Frank Zappa - Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar (1981)

Definitely wound up with a fresh appreciation of Zappa's considerable guitar talents this year, so an hour and a half of guitar solos sounded like a worthwhile acquisition.  Originally a set of three individual mail-order records: Shut Up, Some More & Return Of The Son Of, then a 3-LP box set, then 2 CDs, this entirely instrumental patchwork was mostly recorded live between 1977 and 1980.  

 

Sometimes excerpted from known songs (eg the three title tracks come from Inca Roads performances), sometimes on-the-fly improvisations, Zappa deftly edited these solo highlights into an order that aimed to vary the textures and tempi.  He also "grouted" it all with little snippets of chatter which "just served as punctuation", "to hear another texture and then set you up for the next thing".

The results, which might have come across like the ultimate overindulgence in lesser hands, form a durable, enjoyable portrait of a guitarist who was really maturing as an individual stylist in this era.  Even when there's not much beyond a basic vamp going on behind him (Treacherous Cretins, Soup 'N Old Clothes), Zappa's playing is never less than scintillating.  The sequencing works really well too: rather than front-load all the best cuts, the three-volume album actually gets better as it goes on, so my personal highlights Pink Napkins and Stucco Homes sit on Disc 2 here.  Then, to finish with something completely different (or perhaps he didn't have quite enough material selected for six sides), Zappa lets the album play out on a violin/electric bouzouki duet with Jean-Luc Ponty from 1972.

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

pw: sgtg

For Zappa-CD-variation trainspotters: source is Japanese Ryko 2-CD from the 80s ("grouts" sit at the beginning of tracks rather than end of track prior).

Previously posted at SGTG:

Lumpy Gravy

Waka/Jawaka

The Grand Wazoo

Roxy & Elsewhere

One Size Fits All

You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2: The Helsinki Concert

The Perfect Stranger (live 2018)

Reinhold Friedl / Zeitkratzer - Kore (2016)

German new music ensemble Zeitkratzer were previously featured here tackling early Kraftwerk - see link below.  Here they perform a work composed by their director Reinhold Friedl, which he created as a homage to Iannis Xenakis - always good news to my ears. With Zeitkratzer having already tackled Xenakis in the past, they perform this noisy tribute with aplomb.

Kore is a 53-minute work in four continuous sections, scored for six amplified wind and string instruments plus piano and guitar, and was recorded live in Hamburg in January 2013.  Straight away the Xenakian roar of works like Persepolis comes to mind, as well, as the queasy, slippery strings of his work in that format.  The second (and initially the third) sections are only slightly more restrained, and the remainder picks up the intensity again, like towards the end of La Légende D'Eer, before dropping away to an eerie finale.  The close-miked instrumentation and high-quality sound allow for microscopic detail as well as the thrill of the full-on sonic assault, and the whole composition is a worthy homage whilst displaying the power and intensity of Friedl and his ensemble.

link

pw: sgtg

Zeitkratzer at SGTG:

Zeitkratzer plays Kraftwerk (live 2017)

Stan Getz / Eddie Sauter - Focus (1962)

One more Stan Getz post, in a sublime orchestrated album of pieces by composer/arranger Eddie Sauter.  On the surface, this might seem like a Miles Davis/Gil Evans-style collaboration, but the circumstances and sound are quite different.  Focus was a more straightfoward commission from Getz, whereby Sauter wrote the music and scored it without a lead melody line, into which space Getz would improvise.  His sax is overdubbed on some tracks, played live against the orchestra on others - the session details are unclear on which was which.

Sauter decided to write largely without a rhythm section, so the opening Alice In Wonderland evocation I'm Late, I'm Late is the only piece with a substantive drum track, provided by Roy Haynes.  After this uptempo start, much of the music is lush and languid, like the gorgeous Her and I Remember When; only Pan and Night Rider quicken the pace again, using the strings to provide the rhythmic pulse.  Getz's playing is at its absolute best throughout, flitting over the orchestra like a butterfly, all the way to the beautiful midtempo closer A Summer Afternoon.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Conception

Getz/Gilberto

Sweet Rain

Frank Zappa - Sleep Dirt (1979)

Found this lovely little sleeper (sorry, couldn't resist) album lurking in the midst of Zappa's late 70s legal debacle with Warner Brothers.  Sleep Dirt is part of a group of contract-fulfilling albums which Zappa tried at one point to compile into a 4-LP set, eventually posthumously released as such on triple-CD.  Anyway, the seven instrumental tracks here were recorded in '74 and '76, meaning that my holy trinity of Zappa musicians (George, Chester & Ruth) make appearances.  Sounds promising already - as does the fact that Zappa had wanted to call this album Hot Rats III.

 

After an atmospheric, almost King Crimson-like guitar-based opener, a fantastic jazzy sequence of tracks spotlight my three faves named above; the Grand Wazoo-era composition Regyptian Strut is particularly enjoyable.  From the original side two, the title track is a very nice, almost proto-Windham Hill acoustic guitar duet, then the final track is simply magnificent.  After a fun catchy intro, The Ocean Is The Ultimate Solution builds into a multi-tangent guitar-bass-drums jam (edited down from over 40 minutes to 13), with Zappa on uniquely-tuned Fender 12-string.  More FZ-shredding next week!

Come the 80s, with Zappa having regained control of his catalogue, he set about tweaking Sleep Dirt into how he'd always wanted it to sound.  By the time the album debuted on CD, there were drum overdubs, editing and remixing in places, and most drastically three tracks had gained a female lead vocal (performed by Thana Harris).  With lyrics from an unfinished theatrical project about an evil queen and a giant spider, these songs now suggested the monster-flick equivalent of classic Bond themes gone insane, and are loads of fun.  So which version of the album wins overall?  Only way to decide is to try both...

Original instrumental album (restored by 2012 CD)

Vocal/remix album (from 1995 CD)

pw for both: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Lumpy Gravy

Waka/Jawaka

The Grand Wazoo

Roxy & Elsewhere

One Size Fits All

You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2: The Helsinki Concert

The Perfect Stranger (live 2018)

BBC Concert Orchestra / James McVinnie - Rautavaara, Glass, Pärt, Jóhannsson etc (BBC Proms 2021)

Another great Proms concert, recorded a week ago and this time pairing the BBC Concert Orchestra with organist James McVinnie.  A well-selected programme of atmospheric modern orchestral music is punctuated by a couple of fantastic solo organ pieces, then both come together in the finale.

 

Einojuhani Rautavaara's chilly soundscape Cantus Arcticus is up first, the music woven around taped birdsong captured by Rautavaara in northern Finland in the early 70s.  A brief piece by Judith Weir is next: she describes Still, Glowing as "an attempt at ambient music".  The first feature for James McVinnie is Philip Glass' Mad Rush, in its original organ version - recording by Glass here, or on piano here.  The orchestra return with Arvo Pärt's Festina Lente.

No interval in this performance, so the orchestra continue on with two pieces from the late Jóhann Jóhannsson's Orphée album, reproducing their lovely melancholy in fine style.  In between them is another solo organ spotlight, this time one of Messiaen's Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité.  American composer Missy Mazzoli's Holy Roller is next, taking fragments of Tallis to create "a monument to a non-existent religion", then McVinnie joins the orchestra for Canadian Samy Moussa's incredible A Globe Itself Infolding to give a memorable conclusion to the programme.

link

pw: sgtg

Arvo Pärt at SGTG: Spiegel Im Spiegel, etc

Jóhann Jóhannsson at SGTG: Fordlandia / Orphée

and lots of Philip Glass.

Carla Bley - Escalator Over The Hill (1971)

A jazz-rock/Weill-esque opera/Indian-influenced avant-garde behemoth, complete on three LPs and later two CDs, four years in the making, from Carla Bley (composer), Paul Haines (librettist), and a cast of dozens of voices and musicians.  So much has been written about EOTH over the years that it's difficult to think what to add.  Perhaps the hundred-odd minutes of inspired insanity contained in this major labour of love are best just jumped straight in to, so here goes.

The thirteen-minute overture sits nicely alongside Bley's other work of the era in its dramatic, portentous sweep.  Then a swirl of "phantom" voices, tape effects and organ introduce the first characters, with Warhol star Viva acting as narrator throughout.  As an 'opera' (or rather, "chronotransduction"), Haines' text is so void of narrative logic it might as well be Einstein On The Beach - all that can be gleaned from the libretto is that it loosely concerns the inhabitants of a dilapidated hotel.  These include a couple named Ginger and David, who are voiced at certain points by a pre-solo fame Linda Ronstadt, and the singer from Manfred Mann who I grew up knowing as Uncle Jack.  Other voices include the musicians, such as Don Preston and Jack Bruce, as well as Bley/Mantler's daughter Karen Mantler making her debut on record, then about five years old.

The musical pieces then vary in length from under a minute to several, taking in more mind-blowing big band arrangements, small-group explosions with stinging lead guitar (check out John McLaughlin on Businessmen), gloomy piano with free-jazz skronk attacks, and more.  Eventually, the music reaches its absolute summit in the stretch corresponding to the third LP in the original box set.  A.I.R. (All India Radio) would soon be covered by Jan Garbarek among others; here it is in its original version.  The epic Rawalpindi Blues takes in more McLaughlin brilliance amid a coming together of the "Traveling Band" and the "Hotel Band", and if that wasn't enough, it gets a just-as-good nine minute coda.  One more short piece leads in to the stunning finale, which after eight and a half minutes (on record) ran into a lock-groove - on CD, this loop of humming drone plays out for nearly 19 minutes, then has a final snippet of calliope music as a 'hidden track'.  In a way, this is the ideal ending to a truly unique musical experience.

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

pw: sgtg

Carla Bley at SGTG:

A Genuine Tong Funeral

The Jazz Composer's Orchestra

Fleur Carnivore

Appearing Nightly

Trios

Ferrante & Teicher - In A Soulful Mood (1974) & Killing Me Softly (1973) (2013 reissue)

A typically fine-sounding twofer remaster from Dutton Vocalion, focusing on piano tricksters Ferrante & Teicher.  Like the recent Chaquito post, these two albums come from a period in the 60s-70s when the easy listening industry turned to the more contemporary hits of the day to update its mass appeal.  So if Chaquito featured tunes like Aquarius and Light My Fire gone cod-Latin, the two records here include the likes of Ain't No Mountain High Enough and My Cherie Amour gone Philly Soul-lite with liberal amounts of piano.

Yep, these two albums are both stone-cold crate-digger gold, with abundant sampling potential in their funky backing - and it's not all covers, as evidenced by the smoking original blues Hong Kong Soul Brother.  Other highlights of In A Soulful Mood (placed first on CD) include a lovely slow-grooving version of Duke Pearson's Cristo Redentor, made famous by Donald Byrd, and two Stylistics songs, Stone In Love and Betcha By Golly.  Released the previous year, Killing Me Softly was the album with that striking cover painting above - it's not a legit Margaret Keane, just an imitation.  Here we get a bit more of a films & shows focus, with the likes of Also Sprach Zarathustra (modelled after Deodato's version) and Last Tango In Paris, as well as two more F&T originals, See Saw and Night Sounds.

link

pw: sgtg

Kaija Saariaho - Private Gardens (1997)

Typically ear-bending brilliance from Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, in a collection of solo works from the 1990s.  Much like her other music featured here before (links below), sound manipulation plays a central role throughout, with every piece having "...and electronics" appended to the instrument of choice.

First up is sixteen bewtiching minutes of Lonh (1996), sung by Dawn Upshaw, with her soprano voice (and some spoken fragments and whispers in there too) emmeshed in the web of electronic sound.  Both from 1992, the three-part Près is an envigorating journey for solo cello and subtler manipulation, and NoaNoa combines regular flute playing with associated sounds of rustling, breathing and voice.  To round out a highly recommended collection of journeys into sound, the percussion cycle Six Japanese Gardens (1993-95) takes its inspiration from a visit to the gardens of Kyoto, and (again using voice as well as instrument) is by turns meditative and ritualistic.  Don't miss this one - as with all of Saariaho's music that I've heard, it just sounds so damn good.

link

pw: sgtg

Kaija Saariaho at SGTG:

Du Cristal...À la Fumée, Nymphéa

Graal Théâtre, Solar, Lichtbogen

Überzeugung, Nuits Adieux

Gary Burton Quartet With Orchestra - A Genuine Tong Funeral (composed by Carla Bley) (1968)

Some classic Carla Bley this Friday and next, starting with "A dark opera without words... based on emotions towards death - from the most irreverent to those of deepest loss", as she described it.  Written between 1964 and 1967, Bley expanded the work with sections specifically for vibraphone quartet when Gary Burton expressed an interest in it.  Thus the final version came together as this enjoyably strange record, with members of the Jazz Composer's Orchestra supporting Burton's quartet.

With 15 tracks, several under a minute long, A Genuine Tong Funeral is a great insight into Bley's versatility as a composer as far back as the mid-60s.  The dirge-like themes that might be expected for such a weighty concept are just as likely to be sitting alongside jaunty, upbeat passages, or the occasional full-on blast of free jazz skronk towards the end.  Burton proves to be the ideal musician to front the project, giving its spindly complexity an accessible cool.  ECM's Dreams So Real from the following decade might be the deserved classic of 'Burton Plays Bley', but this ambitious little oddity is just as worthy of recommendation in its own right.

 

link

pw: sgtg

 

Gary Burton plays Carla Bley at SGTG:

Dreams So Real

Gary Burton at SGTG:

Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett

Fluid Rustle (Eberhard Weber)

Lyric Suite For Sextet (with Chick Corea) 

Carla Bley at SGTG:

The Jazz Composer's Orchestra

Fleur Carnivore

Appearing Nightly

Trios 

Ricardo Villalobos - Dependent And Happy (2012)

Ear-bending, trippy minimal techno from the master.  When first released, Dependent And Happy took the form of two and a half hours of music across twelve sides of vinyl; shortly afterwards, 11 of the 14 tracks were mixed down into this fully-segued 78 minute CD.  Airy, atmospheric and never boring even when it seems there's very little going on, this is expertly-produced electronic music that suits any level of concentration.  Traffic sounds, odd voices, minute variations in the drum tracks and more keep offering a fresh experience no matter how many times you return to it.

link

pw: sgtg

Ricardo Villalobos at SGTG:

Fizheuer Zieheuer

Vasco

Re: ECM

Safe In Harbour