Wyatters delights (what are you listening to?)

[svennevenn]

2 from Kevin:
Kevin Ayers: Unfairground
Kevin Ayers and The Whole World: Hyde Park Free Concert 1970
3 from MoonJune (http://www.moonjune.com/):
Delta Saxophone Quartet: dedicated to you... " The music of Soft Machine (Great album!!)
Soft Machine Legacy: Soft Machine Legacy
Elton Dean and Mark Hewins: Bar Torque
5 from Norwegian Rune Grammofon (http://www.runegrammofon.com/artists/):
Arve Henriksen: Strjon
Ultralyd: Conditions for a piece of music
Susanna and The Magical Orchestra:Melody mountain
Supersilent:8
Shining: Grindstone  (progjazzrock style!)

[Max_Gate]

Gary Numan's 'Jagged' (Mortal CD001, 2006) has been darkening my door - and delighting me with its attack, which is more convincing than the younger man's theatrics.

Then again, if you play Otis Taylor's 'Respect the Dead' (Northern Blues Music 0009, 2001) you realise what's missing in the Numan album: the tears of the bereaved. Taylor is up close and personal; the prolonged harmonica is a caress.

[greystone]

I haven't posted for a while so thought I'd look in. On June 1st 1974 I saw Kevin Ayers, John Cale Brian Eno Robert Wyatt, Mike Oldfield and Nico at the Rainbow. I hadn't realised until now that there was a recording of it-it's much as I remember it-a bit of a curate's egg. Interesting to hear all the same for any Wyatt fans. I've much enjoyed the Unfairground this year and of course Comicopera. It reminded me how good Kevin Ayers was-especially Whatevershebringswesing-a wonderful album which I've been pleased to introduce to my kids. Also reminded me how good John Cale's Paris 1919 was.
I don't know about you guys but I like to find new people too. I've been much taken with Rachel Unthank's two albums this year. I've also discovered A Hawk and a Hacksaw and am still trying to make my mind up about Neutral Milk Hotel. The trusty Orchestra Baobab had a great new album out this year and I'm also growing to like Devendra Banhardt's Smoky Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. The Imagined Village is also an interesting new album-varied and thought provoking especially for those of us who are English and struggle with what that means today. Any suggestions of new things to listen to gratefully received.

[Max_Gate]

Some days I'm prone to bemoaning all and sundry rock gods as clay pigeons fit only to receive shotgun pellets. In such a mood I huff: "You like The Who? Who are you?" Listening to their post 1973 albums I'd be justified. But not when I put on 'Live at Leeds'; as 'I Can't Explain' kicks over the speakers my curmudgeonly jaw drops in wonder. If the earth doesn't move then my body does. I know, I can't explain.

[crayola_lectern]

Listening to the North Sea Radio Orchestra who I'm supporting in Brighton on Sunday.
http://www.myspace.com/northsearadioorchestra
Their music is fabulous.

[nonightsweats]

re-listening to radiohead's amnesiac now: weirdly left this on the back burner for a long time; beautiful stuff. also portishead's third - excellent dubby analogue sounds.

[rushomancy]

I tried listening to the pre-release of Portishead's Third, but sadly it's a victim of the loudness wars in this form.  :'(  Hopefully the vinyl release will actually sound listenable.  The sad thing is that I don't even own a working record player anymore, so I have to wait for the record to come out and wait for someone with a decent turntable to rip it to FLAC, and only then will I have a copy of the album that won't make me want to cry on account of sounding so bad.  And the record companies wonder why CD sales have gone in the toilet!

Mostly I've been checking out the bootlegs.  That Velvet Underground Gymnasium bootleg that just surfaced is jaw-dropping.  Finally a live recording of them that doesn't sound like it was recorded from the toilet in an abbatoir somewhere!

[nonightsweats]

That Velvet Underground Gymnasium bootleg that just surfaced is jaw-dropping.  Finally a live recording of them that doesn't sound like it was recorded from the toilet in an abbatoir somewhere!

yes, it's pretty great. i still love the 1st official live one - live 1969 - but gym has john cale on it as well.

[rushomancy]

That Velvet Underground Gymnasium bootleg that just surfaced is jaw-dropping.  Finally a live recording of them that doesn't sound like it was recorded from the toilet in an abbatoir somewhere!

yes, it's pretty great. i still love the 1st official live one - live 1969 - but gym has john cale on it as well.

Honestly they were probably a better live band in '69, but I think the sound quality on the Gymnasium one is a better than the '69 live record, IMO- not perfect, but better than anything else I've heard, with or without Cale, and I've heard pretty much everything circulating.  (Haven't heard the excerpts of the Matrix masters that are out there, but aside from that...)

Unquestionably better sounding than anything Warhol recorded (whatever his merits as an artist, he unquestionably did _not_ know how to record a rock band) or the Columbus, Ohio EPI show from November '66, and also better than "Sweet Sister Ray" from '68.  Weird to hear "Sister Ray" without organ, though!  Now if only the _other_ Gymnasium show would surface- the one "The Booker T" and the "good version" of Guess I'm Falling In Love comes from.  "Walk It and Talk It" with Cale could be really interesting!

[Max_Gate]

My favourite trumpeter from the 1950s is Kenny Dorham. As one of the best he played with the best, who benefited from his talent and said so. But neither the critics nor the public listened in sufficient quantity to save him from working in a munitions factory to pay for the pizza. 'Underrated' is the label that drops to the floor when we try to pin it on a ghost.

His albums 'Matador' and 'Inta Somethin', both featuring Jackie McLean on alto sax, are magical - if 'magic' is the perfect progression, a sense that the notes were ordained to be played in this order yet still (and how) surprise the listener.

[Max_Gate]

Roy Harper: 'Counter Culture' (2005): The witty title announces this near-perfect 2CD jaunt through forty years of bittersweet pastoral raving from the original sophisticated beggar who is, unfortunately, best known for his vocals on Pink Floyd's 'Have a Cigar'. In his own words, "And twelve hours of sunset/Half a day in the sky/I'll see you tomorrow/As the steel crow flies/O how time flies..."

[Max_Gate]

Urmas Sisask: 'Starry Sky Cycle' (Lauri Vainmaa, Piano) - Finlandia CD 4509-95880-2

Sisask partners composition with astronomy. He runs an observatory and his works are dialogues with the cosmos. We could argue that all art is, however Sisask directly references the heavens. These pieces are engaging if over-reliant on ostinato patterns - a device he uses without Stravinsky's mercurial inventiveness. The performance and recording are luminous, airy, wonderful.

Now, what are you listening to?
__________________

[moochsid]

Roy Harper: 'Counter Culture' (2005): The witty title announces this near-perfect 2CD jaunt through forty years of bittersweet pastoral raving from the original sophisticated beggar who is, unfortunately, best known for his vocals on Pink Floyd's 'Have a Cigar'. In his own words, "And twelve hours of sunset/Half a day in the sky/I'll see you tomorrow/As the steel crow flies/O how time flies..."

The Harper lyric that has stuck in my mind is from Nobody's got any Money in the Summer ( Ithink) and goes..
"like a Turkish wrestler's jockstrap cooked in chipfat on a greasy day".

Which shows that old Roy can turn his hand to romance when the mood takes him.

Currently listening to Cercle Noir a compilation of soundtracks to Jean Pierre Melville films, Best of Pascal Comelade and lots of Ghedalia Tazartes.

[Max_Gate]

C.P.E. Bach: Four Hamburg Symphonies: Collegium Aureum (BASF/Harmonia Mundi, 1973)

His old man would be proud of such verve. Bracing as a southerly but uplifting, optimistic. And wonderful for this dullard weekend, when even grass-stalks crumple under the weight of raindrops.

[Max_Gate]

I tried listening to the pre-release of Portishead's Third, but sadly it's a victim of the loudness wars in this form.  :'(  Hopefully the vinyl release will actually sound listenable.  The sad thing is that I don't even own a working record player anymore, so I have to wait for the record to come out and wait for someone with a decent turntable to rip it to FLAC, and only then will I have a copy of the album that won't make me want to cry on account of sounding so bad.  And the record companies wonder why CD sales have gone in the toilet!

Yes, this tendency to compress the goodness out of the music when remastering leaves us with the equivalent of a squeezed lemon. Fortunately I listen to lots of jazz (which is how I happened upon Robert Wyatt all those years ago) so the sonic news is better. Labels like Blue Note and ECM are masterfully engineered.

Paul Motian's latest: 'Time & Time Again' (ECM) is a case in point. Each note is etched in the air. William Hazlitt talked of 'the spirit of the age' and this recording is a gorgeous, informed evocation of just that. I suspect that Joe Lovano's tenor sax isn't as indelible as Carlos Ward's alto on Motian's classic 'Tribute' (1974), however he does more than enough to keep me hanging. And Bill Frisell's guitarwork is a delight: it's like watching a dragonfly dance (but in a stately way) over a still creek.