundled together in a 2-CD remastered edition at one point, Mingus Dynasty was recorded shortly after the release of Ah Um and came out in the spring of 1960.  If the opening Slop sounds like a variation on Better Git It In Your Soul, that's exactly what was commissioned of Mingus (by a TV show) for the tune, and it kicks off the album in fine gospel rave-up style.  Elsewhere, Mingus' compositional skill continues to flourish in striking pieces like Diane and Far Wells, Mill Valley, and his debt to Duke is made even more explicit in fine renderings of Mood Indigo and Things Ain't What They Used To Be.

 

Mingus Ah Um link

Mingus Dynasty link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

East Coasting
Jazz Portraits: Mingus In Wonderland 
Oh Yeah

Tijuana Moods
The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady  
Mingus Plays Piano  
Let My Children Hear Music

Mingus Moves
Changes One & Two
Cumbia & Jazz Fusion
plus:  

The Quintet: Jazz At Massey Hall
Blue Moods  
Money Jungle  
BBC Proms Tribute by Metropole Orkest

That's all, folks! (for now)

Time for a break.  Many, many thanks for all your comments over the past five years!

Back in a few months.  I'll leave you for now with some of the most perfect, timeless piano music ever written, in my favourite rendering by French pianist Pascal Roge, recorded 1983 and released the following year.

 

Happy new year to everyone, and here's hoping your 2021 is better than 2020 (not a high bar to clear, I guess).

Cheers,

AB

link

pw: sgtg

Harold Budd 1936-2020

 

R.I.P. Harold Budd, 24 May 1936 - 8 December 2020

 

Harold Budd, ambient/modern classical musician and composer, has died at the age of 84 after decades of creating some of the world's most sublime music.

Posts at SGTG:

The Oak Of The Golden Dreams

The Plateaux Of Mirror

The Pearl

Music For Three Pianos

 

And here's another I never got around to posting before: The Serpent In Quicksilver/Abandoned Cities.  Usual password, sgtg.  It's a compilation of a typically gorgeous, languid EP and an LP of two darker ambient ventures.  Thanks Harold for so much wonderful music.

Gary Peacock has died

RIP Gary Peacock,12 May 1935 - 4 Sept 2020

After a six-decade career of phenomenal jazz bass, Gary Peacock has died at the age of 85. He released music both as leader and as a sideman to loads of great musicians, not least in the Keith Jarrett Trio which will be where I've heard him most.  Enjoy the ever-propulsive swing of the Standards Trio at SGTG here.

"Blue" Gene Tyranny & Peter Gordon - Trust In Rock (review only - brand new release of 1976 archive recordings)

Couldn't resist grabbing a copy of this when it came to my attention on Boomkat a couple of weeks back.  I knew that Robert Sheff, aka "Blue" Gene Tyranny had released his own records on the Lovely Music label as well as playing with Robert Ashley on Private Parts (The Record), and I'd heard little snippets of Tyranny's stuff; ditto for Peter Gordon, whose LP Star Jaws appears to have been the first release when Lovely Music was set up by Ashley.  Now that I've heard this archival concert recording, though, Tyranny & Gordon's debut albums make a lot more sense in context.

Both men were around in the Bay Area new music scene of the mid 70s, and as Unseen Worlds note in their explanation of this release, "by 1976, the idea of a capitalized 'New Music' had increasingly lost its punch for Tyranny and Gordon. Rock and Roll, likewise, was nearing an apparent generational expiration."  What they envisaged, and put into practice with a group of like-minded musicians, was something that would combine and refresh both genres.  As Unseen Worlds' description continues: "The way out of this impasse was trust in rock, which was both description and command. Rock, for this all-star cast of Bay Area heads, became a perpetual revolution that could be serious, playful, polemic, focused, technical, and lovely."

What is now available, then, is two hours of live music, firstly four of Tyranny's pieces, then five of Gordon's.  The opener Without Warning starts out as a normal rock song, with vocals (as on all the other vocal track) by Patrice Manget, and then just goes on and on. For 20 minutes.  There's elements of funk and jazzy touches, and a sort of minimalism that takes the small-group approach of early Philip Glass but nowhere near as repetitive.  It's maybe a kind of progressive rock, but without any pretentiousness.  Sometimes it's just absolutely lovely, with Next Time Might Be Your Time (the eventual opening track on Tyranny's first album) sounding in places like a reimagining of My Sweet Lord, had Harrison been influenced by Dale Carnegie rather than Krishna Consciousness.  

As a whole, and in a similar time frame, Trust In Rock could perhaps be compared to Henry Cow, but infinitely more accessible.  The furthest "out" this music really goes is Gordon's closing track Intervallic Exapansion, which is 27 minutes of churning minimalism, but still in a jazz-rock context.  Just have a listen at the link below, this music is absolutely wonderful - huge kudos to Unseen Worlds for making it available.  This is hands down my favourite archive release of 2019, unless something else truly stunning comes out to beat it.

Listen online and/or buy 2CD/3LP/dl here.

Scott Walker 1943-2019

R.I.P. :(

What a career... with the most envelope-pushing stuff saved til the end.  Sheer bloody genius.

Previously posted on SGTG: Tilt

Klaus Dinger + Japandorf (2013) / Pre-Japandorf - 2000! (rel. 2017)

Happy New Year everyone!  Thanks again for all your comments and support, especially through the, well, slightly trying times of last November.  Got so many helpful suggestions after (repeatedly) losing tons of files that hopefully this blog is now better protected from any further meltdowns.  In terms of the future, I'm hoping that SGTG will last another full year of three posts per week - may have to scale back before that though, but will keep you lovely folk in the loop as to my plans.

For now, here's the final appearance of an SGTG tradition - starting the new year with a Klaus Dinger post.  This'll be its final appearance as I've now posted his entire post-Neu! catalogue - but who knows, we might get more from the archives someday.  Today though, here's the last two releases to date from the fascinating career of a unique artist.  Following Dinger's death in March 2008, his partner Miki Yui began finalising the recordings that she and Dinger, plus Japanese-German musicians Masaki Nakao, Satoshi Okamoto and Kazuyuki Onouchi had been recording in 2007-8.  The album, Klaus Dinger + Japandorf, was released in March 2013.

What emerged on the album was a strong set of material that tempered Dinger's improvisational instincts with succinct, upbeat Japanese pop.  Dinger still stretched out, on the two 'Sketch' tracks, with a garagey fuzztone that resulted in his most vital and exciting music in years, and the obligatory Cha Cha 2000 was more of a psychedelic remix than another straight play-through.  The shorter songs had the strongest Japanese influence, whether in a funky electric piano-led ode to cooking Udon broth or almost unbearably poignant in Spacemelo, which became Miki Yui's farewell to Dinger when she added her vocals after his death.  The album as a whole was a more than worthy tribute to Dinger, but it only told part of the Japandorf story...

...which began in 1998 immediately after the final la! NEU? concert.  After playing, Dinger was approached by Nakao, who then introduced him to Onouchi (who helped prepare the la! NEU? gig recording for release), and so on.  Having acquired a new group, as well as briefly retaining Andreas and Viktoria from la! NEU?, Dinger held recording sessions in 1999 and 2000, the latter of which were eventually featured on this 2017 release, credited to Pre-Japandorf.

This collection might be only 38 minutes long, but it still fills in an important link in Dinger history.  The sound of these tracks is a loose hybrid of the sound of la! NEU? (there's even a fresh interpretation of Mayday) and pointers towards that of Japandorf on their album.  Although slight on running time, the tracks here are a great insight into the spontaneity of the sessions with this short-lived lineup.  Viktoria Wehrmeister is particularly good fronting the tracks Pure Energy and Talk, and the improvisations in the album's second half are enjoyable too, especially the scalding fuzz guitar that Dinger unleashes at the end of Midsummer.  Thank You All is pretty much the perfect endnote to Dinger's career - gives me a bit of a lump in my throat sometimes.

Japandorf link
Pre-Japandorf link
pw: sgtg

Yep, another files update...

Google Drive isn't going to work.  I've already started to receive copyright notices and account suspension warnings.  Had to immediately delete all the files from the past few months as they were in the Drive tied to my personal email address, and there's tons of family photos etc stored there that I don't want to risk losing.

So I'm afraid (unless anyone has any other suggestions) it's back to Zippyshare for everything.  Will re-upload as and when I've got the time and energy.

Update. Sat 10 Nov: Thanks again everyone for your helpful comments, and your encouragement.  First thing I'm getting done is putting back up the 2018 links that I wiped yesterday; Zippy will do for now, then will think through other options.

The good thing is that all the other Google Drive accounts that I opened to host the 2016-2017 links have so far (fingers crossed!) not received any notifications, so they can stay there until any problems arise.  (Ellington Uptown from Dec 2017 will go back up today - thanks to the person who noticed I'd skipped over it!)

I stopped using full names for the zip files and changed to letters & numbers a while back, and will use passwords going forward; re-zipping everything else to include passwords will get done eventually, but that'll need to be a low priority.  The other thing that will be useful will be when I get a Lumen report from Google, apparently this service tells you (eventually, it can take weeks) which files were reported.  Will be interesting to find out - I think the main problem I have that, say, Die or DIY doesn't have, is my tendency to stray in to major label waters, or labels that were once indies and now have ownership by one of the majors, e.g. Virgin/Charisma.  May have to avoid that going forward if it turns out to be the case.

cheers

AB

Robert Rich & B. Lustmord - Stalker (1995)

This'll do nicely as a belated Halloween post.  I did get hold of this album on Halloween last week - walked in to my favourite Oxfam Music shop, and it was playing over the speakers.  Initially wondered if this was Tangerine Dream circa Atem, or something... no, the tech's not vintage enough... eventually, I just walked up the counter and asked to buy it.

So here it is - over an hour of first class dark ambient from California ambient master Robert Rich and Welsh industrialist Brian 'Lustmord' Williams, inspired by Tarkovsky as per the album title.  I've never actually seen that film - any good?  This album is phenomenal though, I keep hearing Coil-esque bits, even eerie resemblances to In The Shadow Of The Sun.

link
pw: sgtg

Re-upping Update

Hi folks.  Just about there - every post should be on Google Drive by Tuesday.

Aug-Nov 2017 was the trickiest - looks like the only backup I did was on the HD of a laptop that died at the end of last year.  Still, got just about everything re-ripped, or otherwise found, with one exception that I've completely lost.  So here's a bit of a reader appeal: anyone got the files for the Mingus Tribute?  I know I did that one plus an unedited file, so it's a big ask, but if anyone's able to help out (doesn't have to be both aspects, unless anyone has the whole lot) that would be awesome (All good now, with huge thanks to the two contributors of the files!).

Cheers,
AB

Tomasz Stańko 1942-2018

Aw, crap.

Tomasz Stańko, one of my favourite jazz artists, has died after a lung cancer diagnosis earlier this year.

Will post an album in tribute in the next couple of days, in between the scheduled posts for this week.

The Missing Post

If you've been following the events of this blog over the last day or so, you'll be aware that I deleted a whole post in a bit of a late-night panic when some Mega takedown notices hit my inbox.  After trying to work the [artist redacted] Zippy links back into the NWW post, not only did they all get zapped by Zippy but the NWW link went down too.

This is all getting slightly worrying, so I've decided to delete all references to [artist redacted] from the NWW post.  Unfortunately (and perhaps I'm just being overly paranoid) I've also deleted a really nice comment from that post, as it mentioned [artist redacted] by name.  Apologies for that, futurepyramid - I really appreciated your comment.

Oh well... to cheer myself up, I've worked up a post of one of my favourite 80s electronic records for Friday.  Won't be using Mega for the foreseeable future - apologies to anyone who preferred downloading from the Mega links.  If the Zippy link gets zapped from Friday's post, I don't really know where to go from there - maybe just take a break for a bit.

Thanks again for all your downloads, comments & follows - makes it all worthwhile.

AB

Ana-Maria Avram, 1961-2017 - R.I.P.

Only just found out that Romanian composer Ana-Maria Avram passed away at the beginning of this month, aged 55. :(  Information about the cause of her death doesn't seem to have been published as yet.

Piece from The Wire on Ana-Maria's passing here.  Another here.

conducting in 2011

I've only been listening to her music for a couple of years, along with that of her husband Iancu Dumitrescu (both pictured below), but it's been life-changing - new extremes in modern classical music that have really broadened my listening horizons.  RIP Ana-Maria, and condolences to Iancu - I believe they'd been together since the late 80s/early 90s.

More to come soon from Ana-Maria and Iancu on this blog - for now, already posted are:

ED.MN.1001 - Medium/Cogito (just Iancu's music)
ED.MN.1002 - Au Dela De Movemur
ED.MN.1003 - Pierres Sacreés (just Iancu's music)
ED.MN.1004 - Musique de Paroles
ED.MN.1008 - Five Pieces
ED.MN.1011 - Musique Action '98
ED.MN.1019 - In Tokyo

Download options! (based on your feedback)

All Mega links should now have a Zippy alternative.

Enjoy! 

Comments 'n' spam

Hi folks,

Got spammed pretty hard today across a whole bunch of posts, and whilst trying to batch-delete it all, I accidentally deleted a few weeks worth of genuine comments as well.... arrrrgh.

 

Apologies to everyone whose comments have been lost.  I really appreciate it every time someone takes the time to comment, makes the whole thing worthwhile.  Please keep 'em coming!

Cheers,
AB

New Year Resolution 2016:

- To start my own album-sharing blog, after years of enjoying many others that have introduced me to lots of great music.

- To post fairly regularly (two or three posts per week?), focusing on albums that I like and that I'd like to share.  My first thought was that I'd like to post mostly albums that I've read interesting things about, found them near-impossible to find online for download, and so ended up buying them.  Then I realised that I'd probably run out of albums that  fit that definition after about a week, but will share rare-ish stuff whenever possible.

- To only post albums that I've found on other blogs if the original source no longer exists or is no longer active.  Whenever possible, I'll try to credit the original source (even if it's a defunct blog) unless I've completely forgotten.  If I end up coincidentally posting something that's gone up recently on someone else's blog - just means they have great taste!

Enjoy,

AB

 testing...testing... (great, seems easy enough to do uploads & hyperlinks.)