Lula Côrtes / Zé Ramalho - Paêbirú (1975)

Of all the 1970s Brazilian albums I've heard so far, this double concept album collaboration between Lula Côrtes & Zé Ramalho is one of the most experimental and psychedelic.  Containing numerous moments that could almost be Amon Düül, Agitation Free, Between or a less refined Popol Vuh, it's like Brazilian krautrock.  Needless to say, Paêbirú has become a cult classic, both as a great acid-folk brain-melter, and as a once-ultra-rare obscurity: before various reissues brought it back into availability, most of the small original pressing was lost in a warehouse accident.  Fittingly for the 'four elements' concept, this was either by fire or flood, depending on which story is correct.

So as above, to structure their double-LP about Brazilian mythology, Côrtes & Ramalho titled the four album sides elementally: Earth, Air, Fire & Water, or in Portuguese: Terra, Ar, Fogo, Água.  Vocals are minimal and often basic chants, so the language barrier is a non-issue in getting immersed in the incredible sound.  The Terra side starts as it means to go on, with acoustic guitars, flute and tribal percussion.  After a minute of this comes the first of many moments of wow, that bassline is incredible - seriously, crank the bass up for this whole album as high as you can.  After a short track of incredible percussion and acid-drenched fuzz guitar, the Terra side ends on a calm flute, piano and acoustic guitar piece.

Ar begins in much the same territory, against a backdrop of melodic acoustic guitar scales, before this album side delves into darker, more ritualistic jams with a sax adding a jazzier element.  The brief Fogo side has appropriately firey guitars and sitar, skull-splitting garage-psych Farfisa and scorching grooves.  For the final stretch, Água commences by invoking the sea-goddess Iemanja (see also here), then takes in more guitar duelling and great percussion, two lovely short tracks evocative of Jorma Kaukonen/Hot Tuna, and one more great acoustic/percussion jam.  Hugely recommended masterpiece.

Original 2-LP gatefold with Ramalho (L) and Côrtes (R)

link

pw: sgtg

Gong - Angel's Egg (1973)

Psychedelic adventures with Pothead Pixies, Octave Doctors and more from Daevid Allen, Steve Hillage & co.  This album by the classic Gong lineup starts with a spacey introduction, which segues into a great piece of jazz rock with some wonderful lead guitar from Hillage, and continues on in this vein for the rest of the album.

Many of the tracks are short connecting pieces which give the various band members a turn in the spotlight: more Hillage on Castle In The Clouds, Didier Malherbe on Flute Salad, Pierre Moerlen on Percolations.  Allen's "mystical histories of an undiscovered planet... for children of all ages" keep the narrative tied together among all these various interludes, and the three songs that close the album (including Hillage's I Never Glid Before) are among Gong's very best.

link
pw: sgtg

Gong at SGTG:
You
Shamal
Gazeuse!
Expresso II
Daevid Allen at SGTG:
Dividedalienplaybax80
Steve Hillage at SGTG:
Motivation Radio
Green
Open/Studio Herald
Rainbow Dome Musick
Point 3: Water

Shuggie Otis - Inspiration Information (1974)

Between the release of his second album Freedom Flight and this, his third, Shuggie Otis transitioned from precociously talented and well-connected teenager to a young adult and true auteur.  Working from a home studio, he wrote and produced this album alone, played all the instruments bar the horn and string arrangements, and virtually abandoned his blues roots for something (even) funkier and altogether weirder.

It was a sound that didn't have much impact at the time, and ended up with Otis being dropped by Epic, but Inspiration Information's time would come a quarter of a century later when David Byrne's Luaka Bop label first revived it.  At that time, Shuggie was posited as a proto-Prince, which does hold up in the loose, funky songs and singular artistry and musicianship.  It's also historically congruent with the advances in the studio that Stevie Wonder and Sly Stone had been making in the early 70s, not least in the use of a primitive Rhythm King drum machine.

The first side of the album is a flawless run of four great songs, bursting into life on the smoking funk groove of the title track, followed by the languid Island Letter.  Next are the taut, spare groove of Sparkle City and the drum-machine based comedown experience Aht Uh Mi Hed.  Other than the first 58 seconds, the album's second half is entirely instumental, in common with its predecessor.  Unlike Freedom Flight, there aren't two lengthy jams here but a clutch of short impressionistic sketches, which reach their experimental apex in XL-20 and Pling.  Shuggie might have been too ahead of his time in 1974 for this record to be huge, but now it just sounds timeless.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Here Comes Shuggie Otis
Freedom Flight

Shuggie Otis - Freedom Flight (1971)

Shuggie Otis' second album was such a huge step up from his debut that it's easy to forget this was still the work of a 17 year old.  With two execptions, he's the sole songwriter, and his already prodigious guitar talent continued to shine as well as showing off his skill at several other instruments.  Shuggie's rising profile also brought guest stars on board for this one: George Duke and Aynsley Dunbar are featured here.

Freedom Flight is perhaps best known for Strawberry Letter 23, the gorgeous piece of baroque psychedelic pop that would later be a funked-up hit for The Brothers Johnson.  That's only one of four superb songs on the first side of the album though, which is filled out by one of the funkiest blues covers ever recorded.  The album's second side was taken up by two lengthy instrumentals: the bluesy Purple, which expands on the template of Gospel Groove from Shuggie's debut, and the beautifully mellow title track.  It's difficult to pick Shuggie Otis' masterpiece between this one and the one coming up next week.

link
pw: sgtg

Shuggie Otis - Here Comes Shuggie Otis (1970)

First in a three-Friday exploration of the slim but awesome discography of Johnny Alexander Veliotes Jr, best known by the pet name his mother gave him, and the shortened surname that his famous father already went by.  Shuggie Otis started performing live with his father's band in the mid 60s when he was eleven years old, where he'd "wear dark glasses and a paint a moustache on" to disguise his age, as he relates on this album.

Here Comes Shuggie Otis was his solo debut as a prodigious teenager, and consists mostly of material co-written by father and son, its standout feature being Shuggie's rapidly developing guitar versatility.  The ten tracks touch on the psych-soul and baroque AM pop sounds of the day, with a bedrock of blues and R&B.

The highlights include Oxford Gray, the longest and most ambitious piece that opens the album, and the slow-cooking Gospel Groove, pointing the way to what was to come.  As mentioned above, Shuggie's Boogie starts out with a potted autobiography of his formative influences, saved from being a bit precious and corny by exploding into another great twelve-bar tearup.  From here, Shuggie's playing, singing and writing would just get better and better.

link
pw: sgtg

Legendary Pink Dots - Asylum (1985)

Double album of dark psych-pop, post-punk prog weirdness and god knows what else, from Anglo-Dutch cult legends who are still on the go after 40 years.  This is the first album of theirs I've taken a chance on after being vaguely aware of them for ages, so any pointers as to where to go next would be much appreciated.  The attraction of this one from the mid 80s was the editing participation of one Steven Stapleton, which on listening appears to be limited to the strangest tracks at the end, but I could be wrong.

Whether or not Asylum is a good entry point to the Legendary Pink Dots, I loved it, and found it well structured - the short songs at the beginning gradually give way to more ambitious, longer tracks and finally full-on avant-garde insanity on the original Side 4.  The lazy description of this band might be that they're like a post-punk version of Barrett-era Floyd, which has a grain of truth, but there's so much more besides that.

For instance: love the violin sound (although I gather they had numerous lineup changes), Edward Ka-Spel's voice, especially on the spoken-word epic So Gallantly Screaming, and the two gorgeous tracks with a female lead vocal, from Attrition's Julia Niblock.  The keyboard sounds and production values might not be to everyone's taste, but for me they were spot on for an album of this style and vintage.  I'm looking forward to further exploration.

link
pw: sgtg

Steve Hillage - Open/Studio Herald (1990 compi from 1979 LPs)

Steve Hillage had a particularly productive year to close out the 70s - a double-live album, his first ambient album Rainbow Dome Musick (see list below), and then Open - another funk-psych-prog-electronic record in the vein of Motivation Radio and Green.  That live double, Live Herald, actually ended with a studio side, and when Open came out on CD in 1990 the four 'Studio Herald' tracks were added at the beginning of the disc.  Hillage also re-shuffled the running order of the Open tracks, and added a single-only cover of Getting Better from Sgt Pepper's.  This has all since become canon on subsequent reissues, so might as well go with it.

Studio Herald, then, is likely to have been a further overspill from the two albums' worth of material that made up Radio & Green - it's in a similar ballpark, with the nine-minute New Age Synthesis (Unzipping The Zype) particularly good.  Elsewhere, Hillage attempts to go punk on 1988 Aktivator and just comes off a bit Hawkwind, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - overall, Studio Herald is a decent EP overture.  So how about Open?

As mentioned above, Hillage rejigged the track order for this release, resulting in LP closer Earthrise being the first thing from Open that we get here.  It's based on a melody by Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum, and works well in this arrangement.  The title track comes next, with a bit of nifty vocoder and the same twee-but-pleasant lyrics as on Motivation Radio.  As on the other Open tracks, the synths & sequences are well integrated with the guitars and gently funky rhythms, making this album a sort of distillation of its two predecessors, with its high point probably Day After Day (which was the original LP opener).  The Beatles cover is a bit slight but fun in a Hillage kind of way, and don't miss the muscular workout Don't Dither Do It near the end of the CD.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Motivation Radio
Green
Rainbow Dome Musick
with Gong: You
with System 7: Point 3: Water

Gong - You (1974)

One more Gong/Hillage post for the time being, in the last (studio) occasion that they'd both intertwine.  This album is the sweet spot of psychedelic Gong for me, where they got to fully flex their musical muscles on four lengthy tracks, and the remaining short pieces are the ones that carry most of Daevid Allen's comic-space-opera narrative.

After You opens with two of the latter plus a short atmospheric instrumental, Hillage is the first to get the musical spotlight with Master Builder.  I'm assuming the main riff was his, as it would appear again as The Glorious Om Riff on Green, and his guitar solos here are nothing short of blinding.  The next track, the nine mind-bending minutes of A Sprinkling Of Clouds, might prefigure Rainbow Dome Musick to begin with, but the master synther in this case is Tim Blake rather than Hillage/Giraudy.

The absolute star of You, however, IMO has to be bassist Mike Howlett.  Rock solid throughout, the generous dose of psych-jazz-funk that he lays down throughout the album reaches its apex on the ten minutes of The Isle Of Everywhere.  Laying down a hypnotic bassline that Holger Czukay might've been proud of, everyone from Blake to Hillage to the French percussion team that would shortly take ownership of the band gets a chance to shine on this album high point.

link

Steve Hillage - Rainbow Dome Musick (1979)

Basically an essential post to round up the recent spotlighting of Steve Hillage, and one of the most essential ambient albums ever made, full stop.  Synths and sequencers had been increasing in prominence from Motivation Radio to Green, and for their next studio album Steve & Miquette went all in with these two side-long instrumental pieces.

Written for the Mind-Body-Spirit Festival that took place at the London Olympia from 21-29 April 1979, the album was released shortly before the event and credited its A side to Miquette Giraudy as composer, and B side to Hillage.  Fast forward a decade, and Hillage famously walks into a club's chillout room only to find the record being spun by Alex Patterson of The Orb, leading to Hillage & Giraudy's creative rebirth as System 7.

Rainbow Dome Musick's first half is called Garden Of Paradise, and it appears to be a garden with a stream running through it given the opening water sounds.  The gentle synths, electric piano and bells bubble and tinkle around, and at the halfway point the garden's birds burst into life, soaring and singing with Hillage's lead guitar part.  After the piece settles back down to the synths and fades away, the second half of the Dome experience is announced by a single bell, and the much, much trippier synths of Four Ever Rainbow start to worm their way into your subconscious.  Hillage sparingly plays mellow echo-guitar, but otherwise lets the womb-like electronics envelop the listener completely.  Beyond-essential ambience.

link

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

Steve Hillage - Motivation Radio (1977)

Back to Steve Hillage, with his third solo album.  Appearing after two solid slabs of psychedelic prog, this is where Hillage reshaped his sound around the funk and proto-disco music he was unashamedly enjoying at the time (despite fans who spoke to him carping about it, which only spurred him on).  The result was a massively fun record of eight tightly arranged shorter songs, and a cute little cover of Not Fade Away to finish.

Motivation Radio's lyrics can seem a bit dated (however, is it just me that finds Radio quite prescient, given the rise of the internet/social media as an admittedly imperfect counter to mainstream media?) and hippy-dippy, but at their heart just boil down to self-confidence/self-discovery platitudes and other messages of positivity.  Which is kind of nice; there's a great line in the AMG review of the album, although I suspect they won't have been the first to use it, about Motivation Radio being "the light side of the moon" in comparison to the largely downbeat Pink Floyd MO of the era.

Floyd are a vaguely useful musical comparison too; the album has a great 70s rock production with a generous dose of synth, both courtesy of Malcom Cecil of Tonto's Exploding Head Band, and there's also lingering traces of Hillage's time in Gong (see Octave Doctors).  Miquette Giraudy's synth talent, pointing the way to the future, is worth mentioning too.  What really elevates Motivation Radio, though, are Hillage's great guitars, energising the whole record with driving riffs and blistering leads.  When this coincides with the more purple lyrics, the result is a nice balancing act that stops the songs seeming too twee - Light In The Sky and Saucer Surfing are perfect examples.  With a tight rhythm section wrapping all this up, the result is just a wonderful album.

More to come on Monday! ;)

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.

link

Dave Pike - The Doors Of Perception (1970)

Detroit-born vibesman Dave Pike released this Herbie Mann-produced oddity in 1970, but the basic tracks were actually recorded four years earlier at the Village Gate.  Mann's attempts to get hip with the production include rain and thunder tapes, ersatz audience overdubs and some insane stereo panning.  Even if The Doors Of Perception might sound dated for all of that (and for its title), the music within has enough great grooves to make for a durable, and highly enjoyable 27 minutes.

The first lengthy track, The Drifter, has a great melodic swing to it with a nice edge of fuzz on Chuck Israels' walking bass (which gets dialled up to eleven on the title track that follows).  The album's second half reins in the studio trickery for a couple of particularly nice cuts - the self-explanatory Ballad, and the final breezy groove of Anticipation, where you can best focus on this great group's interplay.

link

Brast Burn - Debon (1975)

This album seemed like one of these "too good to be true" musical legends when I read about it a few weeks back.  An obscure one-off by a Japanese musician, who may have also been responsible for another album credited to 'Karuna Khyal' on the same tiny label, that briefly appeared in one record shop in Nakano, Tokyo, and sounded like someone doing a mashup of every krautrock album you've ever heard with a dash of Ry Cooder on top?

So when I found a copy of this CD (from the same Paradigm label responsible for reissuing Journey Through Space and Acezantez) going for peanuts shortly afterwards, it was impossible to resist.  The low price was due to library stickers - seriously, the fact that an English public library had something like this in its CD racks at some point was just the icing on the cake - wonder how often it was borrowed?  And of course, there was still the music...

True to the reviews I'd read, the two 23-minute pieces that make up Debon have a very strong krautrock flavour - there's echoes here of both Amon Düüls, Ash Ra Tempel in their mellower moments, a bit of a Faustlike sensibility... you get the idea.  Long, raga-like sections of guitar and percussion jamming cut into each other with occasional vocal declamations and incantations.  Bells, electronic whooshes and other odd bits of studio noise complete the picture of an album that reminds you of a lot of things, sure, but the way it's all put together is utterly unique and mindbending.  One of these wonderful discoveries that always remind me there's infinitely more great music out there still to be found.

link

Fausto Romitelli (played by Ictus ensemble) - Professor Bad Trip (2004)

Italian composer Fausto Romitelli managed to stake out a truly unique and disorienting soundworld in his unfortunately short life (he lost a battle with cancer in 2004 at the age of 41).  This has been my entry point to his ouevre, and it's a good overview.

Set into three movements (or 'Lessons', as introduced by a suitably professor-like narrator), Professor Bad Trip was Romitelli's breatkthrough opus in creating a surreal, constantly-shifting blend of modern classical music and psychedelia.  Performed here by the Belgian ensemble Ictus, it's a stunning 40-minute aural hall of mirrors that takes a few listens to get a proper hold on.  Shorter pieces flesh out this release - another ensemble one, Green Yellow & Blue, and two solo works - Seascape for contrabass recorder, and Trash TV Trance for electric guitar and guitar-jack interference.  Recommended.

link