Rock Bottom, Robert Wyatt’s first post-Soft Machine solo album, was completed and released in the year that followed his fall from a third floor window, which left him paralyzed from the waist down. It is an album dense with melancholy. But it is also filled with an urgency that betrays hope and a poetic willingness to truly engage with the creative process.

Surrounding himself with friends and music collaborators (Nick Mason, Mike Oldfield, Fred Frith, Laurie Allan and Richard Sinclair to name but a few), Wyatt spent the early months of 1974 arranging and recording the six songs that make up Rock Bottom.

Droning horns and sparse percussions are but a few of the elements that give Rock Bottom its fragile structure. Despite its apparent minimalism, the album is an intricate mélange and juxtaposition of sonic nuances and lyrical passages that are unique to Robert Wyatt.

This is an outstanding album and it has just now being reissued on vinyl.

A Last Straw listen

Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road listen

Robert Wyatt in a solo performance filmed in Paris - 1975

The Parable of Arable Land kicks off in a free-form freak-out that resurfaces obstinately throughout this first album by The Red Crayola. This is the unfamiliar landscape of Texas 67. It is the sound of The Red Crayola with the Familiar Ugly.

Much emphasis has been placed on the 50-person noise ensemble responsible for the cacophonic episodes interspersed throughout The Parable of Arable Land. But it is when the noise dissipates that the disorienting yet enthralling sound of The Red Crayola is most effective.

This is Texas 67 and it lies somewhere between Arthur Lee’s Love and Richard Hell’s Voidoids.

Hurricane Fighter Plane listen

Pink Stainless Tail listen

Cinéma Abattoir and Double Négatif present another series of experimental films this weekend. 

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Friday - July 3, 2009

LA FONCTION DE L'ORGASME – Lamashtu, Qc, 2009, 10 min

PIXEL MACHINES – Monk Boucher, Qc, 2009, 29 min

LUCIFER - Serge de Cotret - Qc, 2008, 3 min

LA FEMME-IMAGE - Guy Borremans - Qc, 1960, 35 min

Saturday - July 4, 2009

GRAPHYTY - Jean-Pierre Bouyxou - France, 1969, 21 min

FRAGMENTS D'UNE VIE ANÉANTIE - Christophe Karabache - France, 2003, 8 min

CHANT SAUVAGE: LE MÉNESTREL - Chaab Mahmoud - France, 2007, 9 min

PERCEPTUAL SUBJECTIVITY - Philippe Léonard - Qc, 2009, 5 min

BLACK AND WHITE TRYPPS NUMBER THREE - Ben Russell - US, 2007, 12 min

Karl Lemieux film projection performance w/ Hyena Hive and guests

Chromosphere, Dreamcatcher, Bill Nace (USA), Metalux (USA)

Sunday - July 5, 2009

DAY TRIPPER / LE VOYAGEUR DIURNE - Étienne O'Leary - France, 1966, 9 min,

HOMEO - Étienne O'Leary - France - 1967 - 38 min

CHROMO SUD - Étienne O'Leary - France, 1968, 21 min

"One of the very few films made by Etienne O’Leary, all of which emerged from the French underground circa 1968 and can be very loosely designated ‘diary films’. Like the contemporaneous films by O’Leary’s more famous friend Pierre Clementi, they trippily document the drug-drenched hedonism of that era’s dandies. In contrast to the back-to-origins minimalism of the Zanzibar Group (Garrel, Deval, Reynal, Bard, etc), O’Leary worked with an intoxicating style that foregrounded rapid and even subliminal cutting, dense layering of superimposed images and a spontaneous notebook type shooting style. The touchstone would seem to be Mekas and the New York underground rather than Godard. Yet even if much of O’Leary’s material was initially ‘diaristic’, depicting the friends, lovers, and places that he encountered in his private life, the metamorphoses it underwent during editing transformed it into a series of ambiguously fictionalized, sometimes darkly sexual fantasias. Chromo sud, his most sinister work by far, owes as much to Kenneth Anger as to Mekas, presenting the libertarian impulses of the time in as orgiastically morbid and sadistic a vein as Anger’s Scorpio Rising biker culture. In common with O’Leary’s other films, Chromo sud is a testament to the transformative powers of editing and the control it gives the filmmaker in shaping his own reality from the world around him." Experimental Film Club on Chromo Sud

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Follow this link for more details about weekends in the pines.

Inventions for Electric Guitar is Ash Ra Tempel’s sixth album although it would probably be more accurate to describe the album as Manuel Göttsching’s first solo effort.

Göttsching’s performance and recording experience with Ash Ra Tempel, as well as his work on projects such as Seven Up and Tarot (with Timothy Leary and Walter Wegmüller respectively) predisposed him to pursue experimentations with electronic and improvised music. Inventions for Electric Guitar provided the vehicle for those experiments and allowed Göttsching to discover commonalities in approaches and interests with Terry Riley and Steve Reich, whom he met in 1974 and 1976.

“The incredible career of the electric guitar since the beginning of rock’n roll times and my personal experiences on that instrument within the last six years gave me the possibility to lead the guitar to a new way of performance – electronic music.” Manuel Göttsching

Ash Ra Temple VI provides further evidence of the depth and immensity of the soundscape that emerged out of 1970s German musical explorations.

Pluralis listen

Cale and Reed had just completed Songs For Drella when they were asked to perform at a special Andy Warhol exhibition taking place in a small town just outside of Paris. The audience was mostly composed of elite industry representatives and Warhol aficionados. Among those present were Morrison and Tucker who had been invited to participate in the commemoration and celebration of Warhol’s work.

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This day, Friday, June 15th, changed much. As of the preceding week, no one was going to play. As of Thursday, John and Lou would perform some Drella songs. And as of Friday morning, Lou, and John and Moe were talking about doing “Pale Blue Eyes” after Drella songs. Lou and Sterling sat by each other at brunch, and chatted in a friendly fashion. But still, 30 minute before the set, when the car came to drive Sterling from the Chateau brunch to the stage area, Sterling was not going to play. “Please hurry, Mr. Morrison. You must not be late to play,” said the driver.

Sterling threw up his hands as if Frank Zappa had appeared: “I’m not playing! I’m not playing!” he called, backing away from the car. It was only at the stage, where he was given a guitar from the opening band Pulnoc, that he consented to play. Lou asked Mow how her muscles were, if she was up to playing “Heroin” instead of “Pale Blue Eyes.” Everything fell together, in the same casual manner the band originally fell together.

– M.C. Kostek (We Have a Little Surprise for You … - 1990)

The Velvet Underground Companion: Four Decades of Commentary

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Heroin performed by the Velvet Underground on June 15, 1990

Heroin listen

From The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)

"Edgard Olivier Charles has a fascination for the ghosts which live within records," the organizers of this year’s suoni per il popolo tell us.

Tonight, he will be joining others – Tim Hecker / Jonathan Parant – for an evening of experimental electronics at La Sala Rossa.

This should provide us with a new context with which to approach Au contraire's arrangements and electronixxx.

Listen to the album, attend the performance and/or listen to “Desert Island Discs” En Grains.

"Desert Island Discs" En Grains listen

The above piece was commissioned by Vincent Leduc for his Autoportrait en commissaire.

There is only one of those at this moment and I doubt efforts will be put into mass producing Pas Chic Chic eight-track cartridge tapes. There are plans for a few more, but there will be no production on a scale that would bring into question the economics of the music industry.

So here it is – Pas Chic Chic in four programs.

-------------------------------

Listen to individual tracks in the pas chic chic discography section (or play them all simultaneously).

Follow this link to download the demo versions listed in programs 3 and 4.

-------------------------------

PROGRAM 1

1. Haute infidélité
2. Tes clichés déclenchés
3. En chaîne et en vogue
4. Mlle mille

PROGRAM 2

1. Mlle mille (suite)
2. Aude aux ondes
3. Vous comprenez pourquoi
4. Se mirer mare
5. Haydée morcelée
6. Brise méprise

PROGRAM 3

1. Brise méprise (suite)
2. Plein soleil
3. Blindé d'attentions
4. Haydée morcelée - demo version
5. En chaîne et en vogue - demo version

 PROGRAM 4

1. En chaîne et en vogue - demo version (suite)
2. Psyché pin-up - demo version
3. Tes clichés déclenchés - demo version
4. Sur les écrans statiques - demo version

-------------------------------

vendredi 5 juin
8:30 pm - la sala rossa (4848 st-laurent, montréal, qc)
10$ en pré-vente / 12$ à la porte

There is not much information available about Pythagoron Inc. except for a long-expired P.O. Box address, which suggests that the music made available by the corporation originated from someplace in or around New York City – less than 100 miles south of Garnerville, NY, where USCO (a media art collective also known as The Company of Us) operated for most of the sixties and early seventies.

USCO belonged to a generation of eccentric psychic pioneers whose fascination with technology and mysticism resulted in the creation of mind-expanding art, infinity machines and environments. Pythagoron Inc 1977 built on those previous efforts to rehabilitate consciousness – but this time using electronic modulations and pulsating rhythms.

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Pythagoron:

“You are relaxed, lying down in a darkened room – eyes closed, your mind quiets and the sound begins – it pours through like an enveloping shower. The tones gradually become a familiar place where ethereal images and ideas flicker, then solidify. Trusting the experience you let go and the sound seems to dissolve. You couldn’t describe this space – yet it’s familiar, a personal awareness that always was slightly out of reach. Gradually it ends – an experience as varied as your consciousness.

‘Pythagoron brings you to a different place.’

Phytagoron is not just music – but sound controlled with electronic precision to alter your awareness, to get you high. Developed through years of research into the resonant interaction of sound and brainwave patterns, Pythagoron sound is unique in concept and production.”

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Pythagoron Inc 1977 is white noise and drum machines processed and echoplexed until any appearance of momentum is subdued and immersed in slow moving procession-like drone waves. It is 42 minutes of music that would have made an excellent soundtrack for Edmund Alleyn's Introscaphe or Haus Ricker’s soft environments. Pythagoron is sound-induced intoxication best experienced on your own.

Pythagoron - Part 1 listen

CD-R reissue available through Mimaroglu Music Sales

From the Tangerine Dream you've never heard before ... cyclone.

Tangerine Dream disciples insist that Cyclone is a bastardized album that sprung from a questionable marriage of influences and motives.  Tangerine Dream’s sixth album with Virgin Records does sit uncomfortably among the band’s other pre-1980 releases. Yet this, I would argue, is reason enough to let Cyclone stubbornly spin under the needle until some of it makes sense.

The 1978 release features the Virgin Years core members, Edgar Froese and Christopher Franke, with drummer Klaus Krieger and English vocalist Steve Jolliffe. Cyclone contains Floyd-inspired themes and fragments that betray an obvious penchant for English progressive rock. On this album, the quartet diverts a totality of means towards creating decadent epic prog-rock moments and all of this is enhanced by German motorik digressions that should leave you perplexed. You might enjoy it.  I do. 

rising runner missed by endless sender listen

madrigal meridian listen

Get the 1978 Tour Programme on Jacob's Tangerine Dream blog.

White Noise’s An Electric Storm was meant for those of us living in this new millennium.  The music is at times Goraguer-like but with a certain abrasive eroticism that would be well-suited for an experimental animation film dealing with love and decay.

White Noise was formed in 1969 by David Vorhaus, a classically-trained bass player, and BBC Radiophonic composers Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson. An Electric Storm was released that same year but has since entered one of the few opened portals to timelessness.

Sensory anguish is inevitable once you make the decision to proceed from one side of An Electric Storm to the other.

My game of Loving listen

The Visitation listen

An Electric Storm

“White Noise creates a chillingly beautiful future with a musical amorality play taking place in an erotic zone somewhere beyond 2001.”

Go to Head Heritage for more details about the album.

The above version of Interlude 1 is from our performance at the Musée D’Art Contemporain in Montreal. Karl Lemieux manned the projectors that evening.

+ Pas Chic Chic live footage and video material

1 Günter Schickert / Überfällig (1979)

Absolutely mental release from 1979!

Sounds like nothing else, not even from its time: long & trancey drums + arpeggiated fx guitar epics, weird autistic vocals, ambient found sounds ... Imagine a darker and weirder, almost creepy, polyrhythmical Can/Neu!/Achim Reichel cross, but way more far-out...

A masterpiece. Point final.

Apricot Brandy / Wanderer listen

2 Conrad Schnitzler / Con (1978)

Ok, what to say about this gem?

About Conrad Schnitzler himself? It seems to me that out of all the true "krautrock" originators, he's the one who most successfully reinvented his aesthetic and went along with developments and "trends" in electronic music, at least until the mid 80s (I am not familiar with his music after that). From the free improv-conceptual madness of Eruption and Kluster to his full-on/psych-out electronic industrial "colors" records, to the cleaner and colder synthscapes of his late 70s output, not to mention the weird DAF-like fragmented electro "Con 3" from '81, you can say he had a pretty broad approach to the possibilities of what electronic music could be.

And as for this mindmelting chef-d'oeuvre, recorded at Peter Baumann's Paragon studios sometime in '78, it's quite simply one of the oddest ice-cold synth records of all time. With evocative titles like "Electric garden", you know what your in for: forests of cold dripping electronic tones and reverberating distant oscillations, phased-out waves of neon lights and bizarre fragmented rhythmusmaschines: this is sci-fi psychedelia at its best! The sounds of an impossibly past future...

Electric Garden listen

3 Can / Landed (1975)

So Can are obviously one of the more famous “krautrock” bands, but this LP is often overlooked, and it’s a shame ‘cuz it actually stands up to their earlier output.

When I first heard "I want more" from "Flow Motion" 2 years ago, I was happy to hear that Can had not died after "Soon over Babaluma" as I had initially thought; it was exciting to hear how the band had transformed their sound to keep up with the times while sticking to a sense of experimentalism in production and tone. Then I actually got a hold of the rest of "Flow Motion", and I was terribly disappointed...

Then my friend played me "Hunters & Collectors" from "Landed" without telling me who it was and I was immediately drawn in. At first listen, it sounded like a really warped long-lost Syd Barrett track, though the production and arrangements were nowhere close to anything Barrett has ever done. I was confused to find out it was actually Can.

This is a strange record. It definitely sounds like Can but it's much more oddly produced, with nice electroacoustic touches here and there transforming them into a futuristic rock n' roll band, maybe less psychedelic but still forward-looking. The tracks have so much going on all the time that it's hard to grasp the whole record in one listen; it's a dense, rich and involving listen. You may have to give this baby a few spins before "getting it", but trust me, if you have the patience, it will reveal many marvels! And the last track, "Unfinished", is a total masterpiece. Much more focused than earlier tape experimentations like Tago Mago's "Aumgn", it's a beautiful electroacoustic rock tape-piece with truly psychedelic guitar playing from Karoli, electronic tones & drones, and moody percussion. Kinda similar in spirit to the "Faust Tapes" and what This Heat and Brise-Glace would end up exploring on their own later on...

Hunters and Collectors listen

4 Wolfgang Riechmann / Wunderbar (1978)

A record definitely of its time!

You can hear Riechmann was coming from an early 70s Düsseldorf frame of mind, but was veering closer to the post-75 Sky Records electronic approach, full of warm psychedelic phased-out Arp synths, yet very cold and dark in other places, almost new-agey but too artsy to be relaxation music. A good example of this is the track "Himmelblau", where a motorik Dinger-like rhythmusmaschine (or is it drums?) drives the phased-out synths on a freeway to a somewhat far-out sci-fi land, with Riechmann chanting naïvely in his la-la-land: fucking brilliant! It is surely not a coincidence then that Riechmann used to play in a band called Spirits of Sound with Micheal Rother and Wolgang Flur back in the 60s...

This record stands on its own, nothing like it before, and unfortunately, nothing after, as Riechmann was murdered a few days prior to the release of this gem...

Himmelblau listen

5 Tyndall / Reflexionen (1982)

Crazy vocoder business.

The melodies have that almost over-the-top sweet Zuckerzeit je-ne-sais-quoi vibe, but almost all the pieces have vocodered vocals, making for a very odd and fascinating mélange.

An essential electronic record.

Transit West Berlin listen

The dirt road that leads to Arcosanti was not as long as I expected it to be. Yet the experimental town is far enough from Phoenix and neighboring cities to allow visitors and residents to recognize that they are in a place like nowhere else.

Work on Arcosanti began in 1970. The town was meant to be the world’s first arcology, a concept developed by green architect and urban planner Paolo Soleri. Arcology proposes to fuse architecture with ecology so as to make possible revolutionary ecological human habitats. Unfortunately, Arcosanti has not moved beyond its embryonic state despite its 40 years of existence.

Alastair Gordon’s Spaced Out: Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties is an excellent book which provides an overview of the many ways with which individuals and collectives challenged and redefined how and where they lived. The book contains hundreds of examples of projects which failed to survive the political and cultural changes associated with the seventies and eighties. Arcosanti is not one such example.

“On first impression Arcosanti looks like a ruin, all starts and stops and unfinished business,” Gordon notes. “Paolo Soleri intended it to be to be a concentrated living node without cars, a prototype town for seven thousand people, self-sufficient and sustainable. Unlike most visionaries, however, the Italian-born architect actually came to the desert and started to build the thing with his own hands.”

The sight of Arcosanti in the distance is far from spectacular despite its position atop one of the many mesas found in central Arizona. Only a small portion of the experimental town has been built and much of its wealth and beauty reside in dreams not yet fulfilled.But this does not mean that Arcosanti’s demise is imminent.

The towering cypress trees interspersed throughout the site remind us that it is too early to declare the town a failed experiment.

You might not read or understand French but this should not stop you from visiting Patrimoine PQ. The blog focuses primarily on sixties and seventies Quebec artists whose records were never reissued. It therefore aims at documenting a large part of Quebec’s music history which fell into obscurity before most of us graduated from elementary school. Patrimoine PQ is an amazing resource worth your support.

The blog now also hosts a podcast.

Here is a description of Patimoine PQ’s first contribution.

Patrimoine PQ's first podcast, Itinéraire 9 pour l'Atlantide (named after Melchior Alias & Tony Roman songs) is dedicated to Quebec's rarest and oddest pop-psych numbers. You'll hear crazy grooves from Serge Mondor and Le District Ouest, a rare BeeGees french cover plus many english bands such as The Scene & Mill Supply. Let the incense sticks burn and start pickin' les vibrations...

More on Quebec garage and psych blogs here.

This is day 3 of an Arizona road trip that will take me from Soleri’s experimental town to the organ pipe cactus of the Sonoran Desert and the red mesas of Monument Valley. It is not impossible that I ended up here as a means to recuperate from long bitter-cold winter months. But I am also fascinated by arid landscapes and the extraordinary topography of the American Southwest.

I chose to dedicate today’s post to Black Sun Ensemble, a Tucson-based psychedelic rock group. It seemed appropriate.

Black Sun Ensemble released its first album independently in 1985. The band’s desert rock sound and psych inclinations must have felt fresh at the time and this no doubt encouraged Reckless Records to endorse Black Sun Ensemble.

The band’s first album with the UK label is often referred to as the Goldfish record. It is actually a compilation of instrumental material that appeared on earlier independent releases. Black Sun Ensemble’s discography has failed to elicit my enthusiasm but there is something valid and interesting in the band’s approach to composition.

The Goldfish record presents the band in its greater moments and I am sharing two of those here.

DOVE OF THE DESERT listen

RAGA DEL SOL listen

To audiophiles, Duguay and Boudreau are mostly known for their work with L’Infonie, an eccentric and explosive collective that asserted itself in the months that followed Expo 67. That was a time when Quebec’s population was still coping with its divorce from a religious state. L’Infonie was therefore a little more than a sixties phenomenon. Today, the band stands as some kind of landmark in Quebec cultural history.

It might therefore seem paradoxical that Boudreau and Duguay chose the St-Jean Baptiste church to assemble a large group of musicians for their MNM Performance. Not necessarily. The church has often been used during festivals or for cultural events. It is also a beautiful site that is well-fitted for performances of massive proportions such as the one I witnessed several weeks ago. It is believed that 333 musicians and singers participated in the event.

Those present were there to hear or perform the 53 figures that make up In C, a piece written by experimental composer Terry Riley. L’Infonie recorded their own version of In C, which they released as Mantra in 1970. But there was no rock group this time. Accompanying Boudreau and Duguay were 7 members of the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec, dozens of music students and choir members, as well as a church-full of participants.

Those expecting to hear an integral version of Mantra were necessarily disappointed. The performance was lacking in volume, spontaneity and free form. It seemed a little too didactic with Boudreau carrying signs to guide the participants through the 53 figures and Duguay leading the audience through vocal rhythmic patterns.

The performance was nonetheless enjoyable and sufficiently stimulating for a winter Sunday afternoon. I returned home and pulled out my copy of Terry Riley’s In C and then sat through a full listening of Mantra.

L'INFONIE in c listen

Against the Day was first performed at the Suoni Per Il Popolo festival last year. What was meant to be an ephemeral one-night performance by Land of Kush, Sam Shalabi’s 30-person ensemble, was transformed into a studio and album project. The five sections that compose Against the Day were recorded at Thee Mighty Hotel2Tango late last summer and are now being released on vinyl and compact disc by Constellation Records.

There will be two record release shows at the Sala Rossa this week. Read the short articles by Baillargeon and Guimond for more details.

Land of Kush listen

“With the backing of 28 musicians, this is probably Shalabi’s most massive release yet, but he manages to lay off the possible bombast while covering his tracks with the crosspollination of different styles including Middle Eastern, free jazz, prog rock and psychedelia. His composition style is as fearless as ever, with his arrangements leaving elbow-room for soloists and blips huddled in the background”.

-Johnson Cummins

“Against the Day shows how Shalabi harnesses the energy of having so many people in one place to create a chop-heavy sound in the tradition of Amon Dull’s Psychedelic Underground epics, spanning psych, Middle Eastern, and North African influences: warbling saxophones, galloping drums, dazzling guitars, shrieking woodwinds, etc.”

-Marc Hogan

It might seem absurd to dedicate another post to the topic of eight-track cartridges considering that we are now, more than ever, completely submerged in digital technology. Why bother wasting words on archaic tapes when MP3s and other such formats have come to define our rapport with music? I don’t know how to answer that question except that the impulse to return to the topic of eight-track tapes came after receiving a very intriguing present: an eight-track to cassette converter.

You might think of eight-track tapes as being completely obsolete, yet somehow they are not nearly as irrelevant as cassettes. The former belong to a period for which we have developed a certain nostalgic attachment. Eight-track tapes are associated with the tail end of post-war modern design in home furnishing and stereo equipment. Most importantly, they represent the first real possibility of transportability. In 1965, Ford Motor Company equipped a number of new vehicles with eight-track players, thereby liberating a generation of drivers from the airwaves. Portable players soon followed.

Records labels were quick to adopt the format. By the mid-1970s, building an extensive music library of eight-track tapes seemed realistic. Audiophiles could even add quadraphonic tapes to their collection – from Sun Ra to Kraftwerk and to Lou Reed to name but a few.

Audio cassettes suffered a different fate. Although they first appeared in the mid-1960s, cassettes had to wait until the late 1970s to stand alongside vinyl records as a legitimate format. But it was already too late. The cassette lacked the appeal of novelty and simply served as a substitute for the eight-track cartridge. It is true that the audio cassette offered substantial improvements on its predecessor but its demise was apparent from the very beginning. Most of us will remember the walkman and perhaps the boombox. But today, portable music is synonymous with MP3 players or iPods, not the cassettes that fill bins at flea markets and the Salvation Army.

The idea of an eight-track to cassette converter may, therefore, seem bewildering. I would like to describe the gift I received as doublement désuet.

But not everyone is willing to see eight-track tapes and audio cassettes as relics from the past. Both formats can count on a substantial number of supporters who continue to believe in what seems like the failed promises of easy-to-carry analog tapes. The independent film, So Wrong They’re Right, is a perfect example. So are tape revivalist labels such as Run Down Sun Records and Montreal’s Pasalymany Tapes.

I have grown attached to eight-track cartridges but I am not certain that I can gather enough enthusiasm to start piling more tapes on the already cluttered rear seat of my 1973 Dodge Dart. Adding carrying cases filled with cassettes therefore does not seem like an option, nor is reverting to an iPod player – poor AM radio reception does not allow for synchronization and I don’t see myself playing an iPod through a discman hooked to the eight-track to cassette converter.

Ultimately, I am not concerned with enlarging the music library I currently store on the rear seat and in the glove compartment. I have grown attached to the uncertain sound of wobbling tapes coming from the back of the car. I sometimes like to think that is the way music was meant to be heard. Yet I will hold on to the eight-track to cassette converter because of what it really offers: a means to remember what it felt like when you knew things were moving forward without really knowing how fast they were moving.

The Eighties / Les années 80

Human Highway
Directed by Dean Stockwell & Bernard Shakey (N. Young)
Music by Devo & Neil Young
- Hey Hey My My

listen

The Shining
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Music by Wendy Carlos
- Bumps In The Night

listen

Blade Runner
Directed by Ridley Scott
Music by Vangelis
- Memories of Green

listen

Zombie
Directed by Lucio Fulci
Music by Fabio Frizzi
- Main Title

listen

Xanadu
Directed by Robert Greenwald
Music by Electric Light Orchestra
- I'm Alive

listen

The films of Alejandro Jodorowsky have long ago earned their place in the pantheon of bizzaro cinema.

The Chilean-born director’s ability to perturb audiences was already apparent with the releases of La Cravate (1957), Fando Y Lis (1967) and El Topo (1970). Jodorowsky’s third feature film, The Holy Mountain, premiered at Cannes in 1973 and proved a serious contender to its predecessors. The film, with its brutal treatment of politics and aesthetics, constitutes the director’s crowning achievement. It is creative violence at its best.

Thanks to Abkco Films, Jodorowsky’s early work is now available on DVD at a more than reasonable cost. Included in the boxset are the soundtracks to El Topo and The Holy Mountain.

Songs from The Holy Mountain and stills from corresponding chapters below.

cast out and pissed - alchemical room - rich man in a fishbowl - pantheon bar (bees make honey ...)

SONGS FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN listen

I never thought of Deja Voodoo as a Québécois band. I tend to associate the adjective with what is commonly referred to as “musique québécoise.” Deja Voodoo, musically and politically, certainly does not fall under that umbrella. So why is Cemetery, the band’s debut LP, listed in Eric Trudel’s 101 Disques Qui Ont Marqué le Québec (101 Records that Changed Quebec)?

A first browse through Trudel’s most recent book left me perplexed. The title, with its obvious reference to Quebec’s celebrated (infamous for others) language law, led me to assume a focus on politically charged francophone music. I was therefore surprised to see Deja Voodoo listed between Corey Hart and The Box. Leonard Cohen, Infonie, Men Without Hats, the Nils, and Voivod also appear in the book. So does Celine Dion as well as Eric Lapointe and Rock Voisine. The fact that the book lacks a proper introduction and statement as to how and why the albums were chosen contributed to my confusion.

In 101 Disques Qui Ont Marqué le Québec, Trudel offers a selection of albums that have, in one way or another, contributed to the development of this province’s diverse music industry. His approach is honest and inclusive despite a lack of focus and coherence. The book's title is catchy and effective. It also suggests that the author is aware of the need to redefine what is meant by "musique québécoise." This is where Trudel really succeeds.

"En cette ère de mondialisation - et donc d'homogénéisation - culturelle, il est fort à propos de rappeler la richesse, la profondeur, et la beauté de notre patrimoine musical aux influences européennes et américaines, de sa pluralité qui est aussi sa singularité," Trudel notes.

101 Disques Qui Ont Marqué le Québec does not have the attributes of a reference book but it will do well as a coffee table book for people with a general interest in music and Quebec culture.

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I started this post with a reference to Deja Voodoo, so here's an introduction to the band’s discography.

Read what Trudel has to say about the band or follow the links provided here for more details about Quebec's kings of sludgeabilly.

**Note that I failed to include live and demo material, singles, as well as the worst of Deja Voodoo. As far as music video material is concerned, none is available online at the moment.

METRO VERS L'ENFER - CEMETERY listen

GOTTA HAVE MONEY - TOO COOL TO LIVE TOO SMART TO DIE listen

VIET CONG - SWAMP OF LOVE listen

YEYE - BIG PILE OF MUD listen

LONELY MOTEL - IT CAME FROM CANADA VOL. 1 listen

THREE MEN, ONE COFFIN - IT CAME FROM CANADA VOL. 2 listen

SOMEONE IN MY HOUSE - FROM MONTREAL listen

GRAVEYARD SHIFT - ON GARDE listen

The Sixties / Les années 60

Teorema
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Music by Ennio Morricone
- Fruscio di foglie verdi

listen

Le Boucher
Directed by Claude Chabrolt
Music by Pierre Jansen
- Le Boucher

listen

The Fearless Vampire Killers
Directed by Roman Polanski
Music by Krzysztof Komeda
- Vampires To crypt

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Directed by Barbet Schroeder
Music by Pink Floyd
- Main Theme

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Andrey Rublyov
Directed by Andrey Tarkovsky
Music by Vyasheslav Ovchinnikov
- Track 04

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Aguirre, Wrath of God was first released in 1972. Written and directed by renowned German filmmaker, Werner Herzog, the film is a troubling tale of delusion and failure. It tells the story of Spanish conquistadors traveling down the Amazon River in search of riches and power. Klaus Kinski offers a powerful performance as he embodies - or subjects himself - to the wrath of god. His megalomanic yet pathetic character acts as the driving force of the expedition as it drifts away towards self-destruction.

I am inclined to argue that the end of Aguirre stands as one of the most stunning moments in film history. Central to the final scene is the music of Popul Vuh which also opens the film. "Aguirre I" provides an eerie soundscape dominated by choir organs and analog synth textures. The music sets the tone for the film, foretelling the tragic destiny that awaits the members of the expedition.

AGUIRRE I listen

Although Popol Vuh’s Aguirre is considered a soundtrack album, it only came out in 1975 and contains material that was recorded after the film’s initial release.The song "Vergegenwaertigung" appears on early vinyl versions. It occupies the entirety of Side B and reveals more of Florian Fricke’s early electronic experimentations. Nearly seventeen minutes of oscillating frequencies and occasional sound fragments traveling through atmospheric space. The song is not out of place on the album. On this solo piece, Fricke’s performance stretches time and space while threatening to precipitate the listener towards an impending end. The piece could stand on its own but it completes very effectively Popul Vuh’s Aguirre.

There has been a considerable amount of confusion about this album. Some clarifications have been provided here and below.

(...) Aguirre (1975) featured some of the music from Werner Herzog's film of the same name. Herzog and Fricke were long term friends from Fricke's days as a film reviewer. This was a strange release, as it compiled recent alternative studio takes with the original music for the film. The long piece "Vergegenwaertigung" was a solo Fricke electronic number, a throw-back to the first two Popol Vuh albums, probably recorded in late 1972. Also "Aguirre I" was recorded before Fricke discarded the moogs and mellotrons. This was a majestic and floating large scale track. "Morgengruss II", "Agnus Dei" and the guitar part of "Aguirre II" were probably recorded in May 1974 at the sessions for the forthcoming album Einsjäger & Siebenjäger and were fine examples of Fichelscher's brilliant guitar work. The album was originally only released in France and Italy. To add even more to the confusion, the German re-release on Pop-Import 1982 had three later Popol Vuh tracks (...) replacing "Vergegenwaertigung". This is not mentioned on the cover nor the label. Either it was a mistake or an illegal replacement due to the loss of master tapes. (...) - Dag Erik Asbjornsen’s Cosmic Dreams At Play

Key contributors on this album:
Florian Fricke – piano, spinett, mellotron (or choir organ)
Daniel Fichelscher – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, drums, percussions
Djong Yun - vocals

Julian Cope’s most recent book, Japrocksampler, is indicative of a growing interest for rock-infused music produced in post-war Japan. The book is a welcomed addition to the literature that deals with the dissemination of rock’n’roll music and its subsequent transformation by cultural forces residing outside of the Western world. More articles and books on the topic will surely follow and one can predict that japrock reissues will start appearing in racks at independent stores in the coming years. And that is certainly not a bad thing.

There are some records however that cannot easily be categorized and Harumi’s Samurai Memories is one of them. Julian Cope lists the album on the japrocksampler microsite but admits to never having heard it. He therefore relies on The Seth Man who accurately describes the album as “more L.A. than Tokyo”.

Samurai Memories was released on Verve Forecast early in 1968. The project appeared to have been initiated by producer Tom Wilson who saw in Harumi, a Japanese songwriter, potential for an ambitious music-art project. In the 1950s, Wilson had set up Transition Records and released albums by Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor among others. He then went on to work for other labels, including Columbia Records. It is during those years that Wilson gained status as a producer. By 1965, he had produced four landmark albums by Bob Dylan (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Another Side of Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home), as well as Simon and Garfunkel’s Wednesday Morning.

The following year, Wilson moved to Verve Records. He produced Zappa’s The Mothers of Invention (co-produced would perhaps be more accurate here), The Velvet Underground, as well as Nico’s Chelsea Girl. It is no surprise that Wilson was able to secure a contract for Harumi at Verve Forecast. He was a remarkable producer who knew how to harness talent and vision.

Unfortunately, Samurai Memories is an uneven album. There are some very strong moments interspersed throughout the two LPs but the project suffers due to its length. The music is a combination of sixties orchestrated pop with obvious west coast psych elements thrown in here and there. Echoes of The Velvet Underground (We Love) and Dylan (What a Day for Me) can be heard on a few songs.

PopMatters reviewer, Philip Buchan, notes “this album’s only redeeming quality is its ambition”. He then adds, “[Samurai Memories’ failures are due to a] producer with too many ideas and a pop star with too little personality. The psych-soul grooves and sunshine-pop arrangements that Wilson dreamed up are just dandy, but Harumi couldn’t make them his own. In most tracks, he sounds bored and removed, his lyrics overgrown with clichés, his voice not nearly as acrobatic as the bouncy horns and wiry guitars around him. And as the album progresses, Wilson’s contributions seem to reek of desperation—you can almost hear him wondering how he’s going to inject some pizazz into each new track.”

The two LPs that compose Samurai Memories can hardly be described as japrock and they contain a few songs of no consequence. The Seth Man and Buchan are both right. Yet, to dismiss the album as irrelevant and uninteresting would be a mistake. It is a testament to what is possible when a producer, such as Wilson, is provided with unrestrained opportunities to pursue artistic endeavors. Samurai Memories is a document of its time with its flaws and shining moments.

TALK ABOUT IT listen

WHAT A DAY FOR ME listen

WE LOVE listen

SAMURAI MEMORIES listen

Get the CD remastered version through PsychProg.

1. Sur le quai de la péniche du Sonic, Lyon, FR (Gavin)

2. Calanques méditerranéennes, La Ciota, FR (Eric G)

3. Quelque part dans la tempête, CH (Eric G)

4. Quelque part en République Tchèque (Eric G)

5. Bar 59, Lucerne, CZ (M-D)

1. A Klub, Slavicin, CZ (Eric G)

2. Le Vox Supercontinental, UT Connewitz, Leipzig, D (Eric G)

3. 3. Affiche au Studio Rubin, Prague, CZ

4. Shalabi experience (Alexandre St-Onge, Sam Shalabi), Vooruit, Gent, B (Gavin)

5. Le cinéma UT Connewitz, Leipzig, D (Eric G)

1. Balcon du cinéma UT Connewitz, Leipzig, D (Gavin)

2. Social Club, Paris, FR (Eric G)

3. Programme des soirées Anti-social, Social Club, Paris, FR

4. Un canal à Gent, B (M-D)

5. Hôtel du XIXe siècle, Plzen, CZ (M-D)

What follows is the result of a short exercise: choosing a soundtrack from the 70s and extracting a fragment from it...

Images pour les oreilles - première partie
Les années 70

Cette semaine, nous nous sommes prêtés à l'exercice suivant : choisir une bande sonore des années 70 et en capturer un morceau...

Les granges brûlées
Directed by Jean Chapot
Music by Jean-Michel Jarre
- La chanson des granges brûlées

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Continental Circus
Directed by Jérôme Laperrousaz
Music by Gong with Daevid Allen
- What do you want

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Halloween
Directed by John Carpenter
Music by John Carpenter
- Halloween theme

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Veruschka
Directed by Franco Rubartelli
Music by Ennio Morricone
- La bambola

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Sweet movie
Directed by Dusan Makavejev
Music by Manos Hadjidakis
- Nocturne a deux voix

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Works of art, unlike those of science, have no practical goals in any material sense. Art is a meta-language, with the help of which people try to communicate with one another; to impart information about themselves and assimilate the experience of others. Again, this has to do not with practical advantage but with realizing the idea of love, the meaning of which is in sacrifice: the very antithesis of pragmatism. I simply cannot believe that an artist can ever work only for the sake of ‘self-expression’. Self-expression is meaningless unless it meets with a response. For the sake of creating a spiritual bond with others it can only be an agonizing process, one that involves no practical gain: ultimately it is an act of sacrifice.

Andrey Tarkovsky – Sculpting in Time

L’année dernière à Marienbad (aka Last Year in Marienbad) is an enigmatic film which, just like Tarkovsky's The Mirror, has continued to captivate me over the years. It was ten years ago that I saw Alain Resnais’ masterpiece at the cinémathèque but my memory of the screening is still vivid. One thing I remember clearly is the rhythm with which the music and dialogue alternated and combined to further disorient and engage those of us sitting in front of the screen. Both Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet understood the importance of music in cinema and it is Francis Seyrig who found himself with the task of writing the score for Last Year in Marienbad.

Seyrig’s career as a composer seems to have been short-lived. Not much information is available concerning his musical output but he seems to have been mostly active as a soundtrack composer during the sixties. During the first half of that decade, Seyrig composed music for Last Year in Marienbad (his sister Delphine Seyrig plays one of the two main protagonists), Le procès de Jeanne D’Arc (a 1962 film by Bresson), as well as Marie Soleil (a film directed by Antoine Bourseiller, who also acted in Varda’s Cleo de 5 à 7 and Resnais’ La Guerre est Finie).

The material below was released on 7” vinyl by Philips in the early 1960s. Aside from La valse de Marienbad which is now available on Alain Resnais: Portrait musical, the soundtrack for Last Year in Marienbad has been unavailable for more than four decades.

Thé dansant listen

Promenade listen

Solitude listen

La valse de Marienbad - Final listen

1961 Trailer

Cette voix parle de façon continue, mais, bien que la musique ait cessé tout à fait, on ne comprend pas encore les paroles (ou on les comprends en tout cas très mal) à cause d’une forte réverbération ou quelque effet du même genre (deux bandes sonores identiques décalées se rejoignant progressivement jusqu’à devenir une voix normale).

• Alain Robbe-Grillet - L’année dernière à Marienbad (ciné-roman)

La musique de L’ANNÉE DERNIÈRE À MARIENBAD est bien entendu fonctionelle (ce qui n’exclue pas le lyrisme). Sa fonction est de renforcer le perpétuel balancement entre le réel et l’imaginaire qui caractérise cette histoire d’amour.

Cette musique veut donc se confondre au décor, retrouver l’ambiguïté des sentiments des personnages, accentuer les doutes que l’on peut éprouver sur la réalité du déroulement de l’action.

C’est pourquoi elle utilise des formes musicales tantôt archaïques tantôt contemporaines et que telle séquence qui commence dans un style finit volontairement dans un autre.

• Alain Resnais - Extrait du verso de pochette de la bande originale du film