Anche l'ex-fanzine Facelift ha un anniversario da festeggiare più o meno in questo periodo, allo scoccare dei 35 anni dalla data della sua prima uscita, nel maggio 1989. Le pubblicazioni su carta si fermarono nel 1998 - alla vigilia di un numero 20 concluso ma mai stampato - per poi riprendere in altra forma sul web tramite due canali complementari, un blog (Facelift - The Canterbury scene(zine) continued…) e un gruppo su FB (Facelift - The Canterbury Scene and Beyond...), quest'ultimo attualmente con poco meno di duemila iscritti. Responsabile allora come ora è Phil Howitt, atteso a breve anche per brindare al completamento del suo corposo studio su Hugh Hopper. Auguri!

https://canterburyscene.com
https://www.facebook.com/facelift
https://homepages.3-c.coop/facelift

E mezzo secolo è trascorso anche dal celebre concerto dell'8 settembre 1974 di Robert Wyatt e amici (e che amici!) al Theatre Royal Drury Lane a Londra, documentato ufficialmente da Hannibal/Rykodisc solo nel 2005, in verità conosciuto da tempo e per altra via da ammiratori e appassionati. Uno di questi, Shlomo Polonsky, ne ha prodotto qualche anno fa una graziosissima ricostruzione animata, tuttora disponibile via Vimeo.

Così Wyatt nel 2020: "I've listened to it since. I think it's the one concert that... If I'd have only one of my records it would probably be that one. Because it is what it says, it's a live concert. I say it's nostalgic, but it's an evidence of what it was like - doing music in front of people for people and how I would respond to their response which cannot be reproduced in the studio. It's more edgy and of course you can't change any mistakes, you have to except those, but you're constantly adapting somehow to the feedback in a some way that's hard to explain".

http://www.disco-robertwyatt.com/drury_lane
https://September_8,_1974_Theatre_Royal_Drury_Lane
https://vimeo.com/859035582

 

Compie mezzo secolo in questi giorni - uscì ufficialmente il 10 settembre 1974 - uno degli album più importanti dei Magma, Köhntarkösz, registrato a maggio di quell'anno a Valbonne (Francia) con le attrezzature del Manor Mobile governate da Simon Heyworth e la produzione di Giorgio Gomelsky. In formazione con Christian Vander c'erano Stella Vander, Klaus Blasquiz, Gerard Bikialo, Michel Graillier, Jannick Top e Brian Godding. Leggendario!

Not being a man who tended to sit on his laurels Christian Vander decided, with K​ö​hntark​ö​sz, recorded in 1974, to set off in a completely new musical direction, putting anyone who expected a simple encore to Mëkanïk Dëstruktïw Kömmandöh straight onto the back foot. Fortified by the success of the last album, the majority of musicians would be delighted to lay back into their own style and play safe. Not so for Vander, who was driven to surpass himself, to bring to birth a new masterwork. Considered against the other albums, K​ö​hntark​ö​sz (the composition) used a profoundly original approach to lift the rhythmic pulse and float it above the music, so that instead of marking time it continually sits above the metre. The savage virtuoso drumming of the earlier albums is here replaced by a more restrained approach, in which every stick hit seems to weigh twenty tons by contrast. The result is a mysterious incandescent atmosphere which holds the listener in breathless thrall right up to the explosive finale.

http://www.magmamusic.org

 

Conservata negli archivi di Observations of Deviance presso la statunitense WFMU, oltre ad alcune puntate relativamente recenti su Annette Peacock, Toru Takemitsu, Roland Kirk, Fred Frith e Wadada Leo Smith, si segnala quella dedicata un paio d'anni fa ad Anthony Moore, con una lunga intervista, un excursus attraverso i vari album da titolare e le nobili produzioni per altri (Kevin Ayers e This Heat), i riferimenti alle storiche avventure con Slapp Happy e Henry Cow e al contributo ad alcuni brani dei Pink Floyd. La puntata è quella del 22 luglio 2022.

https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/117619

 

Speciale attenzione tutta per Steve Beresford nella puntata di sabato scorso di Observations of Deviance curata da David Mittleman per la statunitense WFMU, con ampia e varia selezione di brani e un'intervista in due parti al Nostro in occasione della ripubblicazione di Dancing the Line. E rinnovata attenzione gli riserva anche l'etichetta del Cafe Oto, Otoroku, che rende disponibile un suo fulminante duetto con Mandhira de Saram lì registrato a gennaio di quest'anno: Ma Petite Heffalump.

https://www.wfmu.org/dancing-the-line-interview
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/steve-beresford-mandhira-de-saram

 

A trent'anni dalla scomparsa di John Stevens (1940-1994) si riunisce stasera al Cafe Oto londinese un bel gruppo di amici, collaboratori, allievi e studiosi per celebrarne il ricordo e rilanciarne gli insegnamenti: Maggie Nicols e John Butcher, Dee Bynre e Caius Williams, Phil Durrant e Mark Wastell - quest'ultimo con una bella storia da raccontare sul gran tamburo del Maestro a lungo creduto perduto e invece ritrovato - e con loro David Toop e Tony Herrington: Another Little Life.

“Music is a chance for self development, it is another little life in which it is easier to develop the art of giving, an art which makes you more joyous the more you practice it. The thing that matters most in group music is the relationship between those taking part. The closer the relationship the greater the spiritual warmth it generates, and if the musicians manage to give wholly to each other and to the situation they’re in, then the sound of the music takes care of itself. Good and Bad become simply a question of how much the musicians are giving, that’s the music’s form.” (John Stevens)

https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/john-stevens-another-little-life

 

Non è invece ancora pronto per la distribuzione internazionale il testo che Thomas Hylland Eriksen e Øivind Hånes hanno consegnato - in lingua norvegese, ma se ne attende a breve una versione in inglese - alla piccola editrice di Oslo Hærverk Forlag: Book Bottom-Historien om Robert Wyatts Rock Bottom.

I seks tiår har Robert Wyatt vært en inspirator og kreativ kraft i de fruktbare grenseområdene mellom pop, rock, jazz og noe uklassifiserbart. Robert Wyatt er er helt unik. To sekunders sang eller tre sekunders famlende poesi fremført med en finger på et enkelt tangentinstrument er nok til å gjenkjenne stemmen og stemningene hans. Denne boka er om Robert Wyatts fineste plate, Rock Bottom.

https://www.facebook.com/haerverkforlag
https://book-bottom-historien-om-robert-wyatts-rock-bottom

 

Lo si sapeva in lavorazione da anni, e proprio all'ultimo ha subìto qualche ritardo ma ora il libro - monumentale - è pronto e Joe Boyd lo sta presentando in Regno Unito e Stati Uniti con una fitta serie di appuntamenti pubblici: And the Roots of Rhythm Remain-A Journey through Global Music, fresco di stampa per Faber & Faber e tra poco disponibile anche come audiolibro con la voce dell'autore in persona.

Richard Williams era alla presentazione londinese qualche giorno fa, e ne scrive in The Blue Moment aggiungendo proprie considerazioni: "And the Roots of Rhythm Remain is an 850-page examination of the forms of popular music with which Joe Boyd has engaged in Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil, Argentina, Bulgaria, Senegal, Albania and elsewhere during his six decades as a successful record producer and enlightened facilitator of musical projects. For many years now it’s been rumoured that Boyd was writing a history of “world music”, a tale perhaps beginning with his presence at the famous meeting at a London pub in 1987 during which that rubric was invented, with the best of intentions and outcomes, as a way of persuading open-minded listeners to pay as much attention to music from other cultures as they did to their own western idioms. The result is much more interesting than a simple history; its eventual subtitle, A Journey through Global Music, conveys a much more accurate impression of what Boyd has taken on."

http://www.joeboyd.co.uk
https://www.faber.co.uk/and-the-roots-of-rhythm-remain

 

Importante nello specifico musicale e un po' anche sul piano simbolico, perché celebra i cinquant'anni di carriera del protagonista - pioniere nell'uso dei sintetizzatori analogici e modulari ancor prima che il moog fosse perfezionato - e al contempo i quarant'anni dell'etichetta che più di ogni altra ha fatto per diffonderne il lavoro. E perché è un addio: Make Way For Mother Mallard, doppio album insieme storico, attuale, e totalmente inedito di David Borden. Per Cuneiform Records.

David Borden is a woefully under-valued pioneer of electronic music and a marvelous composer. Besides his hugely important recordings and performances, he established and headed Cornell University’s Digital Music Program. He’s had a hugely active (if little noticed) career and I’m personally thrilled to be able to work with Dave again for our 40th year! (Steve Feigenbaum)

This double CD recording is our last one. We have been with Cuneiform since the 1980s. It’s been a great 50 years with various ups and downs but it has always been fulfilling and continuously enlightening to be working with so many hard-working, beautiful and generous people. (David Borden)

https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/make-way-for-mother-mallard

 

Un emozionante documento con la viva voce di Derek Jarman (1942-1994) catturata in audio vérité nel giugno 1992 all'inizio della stesura di Chroma, personalissimo rapporto sulla storia, l'uso e il significato dei colori quando già la sua vista era seriamente deteriorata e ormai sul punto di svanire. Lo ha custodito e ora divulgato Simon Fisher Turner in Life Recordings From Prospect Cottage And The Ness, rendendolo più ampiamente disponibile tramite il berlinese Digital Archive of Tapeworm dopo l'iniziale pubblicazione in poche copie su audiocassetta.

Chroma is a meditation on the color spectrum by the celebrated late artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. From the explosions of image and color in In The Shadow of the Sun, The Last of England, The Garden and Wittgenstein, to the somber blacks of his collages and tar paintings, Jarman has consistently used color in unprecedented ways, making his ideas on the subject of interest to filmmakers, film audiences, artists and students alike. Blue, his most personal and innovative film, consists of a compelling soundtrack accompanied by a monochrome blue image and is, among other things, a comment on Jarman's diminishing eyesight due to AIDS. In his signature style, a lyrical combination of classical theory, anecdote, and poetry, Jarman takes the reader through the spectrum, introducing each color as an embodiment of an emotion, evoking memories or dreams. He explains the use of color in Medieval painting through the Renaissance to the modernists and draws on the great color theorists from Pliny to Leonardo. He writes too about the meanings of color in literature, science, philosophy, psychology, religion and alchemy. Read either as a work on color, or a distillation of Jarman's artistic vision, Chroma presents an exciting perspective on the subject.

https://datworm.bandcamp.com

 

Klimperei saluta l'estate con brio invitando tutti a farsi un bel giro di valzer. Anzi, ventisei! Con Denis Fédabeille e Tom Motley: Valses balsamiques, su InPolySons.

Dansons des valses! Klimperei dès ses débuts a intégré de nombreuses valses dans son répertoire : le trois temps, c’est à la fois la stabilité du triptyque et l’envolée fragile ('A trois on part', 1-2-3-Soleil…), la tête qui tourne, l’amusement de se laisser porter ou d’entraîner, l’été et ses bals. Denis Fédabeille apporte à ce duo l’électronique décalé, voire nostalgique: les valses boitent parfois. C’est d’ailleurs lui qui a eu l’initiative de ces Valses balsamiques, en mode exercice de style (26 valses) cher au label InPolySons. C’est Tom Motley, artiste américain illustrateur de comics, qui réalise le magnifique visuel empli tous ces petits personnages pris dans des valses impétueuses pour oublier le temps (et il y en a trois) qui passe.

https://inpolysons.bandcamp.com/valses-balsamiques

 

A diciassette anni dalla sua uscita, dopo molti e profondi cambiamenti personali intercorsi, David Garland torna a uno dei suoi album più belli, The Noise In You, per provare a metterne in nuova luce la raffinatezza e i pregi: "Time is even weirder than I had realized. At this moment 2007 was 17 years ago. Important aspects of my life were so different then: I lived in midtown Manhattan, and now I’m in the countryside; my wife Anne was alive, and our son Kenji was still a kid; I was working full-time making radio shows on WNYC. In many ways, all my changes and losses have made me a different person in a different place, and I’d be inclined to describe 2007 as being “a long time ago.” But making music is apparently an activity outside of time. During the Pandemic I listened to a couple Noise In You recordings, and realized there were a few ways I could make them deliver their intent more effectively: add bass where there hadn’t been any, organize the rhythm better, rebalance the mix, etc. One rule I gave myself was to not redo any vocals. Most songs aren’t changed a lot, just focused. Adding bass was fun, filling in that previously empty frequency, and clarifying harmonies. I refer to this new version as “mixed anew,” rather than re-mixed - a term which would imply a greater transformation. If these songs were people on stage, they’re now better lit, and I'm pleased to see them more clearly."

https://davidgarland.bandcamp.com/noise-in-you-new-version

 

E qualcuna delle splendide immagini di Luciano Rossetti - autore tra l'altro della foto di Susana Santos Silva che quest'anno ha vinto il prestigioso premio dei Giornalisti e Critici di Jazz Americani - è attualmente in mostra in due distinti luoghi: al Macof di Brescia (Dual Rhythms, in coppia con Jimmy Katz) e al Lupo340 di Cervia (una collettiva con il meglio-del-meglio del Jazz World Photo).

https://www.lucianorossetti.it
https://www.instagram.com/lucianorossettifoto
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/member-luciano-rossetti

 

I segni, le indicazioni e i gesti utilizzati nelle celebri improvvisazioni condotte da Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris (1947-2013) sono stati raccolti e catalogati qualche tempo fa in un bel volume edito da Karma a New York, The Art of Conduction: A Conduction Workbook, al quale ha lungamente lavorato l'autore e che poi è stato portato a termine da una delle sue più assidue e preziose collaboratrici, Daniela Veronesi. Ne è finalmente pronta la versione in italiano, pubblicata a Lucca da Libreria Musicale Italiana, con contributi critici, cronologia completa e le splendide immagini - presenti anche nell'edizione originale - di un altro illustre affezionatissimo, Luciano Rossetti: L’arte della Conduction.

Lawrence Douglas "Butch" Morris was an American jazz cornetist, composer and conductor, internationally considered one of the great musical innovators of our times. His interests in ensemble music - from avant-garde jazz to contemporary classical - crystallized into a unique method of real-time orchestral composition, which he called Conduction, designed to enable conductors to direct an ensemble. Morris toured the world, introducing Conduction to a varied community of musicians, and his influence extended into art, dance, poetry and cinema. The Art of Conduction is a theoretical introduction and practical guide to Conduction. During the last ten years of his life, Morris worked to document his method in this book form; his untimely death left it near finished. Finally Daniela Veronesi, a linguist and longtime collaborator, brings his manuscript to completion.

https://bookstore.karmakarma.org/the-art-of-conduction
https://www.lim.it/larte-della-conduction
https://www.facebook.com/conductionworkbook

 

Il concerto di Ava Mendoza tenuto a Bonn presso il Dialograum Kreuzung an St. Helena è stato trasmesso in live streaming lo scorso 29 agosto: lo si ritrova ora negli archivi YT dell'In Situ Art Society, episodio numero 147 nel lungo ciclo The Dissonant Series.

Ava Mendoza ist eine in Brooklyn lebende Gitarristin, Sängerin, Songwriterin und Komponistin. Geboren 1983, begann sie mit ihrer eigenen Musik und als Sidewoman und Kollaborateurin in vielen verschiedenen Projekten aufzutreten, sobald es ihr erlaubt wurde, auf Veranstaltungen aufzutreten. Als Gitarristin hat Mendoza für ihre Technik und ihre Lebendigkeit viel Anerkennung erhalten. Sie ist die Leiterin der experimentellen Rockband Unnatural Ways und tritt auch als Solokünstlerin auf. In jedem Kontext ist sie bestrebt, der Musik Ausdruckskraft, Energie und eine große klangliche Bandbreite zu verleihen. Sie wurde als eine der '10 weiblichen Gitarristen, die man kennen sollte' von Guitar World vorgestellt.

https://youtu.be/m_DrxJk0n24

 

Tra i vari titoli in uscita in questi giorni per l'iperattiva Discus Music è sicuramente degno di nota Fanfares and Freedom, con protagonista il quartetto di Paul Dunmall (con Liam Noble, Caius Williams e Miles Levin) assieme a un quintetto di fiati guidati da Laura Jurd (con Chris Batchelor, Alex Paxton, Raph Clarkson e Oren Marshall) alle prese con una composizione di Jurd aperta all'improvvisazione e pensata apposta per il sassofonista: "When commissioned to write this music, I was immediately excited and in some ways, joyfully daunted by the challenge. Aware of the dynamic magic of his quartet, it was immediately clear that the only role for Paul in the work was one of complete freedom. The question at that point, was how to make this the work of a ‘composer’ and put my artistic stamp on the whole affair? Whilst there are many composers interested in the blur between the written and the improvised, I wanted to give the listener a satisfyingly coherent sense of when they were listening to improvisation and when they were listening to conventional notation - the written music for the most part, fairly brazen in its stylistic identity. I’ve long been excited by the prospect of composing music for a chamber ensemble of brass players - all at equally home reading notation, improvising freely and in more of a typical jazz context. And there it began - a musical dialogue between the Paul Dunmall Quartet and Brass Quintet, both parties summoning, reacting to, propelling, welcoming, daring and disrupting the other. This was an album I never expected to make, which in itself feels like a celebration of spontaneity and the unexpected." 

La registrazione è stata effettuata dal vivo a Londra al Vortex lo scorso ottobre, e la si può ascoltare in anteprima stasera sul web con la possibilità di dialogare in tempo reale con l'autrice e con gli altri ascoltatori e ospiti interessati.

https://discus-music.org
https://discusmusic.bandcamp.com/fanfares-and-freedom
https://discusmusic.bandcamp.com/listening-party