Tangerine Dream - Thief (1981)

Think this is the only bit of Tangerine Dream's Virgin years that I haven't yet posted.  Thief was the soundtrack album for Michael Mann's feature debut, so can double as a tribute to James Caan.  As a TD album (and regarded as such in the series of 'Definitive Edition' remasters), sure it has bits of repetition and recycling, but that's par for the course in a soundtrack, and it creates a dark, dramatic atmosphere with ease.  Recorded in 1980 (other than a remixed portion of Through Metamorphic Rocks from Force Majeure, retitled Igneous), and so sitting between Tangram and Exit, the music is a solid addition to the 'proper albums' discography of Froese-Frank-Schmoelling.  Atmosphere, rhythm, melody and shorter tracks all point the way forward for this lineup.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Electronic Meditation

Alpha Centauri  

Zeit

Atem 

Phaedra (scroll past main post)

Rubycon & Richochet

Stratosfear
Encore

Cyclone
Force Majeure
Tangram

Pergamon

Exit

White Eagle 
Logos: Live At The Dominion
Hyperborea

Poland

Le Parc

Vangelis - La Fête Sauvage (1976)

More Vangelis music for a Frédéric Rossif wildlife documentary, this one seemingly focused on big cats judging by the various album cover pictures used over the years.  When originally released, the soundtrack album's LP sides were simply titled La Fête Sauvage Part 1 and Part 2; this has transferred to CD (at least on this Polydor one, some other reissues differ) as a single 38 minute track.

It's great Vangelis music, rooted in his mid-70s sound and very much looking ahead to the late-70s lushness of Opera Sauvage in its second half.  First though, we get what I presume maps to Side 1 of the LP, in just over 18 minutes that takes in an uptempo theme, three short sections of percussion, voices and flute (performed by guest musicians) and lastly a more laidback electronics and percussion theme.  That last section leads in nicely to the long Vangelis-only piece that takes up the rest of the album.  With reverbed electric piano and lush synthesisers, it shows Vangelis honing in on the gorgeous sound of his late-70s work.  It's effectively a theme and variations, returning to the main melody right at the end, and has lately become one of my absolute favourite pieces of Vangelis' music.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
L'apocalypse Des Animaux

Opera Sauvage

Antarctica
Soil Festivities
Invisible Connections

Vangelis - Opera Sauvage (1979)

One of three releases in a busy 1979 for Vangelis, Opera Sauvage was his third soundtrack for French nature documentarian Frédéric Rossif (link to the first, Apocalypse Des Animaux, below).  By this point, the gorgeous, gossamer sheen of Vangelis' palette of synths and electric piano was at its height, and these seven pieces work wonderfully as an album in their own right.

The understated pulse of L'Enfant could be seen as a precursor to Chariots Of Fire, and in fact this album is quite literally a precursor to that more famous soundtrack - director Hugh Hudson started out by using L'Enfant and Hymne as working music, and both pieces remained in Chariots Of Fire, although one in a different form and the other given to a brass band.  On Opera Sauvage, in between those two tracks is the album's longest and my personal highlight, the beautifully meditative Rêve with its slightly bluesy/jazzy electric piano lead.

I'm not really aware of the content of Rossif's TV series Opera Sauvage, but it may well have been partly avian-themed given the bookends on side two here.  Mouettes (gulls) is a brief synth piece and the multi-section Flamants Roses (flamingos) features Jon Anderson on harp, setting up the full-on collaboration to come.  In between these two pieces are Chromatique, which gives more interesting instrumental variety in its guitar textures, and the suitably evocative Irlande.  One of Vangelis' most accessible records of his classic era, and I reckon one of the very best.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
L'apocalypse Des Animaux

Antarctica
Soil Festivities
Invisible Connections

Philip Glass - Analog (2006 compilation, rec. 1975-81)

Compilation released by the Philip Glass archive label Orange Mountain Music, centered around the 1977 LP North Star which originally came out on Virgin Records.  North Star comprised of soundtrack music for a 1975 documentary about the sculptor/assemblage artist Mark Di Suvero, and as such contains much shorter pieces than any other Glass release of the era.

Listening to North Star, in fact, is like a series of miniature trailers for Einstein On The Beach (link below) - the preponderance of tracks based around electric organ and simple vocal phrases definitely points the way forward to Einstein.  There's some really lovely variations on the Glass sound of time too, such as River Run and the flute tapestry of Are Years What (For Marianne Moore).  Like Glassworks, this is an ideal album for listeners who might enjoy the early Philip Glass sound, but be put off by a single idea stretching across 20-odd minutes.

The bonus on Analog is Soho News, an EP from 1981 containing "two minor works originally written in the mid-70s".  The three parts of Dressed Like An Egg are in a similar vein to the organ/voice pieces on North Star, and the real treat is an early organ rendition of Mad Rush.  Perhaps best known as a piano piece since the release of Solo Piano (link below), it was originally intended to be an organ work, and is presented here in its full 16 minute recording (Soho News originally edited it down to seven minutes).

North Star, original LP cover, 1977

Soho News, original 12" cover, 1981

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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
Solo Piano
Dance No. 4 (Christopher Bowers-Broadbent)
How Now, etc (Steffen Schleiermacher)
Glassworks (live 2017)
Symphony No. 3 (live 2020)

Vangelis - Antarctica (1983)

A winter favourite of mine, and an underrated Vangelis album.  Antarctica was the soundtrack to Koreyoshi Kurahara's film Nankyoku Monogatari (South Pole Story) about the ill-fated Japanese exploration of 1958.  I haven't seen the movie, but the music here aptly conjures up great expanses of ice and natural beauty, as well as the treacherous weather conditions and moments of high drama.

The grand, stately theme sets the stage with its simple melody and gradually developing percussion.  The main melody will repeat quite a few times across the album, which would feel a bit like short-changing listeners on a regular studio record, but is perfectly fine on a film soundtrack.  Vangelis always keeps things interesting.  The second track, Anarctic Echoes, is a particular highlight, with the melody slowed right down amid a dreamlike atmosphere; Life Of Antarctica is another that develops really well.  The more upbeat moments of high drama work well too, like the jittery synths of Kinematic, and the darker atmospheres of Other Side Of Antarctica.  Wrap up warm and enjoy.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
L'apocalypse Des Animaux
Soil Festivities
Invisible Connections

Tibor Szemzö - The Other Shore (1999 compi, rec. 1992-97)

Hungarian musician & composer Tibor Szemzö previously featured here with his Snapshot From The Island album; this three-track collection switches out the bucolic, mellow atmosphere for a more melancholy journey.

First up is the title track, building gradually as string phrases from Szemzö's Gordian Knot Company ensemble punctuate the silence.  Chanting voices and restrained percussion enter, then a little bass guitar, to which Szemzö will eventually add bass flute.  Meanwhile, extracts of a Buddhist treatise, Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law, are recited in Japanese.  So far, so nicely mediative.

The second piece is Symultan, based around sampled voices from a Roma community and related field recordings, with a similar musical backing to the first track eventually taking shape.  It will be all the more affecting for those that understand the language - they're apparently talking about all that was lost to their community under fascism - but is still a striking work of very human melancholy without knowing the speech.  The album closes with Gull, an absolutely lovely work for string quartet and tabla.

link
pw: sgtg

Arp Life - Jumbo Jet / Z Bezpieczną Szybkością (2014 compilation, rec. 1975-78)

In 1975, library music composer Mateusz Święcicki (1933-1985) teamed up with film soundtrack composer Andrzej Korzyński (b. 1940) to start off a studio ensemble for Polish Radio.  The name given to the project, which Święcicki had been using a couple of years earlier, was Arp Life: he'd liked how the Arp Odyssey synthesiser sounded much more refined compared to the rougher Minimoog.

For the next three years, additional musicians associated with the radio studios, most of their names lost to history, would come and go to add strings, brass or percussion as desired.  And ironically enough, Arp synths were scarcely, if ever, used - pretty much everything electronic here is either Fender Rhodes or Minimoog.  The best known artefact to emerge from this arrangement, and a mainstay of crate-digger blogs for as far back as I can remember, was the Jumbo Jet LP, released by Polskie Nagrania in 1977, and featuring new core member Maciej Śniegocki as writer and arranger.

Whether on a vinyl rip, or a remastered CD like this, the sampling appeal of Jumbo Jet is undeniable - wah-wah guitars, funky Rhodes and nifty bass & percussion riffs are everywhere, along with a handful of great fuzz guitar leads and melancholy disco strings.  Vocals are either wordless or limited to the track title; only the title track has more than that.  Only two tracks top the four minute mark - Jumbo Jet is basically a library LP par excellence, and a few tracks saw use in film, with Baby Bump and the gorgeous Hotel Victoria featuring in Andrezj Wajda's Man Of Marble.

original cassette cover, 1978

The following year, the Wifon label released a series of cassettes specifically promoted for in-car use, with the titles encouraging Poland's motorists to 'have a nice journey', 'don't dazzle [with your headlights, presumably]', and 'drive at a safe speed'.  That last one - in Polish, 'Z bezpieczną szybkością', was effectively Arp Life's second and last album.  Three tracks on the tape were taken from Jumbo Jet (Motor Rock was presumably a no-brainer to open the tape with), and the remaining ten were never released in any other format until this 2014 CD, which was followed by individual vinyl reissues.  The sound of these tracks is much the same as on Jumbo Jet, although Korzyński is the dominant writer rather than Śniegocki, leading to a bit more brass in the arrangements.  A couple of non-album singles and an unused signature jingle written for the Tonpress label round out this great compilation.

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Popol Vuh - Coeur De Verre ("Singet, Denn Der Gesang Vertreibt Die Wölfe") (1977)

Or indeed, 'Herz aus Glas', or any of the other permutations of the title over the years...  The original name for this 1977 album, which translates as 'Sing, for the song drives out the wolves', was put aside when Werner Herzog once again tapped Florian Fricke for some new Vuh music for his latest beautifully bizarre movie, and it was decided to market the album as a soundtrack.

As my memories of the Heart Of Glass film are a bit hazy (and to be honest, still would be if I'd just finished watching it five minutes ago - it's a bit hard-going even by Herzog's standards), let's just focus on the music.  As the follow-up to Letzte Tage - Letzte Nächte, Popol Vuh were still in rock mode, with Daniel Fichelscher's guitars up front and centre.  And top, bottom, sides and background too.  This album has often begged the question - is Florian Fricke even on it?  He's credited with piano as usual, but is so far back in the mix as to be virtually inaudible.

If Coeur/Herz/Wölfe is very much the Fichelscher show then, that's no bad thing, as he's on fine form, letting his chiming layers of guitar and ringing lead lines create another minor masterpiece in the Popol Vuh canon over the drums and percussion (also played by Fichelshcer).  Al Gromer Khan drops by on sitar for Das Lied von den hohen Bergen to round out the album's majestic first half on a nice mellow note, before things get even more amped up.  Hüter der Schwelle and Der Ruf in particular are the rockiest this band ever got, but the closing Gemeinschaft with its guest flute part points towards their progressively mellower future.

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Gianluigi Trovesi & Gianni Coscia - In Cerca Di Cibo (2000)

An enduring ECM favourite of mine, In cerca di cibo (In search of sustenance) is a gorgeous, mostly mellow album of duets between two Italians - accordionist Gianni Coscia and clarinetist Gianluigi Trovesi.  Half of the compositions on this gem of an album come from Fiorenzo Capri's soundtrack to a 1971 Italian TV movie about Pinocchio (see below), which provides the melancholy backbone around which jazzier material by the two musicians and others can be deftly sequenced.  Taken as a whole, it's like a street-cafe performance by two seasoned local musicians on a lazy Sunday afternoon somewhere in Italy, and always provides the sustenance that the listener has been searching for, and then some.

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Popol Vuh - Aguirre (rel. 1975)

Time for more Popol Vuh, in the form of the 1975 soundtrack album (of sorts) for Werner Herzog's 1972 film Aguirre, Wrath Of God.  I really ought to see the movie again sometime, as I haven't for years and suspect there's a lot more to it than just the memory I have of Klaus Kinski gurning menacingly on a river raft.  This album does get regular rotation of course, if not quite as often as the peerless studio albums surrounding it in the Vuh catalogue.

Aguirre the album, then, is not quite a soundtrack, more of a compilation/outtakes album; at least we get the most stunning piece from the film featured in two takes here, with 'choir organ' played by US organist Jimmy Jackson (who'd also played with Amon Düül II and Embryo). Besides this, Morgengruss from Einsjäger & Siebenjäger is featured in a slightly different mix, as is an instrumental version of 'Sohn Gottes' from Seligpreisung.  These two tracks might post-date the film, but they sit nicely enough on this album.  Apparently Fricke just liked having the wider exposure for certain pieces of his music.

And don't miss the final 16-minute Vergegenwärtigung, which dates right back to the In Den Gärten Pharaos era of Moog-synth dominated Popol Vuh in all its spacy formlessness.  If you listen hard enough, there's occasional bits of the main Aguirre theme buried far down in the mix - I missed this completely for ages until someone else's review pointed it out.

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Ash Ra Tempel - Le Berceau De Cristal (1975, rel. 1993)

How about one more soundtrack?  In contrast to Barbet Schroeder's 'More', which at least had a plot, Philippe Garrel's 'Le berceau de cristal' (The Crystal Cradle) was a much more typically arthouse venture starring Nico and Anita Pallenberg.  And a thoroughly gloomy one to boot - I won't spoil the ending, but the sole imdb review has the lowdown.  If you can overlook the poor sound and picture quality, the whole thing's on vimeo.

What interests me most about the film is this great soundtrack.  Recorded in 1975, and eventually released on CD in 1993, 'Ash Ra Tempel' in this case are just Manuel Göttsching and Agitation Free founder member Lutz Ulbrich, working with an old Farfisa organ, EMS guitar synth, and Göttsching's patent floating layers of echo-unit treated guitar to create the "music for dreaming" that Philippe Garrel had been looking for.

In the wake of his first solo album, Inventions For Electric Guitar, Göttsching in 1975 was touring Europe accompanied by Ulbrich.  Approached by Garrel following a performance in Cannes, Göttsching offered a tape of the final piece they'd just performed, which is the first track you hear on this release.  The rest of the soundtrack was then recorded in the studio in Berlin, and was thankfully made available by Spalax in 1993.  Anyone who loves Göttsching's mid-late 70s echo-guitar work, and the subtle Berlin-school electronics that went with it, needs this one.  Le berceau de cristal will also definitely also appeal to anyone amenable to the Tangerine Dream / Klaus Schulze sounds of the era.  Everyone else - give this a try too!  It's a solid, durable soundtrack that sounds great as a cosmic dreamscape of an album.

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Pink Floyd - Soundtrack from the film 'More' (1969)

From being a massive fan in my teens, my window of Pink Floyd tolerance has become ever narrower to settling on the immediate post-Barrett years.  I just find this era most satisfying to listen to - a more innocent, democratic band just finding their way, playing spellbinding live sets and recording great little songs that would all but disappear in another couple of years.

More was an end-of-the-60s, end-of-innocence drug flick - Barbet Schroeder was a long way from Single White Female with this, his directorial debut.  I haven't seen the film but by most accounts it holds up ok for its vintage; and it has this album as its soundtrack, featuring a band at the centre of their 'wilderness' period but sounding fresh, vital and ready to try anything before settling into their high-concept era.

Take for example Green Is The Colour, sounding like a demo dashed off in five minutes, but with an undeniable charm.  This song, and my personal favourite Cymbaline, would end up in the band's live set for the next couple of years in more developed form.  Elsewhere, there's clear links to better-known Floyd material of the period - Main Theme and Dramatic Theme sound like mellower takes on the intro from Let There Be More Light, and the goregous Cirrus Minor a close cousin to Grantchester Meadows.  The Nile Song, though, sounds like nothing else they'd done before or since, and this was the one that blew my socks off when first exposed to it as a 13-year old listening to the Relics compilation.  They really should've done more songs like that; and to be honest, I'd have been happy with ten more albums like this over one Dark Side Of The Moon.

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Popol Vuh - Brüder des Schattens - Söhne des Lichts (1978)

In line with one of my most regular springtime listening habits - it's Popol Vuh time.  Paradoxically, then, I've gone for an album that starts out with three minutes of their darkest-hued music - which some of you may recognise from the opening credits of Werner Herzog's Nosferatu, with those eerie images of Mexican mummies.

Herzog had been friends with Florian Fricke for some time, and had already snagged some top-drawer Popol Vuh tracks for Aguirre - Wrath Of God and Heart Of Glass, to great effect.  It's worth making clear, though, that Brüder des Schattens - Söhne des Lichts (Brother of shadow, son of light) isn't a straightforward soundtrack album to Nosferatu - in one of (several!) confusing quirks in the Popol Vuh catalogue, there's also a separate Nosferatu album with a different tracklist.  So, anyway...

After the unearthly choral opening to the Brüder title track, the rest of its 17 minutes settle into a stately piano and guitar drone that builds and builds, sometimes with a bit more sitar and tambura here and there, to hypnotic effect.  After the 'Schattens' of the Nosferatu intro, this blissful epic of minimal understatement just bathes you in kaleidoscopic 'Lichts'.

Over on Side 2, Höre, der du wagst (Hear, who dares) gives us a subdued epilogue to the main piece, and the album is then rounded out with two slightly more regular Vuh vehicles between Fricke and Fichelscher.  But that's not to undersell them - even your common or garden Popol Vuh album track still exists in its own beautiful universe miles above anything else in the krautrock canon.

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previously posted at SGTG: 
Seligpreisung 
Die Erde und ich sind Eins

Vangelis - L'apocalypse des Animaux (1973)

My absolute favourite album by Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, ever since picking up a vinyl copy ten years ago.  Like many Vangelis albums, this is superior soundtrack music, on this occasion soundtracking a nature documentary by French director Frédéric Rossif.

After the album kicks off with a cute, bouncy opening theme, we're straight in to the first stone-cold classic - La Petite Fille De La Mer is six minutes of utter gossamer gorgeousness, and is rightly the track by which this album was represented on at least one Vangelis compilation.  On another plane entirely, however, are the suite of two tracks on Side 2 of the album, which I used to listen to over and over for hours on end. Crank up Création Du Monde as loud as you can, and bask in its majesty.  You can quite well imagine this being the music that would herald the genesis of a brand new world, which after its expansive turmoil cools down to a calm repose with La Mer Recommencée.

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Throbbing Gristle - In The Shadow Of The Sun (rec. 1980, first rel. 1984)

Been thinking about doing a TG post for the last few days since mentioning Chris Carter in relation to Pyrolator.  Everything TG recorded between 1975 and 1981 (I've become increasingly ambivalent as to whether they should've even bothered reuniting) invigorates and refreshes me like a cold shower every time I dig them out, if cold showers were capable of breaking down every established notion of what music, sound and art should and can do.

CD reissue cover art

Which album/live disc to post though?  This is the one I come back to over and over again if I'm looking for the most satisfying experience of TG playing together as a group to create a sustained atmosphere.  In The Shadow Of The Sun was a film by Derek Jarman, which repurposed various sections of film he'd amassed earlier in the 70s into a slowed-down, overlapping soup of dreamlike formlessness.  TG were called upon to provide a soundtrack, and recorded the perfect one for the film - an hour's worth of dark ambience that drifts, clangs and howls like some unknowable occult ritual.  You can clearly hear the first seeds of Coil and Psychic TV's more ambient, soundtracky moments being sown here.

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The Plimsouls - Everywhere At Once (1983)

A nice little curveball - for this blog at least.  Call it new wave, powerpop, or vaguely align it with early Paisley Underground (you can probably tell I'm no expert here, given my usual posts), this is just a cracker of an album that was too good not to share.  The Plimsouls were from LA, and had a brief existence between 78 and 83, after which they've sporadically reunited.

These guys came to my attention via the debut starring vehicle of the greatest actor of all time - their appearance as the band playing Hollywood's hottest rock club (see above) put them in the public consciousness and led to a major-label album release on Geffen, presented here for your delectation.

The whole album is peppered with great tracks that are infectious in their energy - none more so than the track that originally opened Side 2, How Long Will It Take; that one, plus the title track (also featured in the movie) are my absolute favourites.

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