Tradizionale sfornata di nuovi album di inizio settembre per l'etichetta Cuneiform: stavolta ci sono un doppio Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic d'annata restaurato e arricchito di inediti, un cd con dvd per gli italiani Deus Ex Machina registrati entrambi presso il celebre club Le Triton a Les Lilas (Francia), un nuovo capitolo per The Microscopic Septet dopo le ristampe due anni fa di ben quattro loro album, l'incontro di Richard Pinhas e Merzbow e soprattutto l'atteso Golden Section per Isotope, collezione di inediti dal vivo tutti dell'epoca in cui del gruppo faceva parte anche Hugh Hopper.
Birdsongs of the Mesozoic - Dawn of the Cycads
Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic began in 1980 as a side project by half of Boston’s famed rock band, Mission Of Burma: Roger Miller and Martin Swope. Miller and Swope joined forces with Rick Scott and Erik Lindgren. Perhaps because of their tie to the ever-popular Burma or perhaps because of their sheer excellence Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic earned international recognition for their innovative sound. The New York Times called them “the world’s hardest rocking chamber music quartet.” Their unlikely mix of rock, punk, classical, minimalism, and free-form sound appealed to a broad range of musical tastes. As Roger remembers in the liner notes, “If I had to say what I thought was most unique about the band, it was that we actually played rock clubs and basically pulled off this rather unorthodox thing. Well sure, we pissed off some rockers (“Just look at ’em up there, shuffling their papers!”), but that wasn’t really our concern. If this odd quartet wasn’t about as different as you could get and still play those venues, well at least we put up a pretty good fight.” Rick Scott comments, “We were always the square peg in a world of round holes. Our instruments weren’t bass, guitar, and drums, but guitar, three keyboards, and drum machine (with turntable, water can, washboard, and clarinet thrown in for good measure!). We played in rock clubs, but read from sheet music. We shared the stage with three-chord rockers, but played music from Brian Eno and Igor Stravinsky, and covered the theme from ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’. It boggles the mind how we got away with it.” For the first time ever, all of the band’s 3 recordings for Ace of Hearts (Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, Magnetic Flip and Beat of the Mesozoic) are reissued in their entirety and in the order in which they were originally heard when they were issued. In the the words of Erik Lindgren, the remastering, “sonically makes the ‘Sonic Geology’ package irrelevant.” The package comes with a 20 page booklet of notes and photos and there is a huge wealth of totally cool CDRom material - 175 photos, art files, set-lists, dioramas, letters, documents and more, (including the long-forgotten letter I wrote to them in 1984 where I attempted to poach them away from Ace of Hearts!) Additionally, there are two studio tracks and seven live tracks, none of which have ever been heard before, for over 45' of bonus material.
Deus Ex Machina - Imparis
A sextet of violin, analog keyboards, guitar, bass, drums and vocals, Deus ex Machina’s sound is a unique and unequaled blend of aggressive jazz-rock mixed with complex rhythms, 1970s-style hard-rock guitar and hints of Rock In Opposition-style avant-progressive rock, all topped by the incredible vocals of Alberto Piras, one of the most extraordinary vocalists working in rock today. For this album and for their 20th anniversary as a group, the band wanted to do something different and came up with an idea that presented a fun challenge to themselves. They had never played in France and on the outskirts of Paris, there was a world-class nightclub - Le Triton - that also featured a full recording studio as well as the ability to do a professional video shoot during performances. The band rented Le Triton for 3 days and spent two days recording. They also played a concert which was filmed. The result is Imparis, a double set that comprises a studio album of new material by the band as well as the band’s first-ever DVD. The studio CD contains 45' of new material while the DVD functions as a career overview of their last 10 years, featuring two songs each from their albums Equilibrismo Da Insofferenza, Cinque and Imparis. The concert program of the DVD is 60 minutes of professionally shot and edited live footage of the band performing completely live - there are no ‘fixes or sweetening’ of the performances and consequently, fans should find it more realistic and representative of a genuine live musical performance by a great, tight band than a typical ‘live’ DVD. Also included are extras: interviews (funny and enlightening) + Paris backstage + a short, fascinating, avant-garde, prepared piano performance by Fabrizio of a one of the album’s works + excerpts from Chapel Hill [USA 1996] + a totally over the top Italian TV performance [1996] + an charmngly dated music video that the band did in 1993. Total time of DVD is about 2 hours. Since they probably won’t be coming to your hometown this week/month/year/decade, this is probably the only way for you to see them, making this one is a no-brainer for their many fans.
Isotope - Golden Section
Isotope were one of the major (and earliest) British jazz-rock bands of the 1970s, coming along chronologically only just behind Soft Machine and Nucleus, the two UK pioneer bands in the genre. Isotope was formed by guitarist Gary Boyle in 1972. After about a year, the band signed with a major U.K. management company who got the band signed to a independent label which was owned by a film company and things really took off. By the time of their second and best-known album, Illusion, the band consisted of Gary, ex-Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper keyboardist Laurence Scott and drummer Nigel Morris. This version of the band lasted nearly 2 years and played hundreds of shows. Golden Section is over 65' of all unreleased material, taken from 3 different dates, all from the period when Hugh was a part of the band and lent his strongly distinctive style to the group; from the opening notes of the album, it’s readily apparent that Hugh is in the house! More than half the CD is a program recorded by Radio Bremen in Germany for broadcast. During this time, the band included a fifth member, percussionist Aureo de Souza, who played with the group for several months during spring/summer 1975 and added a definite Weather Report-inspired flair, but whose tenure with the group has never before been documented on record or heard! In addition to the music, Golden Section includes a 12 page booklet with exclusive interviews with the musicians, conducted by Aymeric Leroy, that gives an overview of the entire history of the band and tells the full story of the period covered by these recordings. Also included are never-before seen photographs of the group.
The Microscopic Septet - Lobster Leaps In
Originally active from 1980-1992, the “Micros” started with a basic reeds-and-rhythm texture that was sonically similar to the sound of the Swing Era, but used influences from the entire continuum of jazz. The result was a brilliant blend of fresh-sounding ideas, compositions, arrangements and inspired soloing. The Micros were one of the most celebrated of the many cutting-edge units associated with experimental music’s best-known venue, the Knitting Factory, during the peak years of the “Downtown” music movement in the late ’80s and early ’90s. In 2006, Cuneiform reissued their four albums as two double CD sets, which gained stupendous praise, attention and sales and the Micros reunited to play a few shows to celebrate their release and had such a good fun that they decided to make their reunion ‘an occasional regular thing’. So, the Microscopic Septet are back with their first album in 20 years! Their sound is the sound of jazz in America; ALL of it, from Ayler to Zorn, bebop to Basie, Ellington to Thelonious. The Microscopic Septet distill the essence of jazz into a sound that swings – a music that is intelligent, sometimes humorous, and always good fun. They aren’t afraid to have some fun with the great jazz tradition while also paying homage to it. The band came back from a well-received, two week European tour and went right into the studio to record “Lobster Leaps In” and they were in terrific form; despite the long lay-off, I think that Lobster Leaps In is their best album yet! This is a charming album filled with inventiveness and good-humored, swinging fun.
Richard Pinhas and Merzbow - Keio Line
Richard and Merzbow are both among the best-known figures in electronic rock music today. Merzbow is considered the originator of Japanese noise music and the single best-known artist in noise music today. While Richard’s work wouldn’t be considered to be strictly in the ‘noise’ arena, many of the artists in the field have expressed great interest in his pioneering use of synthesizers and electronics in rock and contemporary music from the 1970s until the present. Despite coming from very different backgrounds, they had long expressed admiration for each others work. Given all of this, it is probably not surprising that the most important electronic musicians of France and Japan should finally collaborate together! During Richard’s second tour of Japan in the fall of 2007, he performed with Merzbow in what Richard called, “an incredible concert”. A week later, at the end of this tour, they booked two days in the studio to work together again, this time on a recording. All material was recorded completely live by the two musicians, with extensive work done in the mix and re-mix stage. Keio Line (the name refers to the name of the train Richard and Masami would take from downtown Tokyo to the recording studio) is a two CD set, released at a special price, that is violent, soothing, hypnotic, noisy and trance-inducing. All aboard the Keio Line!
Note informative ed estratti audio sono in http://www.cuneiformrecords.com. Nella sezione 'Tours' del sito sono periodicamente indicati gli appuntamenti dal vivo con gruppi e musicisti di cui l'etichetta produce e pubblica gli album: per l'Italia ci saranno presto Guapo, Ahleuchatistas e Picchio dal Pozzo.
