... którędy pójdą dzicy święci

Heavy Metal Sextet (1983)

2012-01-27T20:21:00.004+01:00

Mariusz Bogdanowicz - Double Bass, Bass;
Mirosław Sitkowski - Drums;
Jarosław Małys - Keyboards, Piano: Acoustic, Fender Rhodes;
Tadeusz Jakubowski - Saxophone [Alto, Soprano];
Janusz Kowalski - Saxophone [Tenor];
Waldemar Szymański - Trumpet, Flugelhorn

W roku 1983 miałem krótki okres w życiu kiedy słuchałem heavy metalu i idę, którego razu - to był wtedy jeszcze DT Junior - widzę, że w sklepie tę płytę i od razu ją kupiłem. No, bo jak ? Heavy Metal Sextet to pewnie grają heavy metal. Położyłem płytę na adapterze Daniel i co ? Jakaś totalna kicha - beznadziejna fiukanka. Taki to był mój pierwszy - dosyć humorystyczny - kontakt z tym albumem. A teraz - po latach - inaczej już odbieram i całkiem przyjemnie się tego słucha.

Zespół Heavy Metal Sextet został założony na Akademii Muzycznej w Katowicach w 1982 roku, krotko przed krakowskim konkursem Jazz Juniors.

Zespół HMS sięgał w momencie założenia do tradycji hard-bopowej, jednak już wkrótce rozszerzył profil o wpływy jazz-rockowe i funkowe. Wówczas to standardy z ery Silvera, Adderleya i Milesa Davisa, zostały zastąpione kompozycjami Szymańskiego, Kowalskiego i Bogdanowicza. Taki charakter zespołu utrzymał się właściwie aż do końca jego istnienia tzn. do 1984 roku.

W tak krótkim okresie istnienia (1982-84) HMS wywołał spore wzburzenie na scenie jazzowej w Polsce i za granica. W 1982 roku zespół wygrał konkurs Jazz Juniors, a większość jego członków otrzymało nagrody indywidualne. W tym samym roku wygrywa również "Klucz do kariery" na Pomorskiej Jesieni Jazzowej i " Złotego Dyzia" Jana Ptaszyna Wróblewskiego. Jazz Forum uznało HMS za "Nowa nadzieje" roku 1982. W 1983 ukazuje się pierwsza płyta HMS wydana przez wytwórnię Poljazz.

Sukcesy zespołu to również: występ na Jazz Jamboree obok Milesa Davisa, I miejsce na konkursie jazzowym w Dunkierce (Francja) oraz II w Hoeilaart (Belgia), gdzie trębacz zespołu Waldemar Szymański otrzymał nagrodę solistyczną. Rok później wydana zostaje kolejna płyta dla Poljazzu. Na koncie zespół ma również występy na festiwalach Umbrie Jazz w Perugii (Włochy), Jazz Jamboree oraz Bratysławskie Dni Jazzowe (Słowacja). Pod koniec działalności zespól należał do czołówki polskiego jazzu, co odbiło się w ankiecie Jazz Forum i tak HMS w kategorii "Zespół roku 1984" uplasował się na II miejscu.

Alio Die-Parallel Worlds feat. India Czajkowska - Circo Divino (2010)

2012-01-27T17:53:00.003+01:00

Circo Divinio to praca wspólna; włoskiego twórcy ambient Alio Die, greckiego muzyka elektronicznego Parallel Worlds i gościnnie polskiej wokalistki Indii Czajkowskiej. To muzyka, którą lubię, ambientowe pejzaże wypełnione pętlami, dronami, falami dźwiękowych tekstur, plus elektronicznie generowane kreacje ewoluujące w nieznane. Zdarzenia bazujące na akustycznej otulinie. Pełne barw przestrzenne rytmy, w początkowej fazie przypominają Steve’a Roacha. O ile świat Alio Die jest powolny, to Parallel Worlds nadaje więcej życia i zmian. Dużo więcej szczegółów, ale wszystko w ustalonej konwencji, wszystko harmonizuje. Czasem szuka sposobów na pogłębienie „scenerii sonicznej”. Detale o interesujących barwach i często ciekawe zestawienia tonalne. India improwizuje swym głosem bardzo odważnie, przestrzennie, dodaje do całości własny urok, inny świat, nastrojowy i swobodny. (muzycznyesflores.blogspot)

India Czajkowska - wokalistka, kompozytorka i pianistka związana z warszawską sceną muzyki improwizowanej. Tworzy na składy kameralne jak i porusza się w eksperymentalnych przestrzeniach z użyciem elektroniki i sonorystyki, niekonwencjonalnie potraktowanego głosu. Tworzy muzykę filmową i teatralną, współpracowała m.in. z reżyserem Piotrem Uklanskim, Andrzejem Titkowem, teatrem ruchu Te'art KAM i praskim teatrem Wytwórnia. W roku 2008 wydała solowy album Cosmospir (Hic Sunt Leones). Jednym z jej ostatnich wydanych projektów jest Mermago, album nagrany w trio z Ryszardem Lateckim i Maciejem Cierlińskim (Obuh Records, 2010). Rok temu ukazała się także płyta Circo Divino, będąca owocem współpracy z Parallel Worlds (Grecja) i Alio Die (Włochy) Jako improwizująca wokalistka nagrywała i koncertowała m.in z nowojorską formacją jazzową Ensamble Elektra, Drum Freaks, Tadeuszem Sudnikiem (live electronics), Markiem Chołoniewskim w elektronicznym projekcie Hipnagog, Raphaelem Rogińskim, Orbitą Żoliborz, Black Glass.

That's what happens when two interesting and original music project colloborate together. «Circo Divino» became the first collaborative effort Alio Die and Parallel Worlds. Absorbed in my opinion, the best of both parties, this album had unique in its kind sound. Acoustic experiments of Alio Die literally melted together with the modular synthesis of Parallel Worlds, add to this the insinuating voice of India Czajkowska and at least you get a pleasant listening experience. «Circo Divino» seems to me to travel to distant lands, a bit surreal and I would say even fabulous. A mixture of ethnic ambient, technogenic landscapes and vocals give the album a fresh colorful sound. Before my eyes and float the endless landscapes of these nonexistent, but nevertheless beautiful places. Sound also has some indescribable depth, and the more you listen, the more you are drawn into this depth, more and more. And believe me to get out of this embrace of magic doesn't want to. Music is a kind of boundary condition: it is minimalist and exciting, full of mysterious darkness and light simultaneously. Such is the concept antogonistic gave, in my opinion, not only the original sound, but also the unique emotional color.

The most enjoyable for me was the fact that experimentation doesn't struggle with the melody, not suppress it, but complements. I would note the remarkable design of the artist Romani Sanchez . In my collection his artwork is one of the most beautiful works together with the artworks of Jeroen Advocaat (known for his artwork for Sending Orbs). Although I'm not a big fan of ambient-oriented music, but «Circo Divino» became one of my favourites in this genre along with such albums as «Atlas Dei» by Robert Rich, «Night Falls» by Hecq and «Solitare» of David Moufang.

Halina Łukomska - The Songs Of Lutosławski Serocki Bloch (196-)

2012-01-26T19:44:00.003+01:00

Śpiewaczka (sopran), urodzona 29 kwietnia 1929 w Suchedniowie.

Studiowała w Państwowej Wyższej Szkole Operowej w Poznaniu (1951-54) oraz w Państwowej Wyższej Szkole Muzycznej w Warszawie pod kierunkiem Stanisławy Zawadzkiej i Marii Halfterowej. Studia uzupełniające odbyła u Giorgia Favarettiego w Sienie (1958) i Toti dal Monte w Wenecji (1959-60).

W 1956 zdobyła I nagrodę na Międzynarodowy Konkursie Śpiewaczym w s'Hertogenbosch w Holandii, którego jurorem była w następnych latach czterokrotnie.

W 1960 rozpoczęła ożywioną działalność koncertową. Występowała w wielu krajach europejskich, m.in. na festiwalach w Amsterdamie, Bergen, Salzburgu, Wiedniu, Berlinie, Edynburgu, Royan, Londynie, Lubljanie, Zagrzebiu, Paryżu, Florencji i Wenecji oraz w Stanach Zjednoczonych, Meksyku i Izraelu, z orkiestrami pod batutą Hermanna Scherchena, Wolfganga Sawallischa, Igora Markevitcha, Witolda Lutosławskiego, Pierre'a Bouleza, Claudio Abbado, Zubina Mehty, Ernesta Boura, Michaela Gielena, Bruna Maderny. Szczególnie chętnie dawała jednak recitale i występowała na koncertach z towarzyszeniem zespołów kameralnych.

Repertuar Haliny Łukomskiej, obok nielicznych partii operowych (w 1967 i 1971 wystąpiła w Amsterdamie w operach Claudio Monteverdiego Orfeusz oraz Koronacja Poppei), obejmuje głównie utwory solowe, koncerty oraz oratoria XVIII i XX wieku. Największe uznanie zyskały jej wykonania utworów XX wieku, a wśród nich wzorcowa interpertacja Cinq Poémes de Baudelaire i Ariettes oubliées Claude'a Debussy'ego (z Jerzym Godziszewskim, wydane przez Polskie Nagrania), pieśni Albana Berga, I i II Kantata Antona Weberna (wykonane podczas "Warszawskiej Jesieni"), Pli selon pli Pierre'a Bouleza (z orkiestrą BBC pod dyrekcją kompozytora, wydane przez firmę Columbia). Kunszt wokalny artystki, polegający na nieskazitelnej intonacji, uwidocznia się zwłaszcza w utworach dla niej pisanych, m.in. przez męża Augustyna Blocha (Espressioni, Medytacje, Salmo gioioso), w których głos ludzki traktowany jest czysto instrumentalnie.

Dokonała wielu nagrań radiowych oraz płytowych dla firm fonograficznych Philips, Columbia, EMI, Polskie Nagrania, Harmonia Mundi.

Halina Łukomska sporadycznie zajmuje się pedagogiką. W 1986 prowadziła kursy mistrzowskie w Rubin Academy of Music w Jerozolimie.

Jest laureatką wielu nagród, m.in. Nagrody Ministra Kultury i Sztuki (1965) i Nagrody Przewodniczącego Komitetu do spraw Radia i Telewizji (1982). --- culture.pl

Moe Tucker - I Spent a Week There the Other Night (1991)

2012-01-24T19:10:00.003+01:00

Maureen Ann "Moe" Tucker (born August 26, 1944, in Levittown, New York) is a musician best known for having been the drummer for the rock group The Velvet Underground.

Tucker first began playing the drums at age 19. When she was asked to join the Velvet Underground, Tucker was working for IBM as a keypunch operator. The band's original percussionist, Angus Maclise, had left in November 1965 because he felt the band sold out when it took a paying gig. Tucker was drafted because Velvets guitarist Sterling Morrison remembered her as the younger sister of one of his college friends who played the drums. Tucker was frequently noted for her androgynous appearance.

Tucker's style of playing was unconventional. She played standing up rather than seated (for easier access to the bass drum), using a simplified drum kit of tom toms, a snare drum and an upturned bass drum, playing with mallets rather than drumsticks. She rarely used cymbals; she claimed that since she felt the purpose of a drummer was simply to "keep time", cymbals were unnecessary for this purpose and drowned out the other instruments.

Apart from drumming, Tucker sang co-lead vocals on three Velvet Underground songs: the acoustic guitar number "After Hours" and the strange poem set to music "The Murder Mystery", both from 1969's The Velvet Underground album, as well as "I'm Sticking with You", a song recorded in 1969 but left (officially) unreleased until it appeared on the 1985 outtakes compilation VU. Lou Reed has said of "After Hours" that it was "so innocent and pure" that he could not possibly sing it himself. In the early days, Tucker also occasionally played the bass guitar during live gigs.

Tucker temporarily left the group when she became pregnant with her first child, Kerry "Trucker" Tucker, in early 1970. Because of her pregnancy, Tucker was only able to play a few songs on Loaded, which would become the band's fourth and final album with Lou Reed. Billy Yule, the younger and high-school-age brother of bassist Doug Yule, filled in the role of drummer for most of the songs on the album and live performances.

Tucker returned to the band in late 1970, by which time Reed had left the group and Doug Yule had assumed leadership. She toured North America (United States and Canada) and Europe (United Kingdom and the Netherlands) with the band during 1970 and 1971; shortly afterward, she quit the band.

Tucker moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1971, where she lived with her husband and several children. While living in Phoenix, she played drums in the short-lived band Paris 1942 with Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls. In the early 1980s, she divorced her husband and relocated to Douglas, Georgia, where she was hired at a Wal-Mart distribution center. She quit the job in 1989 when she was asked to go on tour of Europe with the band Half Japanese.

Tucker started recording and touring again, releasing a number of albums on small, independent labels that feature her singing and playing guitar, fronting her own band. This band at times included former Velvets colleague Sterling Morrison. Tucker also participated in the 1992–1993 Velvet Underground reunion, touring Europe and releasing the double album Live MCMXCIII.

Apart from releasing her own records, Tucker has made guest performances on a number of others' records, including producing Fire in the Sky (1993) for Half Japanese, whose guitarist, John Sluggett, plays drums on her own recordings. In Jeff Feuerzeig's documentary about Half Japanese, The Band That Would Be King, Tucker performs and is interviewed extensively. Also, she has appeared with Magnet and former Velvet Underground band members Lou Reed (New York) and John Cale (Walking on Locusts).

Tucker also played drums on and produced the album The Lives of Charles Douglas by indie rocker and novelist Charles Douglas (also known as Alex McAulay) in 1999.

She played bass drum, wrote songs, and sang with the New York/Memphis punk rock–delta blues fusion group, The Kropotkins with Lorette Velvette and Dave Soldier in 1999–2003, recording "Five Points Crawl".

Moe Tucker was married in the early 1970s, and divorced sometime in the early 1980s. She had five children: Kerry, Keith, Austen, Kate, and Richard. Tucker lives in Douglas, Georgia, where she has raised her family. In a 2010 interview, she said she had ceased making music or songwriting several years prior, noting, "No time for it anymore. I take care of my eight-year-old grandson and it's a full-time job."

In April 2009, Tucker gave a brief man in the street-style interview at a Tea Party rally in Tifton, Georgia to a WALB NBC news crew; during the interview, she voiced support for the Tea Party movement, and said she was "furious about the way we're being led towards socialism." In October 2010, British newspaper The Guardian discovered a personal page for Maureen Tucker on The Tea Party Patriots official website, wherein she stated, "I have come to believe (not just wonder) that Obama's plan is to destroy America from within." Her page goes on to encourage readers to send the White House "a letter/postcard" addressed to "King Obama."

Tucker expanded on her political instincts later to the Riverfront Times, saying: “ To be honest, I never paid attention to what the hell was going on. My always voting Democrat was the result of that. My philosophy was and is all politicians are liars, bums and cheats."

Kazimierz Urbański

2012-01-24T15:30:00.000+01:00

Urbański Kazimierz Stefan (ur. 1929), polski reżyser filmowy, scenograf, realizator spektakli audiowizualnych. Absolwent ASP w Krakowie (1956) i Wyższej Szkoły Rzemiosł Artystycznych w Pradze (1958). Zorganizował i prowadził klasę rysunku filmowego na Wydziale Scenografii ASP (1957-1972).

Realizował filmy animowane i impresje dokumentalne, m.in.: Romanca (1960), Gips-Romanca (1962, dyplom British Film Institute w Londynie), Słodkie rytmy (1965), Rezerwat (1969). Także inicjator utworzenia Laboratorium Filmów Animowanych w Krakowie (1966–1969) i Podyplomowego Seminarium Plastyki Kinetycznej Wyższej Szkoły Rzemiosł Artystycznych w Zurychu (1972–1973).

Otrzymał 14 nagród i wyróżnień za filmy animowane i dokumentalne w Krakowie, Oberhausen, Mannheim, Locarno, Montevideo oraz dyplom kardynała K. Wojtyły za reżyserię światła na festiwalu Sacrosong w Częstochowie (1978). (portalwiedzy.onet)

Kazimierz Urbański - born in 1929. Urbański studied stage design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (1951-56) and film graphics at the School of Applied Arts in Prague (1955-58). He organized and conducted animated film courses at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (1957-72), the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (1973-82), and the School of Fine Arts (later Academy of Fine Arts) in Poznan (1979-2002). He also taught in Zurich and Bonn and at the Film School in Lodz. In 1966 he founded the Animated Film Studio in Krakow which he headed until 1969. He also helped to establish the TV Animated Film Studio in Poznan with which he has been collaborating since 1980. Well known for his innovative animated films and poetic documentaries for which he has gotten many awards at international films festivals. (animator-festival)

Henry Flynt & The Insurrections - I Don't Wanna (1966)

2012-01-23T21:59:00.005+01:00

The image of the untrained “folk creature” as avant gardist

When I first heard the New York guitar music on this I DON’T WANNA album just eighteen months ago, I was gobsmacked and derailed by the agitated attack of Henry Flynt’s bluegrass-meets-hillbilly-meets-R&R guitar sound, and the manner in which he took Troggs-simple riffs and upended them into dustbowl dances for tigers on Vaseline. Where had this horseless rodeo been all my life? Contained within these Flyntian grooves was a dehydrated atmosphere of such simultaneously Biblical ancientness and futurist heathenism that it appeared as though some petty sub-Jehovah had chosen to install our man Flynt unfairly and squarely into the darkest episodes ever torn from the pages of J.F.K.’s A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS; if this guy owned a car, it was a kaput Model T drawn by mules for shit damn sure; if this guy owned a chicken coop, it was most likely that same Model T.

Furthermore, the manner in which Flynt commandeered his own riffs or even whole tracks for crooning new songs over at a later time (‘Missionary Stew’ IS ‘Uncle Sam Do’) really blew my mind - especially as the artist himself (hardly yet out of adolescence) looked like a cross between Stork from ANIMAL HOUSE and Napoleon Dynamite. Moreover, brothers and sisters, this guy was a true Zelig of the underground – an everywhere and nowhere baby whose name cropped up time and time again in articles about the American Civil Rights Movement, the modern New York art world, and the new Socialist philosophies being thrown up at the cusp of the 50s/60s. And although no real articles appeared to have been written about Henry Flynt, from the various snatches of info that I could discover from biographies of his more celebrated contemporaries, I gleaned that Flynt had always been considered a heavy conceptual artist, nay, for some people THEE original conceptual artist.

But even for the few souls who knew Henry Flynt’s work, he never was a guitarist but a violinist, and a musical theorist to boot. Indeed, in an essay written for Yoko Ono’s 1992 boxed CD set ONOBOX, The New York Times rock critic Robert Palmer referred to Henry Flynt as a ‘composer, violinist, and the theorist who coined the term “concept art”’. Palmer went on to include Flynt in his list of the very earliest of the Fluxus artists – John Cage, Yoko Ono, La Monte Young, Richard Maxfield – whose art was so named by the gallery owner George Macunius for having been permanently in a state of flux; that is, forever at the moment of becoming…

And yet the difference between Henry Flynt and most other conceptual artists of his time is that the more you play I DON’T WANNA, the more you need to hear it. I know Flynt initially conceived this album in a flurry of post-EPI excitement, probably as nothing more than an adjunct to his more serious violin drone music. But for listeners who get the picture, repeated plays soon become an emotional and cardiovascular necessity. You wanna steep yourself in his hip spikey yokeldrones and his catch-all pop-art lyrical take on the protest movement, and you wanna blast the fucking world to rights. Flynt’s formulaic approach is the difference between the obnoxious and obsessively listenable genius of Takeshisa Kosugi’s majestic 1975 proto-Martin Rev Ur-drone CATCH WAVE and the excessively intellectual violin-tapping non-muse of that same artist on his LIVE IN NEW YORK album five years later. Or the difference between Bill Nelson’s barely contained and primal ‘70s guitar tantrums with Be Bop Deluxe and his pale David Byrne-worshipping World Music-isms of the following decade. And in terms of being a truly Intuitive Non Career Mover, Henry Flynt really did take the fucking cake, limiting his releases to a few private cassettes from time to time, indeed refusing proper releases for any of his works until the beginning of the 21st century. But while I rant and rave about the epic quality of this music, lay back awhile and let The Insurrections burn a few holes on your Inner Carpet, whilst I relate to y’all how Mr Flynt reached this magically (and timelessly) funky place. Hell, motherfuckers, as George Clinton noted on Funkadelic’s ELECTRIC SPANKING OF WAR BABIES – ‘Funk can sit and sit and never go sour’. Well, Beloveds, this Insurrections stuff is almost 40 years old and (like Captain Scott’s bully beef) it’s still as fresh as the day they laid it down…

Avant-Bumpkin Hillbilly Joyriders of the Coming Revolution

In the early months of 1966, during Andy Warhol’s EXPLODING PLASTIC INEVITABLE performances at The Dom, and just before The Velvet Underground recorded their first LP, John Cale became so sick from the group’s unhealthy lifestyle that he was forced to take some time away from their performances. Determined to replace himself with a valid substitute capable of understanding the Ur-drones necessary for fulfilling The Velvet’s highly specific metaphor, Cale asked his friend and fellow LaMonte Young acolyte Henry Flynt to fill in for him. Unfortunately, this young experimental violinist and early Fluxus member was himself currently obsessed with re-awakening his North Carolina roots. And so Flynt brought to the Velvets not the removed and numbing sophistication of Cale’s wind tunnel viola, but a brutally hickish and highly volatile hoedown that brought the young southerner to physical blows with Lou Reed. Henry Flynt says of the experience:

“Reed taught me their repertoire in about five minutes, because basically he just wanted me to be in the right key. At one point I got in a fight with him onstage because I was playing a very hillybilly-influenced style on the violin and that upset him very much.

He wanted a very sophisticated sound; he didn’t want rural references in what was supposed to be this very decadent S&M image that they were projecting.”

However, disastrous though the experience was, Flynt struggled through several further performances with the band, and – in lieu of payment – received six hour long lessons of guitar tuition by Lou Reed himself. Taking this apprenticeship extremely seriously, and stimulated by Bob Dylan’s recent adoption of rock’n’roll in the face of huge criticism, Henry Flynt decided immediately to process and utilise this new sonic information as a vehicle for his other main obsession – political activism. Or, as he wrote later:

“Given my political engagement, I had been waiting for an impetus to try songs with ‘revolution’ lyrics.”

Initially comprised of only Flynt on vocals and electric guitar accompanied by his sculptor friend Walter De Maria on drums, the duo was nevertheless a superb and highly volatile agit-punk outfit that soon went by the name of Henry Flynt & the Insurrections.

Rehearsals initially took place at De Maria’s downtown loft, where the duo swung rhythms around against each other and battered smart 13/8 and 5/4 tempos so hard that they sounded like old vinyl caught in a locked groove. Released temporarily from his LaMonte Young-fixated violin drones, but still determined “to reject the claim of cultural superiority which musicology made for European classical music”3, Flynt’s spangly and disorientating guitar licks and tumultuous Reedian rhythm playing came on like Armand Schaubroeck’s Churchmice playing frenetic Bulgarian wedding music, or John Fahey as fed through the Boards of Canada filter. Moreover, this neo-New Yorker’s refusenik motor-mouthed verbal onslaughts were delivered in an ultra southern preacher twang said to have been far stronger than when he’d first stepped off the train from North Carolina several years previously. Behind Flynt, Walter De Maria’s drumming was a swirling and bruising snare-led dervish dance, inspired by a desire to jettison the indolent thuggery of his previous band The Primitives, whose now legendary 45 ‘The Ostrich’ had almost been an accidental hit in 1965 for its writers Lou Reed and John Cale.4 And such was the musical effect of Henry Flynt & the

Insurrections on its protagonists that they soon attempted to validate their group in the eyes of the New York art community by adding a bass player and organist. However, both Flynt and De Maria were overtly paranoid of the possible unbalances that could be wrought by unsympathetic playing from any new members. And so it was with some trepidation that they asked their friends organist Art Murphy and upright bassist Paul Breslin to extend The Insurrections into a quartet. We shall never know, however, quite how the four piece incarnation of The Insurrections would have fared in a live situation, for, due to Flynt’s wariness of the commercial music business, they were disbanded after recording just one LP’s worth of material in 1966. Flynt would later claim that it was the music hall approach of The Beatles that was to rid pop music of the essential ethnic qualities that had attracted him in the first place, whilst the assassination of Martin Luther King would – for Flynt – be the final nail in the coffin of the civil rights movement that was to drive this delicate soul underground forever.

Flynt’s assumption that his ‘playing would entail commercial success as a by product’ was severely battered by the absolute commercial failure of The Velvet Underground, so recently championed as the New York avant gardists’ answer to The Rolling Stones. It all seemed evidence enough to Flynt that popular rock’n’roll had become “uniformly loud in a way which was vulgar, mechanical, and bloated.5” Here was a perfect excuse for Henry Flynt to bow out of mainstream culture entirely and disappear for good, rather than “competing with musicians for whom the last step in composing a piece is the sale—musicians for whom a bad piece that sells is a good piece.” Thereafter, this marginalised (and highly shell-shocked) artist chose a strictly non-combative path, still quietly exploring his theory of a new American ethnic music in the face of what he called the ‘Youth Disintegration Industry’, but damning all post-’69 rock’n’roll as a ‘one-way march towards grotesquerie and defilement.’ By 1984, Henry Flynt had given up playing music of any kind and had retired inwards into his art theories. He appears to have gained some kind of solace in the notion that all Western art movements were equally pervasive, equally brutal and equally unjust.The timelessness of I DON’T WANNA

But where does this leave Flynt’s sole recorded statement made with The Insurrections? At times, this guy is as much of a Zoroaster staring down the Iranian charioteers as is Van Der Graaf Generator’s Peter Hammill, and – after eighteen months of repeated listening - I personally consider the record to be a truly dislocated and barbarian classic. Moreover, although I’ve attempted several times to make I DON’T WANNA into Album of the Month, I have always previously backed down at the last minute in case it was just my ultra-compassionate, or overly romantic side talking. But still I’d come back for one more spin and fall in love all over again.

The recorded evidence contained within the grooves of this album reveals such an astonishing quicksilver energy of interplay between the guitar and drums that it all sounds contemporary even today. Whilst De Maria’s drumming ricochets around the heavens and, at times, makes no more attempt to keep down the beat than did Mickey ‘Circle Sky’ Dolenz at Monkees concerts, Henry Flynt’s guitar melds Sterling Morrison’s cyclical mantras to Lou Reed’s freerock abandon with effortless ease, all the while his vocalising conjuring up a bucolic and Biblical imagery utterly at odds with the downtown New Yorkscape in which the recordings were made. Except for the seven minutes of ‘Dream Away’, each of the songs is concise – most being under three minutes in length - and each inevitably sounds somewhat reminiscent of L. Reed’s playing in his pre-Velvets groups (which I could never get enough of anyway). But does I DON’T WANNA truly qualify as having been made by a group?

Perhaps not. For “Jumping” is a duel between Guitar Henry and an overdubbed Violin Henry with ne’er a thought for the other three guys in the band, whilst “Dreams Away” is virtually solo Henry throughout its entire seven minutes. It seems that, in choosing a double bass jazzer such as Paul Breslin over an electric bassist, Flynt was clearly intending his sideman to be seen (for credibility’s sake) and not heard (as Leo Fender commented in 1951, the double bass was always ‘the doghouse’ – inaudible to all but the front rows of the audience and NEVER in tune). Perhaps the highly-respected Breslin was put in place to make the Insurrections FEEL more like a ‘proper’ group to outsiders. But you can strain your ears all you wish and barely hear a pulse from that double bass, other than the occasional boogie down on ‘Sky Turned Red’. Furthermore, that Art Murphy’s organ playing was equally secondary to the powerhouse of Flynt and De Maria is also clearly evidenced on I DON’T WANNA, being audible only during the unnecessary and slight instrumental ‘Corona del Max’ (which sounds more like the work of a typical organ-led garage rock band such as The E-Types than hefty musical dudes from a NY seminary). However, as Murphy went on to play with both Steve Reich and Philip Glass in the 1970s, perhaps he too was added to the line-up to infuse a psychic heftiness to this otherwise guitar’n’drums-only ‘quartet’.

But whatever his reasons, Henry made his single most magical statement with this self-styled ‘protest band’ The Insurrections, and mighty thankful should we be for the release of this hitherto unknown gem. Indeed, so should our man Flynt. For, with such a substantial statement now in place, much of Henry Flynt’s other performance work (from the ‘Dreamweapon’ appearances with LaMonte Young to the recent slew of releases via the Locust Music label) will be much easier to access by utilising this record as the gateway to his skewed and elliptical underworld. My compassion for this anguished theorist grows with everything new I learn about the man, especially as his own writings reveal no anger at his lack of commercial success, but instead betray all the compassion for modern humanity of a prophetic voice truly crying out in the desert. As Mr Flynt so percipiently commented back in 1980:

“I have to believe that the audiences which support the deluge of crass, gross music experience a far greater misfortune than I… Under the circumstances, the horrible symbiosis represented by mass culture cannot be upstaged by one iconoclast.” (www.headheritage.co.uk)

Pax Nicholas And The Nettey Family - Na Teef Know De Road Of Teef (1973)

2012-01-23T14:09:00.003+01:00

[PL]

Parodia i tragedia, to dwa gatunki literackie, które mogłaby kochać historia muzyki, gdyby jej rozleglosc można było wpasować w format ludzkiej osobowości. Pax Nicholas byłby zacnym przykładem parodii, jeśli nie kpiny losu. Urodzony w Ghanie, w latach 1971-1978 był członkiem Africa '70, legendarnego zespołu Feli Kutiego, gdzie grał na congach. Jego pierwszą płytą była "Shakara", której tytułowy kawałek stał się po wsze czasy jednym z najbardziej znanych hitów Feli.

Jako wielce utalentowanego muzyka od początku interesowało go jednak oczywiście "dłubanie na boku". Dłubiąc w ten sposób wykręcił dwa albumy dla mało znanej, nigeryjskiej wytwórni Tabansi, które nagrał wspólnie z muzykami równie mało znanego Martin Brothers Band. Jeden z nich, to właśnie Na Teef Know De Road Of Teef, wydany oryginalnie w 1973 i ostentacyjnie zapomniany ze względu na to, że był tak dobry, iż wywołał gniew samego Feli, który po jego usłyszeniu zabronił Paxowi jakiegokolwiek pokątnego tworzenia.

Gdy Pax opuścił zespół Feli po koncercie w Berlinie (w 1978), jego album nie został niestety wznowiony, ale przepadł w otchłani Afryki na wiele lat, by niespodziewanie wypłynąć na wierzch w Philadelphii, gdzie wiosną 2005 odnalazł go niemiecki DJ, Frank Grossner (autor bloga Voodoofunk). Czując wiatr w powietrzu nie namyślał się długo i przedstawił go ludziom z nowojorskiego Daptone Records, którzy widząc w nim prawdziwy diament, natychmiast zdecydowali się dokonać transferu z winyla i zremasterowny album oddać światu.

Dobrze się stało, gdyż cztery kawałki, które możemy usłyszeć, to prawdziwe skarby Afryki. Mamy tu wszystko, co przywykliśmy identyfikować z korzenną, afrobeatową jazdą. Dynamiczne, synkopowane rytmy, wygrywane na congach, mocny akcent perkusyjny, wysokie tony partii gitarowych, głęboki wokal na delayu, i fantastyczne riffy organowe, które w jakiś sposób uzupełniają oszczędne linie instrumentów dętych. Nie da się nie dostrzec, że płyta ta jednak ponad wszystko posiada niezwykle minimalny charakter. Aranżacje są wprawdzie silnie zainspirowane rozpasaniem Feli, jednak czuć w nich nieco innego ducha, eskplorującego bardziej oszczędne, pierwotne przestrzenie. Nie czuć tu tak mocno dominującej figury, jaką dla Africa 70 był Fela, mamy za to zgrany kolektyw muzyków, przekazujących silną, duchową energię z wybuchowym potencjałem tanecznym.

To bez wątpienia jedna z najwspanialszych płyt, która wyszła ze środowiska Feli w latach '70. Gorąca, transowa i piekielnie uzależniająca muzyka, która mało ma sobie równych. Wciąga, jak tajemnicza opowieść, rozwijająca się z kawałka na kawałek. Od niezwykle miarowego Na Teef... każdy kolejny tune staje się coraz bardziej szaleńczy i w coraz większym stopniu wypełniony bogatą aranżacją z obowiązkowymi improwizacjami wokół zadanego tematu. Wielkie dzięki dla Franka Grossnera i Daptone Records, za to że możemy tą płytę położyć na talerzu. To obowiązkowy zakup, dla każdego maniaka afrykańskich dźwięków. Absolutny klasyk i trudny do ominięcia killer! Żałować można jedynie, że nie ustalono składu muzyków na tej płycie, co pomogłoby pewnie wyłowić poszczególne talenty i pomóc kolekcjonerom w dalszym grzebaniu!

[EN]

Parody and tragedy are two literary genres, which might have been loved by the history of music if it's vastness was stacked in the structure of human's personality. Pax Nicholas would be a shining example of parody if not mockery of fate. Born in Ghana, he was a member of Africa '70 in the years 1971-78, legendary Fela Kuti's band, where he played congas. His first credited album was "Shakara", from which the title tune is still considered one of the best known Fela's gut rippers, heavy weight shit!

As a talented musician he was apparently interested in doing things aside since he got to know how to professionaly record music. That way he cut two albums for obscure, little known, Tabansi label from Nigeria, which both were backed by equally unknown Martin Brothers Band. One of them is Na Teef Know De Road Of Teef, released in 1973 and ostentatiously forgotten due to it's extensive heat, which pissed Fela so fuckin' much that he had forbidden Pax Nicholas to record any music by himself.

When Pax left Fela's band after Berlin's concert (in 1978), his album wasn't unfortunately reissued, but has been lost in the depths of Africa for many years to flow back over in Philadelphia, where it was found by German DJ, Frank Grossner (author of Voodoofunk Blog). Frank didn't hesitate long, but approached guys form New York based Daptone Records, who have seen it as it was – genuine diamond. They decided to transfer it from vinyl straight away and after remastering gave it back to the world.

And here we are eventually, with great opportunity to listen to these four wonderful tracks – fiery, African jewels. This album is everything we are used to identify with hard, afrobeat flow. Dynamic, syncopated rhythms of congas, strong percussion accent, high guitar tones, delay treated vocals and wicked organ riffs, which in a way fill in the minimal lines of horn section. Though masterpiece, it's very hard not to see the minimal character of this record. Arrangements are deeply influenced by Fela's debauchery, but essentially overcome by totally different spirit, exploring more humble, ancient spaces. We don't have any dominating figure here, like Fela in Africa 70, instead we hear a collective of highly skilled musicians, transmitting strong, spiritual energy with erupting dance potential.

It's without doubt one of the greatest records, which went out from Fela's circles in the 70's. Hot, humid and extremely addictive music, which doesn't have many alike. It absorbs us like misterious story, evolving from one track to another. Going off with perfectly balanced Na Teef... it gets more and more wicked with every following tune as we pass through richer and richer arrangements and obligatory improvisations. Many thanks to Frank Grossner and Daptone Records for that record on our plate. This is a must-buy for every African music maniac. Essential classic and killer hard to pass by! We can only regret we cannot find any credits for that album, what might be useful in tracking down the single talents and probably would be great help for rarities diggers as well.

Fuka Lata - Other Sides (2011)

2012-01-23T13:34:00.006+01:00

Jest nam niezmiernie miło zaprezentować dokonania młodych artystów, którzy napisali do nas - starych, wykręconych dziadów - z prośbą o napisanie paru słów o ich muzyce. Prowadzimy tego bloga wspólnie i mamy też różne muzyczne gusta, ale łączy nas z pewnością jedno - wrażliwość na to, co ciekawe i oryginalne. I taka jest właśnie muzyka duetu Fuka Lata. Podzieliłem się z kolegą tą muzyką, który napisał:

"Miła niespodzianka. Album Other Sides to interesujące brzmieniowo połączenie efektów elektronicznych, gitarowych eksperymentów i głosu. Muzykę tego duetu przepełnia senna, ale jednocześnie intrygująca i przy tym wcale nie różowa atmosfera. Pozorna surrealistyczna monotonia wcale jednak nie nuży, wręcz przeciwnie, przenosimy się w przestrzeń wypełnioną niespokojną twórczą różnorodnością, która potrafi niespodziewanie zaciekawić, wciągnąć i zatrzymać."

Ja mogę się jedynie podpisać pod tymi kilkoma zdaniami, ale chciałbym też tylko krótko wspomnieć o swoich impresjach - bo przecież nie można tego nazwać recenzją. Nie jesteśmy zawodowymi krytykami muzycznymi tylko wrażliwymi odbiorcami. Nie jestem biegły w takiej stylistyce muzycznej i bardzo rzadko sięgam po takową, ale jakież miłe rozczarowanie odniosłem słuchając płyty "Other Sides". Obawiałem się, że będą to jakieś niemożebnie długie i rozbudowane elektroniczne pasaże i krajobrazy, gdzie nie widać linii horyzontu, a tu wręcz przeciwnie. Płyty słuchałem z zainteresowaniem, zaciekawieniem, a co najważniejsze nie odczuwałem zmęczenia. Jest to piękne połączenie kilku elementów - wokalu, elektronicznych i analogowych sampli, które powoduje, że człowiek czuje się lekko unoszony w kokonie przyjemnych dźwięków w nieznane i nowe przestrzenie. Co tam zobaczy? To zależy tylko od wyobraźni odbiorcy. Muzycy dają tylko "narzędzia", którymi są generowane przez nich dźwięki do podróży, ale czuć wyraźnie, że sami też jej doświadczają. I to jest właśnie wspaniałe. Dlatego jeśli zobaczycie gdzieś kiedyś płytę duetu Fuka Lata, albo plakat zapraszający na koncert to gorąco polecamy oderwać się na chwilę od spraw doczesnych i poświęcić kilkadziesiąt minut na obcowanie z czymś transcendentnym.

Oficjalne strony zespołu:

http://www.fukalata.com
http://fukalata.bandcamp.com

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://fukalata.bandcamp.com/album/other-sides"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Other Sides by Fuka Lata&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

In the making of this album we determined to pursue the experimental ideas that had come from the performing of improvised shows. To this end we followed a discourse on existential solitude and spirituality. One of them being based on a scene from Virginia Woolf's Orlando.

We decided to take on roles which were meant to be experiences of an internal psychic state and an externalization of emotion, while at the same time focusing on cooperation, on the mimicking textures in sound and on visualizing elements of action.

We started from "zero", having only sound sources such as analogue synthesizers, guitar, effects, voice and some recorded live samples.

Using this diversity of audio sources, layering them, starting from chaos we developed stories on a given topic.

Allowing all the potential of our fantasies and free creation, we produced five long oniric soundscapes oriented towards the mystery of prenatal atmosphere, the other side of reality... a simultaneous alternative reality...

This journey is illustrated by the album cover designed by Radek Włodarski.

(opis angielski ze strony Bandcampowej Fuka Lata)

Amiri Baraka - New Music-New Poetry (1981)

2012-01-22T23:42:00.003+01:00

Amiri Baraka właściwie Everett LeRoi Jones (ur. 7 października 1934 w Newark) – amerykański pisarz i krytyk muzyczny.

Studiował religię i filozofię na Rutgers University, Howard University oraz Columbia University, nie uzyskawszy dyplomu. W 1954 wstąpił do armii.

W tym samym roku przeniósł się do Greenwich Village, gdzie zainteresował się jazzem. Tam spotkał się również z początkującym ruchem Beat Generation, który miał duży wpływ na jego poezję. W 1958 założył wydawnictwo "Totem Press", które wydało m.in. Jacka Kerouaka i Allena Ginsberga.

Działacz ruchu Black Power, wpłynął na radykalizację amerykańskiej literatury murzyńskiej.

W 1965 przeszedł na islam i przyjął nazwisko Amiri Baraka.

Pisze poezje, utwory dramatyczne, eseje, publicystykę.

"Muzyka nie potrzebuje słów, aby roznosić pewne idee. Nie są ci potrzebne, żeby stwierdzić, czy dana muzyka jest wesoła czy smutna, prawda? Sama struktura muzyki zawiera pewne treści. Sergiej Eisenstein, rosyjski reżyser, chciał zaprezentować kiedyś film "10 dni, które wstrząsnęły światem" w Anglii. "W porządku – usłyszał – możesz puścić film, ale bez dźwięku". Dlaczego? Bo soundtrack, którym była muzyka Prokofiewa, ożywiłby obrazy, stworzyłby z nimi organiczną całość. Władza boi się takiej żywotności. Przeraża ją ta dynamika. Zaś to, co jest płaskie i nieme, nie stanowi zagrożenia. Ale jeśli połączysz to z muzyką, znów ożyje."

Poetry, 1st of all, was the and still must be, a musical form. It is speech musicked. It, to be most powerful, much reaches to where speech begins, as sound, and bring the sound into full focus and highly rhythmic communication. High Speech.

The poetry for the dying epoch (racism and monopoly capitalism, imperialism) exists mostly on paper. It is print bred and bound, and actually intended for a particular elite. It, like the structure of the economy itself, is not meant to reach or benefit large numbers of people. English poetry died when the Empire died, it was spent by the beginning of the 20th century. Some Ameriacans went over the rev it up (Pound, Eliot, and Co.) but the baton had passed to the Americans because at the time they did not have to cover up as much madness and lies as the Empire. And the various cultures inside the American experience African, Latino, Native American, Asia, European immigrant, pumped it daily full of reality and its complex living rhythms.

Combined with the Anglo American worker and farmer rhythms American poetry, writing, the culture as a whole became truly formidable as a force in the world. (Through obviously spread by the search of the American rulers for the profits all over the world. Like when you turn on the Voice of American or Armed Forces Radio overseas somewhere you do not hear Brahms, but Stevie w or bobby d or various clones there from).

Black poetry, in the main form, from its premise (unless the marker be considerably whited out) means to show its musical origins and resolve as a given. Just as Blues is, on one level, a verse form, so Black poetry begins as music running into words.

Black poet laureates like Langston Hughes are compelling examples of black music running into high speech. He said he wanted “to grasp and hold some of the meanings and rhythms of jazz”. And in more recent generations poets like Larry Neal, Yusuf Rhman, the Last poets, Askia Toure, Jayne Cortez, write a poetry that brings the words into music and reflecting the most contemporary of both expressions, made one.

“Poetry and jazz” I first saw being done in the Village when I got out of the error farce in 1957 or so. But Langston Hughes was the first poet of any reputation I saw using this form, at the 5 Spot in the late 50’s. But he had being doing it, by that time, for years.

It never occurred to me that there would be any reason not to read poetry with music. And the clearer I got my own legitimate historical and cultural sources, the more obvious it became that not only was the poetry supposed to be as musical as it could be, but that reading with music would only enhance and extend its meaning and give new strength to its form.

The poetry I wasn’t to write is oral by tradition, mass aimed as its fundamental function motive. Black poetry, in its mainstream is oracular, sermonic, it incorporates the screams and shouts and moans and wails of the people inside and outside of the
churches. The whispers and thunder vibrato and staccato of the inside and outside of the people themselves and it wants to as real as anything else and as accessible as a song – a song about a real world, full of good and evil.

The music is also Afro-American, as the players and the poet. But the music has borrowed from whatever in the world interested it, but it is still itself. David Murray and Steve McCall are fine artists of Afro-American contemporary music. It is a music whose African origins are sanded by its American experience, like the people. It has come from Word song and Spiritual, and blues is its common personal speech. Murray and McCall are part of a current generation who have taken these basic historical and cultural bases and given the startling innovations of folks like Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Ellington, Mr. Young, Mr. Parker, and Mr. Coltrane, have continued to tell us the second min, hour, day month, year, and epoch of our reality.

Together they [Murray & McCall] are the tremendous wings for the poetry/music flight heard here. We wanted the music and words to extend each other, be parts of the same expression, different pieces of a whole and the work to produce this produced seemed effortless, and it was a pleasure, a beautiful experience. Sometimes working with the other, less skilled musicians trying to put poetry with music is hard draggy work. The musicians might not want to deal with poetry, might not be able to understand that for the music to be right it must begin with the spirit of the poem and put into how sound. But that’s something else. On this record we tried to express some of the joy we had in making the poetry/music. We also wanted to say some things. --- hardbopjazzjournal.wordpress

Zendik (1972)

2012-01-22T14:42:00.004+01:00

Wulf Zendik to postać wielce zajmująca i znacząca dla amerykańskiej kontrkultury - wokalista jazzowy cieszący się sporą popularnością w latach 40. i 50. minionego stulecia, porzucił show buisnes i zasłynął jako pisarz, konstruktor instrumentów i bitnikowski filozof (spadkobierca Jezusa, Freuda i Reicha) oraz charyzmatyczny twórca komuny artystycznej Zendik Farm. Przez wiele lat prowadził też improwizujące (głównie na bazie bluesa), psychodeliczne combo Wulf Zendik Orgaztra (zbieżność nazw z Arkestrą nie jest przypadkowa!), którego dzieje i dzieło to temat na osobną opowieść. Zendik - twórca itaru (czyli sitaro-gitary) i bluesowy pieśniarz o ekspresji wokalnej bliskiej wokalizom Beefhearta, pozostawił po sobie licznych uczniów i współpracowników oraz szereg utworów wykonywanych przez Orgaztrę na koncertach. Po śmierci artysty jego towarzyszka i muza, Arol oraz członkowie Farmy zarejestrowali improwizowany jam, mający upamiętniać osobę i dzieło Mistrza Wulfa. Szczerze polecam. --- Dariusz Brzostek

"The Artist, the free-flyer, the person that dares to be mad can always go back to that madness. You cannot corner that person. That person has an instrument, has a piece of paper, has a pencil, has two dollars worth of dime store paint, has some sand on the beach... That person can always go for Truth. You cannot corner that person. You can lock them in solitary and they'll scratch it on the wall, and if you cut off their hands, they will scratch it in their mind."

"So long as one desires to escape Pain, or pursue Pleasure, or evade boredom, or to be excited (just so long as these desires, to be or not to be, prevail), just so long are we Cosmically useless; powerless. There is only one cogent, power-generating aspiration: It is Truth: Truth in any form discernible and any form discoverable. Yet Truth comes to the Seeker like a thrust in the Pineal Eye and a kick in the Chakran Gut."

"The only political design that will work, would ever have worked, is one for an open-ended society established on a philosophy that declares that each member of the Human Family must accept absolute responsibility for the health and welfare of all things within its comprehension; you see, accept responsibility for all the stuff within the scope of its expanding objective consciousness. This is what I've termed Cosmic Responsibility and it's the basis of Ecolibrium."

What is Zendik Farm?

You deserve a bit of background information:

Below is taken from the Editors’ letter of this “zeen” (issue #47 in case you’re curious – I couldn’t find a date anywhere on the publication):

For those of you who have never heard of Zendik farm, we are a community of physical, psychic, psychological, and cultural mavericks. Our Zendiculture is founded on dealing openly and honestly with all aspects of life. Now located on 300 acres of fertile farmland along the banks of the Colorado River near Austin, TX, the community was started 24 years ago by Arol and Wulf Zendik. We’re learning to create a viable way of life based on cooperation, not competition – a life where each individual’s contribution is essential to the health of the entire community. This is one of the basic principles of the governmental philosophy of Ecolibrium, upon which the farm operates.

Actually, they are now located in West Virginia. Sounds like a typical communal lifestyle, right? You also may be curious to hear the following from the same page:

For those of you who don’t live in one of the 15 cities where you can watch our ZTV shows on cable television, there is an excerpt from Arol’s weekly series called Zendik news.

An eco-friendly commune with TV shows? Yep. Well okay, they no longer use TV as a media outlet for their cause. They do however, have a radio show. There’s more!

The zeen includes sections called “Life on Zendik Farm”, “Deathkulture and the Ecolibrium Alternative”, “Metaphysics & Art” (which includes “The ABC’s of Enlightenment”), and of course some classifieds at the end. The part that I’m interested in sharing here is related to the very last inside page. You see, Zendik Farm also produces their own music, and therefore fabricates their own musicultural experiences.

Of their music, the zeen says:

“The lyrix actually promote thought, rather than escape. Best of all we’ve been producing our own sounds, in our own recording studio, totally independent of the music industry. So you get pure musik, not commercial garbage.”

There have been several albums produced at the farm, and you can purchase four of them on the Zendik Farm website. Several of them incorporate the sounds of world fusion as well as grounded folk styles, and experimental works. The two founders, Wulf (d. 1999) & Arol, have very different musical styles. Arols’ music is very vocal, earthy, and gutteral. Wulfs’ music tends to slant toward tone-poems and/or spoken word, often with instrumental accompaniment. On the album I’ve been given, all of the instruments are homemade on the farm.

link in comments

The Sound Of Feeling - Up Into Silence (1968-1971)

2012-01-20T23:56:00.004+01:00

Alyce Andrece - Vocals
Rhae Andrece - Vocals
Joe Roccisano - Flute, Sax (Alto), Sax (Soprano)
Oliver Nelson - Sax (Soprano)
Gayle Levant - Harp
Paul Beaver - Moog Synthesizer
Gary David - Marxophone, Piano, Vocals
Fred Katz - Cello
Ray Neapolitan - Bass
Chuck Domanico - Bass
Dick Fisher - Drums
Maurice Miller - Drums
Dave Parlato - Bass
Emil Richards - Percussion

Up Into Silence gathers together the complete works of one of the most far out vocal groups of all time. Touching on jazz, pop, psychedelia and the avant garde, musical adventurers Gary David and the Andrece twins forged a truly new and other worldly form of music in late 1960s LA. Assisted by renowned players including Oliver Nelson, Emil Richards and Paul Beaver, the recordings encompass astounding originals, radical interpretations of standards by artists such as Donovan and Paul Simon, and settings of well known poems. The set comes complete with a booklet featuring rare photographs, detailed notes by Gary David and five previously unheard bonus tracks from 1971.

“The ultimate in wordless jazz” - Mojo

“Jazzy, spooky tripped out pop” - www.lysergia.com

The Sound of Feeling are twin sisters who first appeared on a self titled LP. The A side was their singing accompanied by Oliver Nelson, the B side was Oliver Nelson music. That LP was produced by Leonard Feather a jazz columnist for the LA Times and Down Beat. I could not find another recording by the sisters and contacted Feather 10 years after the LP was out. He said that they just disappeared into the "place where talent sometimes goes". Recently, I saw the CD being reviewed on Amazon. I immediately ordered it. However, the ship date was slipped twice - I had to reconfirm the order. Finally, I canceled that order and payed twice as much for it from a British firm. It has been well worth the wait. I simply love the music. The first several tunes are replicated from the LP (which I never found in CD form) and the rest are new to me. The style is jazz at its best - new treatment of old material that adds something to the original. The sisters have tremendous range and quick access to any notes they want. I believe some of the technique is "micro-tonal" in that the scale is extended in nice ways. I wish there was a larger body of their work available to me. (amazon)

link in comments

La Monte Young - The Well-Tuned Piano 81 X 25, 6:17:50 - 11:18:59 PM NYC (1987)

2012-01-20T19:23:00.000+01:00

La Monte Young (ur. 14 października 1935) – amerykański kompozytor, którego ekscentryczna i często trudno dostępna twórczość zaliczana jest do najważniejszych dzieł awangardowych i eksperymentalnych XX wieku. Jego utwory zainspirowane Fluxusem i minimalizmem podważają tradycyjne rozumienie muzyki, podkreślają też niedoceniane dotąd elementy wykonawcze dzieła muzycznego. Zaliczany do "wielkiej czwórki" minimalistów, obok Philipa Glassa, Steve'a Reicha i Terry'ego Rileya, pomimo tego, że ma niewiele wspólnego z Glassem i Reichem.

Young urodził się w mormońskiej rodzinie z miejscowości Bern w stanie Idaho. Jego ojciec poszukując pracy wielokrotnie zmuszał rodzinę do przeprowadzki, zanim osiedliła się na dobre w Los Angeles w Kalifornii.

Studiował w Los Angeles City College. Był w tym czasie tak dobrym saksofonistą, że dostał się do szkolnego zespołu jazzowego wyprzedzając na przesłuchaniu Erica Dolphy'ego. Podobnie jak on, grywał też z Ornette'em Colemanem, Donem Cherrym i Billym Higginsem.

Później wstąpił na Uniwersytet Kalifornijski w Los Angeles, by tam studiować muzykę, a potem na Uniwersytet Kalifornijski w Berkeley. Studiował muzykę elektroniczną z Richardem Maxfieldem, uczęszczał także na letnie kursy w Darmstadzie z Karlheinzem Stockhausenem. W czasie studiów zrezygnował z gry na saksofonie, by całkowicie skoncentrować się na komponowaniu. Źródłem inspiracji był dla niego Anton Webern, śpiewy gregoriańskie oraz muzyka różnych kultur, włącznie z klasyczną muzyką Indii i indonezyjskim gamelanem. Zainteresowania te oraz pragnienie nauczenia się rozpoznawania interwałów na słuch doprowadziły go na rozpoczęte w 1970 roku studia w Pandit Pran Nath (wśród studentów była jego żona Marian Zazeela oraz Terry Riley).

Wczesne dzieła Younga powstały na bazie dwunastotonowej techniki Arnolda Schőnberga (u którego studiował w Los Angeles), kilka z nich kompozytor później zniszczył. Gdy był w Darmstadzie poprzez Stockhausena odkrył Johna Cage'a wskutek czego zainteresował się teatralnymi elementami w muzyce. Pod wpływem muzyki niezachodniej, zaczął też włączać burdony do muzyki.

Po zaangażowaniu się w ruchu Fluxus, w 1960 roku Young napisał kolekcję swych najbardziej znanych utworów "Compositions 1960", w których uwypuklony został element teatralny muzyki. Składają się z prostych instrukcji dla wykonawcy, zamiast tradycyjnego zapisu nutowego, jak na przykład "narysuj prostą linię i idź za nią", inne każą mu zapalić ogień albo wypuścić motyla w pomieszczeniu.

Inne niekonwencjonalne dzieła Younga, to na przykład utwór, w którym muzyk tylko raz gra dwudźwięk, składający się z B małego oraz F# razkreślnego; dźwięk ma w naturalny sposób wybrzmieć. W innym utworze Young nakazuje pchnąć fortepian w kierunku najbliższej ściany; jeśli fortepian przebije się przez ścianę należy pchać go dalej, dopóki wykonawca ma siły. Inne dzieło wymaga, aby artysta oddał mocz.

Young skomponował też dzieła bardziej tradycyjne. Jednym z jego najbardziej znanych wczesnych dzieł jest "Trio for Strings" z 1958 roku, które choć wtedy wydawało się ekstremalne, dzisiaj uważane jest za dość konwencjonalne. Jest to dzieło serialistyczne, lecz technika nie sprawia, że jest intensywne i skomplikowane; trio rozwija się powoli, wręcz cicho, i jest pełne przeciągłych dźwięków.

W 1962 Young napisał pierwszy utwór bazujący na przeciągłych dźwiękach w skali naturalnej "The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer" - była to również pierwsza kompozycja Younga wykorzystująca elektronikę. Utwór ten, jeden z "The Four Dreams of China" bazuje na czterech wysokościach dźwięku o proporcjach częstotliwości 36-35-32-24 (G, C, +C#, D), ogranicza także użycie ich z innymi. Od tej chwili większość kompozycji Younga bazuje na dronach wybranych dźwięków, granych ciągle, oraz zestawie długo brzmiących wysokości dźwięków, na których można improwizować.

"The Four Dreams of China" miało zostać odegrane w instalacji składającej się ze światła i dźwięku, w której żyliby muzycy i tworzyli muzykę 24 godziny na dobę - Young założył The Theater of Eternal Music, który miał zrealizować ten projekt. Początkowo w skład grupy wchodziła jego żona Marian Zazeela, która posługiwała się światłem - "The Ornamental Lightyears Tracery" - we wszystkich występach od 1965 roku, Angus MacLise oraz Billy Name. W 1964 zespół składał się z Younga z żoną (głosy), Tony'ego Conrada oraz Johna Cale'a (smyczki) i czasami Terry'ego Rileya (głos). Od 1966 roku Young wystawiał "Dream Theater" pomimo przerw spowodowanych brakiem funduszy na tak niezwykły, wymagający i drogi projekt.

Większość dzieł Younga ma bardzo długie tytuły, jak na przykład "The Tortoise Recalling the Drone of the Holy Numbers as They Were Revealed in the Dreams of the Whirlwind and the Obsidian Gong, Illuminated by the Sawmill, the Green Sawtooth Ocelot and the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer". Podobnie one same są przeważnie ekstremalnie długie, a wiele nie ma nawet początku ani końca, który istniałby przed konkretnym wykonaniem. Young i Zazeela "wydłużają" dobę ponad dwadzieścia cztery godziny, przedłużając czuwanie bez snu.

La Monte Young był artystą niezwykle wpływowym, rozpoczynając na wkładzie Johna Cale'a w muzykę Velvet Underground kończąc na jego następcach: Tony Conrad, Jon Hassell, Rhys Chatham, Michael Harrison, Henry Flynt oraz Catherine Christer Hennix. (wikipedia)

Young, uchodzący zwykle za pierwszego minimalistę, w połowie lat 60. stworzył grupę Theatre of Eternal Music, w której skład wchodzili między innymi Terry Riley, Tony Conrad, John Cale czy Jon Hassell. Jej instalacje i występy były ogniwem łączącym radykalne eksperymenty Johna Cage'a z narodzinami estetyki psychodelii. "The Well-Tuned Piano", żartobliwie nawiązujące tytułem do legendarnego cyklu Bacha, to potężnych rozmiarów medytacja na instrumencie nastrojonym w tak zwanym "just intonation" (po polsku: "strój naturalny"), którą sam autor uważa za swoje arcydzieło. (Borys Dejnarowicz)

One of the principal architects of the minimalist aesthetic, La Monte Young was among the true innovators of 20th century music, his rejection of traditional melody and structure in favor of hypnotic drone epics influencing not only the avant-garde music created in his wake, but also proving seminal in the development of punk, Krautrock and ambient. Young was born in Bern, Idaho in 1935, beginning his studies of the alto saxophone at age seven. After the family relocated to Los Angeles, in high school he played alongside the likes of Don Cherry and Billy Higgins, continuing his exploration of European classical and contemporary composition at Los Angeles City College and later UCLA. In time, Young also began delving into the classic musics of India and Japan; the barren atmospheres evoked by the music of Anton Webern were another key influence.

In 1959, Young composed Trio for Strings, regularly cited as the earliest work in the minimalist canon; the piece, with its emphasis on lengthy, sustained tones -- intercut with equally extended rests -- baffled his professors at the University of California, Berkeley, and in the wake of several other similarly controversial projects he relocated to New York City. There he studied electronic music, in time joining Fluxus, a loose confederacy of conceptual artists -- among them John Cage, George Macuinas, George Brecht and Yoko Ono -- dedicated to re-establishing the arts in new and different contexts. In 1962, Young first began to conceive of the Dream House, a continual sound and light environment related to his composition The Four Dreams of China; the project remained in limbo for some years, but was a clear forerunner of the principle to guide his subsequent career -- music with no beginning and no end.

At the same time, Young became obsessed with notions of tuning, specifically that of "Just Intonation," a system in which all of the intervals can be represented by ratios of whole numbers, with a clear preference for the smallest numbers compatible with a given musical purpose. He soon set up an improvisational group including his wife, the visual artist Marian Zazeela, guitarist Billy Name (later one of the regulars at Andy Warhol's Factory) and percussionist Angus MacLise; enormously influential within the downtown NYC underground scene, the ensemble's live appearances closely mirrored the principles of Young's latest compositional work, with pieces becoming so epic in scope that performances -- while typically lasting for hours at a time -- still represented only a fraction of the project as a whole.

By 1963, the group's lineup included Young and Zazeela on voice-drones, Tony Conrad on violin and John Cale on viola; variously dubbed the Theatre of Eternal Music and the Dream Syndicate, the ensemble's collective input pushed Young's ideals to their logical conclusion -- sustaining notes for hours at a time, their improvised dissections of specific harmonic intervals rejected the compositional process altogether, instead elaborating shared performance concepts. Upon disbanding in 1965, Conrad, Young and Cale all later staked claim to authoring of the "Eternal Music" aesthetic; Young also held on to the group's live tapes. Regardless, his music from that point on remained pointed in the direction of infinity -- The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, a work tuned to the pitch of his pet turtle's aquarium motor, was begun in 1964 but its theoretical evolution continues into the present, each performance a part of a greater whole.

By the beginning of the 1970s, Young's approach to eternal music required tours of six to eight players, slide projectionists, a technician and over two tons of electronic equipment; needing a week for set-up time alone, these multimedia Dream House installations then remained intact for another week, with sine-wave generators and shifting light patterns creating continuous sounds and images throughout the residency. By 1973, his focus was a piece titled The Well-Tuned Piano, an installation which required at least a month of tuning and practicing in the intended performance space prior to its public debut; as the work developed, Young's performances grew from a standard three-hour duration to well over four. He also returned to his earlier works -- a Dream House installation of The Tortoise, mounted in New York, ran continuously from 1979 to 1985.

Rarely recorded throughout much of his career, Young signed to Gramavision in 1987, with a flurry of releases -- The Well-Tuned Piano, The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer From the Four Dreams of China and Just Stompin', a raga-blues effort recorded with his Forever Blues Band, among them -- soon appearing. Still, throughout his career Young remained a largely shadowy figure, often discussed (his connection to the nascent Velvet Underground the most common point of reference) but seldom heard; his influence on the rise of ambient music and drone-rock is undeniable, yet almost subliminal. Undaunted, he continued composing and performing regularly into the 1990s, with his latter-day works including The Lower Map of the Eleven's Division in the Romantic Symmetry and Chronos Kristalla. (Jason Ankeny)

link in comments

Wanda Jackson - Queen Of Rockabilly (1956-1963)

2012-01-20T00:38:00.005+01:00

Starzy górale zapewne pamiętają niezwykle dynamicznie śpiewającą młodą Amerykankę, która w latach 50. mogła zagrozić nawet samej Brendzie Lee. Ta nastoletnia (wówczas) dama nazywała się Wanda Jackson i w krótkim czasie dostąpiła zaszczytu występowania z Elvisem Presleyem. Z tego występowania wynikł nawet krótki romans z królem rock and rolla, co dodatkowo ubarwiło wizerunek piosenkarki. Jej wielkie przeboje, takie jak „Fujiyama Mama” czy „Let’s Have a Party”, zyskały jej wielu fanów na całym świecie. Niestety, ku żalowi miłośników rock and rolla i rockabilly Wanda na początku lat 60. skierowała swe zainteresowanie ku klasycznej piosence country i jej porywający, nieco szorstki głos utonął w zawodzących dźwiękach stalowych gitar.

Wanda Jackson was only halfway through high school when, in 1954, country singer Hank Thompson heard her on an Oklahoma City radio show and asked her to record with his band, the Brazos Valley Boys. By the end of the decade, Jackson had become one of America's first major female country and rockabilly singers.

Jackson was born in Oklahoma, but her father Tom -- himself a country singer who quit because of the Depression -- moved the family to California in 1941. He bought Wanda her first guitar two years later, gave her lessons, and encouraged her to play piano as well. In addition, he took her to see such acts as Tex Williams, Spade Cooley, and Bob Wills, which left a lasting impression on her young mind. Tom moved the family back to Oklahoma City when his daughter was 12 years old. In 1952, she won a local talent contest and was given a 15-minute daily show on KLPR. The program, soon upped to 30 minutes, lasted throughout Jackson's high-school years. It's here that Thompson heard her sing. Jackson recorded several songs with the Brazos Valley Boys, including "You Can't Have My Love," a duet with Thompson's bandleader, Billy Gray. The song, on the Decca label, became a national hit, and Jackson's career was off and running. She had wanted to sign with Capitol, Thompson's label, but was turned down, so she signed with Decca instead.

Jackson insisted on finishing high school before hitting the road. When she did, her father came with her. Her mother made and helped design Wanda's stage outfits. "I was the first one to put some glamour in the country music -- fringe dresses, high heels, long earrings," Jackson said of these outfits. When Jackson first toured in 1955 and 1956, she was placed on a bill with none other than Elvis Presley. The two hit it off almost immediately. Jackson said it was Presley, along with her father, who encouraged her to sing rockabilly.

In 1956, Jackson finally signed with Capitol, a relationship that lasted until the early '70s. Her recording career bounced back and forth between country and rockabilly; she did this by often putting one song in each style on either side of a single. Jackson cut the rockabilly hit "Fujiyama Mama" in 1958, which became a major success in Japan. Her version of "Let's Have a Party," which Elvis had cut earlier, was a U.S. Top 40 pop hit for her in 1960, after which she began calling her band the Party Timers. A year later, she was back in the country Top Ten with "Right or Wrong" and "In the Middle of a Heartache." In 1965, she topped the German charts with "Santa Domingo," sung in German. In 1966, she hit the U.S. Top 20 with "The Box It Came In" and "Tears Will Be the Chaser for Your Wine." Jackson's popularity continued through the end of the decade.

Jackson toured regularly, was twice nominated for a Grammy, and was a big attraction in Las Vegas from the mid-'50s into the '70s. She married IBM programmer Wendell Goodman in 1961, and instead of quitting the business -- as many women singers had done at the time -- Goodman gave up his job in order to manage his wife's career. He also packaged Jackson's syndicated TV show, Music Village. In 1971, Jackson and her husband became Christians, which she says saved their marriage. She released one gospel album on Capitol in 1972, Praise the Lord, before shifting to the Myrrh label for three more gospel albums. In 1977, she switched again, this time to Word Records, and released another two.

In the early '80s, Jackson was invited to Europe to play rockabilly and country festivals and to record. She's since been back numerous times. More recently, American country artists Pam Tillis, Jann Browne, and Rosie Flores have acknowledged Jackson as a major influence. In 1995, Flores released a rockabilly album, Rockabilly Filly, and invited Jackson, her longtime idol, to sing two duets on it with her. Jackson embarked on a major U.S. tour with Flores later that year. It was her first secular tour in this country since the '70s, not to mention her first time back in a nightclub atmosphere. Jackson returned to the studio in 2010 to begin work on a new album. Produced by Jack White and featuring a band comprised of the White Stripes frontman, his wife Karen Elson, various Raconteurs, My Morning Jacket's Carl Broemel, and a host of others, The Party Ain’t Over arrived in early 2011. --- Kurt Wolff, All Music

link in comments

Świetlicki &Trzaska - Cierpienie i Wypoczynek (2000)

2012-01-19T18:32:00.004+01:00

Marcin Świetlicki - voice
Mikołaj Trzaska - bass clarinet, alto saxophone
Marcin Dymiter - guitar

Kolejne wydawnictwo z cyklu "Marcin Świetlicki + ...". Tym razem pozycja bardzo kameralna, bo w duecie. Ale właściwie to nie do końca w duecie, bo w przeciwieństwie do koncertów promujących ten materiał, tutaj muzyka została nieco obrobiona elektronicznie, przemiksowana, czasami trochę zapętlona.

Tak więc o ile na żywo byliśmy zdani tylko na możliwości recytatorskie i onomatopeiczne Świetlickiego oraz sonorystyczne improwizacje Trzaski, to tutaj mamy odrobinę więcej. Część ścieżek została elektronicznie zniekształcona, momentami Trzaska gra w duecie z samym sobą, pojawiają się tu i ówdzie delikatne dźwięki elektroniczne a nawet gitara (na której gościnnie udziela się Marcin Dymiter), odgłosy tła, szumy. Specjaliści od muzyki współczesnej powiedzieliby po prostu, że to muzyka na głos, klarnet i taśmę.

Mimo minimalnego składu (klarnet to przecież instrument homofoniczny, choć... Trzaska momentami udowadnia, że to nie do końca prawda) aranżacje są bardzo ciekawe. Klarnet Trzaski to istny kameleon - raz służy do sonorystycznych eksperymentów (dmuchanie, stukanie klapkami, syczenie etc.), innym razem kontrapunktuje rytmicznie recytacje Świetlickiego, prowadzi z nim dialogi, wreszcie w niektórych utworach jest po prostu melodycznym akompaniamentem.

Marcin Św. też zresztą daje się wciągnąć w sonorystyczne zabawy, wydłużając wybrane słowa, powtarzając je, zniekształcając, wydobywając z nich wartości czysto brzmieniowe, niemal zamieniając w onomatopeje. Album, jaki otrzymujemy w efekcie tych eksperymentów to pozycja bardzo ciekawa i ze wszech miar godna polecenia. Bardziej może wielbicielom yassu i Trzaski, niż fanom Świetlików, a może... właśnie odwrotnie - może ta właśnie płyta komuś ze środowiska rockowego otworzy oczy na współczesną muzykę improwizowaną (np. produkcje Trzaski z Olesiami)? Życzę tego i polecam. --- Marcin Dobiaszewski (diapazon)

Działalność duetu Świetlicki/Trzaska to niewątpliwie jeden z ciekawszych eksperymentów w rodzimej muzyce ostatniej dekady. Marcin Świetlicki - poeta wyczulony na dźwięki, i Mikołaj Trzaska - jazzman otwarty na słowa, nagrali płytę dokumentującą zderzenie dwóch twórczych osobowości. Efekty mogą się podobać lub nie, każdy musi jednak przyznać, że ich współpraca to wydarzenie nietuzinkowe i dużego formatu.

Longplay "Cierpienie i wypoczynek" podoba mi się znacznie bardziej niż ostatnie dokonania zespołu Świetliki - macierzystej formacji Świtlickiego. Głównie dlatego, że jego niezwykłe wiersze obudowane zostały równie niezwykłymi dźwiękami instrumentów dętych Trzaski, które pasują do poezji znacznie bardziej niż akompaniament gitarowych riffów. Dotyczy to zarówno tekstów znanych dotąd jedynie z tomików Marcina ("Tresura", "Pięć Pieśni Religijnych"), jak i tych wykonywane także przez Świetliki ("Odciski", "Łabędzie", "Maużowina"). Głos Świetlickiego oraz brzmienie instrumentów Traski egzystują na równoprawnych warunkach, a sprawne wyważenie proporcji między słowami i dźwiękami pozwala rozkoszować się twórczym dialogiem obu artystów.

Koncerty duetu sprawiają ogromne wrażenie, głównie za sprawą towarzyszącej im atmosfery. Przeniesienie jej na płytę było zabiegiem ryzykownym, jednak udało się doskonale. Głównie za sprawą "zatrudnienia" Marcina Dymitera, jednego z najbardziej twórczych muzyków średniego pokolenia, który ascetycznymi partiami gitarowymi doskonale "skleja" dwa główne elementy krążka.

"Cierpienie i wypoczynek" stanowi wyjątkowo intymną propozycję dwóch wybitnych artystów. Intrygującą i utrzymaną na wyjątkowo wysokim poziomie artystycznym. I choć nie jest to propozycja najłatwiejsza w odbiorze, jestem pewien, że przyniesie jej autorom nowych zwolenników. (onet)

link in comments

The Trashmen – Surfin' Bird (1964)

2012-01-19T15:12:00.000+01:00

[EN]

If you dig surf & garage and want to rediscover the history of both styles a bit, one band you need to definitely make out is a legend from Minneapolis – The Trashmen, who stormed the US charts in 1964 with their crazy swingin' track Surfin' Bird. As the story goes, three musicians playing in teenage bands – Steve Wahrer (drums, vocals), Tony Andreason (lead vocal, lead guitar) and Dal Winslow (rhythm guitar, vocals) – got together around 1962 after they met during the local talent contests and were quickly reborn as The Travelers. Few months later Bob Reed (bass guitar, vocals) joined the combo and from this moment boys moved on as The Trashmen. At the time they were mainly bashing out Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly covers, but were also digging spectacular sound of Duane Eddy's and Link Wray's instrumentals. However, it didn't happen untill they went to California to spend there Christmas '62, that new surf sound, invented by Dick Dale, conquered their imagination!

Although Minneapolis has been accidentally a city lacking sunny beaches of California, getting instead blizzards in the winter, it didn't seem a big problem for the young cats, who emraced a new sound of The Trashmen bouncing off the ball rooms' walls. Though it was up to George Garrett – the owner of one of these venues and also the founder of a local Nic-o-Lake recording studio – to open the door for The Trashmen. He liked their Surfin' Bird party favourite and agreed to cut them 7" demo single by himself. He quickly called a big shot music distributor and owner of the Soma Records – Amos Heilicher, who didn't particularly like the single, but nevertheless took it for distribution keeping the original Garrett label. The Trashmen promptly entered Kay Bank Recording Studio, where they re-recorded Surfin' Bird in better conditions and added a new composition, King Of The Surf eventually cut as a flip side to Surfin' Bird. Commonly recognised 7" single with Garrett red label was issued in December 1963 to a great success moving quickly up the local charts and then taking over the national ones.

Surf was definitely up for The Trashmen and they jumped on their chance by getting back to the studio the same month and recording material for their first, legendary LP – Surfin' Bird , which got released in January 1964. The whole session was registered and mixed over one hectic weekend! The group added ten new tracks to their two single ones. Among them were: Malagueña, Bird Bath and The Sleeper. The album was a stepping stone, bridging the gap between surf instrumentals, rock'n'roll standards and new garage compostions, recorded in the same, professional radio environment. Malagueña is my personal favourite – a traditional flamenco melody spinned into a surf masterpiece by furious staccato and ass-cracking reverb. Even Dale's Misirlou, the biggest surf hit at that time being covered by practically every surf ensemble in USA, benefits from The Trashmen's take, spilling like hot lead on your balls.

An album version of King Of The Surf is even tighter coming across as a great shit – it's garage spike and warm choirs using surf staccato and heavy bass could be considered an unique concept in it's class. Very minimal treatment of music space and heavy (for the early 60's) sound on the top was a novelty idea (apart of The Trashmen used only by The Sonics at that time), which really got into minds of musicians en masse when used by The Ramones in 1976. This piece perfectly represents a window in time, when surf started mutating into new forms, sliding away from the Fender fury and discoveringthe power of a modest structure, which let new forms pop out. Similar character has Money, where The Trashmen set off a real classy sweeper from an old r'n'b rhythmics giving it a strong drum structure and typical for surf, guitar bravado. Same fate was divided by Church Key (originally by The Revels), which made it's way into Bird Bath. Although the original LP on red Garret label goes these days for $50-100 and it's hard to come by, there's an official HQ reissue on Sundazed, available on vinyl and CD. This is one of these albums, which should make the way into every surf & garage collection!

[PL]

Ciężko w zasadzie wejść w historię surfu, jak i rocka garażowego bez otarcia się o The Trashmen – legendarnej grupy z Minneapolis, która wyważyła drzwi list przebojów swoim przebojem Surfin' Bird w 1964. Los połączył członków grupy około 1962, kiedy Steve Wahrer (perkusja, wokale), Tony Andreason (główny wokal, gitara prowadząca) oraz Dal Winslow (gitara rytmiczna, wokale) spotkali się na lokalnym konkursie talentów i postanowili przechrzcić swoje młodzieńcze projekty w jedną kapelę – The Travelers. Kilka miesięcy później razem z Bobem Reedem (bas, wokale) byli już znani jako The Trashmen grając przeboje Jerry'ego Lee Lewisa, Chucka Berry'ego i Buddy Holly'ego, a także instrumentalne hity Duane'a Eddy'ego i Linka Wraya. Jednak dopiero po powrocie z wycieczki, z Kalifornii w grudniu '62, kiedy trzon zespołu zobaczył szalejącego na scenie Dicka Dale'a, ich wyobraźnię opanował SURF!

Minneapolis było przypadkowo miastem bez dostępu do morza, które w zimie często nawiedzały śnieżyce, ale nie był to duży problem dla dzieciaków, które pokochały nowe brzmienie The Trashmen, odbijające się mocnym echem od ścian lokalnych sal balowych. Właścicielem jednej z nich był George Garrett, przypadkowo także założyciel małego studia nagraniowego Nico-o-Lake-Records, który polubił muzykę zespołu zgadzając się wyciąć chłopakom singla demo z ich największym, koncertowym przebojem, Surfin' Bird. Dla celów dystrybucyjnych Garrett nawiązał jednak kontakt ze znacznie większym od siebie graczem – Amosem Heilicherem, właścicielem Soma Records, który zgodził się na sprzedaż singla pod labelem Garretta. Na mocy porozumienia zespół wszedł do studia Kay Bank Recording, gdzie nagrano ponownie Surfin' Bird w bardziej profesjonalnym otoczeniu oraz nową kompozycję, King Of The Surf, którą wytłoczono jako stronę B singla. Znany wszystkim kolekcjonerom, siedmiocalowy krążek z czerwonym labelem został wypuszczony na rynek w grudniu 1963 z bomby podbijając lokalne listy przebojów i równie szybko stając się ogólnokrajowym wspinaczem.

The Trashmen byli na fali i nie chcąc zaprzepaścić szansy na sukces w tym samym miesiącu wrócili do studia, by nagrać legendarny album Surfin' Bird, wypuszczony na rynek w styczniu 1964. Całość materiału została nagrana i zmiksowana w ciągu jednego, szalonego weekendu! Oprócz swojego największego hitu i chwytliwego surf/garażowego King Of The Surf zespół nagrał 10 nowych kompozycji, z których na uwagę zwracają takie perełki, jak: Malagueña, Bird Bath czy The Sleeper. Album był generalnie połączeniem znanych, surfowych killerów, rock'n'rollowych standardów oraz własnych kompozycji, które nagrane w radiowym studiu, nabrały jednak drapieżnego, garażowego brzmienia. Osobiście, kocham Malagueñę, która z tradycyjnej hiszpańskiej melodii stała się w rękach zespołu surfowym majstersztykiem, rozpędzonym do furii przez gitarowe staccato i przejmujący reverb. Zwraca także uwagę doskonała wersja Misirlou Dicka Dale'a, który był w tym okresie przerabiany przez każde surfowe kombo, ale wersja The Trashmen leje się na jaja gorącym ołowiem!

King Of The Surf w wersji albumowej wciąż sprawdza się jako doskonały pomysł – garażowe ostrze, dopełnione przez charakterystyczne chórki było w tym czasie jedynym w swoim rodzaju. Oszczędna przestrzeń muzyczna i ciężkie, jak na wczesne lata ''60 brzmienie było nowatorskim pomysłem, który miał być dopiero dynamicznie wyeksploatowany przez The Ramones. Kawałek reprezentuje dla mnie perfekcyjnie moment, kiedy surf zaczął powoli mutować w nowe formy odchodząc od dzikiej wirtuozerii na rzecz trzymania jej w ryzach minimalizmu. Podobny charakter miał cover Money, The Trashmen wykrzesali z klasycznej rhythm'n'bluesowej rytmiki jej przebojowy potencjał dając jej mocną, perkusyjną podbudowę i typową dla surfu, gitarową brawurę. Niemal to samo stało się z Bird Bath – oryginalnie Church Key, wielkim przebojem kalifornijskiej grupy The Revels. Mimo że oryginał jest dzisiaj bardzo cięzki do zdobycia, na rynku krążą także bootlegi oraz oficjalna reedycja Sundazed, dostępna zarówno na winylu, jak i na CD. Jest to jedna z tych płyt, która powinna się znaleźć w arsenale każdego kolekcjonera surfu i garażu!

Areski - Un Beau Matin (1972)

2012-01-19T10:13:00.001+01:00

Areski Belkacem (born January 23, 1940 in Versailles, France), is a composer, a multi-instrumental musician, actor and singer. He became friends with French regiment singer Jacques Higelin with whom he recorded an album in 1969 (his voice appears in the song "Remember" which he composed). Areski Belkacem later met Brigitte Fontaine in the Sixties. In 1969, they assembled unit Niok, a mainly impromptu spectacle with the Theatre of Lucernaire, in Paris. He accompanied Brigitte Fontaine and Art Ensemble of Chicago in the performance of "Comme a la radio" at Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier .

In 1970, he was the protagonist in the full-length feature film "Ça va, ça vient" from Pierre Barouh. At the same time, he composed the music for director Peter Brook and also took part as an actor within the framework of the International Theatrical Research Center.

In the seventies, mixing theatre and songs, the pair of Areski-Fontaine had created many spectacles. However, the eighties for them were less productive, despite the creation of "Act 2" in which he interpreted Brigitte Fontaine's text and also had a duet with her. The album "French Corazon" and the mini-tube "le nougat" in 1992 resurrected his reputation as a graceful musician.

Since then, Areski Belkacem has become the principal composer for Brigitte Fontaine. He also collaborated with Barbara, Georges Moustaki and Sonic Youth, Inter Alia.

Other than composing songs, Areski Belkacem also composed musical scores for cinema ("Jeunesse dorée" or "A mort la mort") and theater (Fabrice Rozié's "Transatlantic liaison"). In 2005, based on an idea from Zep and Benoit Mouchart, he created a concert of drawings which shows an original comic strip on a large screen accompanied by live music. The show is now being shown annually at the Angouleme International Comics Festival. He is currently preparing a new solo disc, his second since "Un beau matin" (1970).

link in comments

MC5 - Power Trip (1994)

2012-01-19T00:18:00.004+01:00

Dennis Thompson - drums
Michael Davis - bass
Fred Sonic Smith - guitar
Wayne Kramer - guitar
Rob Tyner - vocal

1: Recorded at United Sound Studios, Detroit, January 4, 1968.
2: Recorded 'live' at the Grande Ballroom, Detroit, Michigan, October 27, 1968.
3: Recording date and location unknown 9probably Detroit, late 1969)
4,5,6: Recorded direct to 2-track at Head Sounds Studios, Ypsilanti, Michigan, late October early November, 1970.
7, 8: Recorded live at "Dialogue '68", at the First Unitarian Church, Cass & Forest, Detroit, Michigan, September 7 1968.
9: 7, 8: Recorded live at "Dialogue '68", at the First Unitarian Church, Cass & Forest, Detroit, Michigan, September 8 1968.

Coś co tygrysy lubią najbardziej :)))

For a band that never had a hit record, the MC5 were a pretty well documented outfit. This is even more amazing considering that such things as board tapes and home cassette recorders were both in their infancy at the time of these-and other- recordings. This collection of previously unreleased material varies widely in quality (none of it studio grade, unfortunately, but nothing here is unlistenable), featuring four live recordings from the band's Grande Ballroom heyday, three instrumental runthroughs and the band track to "Looking At You," the group's second single. The emphasis throughout is on the band's experimental jamming tendencies, heard to its greatest effect on the 18 minute plus free association blues, "I'm Mad Like Eldridge Cleaver," featuring the sax noodlings of the group's manager, John Sinclair. While the live version of "Black to Comm" is a nice addition to the group's meager discography, this is a collection better enjoyed by hard core fans. --- Cub Koda, All Music

"70 minutes of previously unreleased studio & live recordings plus liner notes by John Sinclair. Also includes the original 1968 White Panther Statement and 10-Point Program. Alive Records. Includes liner notes by John Sinclair.

In the wake of the Detroit riots of July 1967, the group relocated to the nearby college town of Ann Arbor. The following summer, MC5 appeared in Chicago at the Yippies' Festival of Life, a rally mounted in opposition to the Democratic National Convention, and in the audience was Elektra Records A&R executive Danny Fields, who signed the band a few months later. Their debut album, the classic Kick Out the Jams, was recorded live at the Grande Ballroom on October 30 and 31, 1968; although the album reached the national Top 30, retailers, including the Hudson's chain, refused to carry copies due to its inclusion of Tyner's trademark battle cry of "Kick out the jams, motherf*ckers!" The controversy spurred MC5 to run advertisements in the underground press reading "F*ck Hudson's!" Against the band's wishes, Elektra also issued a censored version of the album, replacing the offending expletive with "brothers and sisters."
For a band that never had a hit record, the MC5 were a pretty well documented outfit. This is even more amazing considering that such things as board tapes and home cassette recorders were both in their infancy at the time of these-and other- recordings. This collection of previously unreleased material varies widely in quality (none of it studio grade, unfortunately, but nothing here is unlist able), featuring four live recordings from the band's Grande Ballroom heyday, three instrumental runthroughs and the band track to "Looking At You," the group's second single. The emphasis throughout is on the band's experimental jamming tendencies, heard to its greatest effect on the 18 minute plus free association blues, "I'm Mad Like Eldridge Cleaver," featuring the sax noodlings of the group's manager, John Sinclair. While the live version of "Black to Comm" is a nice addition to the group's meager discography, this is a collection better enjoyed by hard core fans.

One of the more interesting (if not necessarily the most essential) of the posthumous MC 5 vault plunderings of the '90s, POWER TRIP is a rag-tag anthology of concert tapes, studio rehearsals, and outtakes, with a healthy offering of the band's (today rather quaint) political rhetoric (thank you, Brother Wayne Kramer). The bulk of the album is dedicated to some of the 5's more free-form numbers, including a few open-ended jams (like "Black to Comm") that were staples of their live show but never recorded officially. There's also a stupendously heavy version of the blues stanadard "Born Under a Bad Sign," plus the title tune, an early workup of the 10-years-ahead-of-its-time punk/funk/free-jazz fusion they later renamed "Skunk (Sonically Speaking)."

link in comments

Steppeulvene - Hip (1967)

2012-01-18T18:12:00.005+01:00

Eik Skaløe - lead vocals
Stig Møller - guitar, vocals
Søren Seirup - bass, harmonica
Preben Devantier - drums

Steppeulvene & the Student Riots

By 1967, the effects of the Vietnam War were beginning to severely affect European opinion of the U.S.A. and many American bands returned home under a cloud of depression from having weathered so many insults and questions about the actions of their government. Preaching freedom for Americans whilst destroying civilian populations thousands of miles away especially alienated the inward-looking Danes, whose youth was now beginning to follow the trend for ‘finding itself’ in travels to the east.

Their figurehead came in the form of the young hippy poet/singer Eik Skaloe, whose wordy songs and strangely-female sounding baritone made his band Steppeulvene (‘Steppenwolf’) sound like Marlene Dietrich fronting Mouse & the Traps. Eik Skaloe was the first of his generation to sing in his native language and – though his decision has ultimately rendered his muse opaque for the rest of the world – Steppeulvene’s 1967 LP, the immaculately-titled HIP, became the symbol of all things cool and defiantly Danish. Tragically, Skaloe’s success in Denmark could not hold back his Odinist wanderings forever and, in 1968, he disappeared whilst travelling through the Indian city of Ferozepore, aged only twenty-five. Whether or not Skaloe was murdered or died of a self-inflicted drug overdose in Ferozepore, the singer became Denmark’s own Brian Jonesian sacrifice and his early death in 1968 symbolically confirmed to young Danes that theirs was a righteous scene. Although the HIP album is musically very dated compared to subsequent bands, Steppeulvene’s influence was already vast and made even greater because of Skaloe’s disappearance at the height of his career. Skaloe is a still true rock myth in 21st century Denmark and will always be considered by the original Danish heads as having been ‘Brother Number One’. Skaloe inspired such highly political bands as the Jomfru Ane Band and Rode Mor to sing their own politicised songs entirely in Danish. The latter band featured the refusenik vocalist/poet Troels Trier and released such records at the anti-Vietnam War E.P. JOHNNY GENNEM ILD OG VAND (‘Johnny through Fire & Water’) about a dead American G.I. returning from the war unaware that he is a ghost. --- Julian Cope

link in commnets

Gardzienice - Metamorfozy - Music of Ancient Greece (2000)

2012-01-17T23:42:00.006+01:00

Płyta „Metamorfozy” jest zapisem muzyki ze spektaklu opartego na opowieści rzymskiego filozofa i retora okresu schyłkowego hellenizmu, Apulejusza. Opowieści niezwykłej, bo ilustrującej cały ferment i niepokój religijno-kulturowy tej epoki. Apulejusz był mistykiem wtajemniczonym w wiele ówczesnych kultów misteryjnych, m.in. Izydy, Ozyrysa oraz Dionizosa i właśnie w swoim najważniejszym dziele, „Metamorfozach albo Złotym Ośle” stworzył wspaniały, metaforyczny opis wędrówki inicjacyjnej zainspirowanej – jak można przypuszczać – własnymi przeżyciami.

Trzeba przyznać, że właśnie wątek misteryjny podkreślony został zarówno w spektaklu, jak i na płycie wyjątkowo mocno. Z nagrań daje się wyłowić stosunkowo niewiele apollińskiej równowagi i kojarzonego z greckim antykiem uwielbienia dla harmonii. Z rytualnych ataków bębnów tryska nieokiełznana ekstatyczność dionizyjskiej, kobiecej strony ówczesnych rytów; a melodie, oparte na obcym współczesnemu, nowożytnemu uchu starogreckim metrum tylko podkreślają dziką, niemal szamańską rytmikę nagrań.

Dionizyjski charakter „Metamorfoz” może wydawać się nieco zaskakujący, zważywszy że Maciej Rychły rekonstruował muzykę przede wszystkim na podstawie szczątków zapisów wyrytych na ścianach skarbców i świątyń. Ekstatyczny charakter nagrań jest więc ostatecznie dziełem doskonałego „zaiskrzenia” na linii kompozytor – wykonawca. Apollo – Dionizos. I właśnie przez to zdaje się w niepowtarzalny sposób ujmować pełnię helleńskiej i hellenistycznej kultury. Kiedy myślimy o starożytnej Grecji zwykle staje nam przed oczyma obraz śnieżnobiałych świątyń - w rzeczywistości świątynie były upstrzone jarmarczno-kiczowatymi kolorami. „Metamorfozy” zarówno w formie spektaklu, jak i odizolowanej od niego muzyki ujmują tę właśnie różnicę. Starają się widzieć antyk jakim był, a nie jakim chcieli go widzieć romantycy.

Grają i śpiewają:

Britta Forslund
Katrin Forsmo
Mariusz Gołaj
Joanna Holcgreber
Martin Essen-Möller
Marcin Mrowca
Tomasz Rodowicz
Elżbieta Rojek
Maciej Rychły
Mariana Sadowska

Gardzienice by Buzzy Wuzzy on Grooveshark

The Association of Theatrical Practices Gardzienice was founded in 1976 by Włodzimierz Staniewski in a village near Lublin which remains the group's headquarters to this day. Staniewski had just finished a five-year period of collaboration with Jerzy Grotowsk's Teatr Laboratorium. The group does create theatrical productions, but its main work is to conduct research into folk culture, as well as ethnic and anthropological studies. Members of the group take part in expeditions. There the shape of future productions is formed, productions which are evolving more and more closely towards modern mystery plays, restoring tragedy from the spirit of music. Their production Metamorphoses (1997), based on Apuleius's Golden Ass, reconstructs music and dance of ancient Greece in a tour de force performance, combining contemporary vocal and dance virtuosity with melodic lines, gestures, and postures derived from ancient vases. Subtitled, an ethnooratorio, it was described in the following terms on the website of Double Edge Theatre:

"METAMORPHOSIS, or The Golden Ass According to Apuleius is a unique performance which revives the spirit of pre-Christian energy, joy, and lightness. All is passionately sung. Staniewski's work is known for its original singing which includes a synchronistic interweaving of text, gesture, and body movement. With METAMORPHOSIS, Gardzienice surpasses itself. They sing ancient Greek songs and sounds in unique modalities which were reconstructed from papyrus remains and stone carvings from the 5th century BC to the 2nd century AD. After a period of study, Staniewski came to the conclusion that this pythagorean music was sung and danced vividly, dynamically, and passionately, in the way inherent to indigenous cultures.

METAMORPHOSIS is a rediscovery, in the present tense, of the vital energy and the compelling dramaturgy of Ancient Greek theater: a theater in which the song, dance, and text are a natural execution of the extremes of human experience. With eleven singers/actors on stage, the characters in the performance include Lucius, transformed into a donkey and returning to the human shape, Psyche, Amor, and the dual role of Dionysus/Christ."

More recently, Gardzienice has produced "Scenes from Electra" based on Euripides play. Electra is a tragedy in which Princess Electra, is consumed with longing for her assassinated father. Married off to a decent by simple peasant. she plots revenge with her brother Orestes upon his return from exile. She tricks her mother, Clytemnestra, into a peasant's hut so that they can deprive her of life. In creating the spectacle, Staniewski has treated the play as a tragedy of emotions. He used mythical tale of the daughter who so loved her father that she has to kill her mother, to portray exteme emotional states: great love, great hatred, blind lust for hatred, paralizing feeling of guilt. Yet he has subordingate the emotionnaly seething material of the drama, to expressive acting in which primacy is given to fully expressive and meaningful gestures. --- Peter K. Gessner

link in comments

Dark Meat - Universal Indians & Truce Opium (2007/2009)

2012-01-17T11:26:00.006+01:00

No i trafiło mnie ... Minęło parę lat od wydania tych płyt, a ja dopiero się na nie natknąlem. Muszę się nimi podzielić, bo jest to coś fantastycznego. Grupa Dark Meat to istny muzyczny wulkan stylów o energii - od free jazzu po southern rock. Mi najbardziej kojarzy się to z dokonaniami takich zespołów jak Fairport Convention albo The Insect Trust z domieszką współczesnej neo-psychedelii w najlepszym wydaniu. O samym zespole nie wiem praktycznie nic, ale wydaje mi się, że tworzą swoistą komunę muzyczno-towarzyską. Z zamieszczonego w serwisie You Tube filmu można wywnioskować, że jest to dosyć liczne grono wariatów. W każdym razie zachęcam do zapoznania się z tym fantastycznym materiałem.

***

Dark Meat's debut album, Universal Indians, begins quietly, with the lone voice of Page Campbell singing an a capella intro with a distinctly pastoral lilt. Just when your ears have become accustomed to her folksy mellifluousness, "Freedom Ritual" explodes in a rapture of sound, as approximately two-thirds of the population of Athens, Georgia, come in all at once. Or at least that's how it sounds. Dark Meat is a Southern rock (or Southern-rock) collective headed by Jim McHugh and spiritually guided by free-jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, and Universal Indians features nearly 30 musicians seemingly playing at the same time.

These sprawling songs hang together loosely, dense and busy with different textures, which are caked on in thick brushstrokes to sound large and layered: Jeff Tobias and Alexis Daglis' saxophones squall through "Assholes for Eyeballs", adding a grainy dissonance, while the marching-band brass make "One More Trip" sound like the coolest field show ever. "Angel of Meth" features girl-group harmonies and "Be My Baby" drums. Descending guitar riffs fall through "Dead Man" and "In the Woods"; choirs of backing vocals echo the choruses, punctuating McHugh's drunken vocals with Stonesy staccato ooh-oohs; gospel cries occasionally pierce the din. Ambient interludes "Birdsong + Footsteps, Flute, Horn" and "Disintegrating Flowers" betray a hippie party vibe, offset by the children chanting and giggling through "Well Fuck You Then".

At times Dark Meat lumber along, as if cramped by the tiny compact disc that holds them all like General Zod, but the loose rhythm section-- at least four strong-- keeps the band surprisingly agile, laying down classic-rock thunder and r&b boogie with equal bravado. As a result, even when the songs descend into a mire of controlled cacophony-- and almost all of them do-- the band can easily and gradually rebuild the rhythms and melodies element by element. If it becomes a predictable tack, it's no less effective for being repetitive.

At the center of this maelstrom is McHugh himself, the ringleader and chief songwriter. Not only does he demonstrate résumé-quality personnel management skills, but his lyrics-- whether conjuring a dead friend, detailing an arduous spiritual journey, or just flipping the bird to anyone in earshot-- walk the line between angry and hopeful, fearful and fantastical. As a singer, he sounds emboldened by the crowd behind him, as if drunk on their company. Universal Indians would be interesting only for the logistics of the undertaking-- I imagine shows where the distinctions between performer and audience is blurred completely-- but the group's communal excitement make Universal Indians a fascinating feat, surprisingly accessible and rewarding.

Truce Opium (2009)

I saw Dark Meat play a small club in Washington D.C. shortly after the release of their debut album, Universal Indians. The Athens collective, whose members numbered well into double digits, couldn't all fit on the tiny corner stage, so a guitarist and a horn player had to play from the audience. Decked out in warpaint and throwing handfuls of confetti like grenades, they actually outnumbered the crowd, which seemed at the time both sad and somehow impressive. Bandleader Jim McHugh has a vision, and while it may not be logistically or financially feasible, he never leaves that fifth tambourine player at home.

For their second album, Truce Opium, Dark Meat have shed a few members-- they're back down into the single digits-- but they actually manage to expand their sound. Where once they mixed the most avant of jazz influences with the Stonesiest of classic rock, now the band blends in, well, pretty much everything imaginable: metal drone, prog effects, throat singing, Southern folk, even granola-crusted jamband. Predictably, Truce Opium bursts at the seams with ideas: A fife rises out of the din on opener "The Faint Smell of Moss" to give the percussive riffs more emphasis. On "Future Galaxies", the horns swell and subside hypnotically, recalling the Doppler Effect keyboards on Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", and closer "Song of the New Year" is a 12-minute sing-along dirge that slowly accrues instruments even as it threatens to fall apart.

That crammed conceptuality is an essential part of Dark Meat's appeal, but those densely packed ideas don't seem to be arranged as exactingly or as excitingly as they were on Universal Indians, which is another way of saying the new songs aren't as strong. By embedding free-form noise into traditional song shapes, they made classic rock sound exotic and made the conceptual sound earthily accessible. But on Truce Opium, the songs are almost carelessly loose, with no recognizable elements to tether their jamming or shape their noise. "When the Shelter Came" twists and tangles itself melodically, initially coming across as anthemic before eventually wandering off into an extended horn break and then collapsing. It sounds unfinished; the shelter never comes.

Still, the novelty of such an unwieldy lineup translates into a distinctively dense sound, so that even when Truce Opium feels unmoored and aimless, the sheer force of Dark Meat comes through clearly, as on "The Faint Smell of Moss" and the short, spastic "Yonderin'", two of the most lucid songs here. Ironically, the best track may be one of the longest: After a rambling intro, the 10-minute "No One Was There" breaks down into an extended drum-rooted jam punctuated by an ascending theme that makes an effective hook for 10 minutes. Dark Meat still play it as loudly as possible, which compensates for so many shortcomings. (pichfork.com)

link in comments

Gale Garnett &The Gentle Reign - Sausalito Heliport (1969)

2012-01-16T16:20:00.003+01:00

Dick Rosmeni - guitar
Rob Fisher - bass
Michael Aragon - drums, percussion
Bruce Horiuchi - guitar
Tony Hill - keyboards
Gale Garnett - vocal

Gale Zoë Garnett (born 17 July 1942) is a New Zealand-born Canadian singer best known in the United States for her Grammy-winning folk hit "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." Garnett has since carved out a career as a writer and actress.

Garnett was born in Auckland, New Zealand. When Garnett was 11, her family moved to Canada, and she made her public singing debut in 1960, while at the same time pursuing an acting career making guest appearances on television shows such as 77 Sunset Strip. She made her "New York nightclub debut" in 1963, and was signed that same year to RCA Records. In the fall of 1964, Garnett scored a number four pop hit with her original composition "We'll Sing in the Sunshine" (also #1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary singles chart for seven weeks and a Top 50 country hit), and recorded her debut album, My Kind of Folk Songs, for RCA Victor. Riding the success of "We'll Sing in the Sunshine," which won a 1965 Grammy for Best Folk Recording, Garnett continued to record through the rest of the 1960s with her backing band the Gentle Reign. However, her follow-up to "We'll Sing In The Sunshine," "Lovin' Place," was her only other single to chart in America. Garnett appeared twice on ABC's Shindig! and The Lloyd Thaxton Show at the height of her singing fame in the mid 1960s.

Garnett delivered a notable performance in the Rankin-Bass feature Mad Monster Party in the late 1960s, with the memorable tunes "Our Time to Shine" and "Never Was a Love Like Mine." At this period she had begun to be more influenced by the counter-culture and had embraced psychedelic themes to some extent. In the late 1960s she recorded several albums of psychedelic-inflected music with the Gentle Reign.

Although Garnett had retired from the music business by the 1980s, she continued appearing in feature films (such as 2002's My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and on television shows, usually in supporting roles. In subsequent years, she also branched out into journalism, writing essays, columns, and book reviews for various newspapers and magazines. She also wrote and performed two one-person theater pieces, Gale Garnett & Company and Life After Latex.

Garnett published her first novel, a romance titled Visible Amazement, in 1999. She followed Visible Amazement up with Transient Dancing in 2003, the novella Room Tone in 2007, and Savage Adoration, her latest release, in 2009.

link in comments

Noise to Silence - Acid Stasi House (2011)

2012-01-16T15:40:00.001+01:00

Acid Stasi House to tytuł sesji zrealizowananej przez Annę Nacher i Marka Styczyńskiego w grudniu 2011 roku w Berlinie, w jednym z tamtejszych budynków byłego Stasi. Sesja ta rozpoczyna oficjalnie nowy projekt Noise to Silence o radykalnym muzycznym charakterze. Muzycy skupią w nim swoje doświadczenia z praktyką real time, z muzyką intuicyjną, z nowymi instrumentami oraz archeologią mediów.

Noise to Silence is a project inaugurated in 2010 by Anna Nacher and Marek Styczynski of Magic Carpathians fame, to pursue their longstanding interest in free form, real time composition and sound installations. Occasionally some other performers and artists are invited to contribute.

Soundtrack for electric astral trips, anywhere between Sun Ra, No Neck Blues Band, Keiji Haino and what not... Plus secret life of axolotl guided by voices of Alaskan Fire Drum.

The album has been recorded live at Stasi House, Schnellerstr., Berlin, in December 2011. Anna Nacher (voice, lap steel guitar, Alaskan fire drum), Marek Styczyński ( electric violin), Jacek E Zero (vintage electronics, voice) - The Curators.

Roy Ayers Ubiquity - He's Coming (1972)

2012-01-16T11:23:00.004+01:00

Roy Ayers (ur. 10 września 1940 w Los Angeles) - wibrafonista, muzyk i kompozytor funkowy, soulowy i jazzowy. Ayers rozpoczął swoją karierę od jazzu, wydając kilka albumów dla Arista Records – amerykańskiej wytwórni płytowej założonej w 1974 przez Clive'a Davisa. Kolejnym krokiem na jego artystycznej drodze było wstąpienie w szeregi wytwórni Polydor Records i zwrot w kierunku R&B i disco. Roy Ayers jest uważany za ojca chrzestnego acid jazzu, a jego ponadczasowe utwory, wciąż zaskakujące swą świeżością, są inspiracją dla młodych pokoleń ludzi poszukujących w muzyce podobnych wartości i emocji. Jednocześnie produkcje Ayersa to nieocenione źródło sampli wykorzystywanych chętnie przez twórców hip-hopu - jego nieśmiertelny hit, „Everybody Loves The Sunshine”, to prawdopodobnie jeden z najczęściej samplowanych utworów na świecie. Z twórczości artysty garściami czerpali m.in. A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, a także mnóstwo hip-hopowych producentów, odwołujących się do jazzowych korzeni. Wielu z nich, jak Erykah Badu, uważało za zaszczyt możliwość współpracy w Ayersem w studiu . W Polsce po raz pierwszy pojawił się 18 lipca 2009 roku w Szczecinie na festiwalu Boogie Brain.

Roy Ayers dorastał w rodzinnie muzycznej - jego ojciec grał na puzonie, a matka uczyła młodziutkiego Ayersa gry na pianinie. Gdy miał pięć lat Roy dostał w prezencie pałeczki do gry na wibrafonie, jednak naukę gry na tym instrumencie, będącym przez następne lata jego znakiem firmowym, rozpoczął dopiero w wieku lat siedemnastu. Dorastał w Los Angeles w dzielnicy South Park, która była wówczas epicentrum muzyki afroamerykańskiej. Szkoły, do których uczęszczał (Wadsworth Elementary, Nevins Middle School, and Thomas Jefferson High School), znajdowały się bardzo blisko Central Avenue (odpowiednika nowojorskiego Harlemu).

W wieku lat dwudziestu Ayers, zafascynowany sceną jazzową zachodniego wybrzeża, nagrywał z takimi artystami jak Curtis Amy (1962), Jack Wilson (1963-1967), and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra (1965-1966), koncertując jednocześnie z Teddy Edwards, Chico Hamilton, Hampton Hawes i Phineas Newborn. Koncertowa sesja z Herbie Mannem na plaży Hermosa w Lighthouse rozpoczęła okres czteroletniej współpracy obu panów, jednak przede wszystkim otworzyła Ayersa na inne gatunki muzyczne poza bebopem, na którym się wychował.

W 1970 roku, po wydaniu trzech albumów pod opieką Herbie Manna dla wytwórni płytowej Atlantic, Ayers utworzył własny projekt pod nazwą The Roy Ayers Ubiquity. W okresie swojej działalności grupa nagrała kilka płyt dla wytwórni Polydor z tak wielkimi postaciami jak Sonny Fortune, Billy Cobham, Omar Hakim czy Alphonse Mouzon. W dorobku muzyka znajduje się także muzyka filmowa (Coffy /1973).

W latach osiemdziesiątych rockowo - jazzowe granie Ayersa powoli ewoluowało w kierunku R&B, funku i disco. W 1980 roku Ayers nawiązał współpracę z nigeryjskim muzykiem Fela Anikulapo Kutim, co zaowocowało założeniem wytwórni płytowej Uno Melodic Records i współprodukcją płyt wielu ówczesnych artystów.

W latach dziewięćdziesiątych, okresie wzrastającej popularności hip-hopu, Ayers uczestniczył w nowatorskim projekcie, łączącym ów gatunek muzyczny z elementami jazzu, na wydanej w 1993 płycie Guru's Jazzmatazz, koncertując jednocześnie wraz z jej współtwórcami - Guru i Donaldem Byrdem.

Harry Whitaker - piano,organ, voc
Roy Ayers - vibraphone, organ, voc
Carol Smiley, Gloria Jones, Victoria Hospedale - backing voc
John Williams, Ron Carter - bass
Jumma Santos - congas
David Lee, Jr. - drums
Billy Cobham - drums, percussion
Bob Fusco, Sam Brown - guitar
Sonny Fortune - sax, flute
Selwart Clarke - strings

Once one of the most visible and winning jazz vibraphonists of the 1960s, then an R&B bandleader in the 1970s and '80s, Roy Ayers' reputation s now that of one of the prophets of acid jazz, a man decades ahead of his time. A tune like 1972's "Move to Groove" by the Roy Ayers Ubiquity has a crackling backbeat that serves as the prototype for the shuffling hip-hop groove that became, shall we say, ubiquitous on acid jazz records; and his relaxed 1976 song "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" has been frequently sampled. Yet Ayers' own playing has always been rooted in hard bop: crisp, lyrical, rhythmically resilient. His own reaction to being canonized by the hip-hop crowd as the "Icon Man" is tempered with the detachment of a survivor in a rough business. "I'm having fun laughing with it," he has said. "I don't mind what they call me, that's what people do in this industry."

Growing up in a musical family -- his father played trombone, his mother taught him the piano -- the five-year-old Ayers was given a set of vibe mallets by Lionel Hampton, but didn't start on the instrument until he was 17. He got involved in the West Coast jazz scene in his early 20s, recording with Curtis Amy (1962), Jack Wilson (1963-1967), and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra (1965-1966); and playing with Teddy Edwards, Chico Hamilton, Hampton Hawes and Phineas Newborn. A session with Herbie Mann at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach led to a four-year gig with the versatile flutist (1966-1970), an experience that gave Ayers tremendous exposure and opened his ears to styles of music other than the bebop that he had grown up with.

After being featured prominently on Mann's hit Memphis Underground album and recording three solo albums for Atlantic under Mann's supervision, Ayers left the group in 1970 to form the Roy Ayers Ubiquity, which recorded several albums for Polydor and featured such players as Sonny Fortune, Billy Cobham, Omar Hakim, and Alphonse Mouzon. An R&B-jazz-rock band influenced by electric Miles Davis and the Herbie Hancock Sextet at first, the Ubiquity gradually shed its jazz component in favor of R&B/funk and disco. Though Ayers' pop records were commercially successful, with several charted singles on the R&B charts for Polydor and Columbia, they became increasingly, perhaps correspondingly, devoid of musical interest.

In the 1980s, besides leading his bands and recording, Ayers collaborated with Nigerian musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, formed Uno Melodic Records, and produced and/or co-wrote several recordings for various artists. As the merger of hip-hop and jazz took hold in the early '90s, Ayers made a guest appearance on Guru's seminal Jazzmatazz album in 1993 and played at New York clubs with Guru and Donald Byrd. Though most of his solo records had been out of print for years, Verve issued a two-CD anthology of his work with Ubiquity and the first U.S. release of a live gig at the 1972 Montreux Jazz Festival; the latter finds the group playing excellent straight-ahead jazz, as well as jazz-rock and R&B. --- Richard S. Ginell, All Music

link in commnets

Hash Jar Tempo - Well Oiled (1997)

2012-01-15T13:46:00.000+01:00

Hash Jar Tempo to projekt muzyczny Filadelfijczyków z Bardo Pond oraz pochodzącego z Nowej Zelandii eksperymentalnego gitarzysty i kompozytora Roya Montgomery'ego. Zespół powstał w marcu 1995 roku i pozostawił po sobie dwa albumy "Well Oiled" (1997) i "Under Glass" (1999). Jak przystało na skład, na obu albumach króluje niepodzielnie przestrzenna, pełna potrójnych gitarowych brzmień, psychodeliczna improwizacja.

Hash Jar Tempo was the name applied to the infrequent collaborations between Psychedelphia space-rock combo Bardo Pond and New Zealand-based experimental guitarist Roy Montgomery. They first teamed in March of 1995 to record the guitar freakout Well Oiled, and when Montgomery returned to the U.S. in 1998 to appear at San Francisco's Terrastock II festival, he made a stop at Bardo Pond's new Philadelphia area recording studio to team for a second session which a year later yielded the album Under Glass.

Recorded in a one day session, Well Oiled lives up to the Krautrock-inspired goof of the band name (think Ash Ra Tempel) without simply replicating the time. Instead, it very much is what is promised, a collaboration between Roy Montgomery and Bardo Pond that lives up to the experimental and exploratory heights both are easily capable of. All cuts are untitled, and given the improvisational nature of the disc, the feeling is that of just listening in on six fine players working together and seeing what can happen without prompting. Unlike the group's semi-namesake, Hash Jar Tempo doesn't punish and haunt so much as it does engagingly trip out, with the right head-nodding pace and echoing chimes that will attract both older stoners and younger shoegaze freaks. There are certainly some pretty intense moments, though -- the fourth track is one of the best, a subtly relentless freakout that feels like slow magma crushing everything before it, with some wild guitar work deep in the mix. Montgomery sometimes isn't as immediately apparent on the cuts, but at points he's clearly present -- if it isn't him doing the central guitar chime on the third track, it's definitely him with all the squalling noises deep in the mix around the core glazed flow. From there things build in slow intensity, never quite exploding at the end but with a constant sense that all the cascading feedback -- unaccompanied by any drumming -- will yet totally let loose. Another Montgomery standout is his majestic lead line that kicks things off on the fifth track, arcing up and down and up again with all the power and melancholy of his work on Temple IV.

Under Glass is another release from two already great abstract projects -- the Hash Jar Tempo moniker denotes a collaboration between New Zealand's Roy Montgomery and the Bardo Pond, artists whose individual work explores the extremes of spacey, atmospheric rock. Under Glass consists of eight long compositions formed from slow-building swells of sound, sometimes with a dramatic, lumbering feel and sometimes with a more drugged-out and sedate tone. The aspect of the group's work that separate them from similar projects, however, is their use of indistinct, barely present bits of drums and vocals, making Under Glass seem less like an exercise in ambience and more like a spacey rock band as seen through a dense and disorienting fog. (allmusic)

link in comments

Oranżada - Samsara (2010)

2012-01-15T08:34:00.004+01:00

Skład tego kultowego napoju został powiększony. Oranżada to teraz czterech muzyków. Miało to niewątpliwy wpływ na brzmienie nowej płyty zespołu z Otwocka. Czy muzyka grupy bardzo się zmieniła? Nie. To dalej ta Oranżada serwująca nam psychodelicje. Termin wymyślony przez Michała Krysztofiaka przyjęty i rozpowszechniony przez dziennikarzy Gazety Wyborczej przy okazji wydania pierwszej płyty w 2005 r. Przybyły do zespołu przed nagraniem płyty Maciek Łabudzki (ex-Żywiołak) przyczynił się do większego zrytmizowania utworów, wnosząc ze sobą świat przeszkadzajek, bębenków. Za jego sprawą usłyszymy gdzieś w tle utworów dźwięki: okaryny, fujary pasterskiej harmonijki ustnej czy też węgierskiego fletu. Mroczny klimatem, mruczący niski głos pojawiający się w utworze „Samsara”, przypominający śpiewy ludu Tuva to też jego zasługa. Reszta zespołu nie pozostaje w tyle. Robert Derlatka (basista) i Michał Krysztofiak (gitara) położyli duży nacisk na linie wokalne i wykorzystali swoje talenty w użyciu dodatkowego instrumentarium - pianina, harmonijki i duduka. Pojawiają się partie śpiewane razem z zaproszonymi wokalistkami Anią Piotrowską i Karoliną Kozak. Artur Rzempołuch (perkusja) kolejny raz nie ograniczył się do swojego macierzystego zestawu bębnów dokładając dźwięki fletu, Philicorda, oraz nietypowe instrumentarium jak: falująca blacha, przelewana woda.

Powstała płyta niezwykła. Niezwykła dlatego bo z jednej strony to nadal ta sama Oranżada, a z drugiej zupełnie inna płyta od dwóch poprzednich. Płyta pokazuje że w czasach wymuszających na zespołach zmianę kierunku w stronę lżejszych popowych brzmień nie straciła swojego ducha wolności twórczej. Utwory dynamiczne (Samsara, Przecież to masz, Oczekiwanie) sąsiadują z formami delikatnymi, subtelnymi, w pewnym sensie nowymi w twórczości tej grupy (Spóźniony i boso, Dlaczego słońce tak mocno świeci). Całość pływa w specyficznym brzmieniu lat 70 tych (Droga, czy Statek). Różnorodność muzyczna połączona z bardzo spójna warstwą tekstów tworzy zamknięty koncept, album. Ostatni akord tej płyty to mini słuchowisko pt: „Jazda do Otwocka” fragmenty wiersza Mirona Białoszewskiego wykorzystane przez aktorów Teatru im. S. Jaracza w Otwocku Przemka Skoczka i Krzysztofa Czekajewskiego wynoszą płytę ponad zwykłe wydawnictwo z muzyką rockową.

Na krążku nie zabrakło muzycznych gości. Swoje zacne płody pozostawili tutaj: Anucha Piotrowska (Żywiołak), Karolina Kozak (działalność solowa, Dr.No), Lidia Jaczech, Bolek Błaszczyk (Grupa MoCarta) z synem Mikołajem, Paweł Jordan (ex Kult).

Podsumowując, trzecie dziecko ORANŻADY to bardzo udane dzieło. Płyta za sprawą swojej melodyjności zadowoli fanów szeroko pojętej muzyki młodzieżowej, a za sprawą kompozycji, artyzmu, aranżu, przypadnie również do gustu wytrawnym miłośnikom muzyki alternatywnej, psychodelicznej, dźwięków „odjechanych”. Ma tą cudowną cechę charakterystyczną dla muzyki wartościowej – każdy kolejny odsłuch pozwala coraz bardziej odkrywać te utwory, zaczynamy słyszeć szczegóły których wcześniej nasze zmysły nie zarejestrowały. Muzyka zespołu zmienia się, ewoluuje, ale naczelne hasło określające jego styl pozostaje nadal aktualne: „zbyt popowi jak na awangardę i zbyt awangardowi jak na pop”. (independent)

Robert Derlatka - bas,śpiew, trąbka, instr. klawiszowe
Michał Krysztofiak - gitary,śpiew, tamburyno
Maciej Łabudzki- instr. perkusyjne
Artur Rzempołuch – perkusja, flet

Gościnnie:

Anucha Piotrowska – śpiew
Karolina Kozak – śpiew
Lidka Jaczech – śpiew
Bolek Błaszczyk - wiolonczela
Mikołaj Błaszczyk – wiolonczela
Paweł Jordan – saksofon
Przemysław Skoczek i Krzysztof Czekajewski – narracja utworu „Impro- Miron”

Oranżada originated between year 2001 and 2002 thus artistically defining the long-lasting (not only musical) relationship of three friends. For over three years the band was touring with concerts throughout Poland gathering positive reviews. Oranżada took part in such events as II Festival of Alternative Art The Best OFF in Żak Club (with.: Lech Janerka, Ścianka, Marcin Dymiter, Tymon Tymanski, Von Zeit, Pudelsi, Łódź Kaliska) or the peculiar "Festiwal w Krajobrazie" 2004 in Inowłódz (with: Pathman, One Inch of Shadow, Hati, The Band of Endless Noise).

At the same time, for the last two years the band has been working on the album Oranżada. The majority of the material was recorded in September 2003 and reflects the band's musical achievement of that time. The basic, very classical instrumentation used by the band (guitar, bass, percussions and vocals) was enriched with the sound of synthesizers, organs, vibraphone, flute, as well as real sounds on the album. The music oscillates around psychedelic sounds, whether the means of expression are rock-like, kraut-rock, avantgard or pop themes. Significant elements of the compositions are trans, noise, and improvisation.

What is most attractive about the album and Orażada music as a whole is its freshness and honest emotional expression. The album was recorded and mixed at the Rogalów Analogowy Studio of Wojtek Czern with the use of vintage equipment and instruments without the use of a computer. This audibly "shows through" in the analog and singular quality of sound and is the clear advantage of this album.

Until now the only official publication where Oranżada recordings could be found was the Piotr Kaczkowski (dj of Polish Radio) "minimax.pl" split released in December 2003.

link in comments