Burning Shed annuncia l'uscita di due importanti documenti d'archivio riguardanti Uriel ed Egg, formazioni cruciali della scena inglese sperimentale e sotterranea della fine degli anni sessanta cui diedero vita prima come quartetto - con Steve Hillage - e poi come trio Dave Stewart, Mont Campbell e Clive Brooks. Molti i materiali raccolti in Arzachel Collectors Edition e The Metronomical Society, sia ufficiali sia portati alla luce ora per la prima volta, incluse immagini e testimonianze d'epoca prodotte direttamente dai protagonisti. Tante e tali da condurre alla pubblicazione di un vero e proprio libro a sé stante, dal titolo Copious Notes, redatto e curato dall'imbattibile, anche con la penna, Stewart. Che scrive: "While compiling the sleeve notes for the two Egg archive CDs I asked my colleagues to send me their recollections of the era. Mont Campbell and Antony Vinall (a lifelong friend who was at school with us and wrote some of the Arzachel lyrics) responded so enthusiastically - and in such great detail - that I couldn't bear to hack their contributions down to size to fit the two CD booklets. Instead, I thought it would be nice to create a special booklet to accompany the CDs which would include our unexpurgated memoirs and other related text. That gave me the opportunity to write at length about the music and add my own memoirs. It also meant we could include song lyrics and many more photos of Uriel, Egg and the Ottawa Company taken by Terry Yetton between 1968 and 1972. Copious Notes turned into quite a labour of love - reading it is probably the closest you can get to experiencing the sights, sounds, smells and sensations of our corner of the experimental / underground UK music scene of the late '60s."

Informazioni al sito di Burning Shed nella sezione Egg Archive.

http://www.burningshed.com

Molti materiali audio e video rimasti esclusi dall'edizione finale del dvd Canterbury Tales, prodotto l'anno scorso da Zeitgeist Media quale terzo volume della serie Romantic Warriors, sono ora raccolti in uno speciale volume aggiuntivo della durata di oltre quattro ore dal titolo got Canterbury?, pronto per la distribuzione presso http://www.progdocs.com. Ci sono interviste, commenti e dialoghi con Daevid Allen, Pye Hastings, Richard Sinclair, Dave Sinclair, Bill MacCormick, Didier Malherbe, Aymeric Leroy, Billy Bottle, Dave Newhouse, Dirk "Mont" Campbell, Theo Travis, Leonardo Pavkovic, Bruce Lee  Gallanter, Giorgio Gomelsky, Jeff Sherman, Jerry Cook, Elaine di Falco, brani offerti appositamente da qualcuno di loro e scene tratte da concerti di Soft Machine Legacy, Forgas Band Phenomena, The Wrong Object, Glass e The Muffins. Una presentazione è in https://vimeo.com/163626036

In the process of producing the Romantic Warriors III - Canterbury Tales documentary, filming live concerts and collecting interviews from some of the legendary minds in the Canterbury Progressive scene, the Zeitgeist Media team acquired a wealth of extremely interesting content that far exceeded what we could fit inside of the film. Among the gems, the remaining unseen footage of Daevid Allen and Giorgio Gomelsky last interviews. The Got Canterbury DVD Digipack features 120 minutes of live concert footage of five progressive bands influenced by the Canterbury bands, and 160 minutes of unseen interviews with members of the original Canterbury bands and with contemporary musicians currently shaping the sounds of modern Canterbury-progressive music. Live concerts include performances by Soft Machine Legacy, Forgas Band Phenomena, The Wrong Object, Glass and The Muffins. In addition, four Canterbury musicians featured in the film perform solo their own composed works: Dave Sinclair, Didier Malherbe, Dirk “Mont” Campbell, and Richard Sinclair.

http://www.progdocs.com/Progdocs.com/Home.html
https://vimeo.com/163626036

 

Forse più della ristampa degli antologici Arzachel e The Metronomical Society, di cui certamente possiedono copia già dal 2007, agli appassionati di Egg, Uriel, Arzachel e The Ottawa Company farà piacere quella dell'istruttivo (e divertente) libretto Copious Notes scritto da Dave Stewart - con validi contributi di Mont Campbell e Antony Vinall - proprio per accompagnarne l'uscita. Allora andò subito esaurito, ora però è di nuovo disponibile - come lo sono quei due preziosi cd - presso Burning Shed.

This compact booklet tells the inside story of Uriel, Egg, Arzachel and the Ottawa Company from the formation of Uriel in early 1968 to the making of Egg's final album The Civil Surface in 1974. The text is crammed full of personal memoirs, anecdotes, short stories, random recollections, social observation, period details, musical analysis and song lyrics, as well as a priceless collection of archive photos taken by Terry Yetton and the musicians. An essential read for Canterbury and prog fans, UK music historians and collectors. 

"While compiling the sleeve notes for the two Egg archive CDs I asked my colleagues to send me their recollections of the era. Mont Campbell and Antony Vinall (a lifelong friend who was at school with us and wrote some of the Arzachel lyrics) responded so enthusiastically - and in such great detail - that I couldn't bear to hack their contributions down to size to fit the two CD booklets. Instead, I thought it would be nice to create a special booklet to accompany the CDs which would include our unexpurgated memoirs and other related text. That gave me the opportunity to write at length about the music and add my own memoirs. It also meant we could include song lyrics and many more photos of Uriel, Egg and the Ottawa Company taken by Terry Yetton between 1968 and 1972. Copious Notes turned into quite a labour of love - reading it is probably the closest you can get to experiencing the sights, sounds, smells and sensations of our corner of the experimental / underground UK music scene of the late '60s." (Dave Stewart)

https://burningshed.com/store/eggarchive

 

E Karl Jenkins è oggetto di un breve commento che Jonathan Coe ha diffuso lunedì scorso subito dopo l'incursione - e l'immediata espulsione - di Dirk Campbell alla National Conservatism Conference, l'inquietante adunata della destra nazionale populista e antidemocratica in corso in questi giorni a Londra. Della serie, analogie e differenze: "Karl Jenkins (ex-Soft Machine) was recently spotted at the coronation, but fellow Canterbury-scene musician Dirk ‘Mont’ Campbell (ex-Egg, Uriel, Gilgamesh, National Health) has taken a very different path since the 70s and today was seen protesting at the NatCon convention in London." 

L'episodio Campbell, oltre che visibile su Twitter, è ben documentato da openDemocracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Campbell

https://twitter.com/jonathancoe/status/1658103334186745860

https://www.opendemocracy.net/dirk-campbell
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-65485194

Noto come 'Mont' fin dalla nascita nel 1968 del gruppo Egg, con Dave Stewart e Clive Brooks, Dirk Campbell si è dedicato nel corso degli anni allo studio approfondito di culture e strumenti musicali di diverse tradizioni e provenienze - soprattutto delle aree balcanica e mediterranea, asiatica ed africana - specializzandosi inoltre come compositore per il cinema e la televisione. A oltre dodici anni da Music From a Round Tower esce tra poco un suo nuovo cd, Music From A Walled Garden, che si può prenotare in anticipo tramite Burning Shed e che sarà poi disponibile via Bandcamp.

Scrive l'autore: "Positioned somewhere between ethnic folk, orchestral and jazz, the music ranges over a wide variety of moods - enigmatic contrasts, ambient acoustic soundscapes, textural patterns and burlesque. The collection is a belated sequel to my 1996 work Music from a Round Tower, which was placed third in the International Green Doplhin Critics' Awards for that year. It was not received with enormous enthusiasm by the music press in general, being too eclectic for most reviewers". E così commenta l'amico Dave Stewart: "Once again, Mont has produced a beautiful, imaginative and thoughtful work with flashes of the humour that belie his 'serious composer' persona. All power to Dirk 'Mont' Campbell, one of the UK's unsung musical geniuses".

https://dirkcampbell.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-a-walled-garden

E' pronto e in distribuzione l'atteso terzo capitolo in dvd della serie Romantic Warriors prodotta e diretta da Adele Schmidt e Jose Zegarra Holder per Zeitgeist Media, stavolta dedicato ai campioni storici della cosiddetta 'scena di Canterbury', ai loro emuli e discendenti nel corso dei decenni: Canterbury Tales.

Così scrive Bruce Lee Gallanter, di Downtown Music Gallery, presente nel film tra gli esperti intervistati: "The Canterbury scene started in the mid-sixties with the Wilde Flowers, mostly school friends from the Canterbury area, who by 1967/1968 split into two bands: Soft Machine and Caravan, two odd/pop/psych bands who had a number of similarities at the beginning of their careers. The original Softs featured Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayers, Mike Ratledge and Robert Wyatt, four very different creative musicians with distinctive and different personalties. Soft Machine recorded eleven albums between 1968 and 1976, the personnel changed on every record, so their sound was always in flux. Since a handful of key members of the Canterbury scene have passed away over the past decade (Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper, Steve Miller, Kevin Ayers, Pip Pyle and very recently Daevid Allen), there are dozens of interviews with many of the survivors: Daevid Allen (ever-enchanting, longtime leader of Gong speaks the most), Brian Hopper, Richard Sinclair, Roy Babbington, David Sinclair, Bill McCormick, Didier Mahlherbe, Phil Miller, Mont Campbell, Robert Wyatt, Chris Cutler... A number of Canterbury-related bands are mentioned as well: Egg, Matching Mole, Hatfield & the North, National Health, In Cahoots, various versions of Gong, Soft Works and Soft Machine Legacy. There is a large amount of rare footage of different eras of Soft Machine and Gong, Caravan, Hatfield and Softs Legacy, making this a deep treasure chest unending gems. The complex histories of many of these bands are unraveled as best as could be done, making this consistently compelling.
About a third of this long film features interviews and live footage from the many bands worldwide who have been influenced by the Canterbury scene from the time it started until today: Supersister, Moving Gelatine Plates, Forgas Band, The Wrong Object, The Muffins, Glass, Planeta Imaginario and Sid Arthur. A trio of Canterbury experts also get to make a number of their own points throughout: Americ Leroy (Calyx website, historian & liner notes writer), Leonardo Petrovic (head of Moonjune label) and yours truly (DMG founder & 1/2 century Canterbury devotee).
There are a number of magical musicians here who give their own charming perspective and are quoted throughout: Daevid Allen, Didier Mahlherbe, Richard Sinclair, Phil Miller and David Sinclair, who closes this film with a poignant solo version of the Caravan classic Nine Feet Underground. Bravo here to both directors who have done a marvelous job of capturing the spirit of something most elusive yet still so important to many of us who are long nourished by it."

http://progdocs.zeitgeistmedia.tv/Progdocs.com/Home.html
https://twitter.com/progdocs
http://on.fb.me/131ltuf

 

Scelta meditata è anche quella che accompagna il nuovo album di Dirk 'Mont' Campbell, Long Time Gone. Probabilmente il suo ultimo, dice l'autore ("This is probably my last musical collection and features all my instrumental skills acquired over many lifetimes packed into one."), che contestualmente rende disponibili via Bandcamp tutti i precedenti lavori, volti a documentare un lungo percorso di studio e di autentica fascinazione nei confronti di voci e strumenti antichi di ogni parte del mondo: ci sono Music from a Round Tower e Music from a Walled Garden, ci sono Bronze e Safar, le musiche per il film d'animazione Dreamland Express (David Anderson, 1982) e utili indicazioni sui preziosi album campionari Origins e World Winds. E naturalmente tutto (o quasi) degli amatissimi Egg.

https://dirkcampbell.bandcamp.com

Dopo aver dialogato con Didier Malherbe, Richard Sinclair e John Etheridge, Ben Goldstein invita Dirk 'Mont' Campbell per un nuovo episodio della sua serie di interviste online The Hidden Track. Lo si trova da qualche giorno su YT, con una postilla aggiunta da Dave Stewart.

https://www.dirkcampbell.co.uk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIEuIslAn8s
https://www.youtube.com/@TheHiddenTrack2112

Che bello! Dave Stewart riprende da questo mese a pubblicare suoi scritti di musica, ricollegandosi idealmente alla serie 'Inside The Music' da lui realizzata per le riviste Keyboard e KM diversi anni fa. Lo fa presso il sito www.davebarb.demon.co.uk, con queste premesse: "For many moons I wrote regular music articles, starting in the UK magazine Sound International in 1979. That series became the basis for my first music book Introducing the Dots, first published in the UK in 1981 and reissued worldwide in 1992. I subsequently wrote an extended series of articles for Keyboard (USA) and KM (Japan), some of which were reprinted in Sound On Sound (UK). When I laid down my pen in June 1998 it came as a bit of a shock to realise that I’d amassed over 120 articles over the course of 13 years. They were mainly about my own music, but also covered the work of musicians I admire (Phil Miller, Mont Campbell, Bill Bruford, Django Bates, Andy Partridge, Eric McWhirter) and other areas which interested me, such as African balafon music, Balinese gamelan, harmonic theory, rhythm programming, working with samples, etc. Recently I found myself leafing through this archive in search of a notated keyboard part to a song Barbara and I were planning to play live (that's one of the advantages of writing about your own music - it makes you notate things which would otherwise be forgotten). As I searched the articles I remembered how much I’d enjoyed writing them; I also recalled that at the time of ceasing my Keyboard writing gig I’d vowed to continue the 'Inside The Music' series online, but somehow never got round to it. Well, after a break of a decade or so I have got round to it, and hope the results will be of interest to anyone out there who, like me, enjoys thinking about the inner workings of music..."

Il primo contributo è dedicato all'analisi compositiva di Jupiter Rising, brano di apertura dell'album di Stewart con Barbara Gaskin Green and Blue uscito la primavera scorsa. I concerti tenuti in Giappone in concomitanza con l'uscita dell'album sono illustrati in fine dettaglio in un bell'articolo per la rivista Performing Musician: www.performing-musician.com/pm/nov09/articles/touringinjapan.htm mentre a diverse domande recentemente rivolte loro da appassionati e curiosi Dave e Barbara danno risposta per iscritto in www.progressiveears.com/library/Stewart-Gaskin.asp

www.davebarb.demon.co.uk

Buona idea quella di Ámarxe di pubblicare anche su supporto fisico l'album Long Time Gone di Dirk 'Mont' Campbell, probabilmente il suo ultimo, diffuso qualche mese fa solo in formato digitale tramite Bandcamp. E ottima idea quella di aggiungervi un brano precedente ma inedito, La Livinière, pieno di riferimenti a Kevin Ayers e Egg (anzi, scritta proprio pensando a loro).

https://amarxe.bandcamp.com/long-time-gone

Music On Vinyl promette per inizio dicembre un'edizione da anniversario dell'indimenticabile The Rotters' Club, in versione doppio vinile con inserto aggiuntivo e brani in più rispetto all'originale: precisamente (Big) John Wayne Socks Psychology On The Jaw, Chaos At The Greasy Spoon, Halfway Between Heaven And Earth, Oh, Len's Nature! e Lything And Gracing, tutti presi da Afters. Con la firma di Dave Stewart: Hatfield and the North!

A Music On Vinyl 50th anniversary double 180g vinyl edition of Hatfield and the North's The Rotters' Club. Signed by Dave Stewart. Magnificently inventive and playful, The Rotters' Club was the second album from the band (comprising Richard Sinclair, Dave Stewart, Phil Miller and Pip Pyle) and featured guest appearances by Jimmy Hastings, Mont Campbell, The Northettes, Tim Hodgkinson and Lindsay Cooper. This expanded edition contains a side of tracks from the compilation Afters and an insert.

https://burningshed.com/the-rotters-club_double-vinyl

L'anno scorso curò la ristampa di Another Fine Tune You’ve Got Me Into, ora Esoteric Recordings provvede a rendere nuovamente disponibile anche il primo omonimo album del gruppo Gilgamesh, uscito per l'etichetta Caroline nel 1975.

Esoteric Recordings are pleased to announce a new official re-mastered release of the classic 1975 self- titled debut album by Gilgamesh. These Canterbury stylists were formed in 1972 with the core of the band built around Alan Gowen on keyboards and Mike Travis on drums. At various times the line-up included former Caravan and Hatfield & the North member Richard Sinclair, Mont Campbell (formerly of Egg) and Neil Murray. The group’s debut album was recorded for Virgin’s Caroline label in 1975 and featured a line-up of Alan Gowen (keyboards), Phil Lee (guitar), Jeff Clyne (bass) and Mike Travis (drums), with guest Amanda Parsons (vocals). Unavailable on cd for over ten years, Gilgamesh is a classic of the Canterbury style and is sure to be a much sought after release by all aficionados of the genre.

http://www.cherryred.co.uk/esoteric/artists/gilgamesh.php
http://calyx.perso.neuf.fr/bands/gilgamesh.html

Klemen Breznikar intervista Dirk 'Mont' Campbell per il blog It's psychedelic baby, that's what it's all about: http://tinyurl.com/montcampbell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Campbell
http://calyx.perso.neuf.fr/mus/campbell_mont.html