Ad accompagnare la pubblicazione dell'album The Granite Variations (Ogun, 2026) il trio Sarost - sigla che proviene dai cognomi dei suoi componenti, Mark Sanders, Paul Rogers e Larry Stabbins - tenne il mese scorso uno splendido concerto da tutto esaurito presso il Vortex Jazz Club di Londra: chi non poté esser presente in quell'occasione ne ritrova ora documentazione integrale su YT.
Freak Out! di Frank Zappa e The Mothers of Invention compie sessant'anni. E il bello è che serba ancora molte sorprese...
"When Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out! arrived in the summer of 1966, it represented a seismic shift in what a rock album could be. Released by Verve Records on June 27, 1966, as one of the first double albums in rock history - and virtually unprecedented as a debut release - Zappa and The Mothers rejected the prevailing conventions of the three-minute pop single, instead crafting an ambitious work that blended doo-wop, rhythm and blues, orchestral music, free jazz, tape manipulation, and biting social satire into a cohesive artistic statement. Set against the backdrop of a pivotal moment in American culture - amid the rise of the counterculture, the Vietnam War, and a growing distrust of mainstream values - the album skewered suburban conformity, celebrity culture, consumerism, and political complacency with a level of sophistication and irreverence that was virtually unprecedented in popular music. Its experimental structure, culminating in the groundbreaking sound collage “The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet” helped redefine the possibilities of the LP, demonstrating that a rock album could function as a unified artistic work rather than simply a collection of songs. In doing so, Freak Out! expanded the creative vocabulary of popular music and helped define the increasingly ambitious and experimental direction rock would take in the latter half of the 1960s.
Sixty years after its release, Freak Out! remains not only a landmark recording, but a bold artistic manifesto whose originality, irreverence, and uncompromising vision continue to challenge, provoke, and inspire new generations of musicians and listeners alike. As Zappa wrote in the album’s original liner notes, “Freaking Out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of thinking… in order to express creatively his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole.” Six decades later, that philosophy remains as radical - and as relevant - as ever."
Dave Newhouse è assieme a Jerry King l'ideatore del secondo episodio collettivo della serie 23rd Century Music iniziata qualche anno fa con ZZAJ -Jazz From The 23rd Century: il titolo, di chiara origine beefheartiana, è My Human Digs Me Blues, e in quasi una cinquantina di tracce vede l'intervento tra gli altri di Mike Watt, Aaron Lee Kaplan, Nick Didkovsky, Elliott Sharp, Henry Kaiser, Jimmy Ågren, Guy Segers, Rich O’Meara, Bret Hart, Walter Whitney, Scott Colby oltre a Newhouse e King naturalmente, e anche di Martin Archer, che tramite la sua Discus Music dà una mano nella distribuzione del doppio album in formato sia fisico sia digitale.
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Ogni motivo è valido per rievocare gli ineguagliabili The Dukes of Stratosphear di 25 O’Clock (1985) e Psonic Psunspot (1987), anche dopo l'esauriente compendio del 2019: Psurroundabout Ride torna ora in una versione Wilson/Atmos magari discutibile, ma con ancora qualche brano in più.
Between 1980 (when they were still performing live) and 1989, XTC wrote, recorded and released a series of albums from Black Sea to Oranges & Lemons that cemented the band’s reputation as songwriters and recording artists almost without parallel in the UK. They may not be as famous as other bands of the era but, to many of those with discerning ears, they’re rated among the very best, the select few who rise above their contemporaries… As if six stellar albums in ten years including two double LPs wasn’t enough, the band also issued two albums under completely different names as The Dukes of Stratosphear, an unashamedly psychedelic ensemble which phased and flanged in and out of existence in 1985 and 1987 respectively.
In 2019, Psurroundabout Ride was released on CD/Blu-ray gathering all of the Dukes’ material including the original stereo mixes, new 2019 Steven Wilson 5.1 and stereo mixes of the albums, a few additional recordings along with demos of 25 O’Clock and Psonic Psunspot. Now in 2026 Steven Wilson has once again worked his magic to create a three-dimensional Atmos audio mix that brings out all the delightful intricacies in detail. While the original psychedelic era was born of the possibilities inherent in stereo but, ironically, mostly heard via mono radios at the time and XTC’s 80s return to that genre capitalised on all the studio progress made in stereo recording over the preceding two decades, The Dukes’ output proved very well suited to the 5.1 surround sound environment in 2019. However, the combination of the strength of the original material/recordings and the possibilities of Atmos, combined with Steven Wilson’s love of the material and experience as a mixer of Atmos releases, take the material several trips further into the audio cosmos.
Grande la soddisfazione invece di Bing Selfish, che per celebrare il primo anniversario della pubblicazione del fortunato The Day I Fell in Love with Everyone racconta per immagini, smascherandoli, gli ipocriti intrighi delle élite aziendali internazionali: Charitable Giving, brano scritto da uno dei suoi più fedeli complici, Lonesome Andi Haller.
Grande la delusione sotto il cielo d'Ontario - e la situazione tutt'altro che eccellente - al punto che i fan canadesi di Eskimo! possono apprendere solo da oltre confine ciò di cui sono stati privati...
Il maggio scorso, dopo qualche bell'annetto di assenza dalla capitale, Fred Frith tornò a Roma per un concerto organizzato da Flaming Creatures e Blutopia presso l'Istituto Polacco: suonò prima in solo, e poi in trio con Marco Colonna e Fabrizio Spera. Entrambi i set sono ora documentati su YT.
Tim Hodgkinson al clarinetto dialoga con l'artista multimediale Zhuyang Liu, in quest'occasione alle prese con il tradizionale strumento cinese guzheng: l'esito è in This Is What Happens, album digitale disponibile su Bandcamp (o anche in cd, richiedendone copia direttamente ai musicisti).
https://timhodgkinson.bandcamp.com/album/this-is-what-happens
https://zhuyangliu.bandcamp.com/album/this-is-what-happens
Già in passato aveva messo mano a file audio o video per (ri)creare a proprio piacere qualcos'altro: ora Ôm Perkuterr prende un po' della batteria di Chris Cutler da Bittern Storm Over Ulm (Unrest, 1974) e si inventa un grazioso omaggio ('Un clin d'œil à Henry Cow') suonando lui stesso tutto il resto. Su YT.
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A recuperare Horde (1981) e Gyromancy (1984) dalle autoproduzioni Dys a tiratura limitata ci pensò a suo tempo Chris Cutler per Recommended; ai due titoli precedenti, Mnemonist Orchestra (1979) e Some Attributes Of A Living System (1980), provvede ora - altrettanto meritoriamente - Walter Robotka per Klanggalerie: è l'epoca pre-Biota dei Mnemonists.
Against the fertile creative backdrop of late 1970s Fort Collins, Colorado, the American ensemble Biota's first recorded projects were produced under the name Mnemonist Orchestra (shortened soon after to Mnemonists). Founded by fellow scientists and community radio engineers Mark Derbyshire and William Sharp, the Mnemonists collective of fine artists, musicians, and college-town bohemians released five self-styled albums between 1978 and 1984 on the group's Dys label. Horde (1981), a seminal album of electronically processed music, garnered particular interest for its groundbreaking use of unconventional sound manipulation, musique concrète techniques, and early period instrumentation - including from the Recommended Records/RēR label, who rereleased the LP on its imprint in 1984. Following the release of Gyromancy (1984) the ensemble split into two collaborative factions: a visual-arts group, which retained the name Mnemonists, and the musical group, Biota.
https://www.klanggalerie.com/gg527
https://www.klanggalerie.com/gg549
David Moss è al centro di un bell'episodio di Observations of Deviance with David Mittleman, trasmesso qualche giorno fa dall'emittente statunitense WFMU: contiene brani di un'intervista rilasciata lo scorso agosto, considerazioni sulle recenti riedizioni su Yatak Records di due suoi capolavori degli anni Ottanta, Full House (1984) e Dense Band (1985), riflessioni fini e sagaci sulla propria multiforme carriera - in particolare sulla svolta impressa dal suo trasferimento a Berlino nel 1991 - e un'ampia selezione di brani tratti dalla vasta discografia ufficiale, con qualche inedito proposto a sorpresa per l'occasione.
https://www.davidmossmusic.com
https://david-moss.bandcamp.com
https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/168691
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Quattro cd neanche lontanamente bastano a rappresentare l'intera collezione del Rosenberg Museum, ideato e allestito nel corso degli anni da Jon Rose con esemplari di ogni immaginabile (e inimmaginabile) tipo di violino: ci prova comunque Relative Pitch Records, e dà una mano anche ReR Megacorp.
Scrive Rose: "The Rosenberg Museum is a critical component of the Gesamtkunstwerk centred on my instrument - the violin. When in 1976 I first imagined such a conceit, I had few resources with which to realise an ambitious project, but slowly I put flesh on the bones. The violin became generic: everything on, with, and about the instrument that my imagination could create. The museum remains a clearing house for experiments and contexts. The itinerant life of a practising musician meant the museum never had a permanent home until I moved to the centre of Australia in 2021, finally gaining a suitable space for both museum and concerts. The museum collects not only my own homemade or hacked string instrument inventions and derivatives, but also violin stories - both true and fabricated - pertaining to the musical other, historically twisted, or culturally critical. The museum holds 65 playable instruments at last count, and something like 1,000 other artefacts of violin iconography. With the instrument collection now easily accessible, I can see that - apart from fundamental sonic exploration - there is something of the early 20th-century ‘one man band’ about the physical requirements and combinations of these inventions. I’m happy to be part of that tradition."
https://relativepitchrecords.bandcamp.com/rosenberg-museum
https://tinyurl.com/RosenbergMuseum
Elliott Sharp è protagonista di un nuovo capitolo dell'inarrestabile The Dissonant Series, con un concerto in solo promosso dall'In Situ Art Society: si tiene questa sera a Bonn presso il Dialograum Kreuzung an St. Helena, trasmesso anche in diretta streaming su YT a partire dalle ore 20.00.
Elliott Sharp kehrt mit einer Solo-Performance auf dem 8-saitigen GuitarBass mit Elektronik nach Bonn zurück. Diese von Journalisten manchmal als 'urbane Ragas' bezeichnete, nicht in eine Schublade zu steckende Musik enthält Elemente aus Noise, Rock, Free Jazz, Electronica und nicht-westlicher Musik, bleibt dabei jedoch völlig einzigartig - eine persönliche Klangwelt, die E# spontan mit einer Fülle erweiterter Spieltechniken und exotischer Klangtexturen erschafft.
Dialograum Kreuzung an St. Helena
Bornheimer Straße 130
53119 Bonn-Nordstadt
E a proposito di Derek Bailey: che fine ha fatto la sua chitarra, l'amatissima Gibson ES-175 del 1963? A quanto pare è in buone mani - quelle di Henry Kaiser e Nathan Moore - trattata con il rispetto che merita...
L'evoluzione e l'opera della compositrice coreano-americana Jin Hi Kim nel corso di oltre quarant'anni sono racchiuse in un prezioso documento prodotto in nove cd da Neuma Records - anche grazie alla catalogazione in capo alla prestigiosa Wesleyan University di Middletown, Connecticut - e allo stesso tempo reso disponibile gratuitamente via Bandcamp: The Jin Hi Kim Collection, oltre dieci ore di musica dove trovano ampio spazio i lavori orchestrali, le sperimentazioni con la versione tradizionale e quella elettrificata del komungo, le interazioni globaliste con percussioni ed elettronica, le applicazioni al suono di una personale filosofia (Living Tones) ispirata all’estetica buddista e sciamanica e l'approdo alla scena internazionale dell'improvvisazione con gli incontri con Henry Kaiser, Derek Bailey, Bill Frisell, Hans Reichel, Elliott Sharp, Oliver Lake, William Parker e Gerry Hemingway, per citarne alcuni. Dice l'autrice: "This collection represents a life’s journey of discovering that true influence is never imitation, but a deep immersion that allows new musical expression to be born. I am grateful to Wesleyan University for archiving this work and ensuring that the philosophy of Living Tones - where each sound is alive with its own spirit and history - can continue to inspire. These recordings are not commercial products, but an educational archive meant to be shared."
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https://www.boosey.com/cr/news/Steve-Reich-at-90
To celebrate composer Steve Reich’s 90th birthday on 3 October 2026, DG is releasing a deluxe, hand-numbered and limited-edition ‘Original Source’ edition of his groundbreaking 1974 recording of Drumming, along with two further earlier works. The set is released in the original LP format with authentic packaging and includes Reich’s original liner notes featuring numerous photographs from the recording sessions, as well as a detailed article containing Reich’s original correspondence with his DG producer. To ensure the best possible sound quality, the recordings have been remastered and edited from the original 4-track tapes for the first time.
https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/drumming
https://youtu.be/YS46Zsy70aM
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L'ECM anticipa di un giorno il compleanno dei novant'anni di Steve Reich ripubblicando in vinile i tre album-capolavoro che essa stessa produsse a cavallo tra gli anni Settanta e Ottanta: Music for 18 Musicians, Octet / Music for a Large Ensemble / Violin Phase e Tehilim, ora raccolti in un box celebrativo dal titolo Recordings on ECM, analogamente al box in tre cd confezionato dieci anni fa quando il traguardo da celebrare era quello degli ottanta.
Compiling “some of the minimalist composer’s finest works, including the definitive recording of his undisputed masterpiece Music for 18 Musicians”, Recordings on ECM comprises the three Steve Reich albums that were released on the label between 1978-1982, presented as facsimile editions housed in a high-quality cardboard box with a booklet containing photos from the archives and liner notes by Paul Griffiths. Sourced from the original analogue master tapes, these vinyl editions authentically re-introduced the listener to recordings that have since become staples in contemporary music. The works included on these three albums are Music for 18 Musicians, Octet, Music for a Large Ensemble, Violin Phase and Tehilim, tracing the influential early creative period of the composer and his development over the course of fifteen years. The box-set arrives on the occasion of Reich’s 90th birthday in October 2026.
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Eskimo Folk Tales è il mini-album con cui The Residents riprendono e rilanciano uno dei loro indimenticabili capolavori, Eskimo (1979), prodotto in vinile da New Ralph/Cherry Red appena in tempo per accompagnare il lungo tour d'autunno negli Stati Uniti. Brani nuovi, con molti ovvi riferimenti agli originali, e una travolgente dimensione percussiva: The Barren Woman And The Worm, The Old Woman And The Skull, A Tale Of Two Tupilaqs, The Fool Who Made Friends With A Stone, The Skeleton At The Bottom Of The Sea e The Arctic Fox.
In the 1970s, as The Residents worked on their Eskimo masterpiece, their mentor The Mysterious N. Senada sent them a collection of handwritten Inuit folk tales, suggesting they incorporate them into the album. But the group shelved them, having gathered more than enough stuff themselves by that point, leaving them to gather dust. Here and now, almost 50 years later, The Residents have revived those folk tales as part of their forthcoming Eskimo live performance, blending them with familiar elements of the original Eskimo album and new music to produce the soon-to-be-classic show. We present a studio recording of those new songs, alongside read-along stories, as written down by Senada almost half a century ago. This is not a new side of Eskimo, but a modern interpretation of material which might, in another universe, have found its way onto the original.
https://residents.wiki/Eskimo_Folk_Tales
https://residents.wiki/Eskimo_Live!
