Robert Hood - Internal Empire (1994)

Classic minimal techno from one of the original Detroit masters.  Got hold of this one when I felt I was concentrating too much on Perlon-style minimalism and could do with an object lesson from the old school; this is minimal techno where although very little happens (subtle developments still always there for the discovery), it's melodic and full of machine soul.

All of the 11 tracks on this CD edition (the original 2x 12" had seven tracks in a different order, one of which is missing here) get straight to the point, and only average about five minutes apiece.  This self-contained approach, without segues, lets each track stand on its own merits - and they certainly do just that.  Home and Chase are my absolute favourites here, but more emerges from the others with every listen.

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Carla Bley - Fleur Carnivore (1989)

"The Big Carla Bley Band" were captured here during three nights in Copenhagen, November 1988, and writing, arrangement and spirited performances were top-flight as always.  The achingly soulful title track that kicks off proceedings was a commission to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Duke Ellington's passing, and The Eternal Waiting Of Canute transports the Norse/English king to more gently lilting Latin shores than the title might suggest.

Another highlight is the 17-minute, three-part suite The Girl Who Cried Champagne.  IIRC (from an interview following a trio remake about six years ago), Steve Swallow would present Bley with a bottle of fizz whenever she finished a composition, and fancying a drink, she lied about this one being complete before it was.  Anyway, this whole set is champagne-worthy, and well worthy of its general recognition as one of Bley's very best releases.

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Previously posted at SGTG: Appearing Nightly

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.

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

George Crumb - Songs, Drones, And Refrains Of Death / Quest (rec. 2004, rel. 2006)

This was originally planned as Monday's post - now it follows Scott Walker quite well.  Wonder if Crumb was an influence on his late career?  The unsettling structure of the main work here, composed from 1962-68, seemingly chaotic but meticulously planned, with both eerie and violent dynamics, definitely makes it an interesting comparison. 

Adopting words from Federico Garcia Lorca, as on 1969's Night Of The Four Moons, each 'song' is indeed preceded by a refrain and then incorporates a 'death drone'.  The instrumentation of electric guitar, amplified bass/piano/harpsichord and percussion is used sparingly, almost minimalistically, for maximum effect.

The other work on this fine recording from 2004 is a rendition of Quest (1994) for percussion, harp, bass, saxophone and guitar.  Again, Crumb writes with disquieting restraint, as the various instruments and melodic fragments (including bits of 'Amazing Grace') waft in and out of the ghostly silence.  A live recording of Quest was previously posted here.

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Scott Walker + Sunn O))) - Soused (2014)

A proper tribute today to the gargantuan, sui generis genius of Scott Walker, who sadly left us last week.  Four and a half years ago, whilst reveling in this latest installment of one of music's greatest and weirdest late-career renaissances, I remember wondering if, and hoping, that he'd have at least one more album this phenomenal in him.  Wondering now, after some interesting soundtrack work but no further album, if he was working on anything more, and if it'll see the light of day.

If not, then Soused will stand as one hell of a final chapter in a solo career of two wonderful phases: first, four albums of exquisite, highly literate chamber-pop that got more perfect with each volume.  Then second, a leap into the otherwordly unknown that took a first step on Nite Flights, another tentative one on Climate Of Hunter, then four giant steps that none of his peers, not even Bowie, came close to in their avant-garde immersion.  As much as Bowie left us on a fresh, experimental high, can you imagine him working with Seattle's dark lords of drone metal?

Sunn O))) somehow seemed a perfect fit for Walker, particularly after The Drift, and Soused is a quintessential example of two unique acts coming up with a synergistic collaboration where neither sacrifices any of their identity.  The stunning opener Brando makes this clear right away, as Walker's crooning of BDSM desire (seen through the prism of movies where the title actor gets beaten up) and attendant whip-cracks float over a river of molten drone lava.

Elsewhere, Scott's latter-day lyrical obsessions of human atrocity, disease and decay continue to ensure that the darkness in the scattered fragmentary words matched that of the music.  The human cost of oppression is laid bare in the plaintive "She's hidden her babies away"'s throughout Herod 2014, and the much more surreal Bull was described as "a crusade against existence itself" by Walker.  The grotesques of Bish Bosch continue in Fetish, but the finale of Lullaby proves a stunning finish.  The song, obliquely about assisted dying, was originally recorded by Ute Lemper and released on the Japanese version of her 2000 album.  It loses none of its power on Walker's own version with Sunn O))), and serves as a truly memorable closer to the final album of his lifetime.

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Previously posted at SGTG: Tilt

David Behrman - Leapday Night (1991 compi of works 1983-90)

The second album by US composer David Behrman continued the computer-music experiments of his first, On The Other Ocean.  The hardware and software had been upgdraded, now coming with a colour graphic monitor and pitch sensors to interact with each musician's semi-improvised performance.  Two suites of this nature were released on LP in 1987, the running order of which corresponds to tracks 6, 7, 1, 2, 3 respectively in this expanded CD edition.

Following the CD programming, we're first given the title suite in its three 'Scenes'.  Supported by Rhys Chatham, the main instrumentalist is Ben Neill, inventor of the electroacoustic 'mutantrumpet' which was designed to easily produce quarter tones and wider sonoritiy and was then further modified by Robert Moog. 

The two parts of A Traveller's Dream Journal that come next are the work new to the CD, and were recorded in Berlin in 1988 and finished in New York in 1990.  As well as the bouncing, twisting electronics, percussion and further keyboards flesh this one out into the most engrossing part of the collection.  Lastly, violinist Takehisa Kosugi fronts Inrerspcies Smalltalk, a commission for a dance piece by John Cage & Merce Cunningham, with some gorgeous playing.  Listening to the whole collection is like a window into some futuristic recording studio with tiny AIs bouncing around the instruments and mixing desk, like zero-gravity balls of liquid.  Highly recommended.

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Third Ear Band - Alchemy (1969)

British free-improvisation with its roots in the heady, psychedelic days of London's UFO Club.  A year or so on from those days, members of two bands had coalesced into a stable lineup based around percussionist Glen Sweeney, and following an equipment theft after a gig at the Middle Earth decided to start from scratch with acoustic instruments.

Now using oboe, recorder, violin/viola, cello and hand percussion as the core of their sound, the medieval and raga-influenced Third Ear Band were in place, augmented by various other instrumentalists.  If legend is true (the general reliability of the legend-spreader suggesting 'No'), they may have been joined on occasion by a teenaged Genesis P-Orridge for some multi-violin jams.

Even if true, Gen's not on this album, but John Peel is, playing harmonica and Jew's harp, and Peel's encouragement and promotion of the group was instrumental in their modest early success.  The eight tracks on Alchemy, their debut, jam around raga-like structures to hypnotic effect at their most potent.  They were certainly good musicians, and had a good (third?) ear for group improvisation.  At its most unsettlingly atmospheric, such as on Egyptian Book Of The Dead, the album shows a promising talent as soundtrackers who'd become best known for Polanski's Macbeth.

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Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer - Re: ECM (2011)

My favourite thing about the sheer volume of ECM's back catalogue is that you can spend years listening to hundreds of albums, and still have hundreds to discover.  When given free rein of the label's output in 2009 to sample and remodel, Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer's first hurdle must've been to decide where to start with their choices.  The thirteen albums that they settled on could easily have been a completely different set.  As per my opening line, I'm only personally familiar with two of them, the only two here of 70s vintage: John Abercrombie's Timeless and Bennie Maupin's Jewel In The Lotus.

Far from being some sort of 'remix album', Villalobos & Loderbauer worked with a live mixing board setup and a modular synth to improvise around the spatial structures of the original recordings.  Taking full advantage of ECM's famously audiophile frequency range and sense of space, they sampled not just instrumental/vocal elements but "also used pauses, gaps and the microphonic impressions of the rooms as source material", to compose the 17 new tracks that make up Re: ECM.

The resulting two-hour listening experience is a deep, subterranean dive into pure sound that continues to pay fresh rewards with every listen.  I've been living with this album on and off for about five years, and dug it out this month to enjoy during a major Villalobos kick that I've been going through.  There's enough here that's recognsiable to please fans of Ricardo & Max, in the minimal, jazz-inflected drum tracks when they appear - a far more reductive, ultraminimalist version of this approach would lead to Safe In Harbor.

There's also more than enough that's classically ECM, even when heavily manipulated, such as a faraway snatch of piano, bass (although nine minutes of Miroslav Vitous' bass buzzing midway through disc 1 may be the album's weakest point) or, in its most sublime moments, a haunting vocal from one of Arvo Pärt or Alexander Knaifel's ECM New Series releases.  Listen and enjoy, many many times, and let this singular project, a fully respectful homage to the ECM sound, wash over you.

Disc 1 link
Disc 2 link
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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

Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno - Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks (1983)

Ambient weightlessness at its most divinely spacious and melodic.  Recorded for Al Reinert's documentary on the Apollo missions, which wouldn't be finalised until 1989, this 1983 LP collected all the original music.  Sampled heavily by subsequent artists, and reappropriated for other film soundtracks, Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks is still a standout in the careers of Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Roger Eno.

Making extensive use of the then-new DX7, Eno further processed the sounds of the synthesizer to create a spacey, floating atmosphere.  Mixed in with this at intervals is the sound of pedal steel guitar, played by Daniel Lanois, more associated with country music.  On Eno's part, this was a deliberate stylistic choice, finding country imbued with a sense of weightlessness when he heard it as a child, and also drawing the link between country as music of the American frontier with the space missions.  All of it is magnificent in its desolation - no highlights necessary to list.  Just play the whole thing, and drift in space.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Another Green World
The Plateaux Of Mirror
The Pearl