30 aprile 2014


Louis Moholo è a Torino questo pomeriggio per celebrare il ricordo dei Blue Notes: con lui Henry Lowther, Jason Yarde, Ntshuks Bonga, Alan Tomlinson, Alexander Hawkins e John Edwards. Al concerto sarà presente anche Hazel Miller, fondatrice e anima pulsante dell’etichetta Ogun fondata insieme a suo marito, il bassista Harry Miller. Alle ore 18:00 al Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi.

Louis Moholo, nato a Cape Town nel 1940, è uno tra i più significativi artisti sudafricani. Membro fondatore dei Blue Notes, successivamente componente dell’orchestra Brotherhood of Breath (guidata da Chris McGregor, era una compagine costituita da musicisti sudafricani e dai principali musicisti della scena free jazz inglese) è stato anche tra i fondatori di gruppi come Viva La Black e della Dedication Orchestra. Moholo ha inoltre collaborato con artisti di rilievo come Derek Bailey, Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Enrico Rava, Roswell Rudd, Irene Schweizer, Cecil Taylor, John Tchicai, Keith Tippett.
Il leggendario gruppo dei Blue Notes, capitanato dal compianto trombettista Mongezi Feza portò il jazz sudafricano alla ribalta negli anni Sessanta, con i suoi migliori rappresentanti, come Dudu Pukwana, Johnny Dyani, il pianista e bandleader Chris McGregor, il batterista Louis Moholo; tutti fuggiti dal loro paese negli anni duri dell’apartheid per approdare in Inghilterra, dove arricchirono la scena musicale locale, con il loro nuovo, fresco modo di intendere il jazz. A distanza di quasi un cinquantennio, proprio Louis Moholo, l’unico sopravvissuto di quella straordinaria stagione creativa, rende omaggio a quegli artisti che seppero creare un linguaggio originale e trascinante, fondendo la tradizione sudafricana con l’arte musicale afroamericana. Per far questo Moholo dirige un gruppo di grandi solisti della scena britannica, figli della grande stagione fiorita grazie ai Blue Notes.

www.torinojazzfestival.it
http://tinyurl.com/mzn3v5s

29 aprile 2014


Dell'originale versione e-book mantiene il titolo - con il sottotitolo making love and music in the Sixties & Seventies (a memoir) - ma raddoppia contenuto e pagine: è il libro di Pamela Windo Him Through Me, finalmente pronto anche in brossura. Presso Amazon se ne scorge un'anteprima: http://tinyurl.com/pw-him-through-me

With the memory of her gifted husband Gary Windo as muse, Pamela Windo takes us back to the years of music she shared with him in the Sixties and Seventies, reliving the successes and fiascos, the trials of being an artist and mother, the exhilaration of the Hippie and Women’s Lib movements, and the challenges of an open marriage. Him Through Me is the story of a young couple’s journey through the revolutionary music world of the Sixties and Seventies. In the fall of 1969, just two months after the Hippies hijacked Woodstock, a young man leaves America and returns home to Brighton, where he knocks at the door of a girl he’d known in school. Gary has paid his dues as a saxophone player in New York City’s jazz clubs and sets his sights on rousing the British music scene. Pam has traveled in Europe and North Africa, has two young sons, and has just left her home and marriage in suburbia. Gary lives life in a major key and as his own career soars, he encourages Pam to play piano, and brings her to perform and record alongside him, in the company of Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, Soft Machine's Robert Wyatt, and Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones. She also played in groups with musicians from The Brotherhood of Breath and The Carla Bley Band. The book boldly evokes the energy and innocence of that ground-breaking and freedom-loving era of “making love not war”, in which music played the major role.

28 aprile 2014

A margine e a integrazione del suo bel libro Bathed in Lightning (Jawbone Press, 2014), resoconto dei primi anni della carriera di John McLaughlin nel cuore della scena del jazz britannico degli anni sessanta, l'autore Colin Harper rimanda a un sito web dedicato per approfondimenti, notizie, interviste e materiali aggiuntivi, capitoli e appendici presenti solo nell'edizione e-book del testo, podcast e vari altri documenti audio e video, alcuni piuttosto rari. Tra questi anche un breve estratto dalle prove di Escalator over the Hill, datato dicembre 1970, con il chitarrista in studio assieme a Carla Bley, Jack Bruce e Paul Motian.

On February 16 1969, John McLaughlin flew into New York, from London, in a snowstorm. The following day, Miles Davis, his hero, invited him to play on a record. Two years later, on the path of Bengali mystic Sri Chinmoy, John launched The Mahavishnu Orchestra - an evocation in music of spiritual aspiration and extraordinary power, volume and complexity, far beyond anything else in jazz or rock. Curiously, it was also a huge success. John McLaughlin brought rock music to its pinnacle, the end point in an evolution from Mississippi blues through Coltrane, Hendrix and The Beatles. And then, in November 1975, he hung up his electric guitar and walked away from the stadiums of the rock world for an ongoing, restless career in music of other forms. To most of the world, John McLaughlin looked like an overnight success, with a backstory going back only as far as that February in 1969. Yet he had been a professional musician since 1958, experiencing all the great movements in British music-trad jazz, rock'n'roll, R'n'B, soul, modern jazz, free jazz, psychedelic rock - a guitar for hire at the centre of the 'Swinging London', a bandmate of future members of Cream, Pentangle and Led Zeppelin, but always just under the radar. Drawing on dozens of exclusive interviews and many months of meticulous research, author and music historian Colin Harper brings that unrepeatable era vividly to life.

http://www.bathedinlightning.com
http://jawbonepress.com/bathed-in-lightning
http://www.bathedinlightning.com/bonus%20media/john_mclaughlin_video_rarities.html

27 aprile 2014

Due distinti approcci compositivi per i brani del nuovo album, il terzo, della New Orchestra di Barry Guy: Amphi + Radio Rondo (intakt, 2014). Scrive il leader: "As always I try to structure the composition to place all the players in a creative dialogue with each other, carefully grading the tensions and releases in the music to take the listener on – Amphi may be termed as "chamber music" whilst Radio Rondo looks towards a more orchestral landscape. In some ways, the listener must also adjust their expectations since the expansiveness of the concert grand piano resonating within an obvious "big picture" as in Radio Rondo, differs markedly from the (no less resonant) more internalized musical gestures of the baroque violin in Amphi. Importantly, the musicians in the BGNO deliver improvisations of nuanced sensibility in response to two quite different compositional strategies". L'ensemble, che oggi conta una dozzina di musicisti - ci sono tra gli altri Maya Homburger, Agustí Fernández, Evan Parker, Hans Koch, Herb Robertson, Johannes Bauer e Paul Lytton - sarà impegnato il mese prossimo in una residenza artistica di tre giorni presso il Cafe Oto a Londra.

http://www.intaktrec.ch/235-a.htm
http://www.maya-recordings.com/ensembles/bgno/index.html
http://cafeoto.co.uk/barry-guy-new-orchestra-three-day-residency.shtm
http://www.londonjazznews.com/2014/04/preview-interview-barry-guy-new.html

26 aprile 2014


Esce per Matchless Recordings un nuovo prezioso documento dal vivo per AMM: Place sub. v., registrato al Festival of Traditional and Avant-garde Music di Lublin (Polonia) il 16 maggio 2012. La formazione è quella immutata da anni, Eddie Prévost con John Tilbury.
Ne scrive Richard Pinnell per The Watchful Ear: "Since the dissolution of the trio version of AMM just about ten years ago now the remaining duo have released a number of albums, four of them without any guest musicians. Throughout these recordings, and in the concerts I have heard them at, Prévost and Tilbury have gradually evolved their music to a point where it feels as if they are fully comfortable as a duo and instead of seeking to find a working solution for the music post-Rowe they have over the last five years or so been pushing things forward again, engaging fully in the present, the relationship between two old friends right now, the way the music shapes itself in the moment. The past isn’t forgotten but it just doesn’t matter when two musicians sit down to improvise. It really feels with Place sub.v, a new album recorded in Poland in 2012 that Prévost and Tilbury have simplified things to this degree, and have thrown themselves so deeply into each and every sound they make. [...] This is incredibly powerful, gracefully humane music, but it is not comfortable music. Listening is an ordeal, a wrench through constant uncertainty, powerful gesture and unexpected response. It is exceptionally beautiful, and yet painfully difficult to engage with, every twist and turn a tug at the senses as the musicians push at each other, constantly asking questions, many of which are left unanswered, the music unfulfilled rather than placated with the usual AMM mannerisms. Here then may lay the essence of the difference with this recording compared to other recent AMM releases. Nothing sounds like it was added simply to round things out, nothing feels like an easy answer. When the music breaks down its because it has pushed itself to places beyond where it usually finds easy escape routes from."

http://matchlessrecordings.com/node/455
http://www.thewatchfulear.com/?p=8943

25 aprile 2014


Simon Fisher Turner torna questa sera a Trento, ospite del 62° Film Festival, per accompagnare dal vivo la proiezione del film The Epic of Everest (John B.L. Noel, 1924) recentemente restaurato dal British Film Institute. Con lui anche James Brooks, Peter Gregson e Andrew Blick. All'Auditorium S. Chiara, con inizio alle ore 21.00.

Il film ufficiale della leggendaria spedizione all'Everest del 1924 è una delle più rare pellicole conservate nell'archivio del British Film Institute. Il suo restauro ha coinciso con il 60° anniversario della conquista del 1953 da parte di Edmund Hillary e Tenzing Norgay. Quello del '24 fu il terzo tentativo di scalata della vetta più alta del mondo e si concluse con la morte di due tra i migliori alpinisti dell'epoca, George Mallory e Andrew Irvine, e diede il via ad un interminabile dibattito riguardo l'effettivo raggiungimento della cima. In condizioni atmosferiche decisamente ostili e con una cinepresa a manovella, il capitano John Noel catturò immagini mozzafiato e di grande importanza storica. La pellicola contiene i primi documenti filmati sulla vita in Tibet, con sequenze girate a Phari Dzong (Pagri), Shekar Dzong (Xegar) e al monastero di Rongbuk. Ciò che però risalta in particolar modo è la capacità di Noel di trasmettere la vulnerabilità, l'isolamento e il coraggio di questi avventurieri in uno degli ambienti più ostili al mondo. Il restauro del British Film Institute National Archive ha ripristinato la qualità delle riprese e reintrodotto i colori originali. La musicazione, composta e diretta da Simon Fisher Turner, presenta un'avvolgente combinazione di musica elettronica, suoni ambientali, strumenti e voci occidentali e nepalesi.

http://trentofestival.it/movies/891
http://trentofestival.it/highlights/the-epic-of-everest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1KSFBFSmF4

24 aprile 2014


Gli album dei This Heat saranno presto ristampati in vinile in edizioni ufficiali e di qualità ben diversa dalle copie non autorizzate attualmente circolanti. Ne danno avviso gli stessi musicisti: "Warning... Any vinyl LP "re-release" copies of This Heat ("The Blue and Yellow") or Deceit currently available are bootleg copies and we have heard reports that they are badly mastered and pressed. Please do not purchase these bootlegs! We will soon be remastering and re-pressing these LP's to highest spec with all the attention to detail that we have maintained throughout our history."

http://this-heat.com
https://soundcloud.com/thisheat

23 aprile 2014


Vedrà la luce tra poche settimane l'album che Mick Hobbs aveva iniziato a mettere a punto a metà degli anni novanta - inteso a riaprire l'antico capitolo Officer! assieme agli attuali compagni di Half Japanese e Strobe Talbot - ma mai portato a termine. Si chiama Dead Unique, e lo pubblica in vari formati l'etichetta Blackest Ever Black.

A complex but thrillingly immediate avant-pop song cycle that charms and confounds at every turn, Dead Unique will give immense pleasure not only to Officer!’s existing cult following, but to anyone with an appreciation of piquant, idiosyncratic songcraft – fans of Kevin Ayers, Flaming Tunes, Art Bears, Woo, Dislocation Dance, R. Stevie Moore, Robert Wyatt, Cleaners From Venus, Lol Coxhill or The Monochrome Set should especially pay attention. It touches upon ragged-raw rock ‘n roll, sumptuous chamber music, pastoral folk, blowsy prog-jazz and paranoid dub-space, effortlessly shifting from skronking abstraction to rousing harmonic refrain and back again.
Dead Unique is also the culmination of Hobbs’ lifelong collaborative impulse: his visionary ability to bring musicians together, galvanise them and wrestle coherence out of the collective free play of ideas, arriving at something far more than the sum of its parts. The tension between composition and improvisation is key to the LP’s power, with Hobbs abetted by an extraordinary supporting cast that includes Tim Hodgkinson (bass clarinet), Fred Collins (vocals), Patrick Q (violin), Martha Colburn (vocal), Gilles Rieder (drums), Jad Fair (vocals) and Jason Willett (bass, keyboards, trumpet). Special mention must go to John Dierker, whose superbly expressive clarinet and saxophone parts are a fixture throughout, and to Joey Stack, who takes lead vocals on ‘Good’ and the show-stopping ‘Elephant Flowers’. Nonetheless it is the voice of Hobbs – as principal writer, performer and protagonist of these songs – that resonates most powerfully. Blurring the roles of storyteller, poet and prankster, he turns memorable line after memorable line, booby-trapping them with mischievous puns, fleet-footed literary allusions, sudden digressions and shifts of register, nonsense rhymes and other wordplay. But his acute wit and flair for the absurd is moored by a deep romantic sensibility, and though it delights in the minutiae of the human comedy, Dead Unique ultimately addresses its biggest themes: love, loss, commitment, independence, the mutability and inconstancy of all things. “You lose, you learn, you advance… but you always go back.”

22 aprile 2014

New York incontra il Giappone nell'ultima versione di PAK, progetto tra i più mutevoli e longevi guidati dal chitarrista - ma qui bassista - Ron Anderson: NYJPN, con l'amico Tatsuya Yoshida e Nonoko Yoshida, reduci or ora dal primo tour insieme.
Un riassuntino è in https://soundcloud.com/magaibutsu/paknyjpn-digest.

http://www.ronanderson-molecules.com
http://magaibutsu.com/mgb
https://www.facebook.com/nonoko.yoshida.9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCgbCS-GY1E

21 aprile 2014

Shijima Hiiragi è specialista di 'progressive rock karaoke', va forte in Moody Blues, King Crimson e Pink Floyd, toccando autentici vertici con le suite di Tales from Topographic Oceans o con la summa di Tarkus. Pochi giorni fa, venerdì santo, ha fatto penitenza con due classici Hatfield and the North: Share It e Lounging There Trying.

http://chordof.life.coocan.jp/blog

20 aprile 2014

Il programma radiofonico della BBC Hear and Now ha proposto ieri sera ampie porzioni del concerto tenuto a Glasgow il 22 febbraio scorso da Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Frith e George Lewis: erano con la BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra diretta da Ilan Volkov, presentando ciascuno una propria composizione per orchestra, cui ha fatto seguito una breve improvvisazione in trio. La puntata, che contiene anche una conversazione con Frith, si riascolta per qualche giorno in http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0414dm7

In a concert devised and recorded specially for Hear and Now, Ilan Volkov conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in works by three important figures from the world of new music and improvisation. Roscoe Mitchell, founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, brings a new arrangement of his work NONAAH; we hear the world premiere of Memex by trombonist and computer music pioneer George Lewis; and English guitar experimentalist Fred Frith is the soloist in his 2003 work The Right Angel. The concert also includes an improvised set by all three musicians.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0414dm7
http://therockandrollknife.blogspot.it/2014/02/fred-frithgeorge-lewisroscoe-mitchel.html

19 aprile 2014

In occasione del loro passaggio a Budapest, il fotografo e documentarista Czabán György ha intervistato e ripreso diversi musicisti internazionali - tra cui Mats Gustafsson, Matthew Shipp, Peter Brötzmann, Paal Nilssen-Love, Ken Vandermark, Joe McPhee, Conrad Bauer, Trevor Watts - componendo un interessante omaggio al jazz contemporaneo e ai suoi linguaggi: Free the Jazz, video di settanta minuti prodotto con il collettivo Közgáz Vizuális Brigád e in collaborazione con il centro culturale A38. Lo si trova integralmente su YouTube oppure in http://www.kvb.hu/index.php/en/dokumentumfilm/65-free-the-jazz

"It's hard to describe what the word jazz means. Yet, when someone listens to jazz music almost instantly recognizes what it is, even if he never heard anything from that band before, or never encountered that type of jazz before. What makes jazz being jazz, who makes jazz being jazz. Who are these people who communicates with this extraordinary language? Can we even call jazz a language, or a form of expression; or is it more than that? Our film does not intend to answer all these questions, it only wants to show you the vast number of things that jazz is involved with, and we tried to get you closer to the fertile process that keeps only jazz alive from the various styles established in the twentieth century."

http://www.kvb.hu/index.php/en/dokumentumfilm/65-free-the-jazz
http://www.czaban.hu/index.php/bio

18 aprile 2014


Pensato per accogliere per esteso le conversazioni di Peter Brötzmann con l'amico e celebre fotografo Gérard Rouy solo marginalmente utilizzate in Soldier of the Road, film girato e prodotto da Bernard Josse e pubblicato nel 2011 anche in dvd (al momento esaurito), We Thought We Could Change The World (Wolke Verlag, 2014) è un ritratto in sé compiuto del sassofonista, dell'artista e dell'uomo, il racconto per parole e immagini di una lunga e straordinaria vicenda musicale e artistica fondamentale nella storia del (free) jazz.
Scrive Rouy in premessa: "Soldier of the Road was shot between November 2008 and August 2009. We went to different venues where Brötzmann was playing between those dates. We also had four long interviews with Brötzmann in his home in Wuppertal. Interviews of other people were made at the same time with Jost Gebers, Evan Parker, Fred Van Hove, Han Bennink, Fred Frith, Michael Wertmüller. And others with Joe McPhee, Conny and Johannes Bauer, Michael Zerang and Paal Nilssen-Love, Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson, that were not used in the movie. Bernard Josse suggested me to ask Brötzmann some specific questions, some of them I did, some others I didn't. But I felt frustrated about the fantastic amount of information that Brötzmann gave us about the history of this music that would not going to be used in that 90 minutes long film - we can easily understand why. That's how I started to realize that not using all that information would be a great loss. All interviews appearing happened either during the shooting period of the movie, or have been published by the French Jazz Magazine during the last forty years, or were never published."

http://www.peterbroetzmann.com
https://www.facebook.com/gerard.rouy
http://www.wolke-verlag.de/broetzmann-world.html
http://wolke-verlag.de/files/wolke-2014/medien/jazz/pdf/broetz_inhalt.pdf
http://www.soldieroftheroad.com


17 aprile 2014


WSB100 celebra questo mese il centenario della nascita di William Burroughs con una fitta serie di iniziative artistiche, letterarie, musicali e multimediali in diversi luoghi della downtown newyorkese, inclusi The Stone, Issue Project Room e Anthology Film Archives.
Di Burroughs è da poco uscita una corposa biografia scritta da Barry Miles, Call Me Burroughs: l'autore ne parla a lungo con John Tytell in una conversazione pubblicata anche su YouTube. E c'è un'ennesima appropriazione in contesto musicale della celebre voce dello scrittore, stavolta in chiave dub-reggae, ad opera di Dub Spencer & Trance Hill: William S. Burroughs - In Dub. 

WSB100 is downtown New York’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of William S. Burroughs, the iconic writer of Naked Lunch, Queer, Junky, and many other legendary experimental works of American literature. Events will take place at Anthology, as well as at The Stone, CUNY Graduate Center, Incubator Arts, Issue Project Room, and The Poetry Project, and will include musical performances, public readings, academic panels, film screenings, multi-media, and performance art. Artists scheduled to appear include John Zorn, Shelley Hirsch, Elliott Sharp, Steve Buscemi, Anne Waldman, Oliver Harris, Barry Miles, Laurie Anderson, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Lydia Lunch, Hal Willner, Bill Laswell, Kenneth Goldsmith, JG Thirlwell, Thurston Moore, and many more. Burroughs’ presence in the East Village in the late 1970s resulted in some amazing cross-pollination between artists working in literature, music, film, and other media, and WSB100 reflects this influence.

https://realitystudio.org

16 aprile 2014


Mentre ancora sta scorazzando tra Olanda, Belgio, Austria e Germania - da solo o in compagnia del gruppo 1000, dei percussionisti Schroeder e Rogier Smal, in duo con Steven de Bruyn oppure con Aki Takase e il rinnovato New Blues Project - già è avvertito della sorpresa pasquale che lo attende nel fine settimana (santa) a Glasgow, un Chadfest di due giorni ad altissimo tasso psichedelico: Eugene Chadbourne!

An innovative guitarist and a true maverick of modern American music, Eugene Chadbourne has spent his career both undermining and energizing the contemporary rock scene, ignoring all of the barriers traditionally placed between folk, blues, country, jazz, and rock. In addition to working within these Western formats, he feels just as comfortable exploring the sounds of various other cultures, often incorporating Asian and Middle Eastern styles and instrumentation into his creations. Because of his penchant for combining various forms, as well as inventing his own sound devices, critics find it difficult to place Chadbourne and his growing discography neatly within the scheme of American music. He is many things at once: a hillbilly improviser, a self-made raconteur, a pop gemologist and a new music eclectic who mixes up jazz, folk, noise and neovaudeville. Nonetheless, the frizzy-haired Chadbourne has remained one of the underground community’s most famous and well-regarded eccentrics since the mid-1970s. A man of self-reliance, Chadbourne regularly performs in odd places, such as record and book stores, as well as in smaller clubs and fringe music festivals. With no set lists, anything is liable to happen at a Eugene Chadbourne gig.

http://www.eugenechadbourne.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KePNDA8Nd0

15 aprile 2014


Nuovo capitolo Cordelia Records, amorevolmente dedicato a Frank Zappa come i precedenti 20 Extraordinary Renditions21 Burnt Weeny SandwichesOn Broadway: Covers Of Invention. Oggetto d'indagine questa volta sono alcune composizioni note e variamente eseguite ma mai incise da Zappa, o circolate in modo poco ufficiale, qui reinterpretate da un piccolo stuolo di collaboratori, colleghi, allievi e ammiratori. L'album, Rare Episodes, è nuovamente frutto della collaborazione dell'etichetta con Andrew Greenaway, autore del libro Zappa the Hard Way e responsabile del sito web The Idiot Bastard.

www.idiotbastard.com/RareEpisodes.htm
http://www.cordeliarecords.co.uk/Pages/New%20Things.html
https://www.facebook.com/cordeliarecords

14 aprile 2014


Per gli appassionati di ogni antica cosa di Bing Selfish, Orchestre Murphy, Amos & Sara e bella compagnia torna disponibile qualche copia dell'ep Selfish Works, con cinque brani usciti da alcune sessioni barcellonesi di inizio anni ottanta in verità destinate ad altro. Il vinile è quello originale, del 1983, mentre la copertina - artigianale, oggi come allora - è di stampa assai più recente, e leggermente modificata. Lo si ottiene via Bandcamp oppure Hyped to Death, dove c'è ancora traccia anche di 12 Minutes at the Hot Club Murphy, altro ambìto documento dell'epoca. In versione abbreviata, Selfish Works uscirà presto anche come nuovo singolo, nel tipico formato 7 pollici.

A 1981 junket to Barcelona found Bing Selfish, Amos, Chris Gray, Rob Storey, and Milk From Cheltenham recording three tracks for a compilation LP, Domestic Sampler-UMYU, alongside the once-and-future stars of the Barcelona underground. Bing and Joe Torres (a/k/a Victor Lounge of Milk From Cheltenham) stayed on, and a few months later welcomed back Rob, Chris and Rodrigo Lodwick to tape an Amos & Sara LP. The only recordings to come of this adventure, however, were the five Bing Selfish-led tracks on Selfish Works. The 12" features most of those above, plus Rita Chuli, Gabriel – who’d played sax on the Milk From Cheltenham track for UMYU, and Enric Villalba (a/k/a Victor Nubla), one of the locals who'd helped organize UMYU. Selfish Works was pressed back in London through Rob's Noise Method label, although it's officially on Bing's own El Frenzy imprint. Hardcore Messthetics/D.I.Y. fans will appreciate that most of the songs are introduced by fragments from the traditional Spanish music tape reels over which they were recording… As with the Hot Club Murphy 12", the original jackets were screened as needed: two basic designs were used, and both were modified as the screens degenerated. The "new" screened jacket combines both designs, adding a proper track-list and, for the first time, personnel-credits. Hand coloured. Differently every time. (Cover #1 had ten small drawings on a hand-colored paste-on; version #2 had a drawing of Bing. On the back both featured an enigmatic story that loosely incorporated the song-titles, but no other info...)

http://bingselfish.bandcamp.com/album/selfish-works
http://www.bingselfish.com/bing-ography.html

13 aprile 2014

Esce in una speciale edizione comprendente cd audio, dvd, vinile e libretto il nuovo album della 'cellula di intervento sassofonistica' ideata più di quarant'anni fa da Gilbert Artman Urban Sax: Inside, disponibile presso Urban Noisy.

Urban Sax is an ensemble founded by the French composer Gilbert Artman made up of massive numbers of saxophones, accompanied by percussion and sometimes voices. The group is directed by Artman and performs his compositions, which are generally repetitive and minimalist, often sounding somewhat mechanistic rather than conventionally expressive. The group was formed in 1973, when Artman organized a concert by a group of eight saxophonists he had produced at a classical music festival in Menton, in the south of France. In subsequent years, the number of players grew to 12, 16, 20, 24, and 30, and by the early 21st century, the group consisted of 52 musicians (with saxophones ranging from the soprano to bass registers). Artman frequently integrates local musicians and dancers into his performances, and thus the ensemble can encompass as many as 200 performers. Urban Sax has performed throughout Europe, in Asia and at Expo 86 in Vancouver. The group's performances are performance art happenings; players wear metallic space suit-like costumes together with gas masks, and each performance is a unique ritualistic event that is planned for the particular architectural or natural space where it is to take place.

www.urban-noisy.com
http://urban-noisy.com/artist/urban-sax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Sax
http://www.discogs.com/artist/265767-Urban-Sax

12 aprile 2014

Vraiment Autre Chose torna alla scorsa edizione del Rock in Opposition-France Event per proporre due ampie occasioni di ascolto, oggi a partire dalle ore 19.00 e domani dalle ore 17.00: http://www.radio-radio.net

Vraiment Autre Chose la petite emission musicale sans pretention d'obédience progressive est diffusée le jeudi à 21h sur Radio Radio 106.8 sur la region Toulousaine ou sur http://www.radio-radio.net

11 aprile 2014


Sean Kitching traccia un ritratto degli Henry Cow per la rivista online The Quietus soffermandosi in particolare sullo splendido album Unrest, a quarant'anni esatti dalla sua realizzazione. E nel merito si fa dire da Chris Cutler: "Lindsay had just joined and we'd had little time to rehearse or write new music with her in mind, so we went into the Manor with nowhere near enough music to complete an album. But, after our experience with Leg End we were fairly confident that, one way or another, we could assemble new material in the studio through a process of improvisation, selection, discussion, editing, overdubbing customised writing, processing and mixing. Which we did. It was an experience that probably did more to bind the band together than anything since our marathon month writing for The Bacchae; and we were very pleased with the result. For us it was a breakthrough. We were so pleased, in fact, that we invited the Virgin staff to a listening (it was still operating as a kind of family then), and were pretty crestfallen when no-one seemed to be very enthusiastic. In fact, management's general lack of interest in the band was what made us pull out of the agency and start organising our own tours and concerts soon thereafter. I think side two of Unrest is still one of our better achievements; I'd select Deluge as a great piece of music even now; and it's a piece that could never have been scored; it was a pure product of realtime playing and collective assembly. It's made of no more than a 50 second loop, some of Ruins played at half speed, several layers of minimal overdubbing, a mix-idea and a concept that grew out of itself. Working this way, you learn to listen differently. And think differently. The way side two reads is... complex; it fits together in a kind of narrative way, and it also makes a lot of unintentional commentary on different kinds of musical form; it's a snapshot, and it couldn't be made today. For us improvisation was essential, and at least 40% of any gig would be improvised. It may be harder to listen to, but it can be more rewarding too; there's a truth there."

10 aprile 2014

Registrato il 25 aprile 2013 al Forte Fanfulla a Roma, va in onda domani sera a Radiotre Suite Jazz il bel concerto in duo di Larry Ochs (sassofoni) e Donald Robinson (batteria). Alle ore 22.50.

The California contemporary creative music performers and composers Larry Ochs (soprano and tenor saxophones) and Donald Robinson (drums) have been highly active contributors to the West Coast music scene for over 30 years. They first performed together from 1991 to 1998 in the Glenn Spearman Double Trio. From 1994 to 2002, they worked with ex-Montreal bassist Lisle Ellis in the trio What We Live, a band that recorded many CDs and added incredible quests for special concerts/recordings including Dave Douglas, Wadada Leo Smith, Nels Cline, John Zorn, Miya Masaoka, Saadet Türköz and Chris Brown, among others. From 2000 until 2010, Robinson was part of the Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core featuring drummer Scott Amendola, Satoko Fujii and with Natsuki Tamura from 2007-2010. Throughout all this time, Ochs and Robinson jammed and rehearsed in Robinson’s studio, easily done as they live only 15 minutes apart. Thus, it seems inevitable that they would eventually create a special repertoire for this duo. So it goes, it is only since 2011 that they began the successful duo collaboration that has been touring last year in Europe, Canada and North America.

http://tinyurl.com/q5yfv59
http://vimeo.com/65259019

09 aprile 2014

Diretto da Mark French e presentato l'anno scorso alla prima edizione del Film Makers Festival di Hastings (Regno Unito), Hear Now è un ritratto del sassofonista Trevor Watts e un omaggio alla sua lunga carriera, da Spontaneous Music Ensemble e Amalgam alla Moire Drum Orchestra e fino ai giorni nostri, con ampie riprese di recenti concerti in duo con Veryan Weston e in quartetto con Weston, John Edwards e Mark Sanders. Ora è anche un dvd prodotto dalla Fmr.

http://vimeo.com/50233708
http://vimeo.com/50233707

08 aprile 2014

Un cd per l'etichetta Fmr documenta gli esordi della Shetland Improvisers Orchestra, esperienza nata tre anni fa durante i laboratori didattici condotti da Raymond MacDonald e George Burt e consolidata in successivi concerti in festival e club, talvolta con l'apporto di danzatori e proiezioni: First Steps, con una dedica a Lol Coxhill e un brano - For Lol - composto immediatamente dopo la sua scomparsa.

http://shetlandjazzclub.org
https://www.facebook.com/ShetlandJazzClub
http://vimeo.com/86980335

07 aprile 2014

Importanti novità discografiche in casa Magma e Offeringrispettivamente con la ripubblicazione di Ëmëhntëhtt-Réin un'edizione più sobria comprendente solo il cd audio, e un'estesa documentazione audio e video dei concerti tenuti al club Le Triton l'anno scorso. C'è inoltre una registrazione magmiana di oltre novanta minuti riesumata dagli archivi di Radio Bremen, epoca 1974: Zuhn Wohl Unsai. "Recorded by Radio Bremen, this double-CD document of a high sonic quality contains a slightly shorter than usual version of Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh, and represents with the remaining tracks Sowiloi, Drum Solo and Theusz Hamtaahk an indispensable supplement to Magma's other live albums."

http://v2.seventhrecords.com/en/magma-19/zuhn-wohl-unsai-live-in-bremen-1974-1132.html
http://v2.seventhrecords.com/magma-19/emehntehtt-re-nouvelle-edition-cd-livret-en-digipack-simple-1131.html

06 aprile 2014


Ci pensa Esoteric Recordings a riproporlo integralmente, con qualche piccola aggiunta recuperata dall'originale versione in audiocassetta: Neil's Heavy Concept Album, pastiche sapiente di progressive e psichedelia prodotto e realizzato da Dave Stewart con la crème de la crème post-canterburyana dei primi anni ottanta. Primattore è Nigel Planer, qui - come nell'inenarrabile Neil's Book of the Dead - nel ruolo di Neil Pye uscito pari pari dalla serie televisiva The Young Ones. Un autentico spasso, dalla prima all'ultima battuta.

Comedian Nigel Planer's Neil, the long-suffering hippy character from the hit BBC series The Young Ones, enjoyed huge success with his 'heavy' album from 1984. Featuring covers of songs such as Hole In My Shoe, My White Bicycle, The Gnome, Hurdy Gurdy Man and Golf Girl, the album included contributions from the likes of Dave Stewart (who also produced the album), Barbara Gaskin, Gavin Harrison, Pip Pyle, Jakko Jakszyk and Jimmy Hastings. Comedians Stephen Fry, Roland Rivron and Dawn French also made appearances. Unavailable for many years, Neil's Heavy Concept Album is an affectionate parody of psychedelic and progressive rock culture. The Esoteric Recordings reissue has been remastered from the original tapes and features four bonus tracks previously unreleased on cd.

http://nigelplaner.co.uk/prod
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neils_Heavy_Concept_Album
https://www.cherryred.co.uk/neils-heavy-concept-album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjODTX5B8dI

05 aprile 2014


Evan Parker compie oggi settant'anni, e li festeggia con uno speciale concerto al Kings Place londinese in compagnia di Phil Wachsmann, Alison Blunt, Sylvia Hallett, Dylan Bates, Aleksander Kolkowski, Benedict Taylor, Hannah Marshall, Alice Eldridge, Marcio Mattos, John Russell, John Edwards, David Leahy, Adam Linson, Django Bates, Percy Pursglove, John Rangecroft e Neil Metcalfe. Così immagina la serata: "The idea for the evening started, as always, with the choice of fellow musicians: seventeen so far, all diverse geniuses, and stalwarts of the London free improvising scene. I've worked in smaller and larger combinations with almost all of them over the years. There are existing playing relationships in smaller groups, but also the potential for completely new subgroupings, some solid ground and some outer space. Perhaps the most long-standing colleague is violinist Phil Wachsmann. We worked with Derek Bailey in the final concerts by the Music Improvisation Company. And guitarist John Russell, who I first knew at the Little Theatre Club as a young man with very adventurous taste in music - a long time ago! There's an array of small group possibilities for the first half. The regular trio I have with John Edwards and John Russell, the trio of string players Alison Blunt, Benedict Taylor and David Leahy would be obvious choices, but there are many more possibilities. The second half will be for the full group. I am working on a sequence of events to underpin that". Auguri!

Evan Parker has been playing sax since he was 14. Over his long, innovative and sometimes controversial career, he has collaborated and formed long-term associations with many jazz greats, explored the use of 'noise', experimented with home-made instruments, co-founded the ground-breaking and hugely influential Incus label, and embraced sound processing and electronica.
He is perhaps most recognized as the creator of a new solo saxophone language, extending the techniques and experiments started by John Coltrane and Albert Ayler, taking them into the realm of abstraction. His use of circular breathing techniques to create extended, complex, overlapping, repetitive and beautiful soundscapes is generally seen as the apex of saxophone virtuosity.

http://evanparker.com
http://tinyurl.com/q9whrve
http://www.kingsplace.co.uk/sound-inventor-at-70
http://www.londonjazznews.com/2014/03/evan-parker-documenatary-and-70th.html

04 aprile 2014


Elliott Sharp è a Londra al Vortex Club oggi e domani per presentare uno dei suoi lavori più importanti degli ultimi anni, Foliage (2012), basato su una partitura dinamica composta unicamente di immagini e input visivi che all'interprete chiede enorme plasticità ed elaborazioni rapide e complesse. In Italia vi si è cimentata di recente la chitarrista Alessandra Novaga, mentre per questo doppio appuntamento londinese ci saranno tra gli altri Riaan Vosloo, Liam Noble, Andrew Bain, Percy Pursglove e Jeremy Price. Durante l'esecuzione le immagini della partitura saranno proiettate e visibili anche all'esterno del club, in Gillett Square.
Foliage è anche un e-book: lo si trova in http://tinyurl.com/pldv8qx. Così lo introduce l'autore: "In its primary function, Foliage is a graphic score open to interpretation and realization by any instrumentalist or ensemble of any size; for an extended duration or a succinct hit; as a concert performance or sonic installation. Much of my composed work uses traditional notation, often the most efficient way to convey instructions to such ensembles as a symphony orchestra. Improvisation also has been extremely important for me, the best way to create social music. But there is another path between composed and improvised, that is often best represented with graphics. Foliage is a culmination of my work in this approach, the closest I’ve come to presenting the “look” of what I’m hearing when I compose in my Inner Ear." Sempre a proposito di Foliage si può ascoltare una conversazione di Sharp con David Weinstein in un contributo realizzato qualche tempo fa per Art on Air: http://artonair.org/play/11128/show/elliott-sharp-foliage

http://zoarmusic.tumblr.com
http://www.vortexjazz.co.uk
http://reversespace.org/elliott-sharp-foliage
http://bombmagazine.org/article/6954

03 aprile 2014


Da un concerto tenuto da Fred Frith e Michel Doneda a San Francisco (Stati Uniti) nel febbraio 2009 viene un cd prodotto e diffuso in questi giorni dal Centre Culturel André Malraux, in attesa di averli propri ospiti a Vandoeuvre (Francia) al Musique Action, prima o poi: "La rencontre de ces deux artistes aurait pu se produire à Vandœuvre lors du festival Musique Action... Cela viendra peut-être, soyons patients. Quoi qu'il en soit, il nous paraît important que cette belle rencontre soit présentée par la collection du CCAM, si l'on considère que Michel Doneda et Fred Frith ont participé depuis le début à notre fantastique et trentenaire aventure, écrivant avec élan, lors de chaque passage, une page complémentaire et inouïe du grand livre des musiques d'aujourd'hui." Un frammento video di quel concerto è conservato in http://nexmap.org/events/excerpts/feb_09/archive01.htm

02 aprile 2014


Pronto da ReR un mini aggiornamento al catalogo, con tutte le uscite più recenti, materiali nuovi e vecchi in distribuzione, qualche ristampa, molti gloriosi titoli Reel Recordings a prezzo speciale e altre curiosità per i collezionisti. Tra le rarità in vinile, tre pezzi d'epoca: Faust, Munic & Elsewhere (in vinile bianco); Henry Cow, Unrest (nell'edizione Broadcast Records); News From BabelWork Resumed on the Tower (l'originale, con copertina e libretto serigrafati).

http://tinyurl.com/ohuo45k

01 aprile 2014

Nella classifica degli album più ascoltati in ufficio da Frankie Clanché a Lione (Francia) il mese scorso: The Extremely Lost Tapes Until Someone Found Them, inatteso inedito dei Velvet Underground; il doppio cd autobiografico di Lambkin e Lescallet The Lost Mikes: A Christmas Dinner at Graham's Uncle's + Jason's 4 Year Old's Birthday Party, su Erstwhile Records; l'antologico The Rather Incomplete Live Recordings di Captain Beefheart, box di 36 cd a tiratura estremamente illimitata; e dell'amato Robert Wyatt la compilazione curata da Byron Coley The Best Of Robert Wyatt: Everybody Loves RW, So Why Wouldn't We?, disponibile via Cuneiform in cd, lp e in formato digitale (senza bonus tracks, per ora).