CDOTD 03/30/2025

 MB & Nisi Quiernis: Phetalnuthrit (Red Light Sound)

Purchased through mail order

Besides my own work, am I on a personal crusade promoting certain people? I certainly can't be as obsessive out MB as some must be, considering how many releases he continues to make. MB/Maurizio Bianchi was early in on the cassette-trading scene. He started as Sacher Pelz, creating turntable abuses direct to tape. He later went by his initials, continuing his turntable manglings before his initial synth experiments and later running through his recordings through a haze of Echoplex. 

The early turntable abuses don't interest me much, apart his obsessiveness. His early synth experiments sometimes hold interest, with left and right channels creating separate performances. 

It's the echo-saturated albums that caught me. Endometrio/Carcinosi were the first I bought, at Eide's, reading the name in Op or some similar fanzine. The workers there filed it under E, which is why I beat Manny Theiner to that pair of LPs.

MB/Maurizio went from sub-underground superhero to retiree (becoming a Jehovah's Witness, no kidding) to returning to record-making. And now I think even he doesn't have every recording he's released.

This one's back in the dark ambient mold, noisy but underplayed sounds. Nisi Quiernis is a Maurizio nom de plum for spoken word performance. It's all in Italian, so every word escapes me. Mostly it's so-called dark ambient, soft-edged noise performances. 

I out this on a stream a few days ago, lay down on the couch and drifted off. An hour later at the end, I woke up. I suppose MB has served his purpose. 

VOTD 03/27/2025

 Charles Ives: The World of Charles Ives (Columbia)

(Three Places in New England, Washington's Birthday, Robert Browning overture)

It's a shame that I don't listen to local radio nearly as much as I used to. Generally when I do it's the NPR news outlet, but there's only so much of that I can take too and very little of its content is locally based. I just don't think most of the programming is worthwhile. I'll occasionally put on a local jazz station, and sometimes my old digs WRCT, but I just don't find it exciting like I once did. Sometimes I'm proven wrong, but not often enough. Maybe I'm just old and jaded.

I also don't listen to CDs in the car as much as I used to either. I have a cheap disc player, and had to hot glue the power supply to it, fed from that opening that used to hold the cigarette lighter. It's a nuisance, but still worthwhile on longer drives.

All of which is to say, it's easy for me to Bluetooth podcasts to my car stereo and that makes up a lot of my listening when I'm driving. Podcasts are another vast ocean of garbage to wade through, so it's not wonder I tend to focus on just a few, and even then nobody consistently. Marc Maron, Dana Carvey and David Spade, Al Franken, Joe Dante's "The Movies That Made Me", some others, and none of them consistently. 

Among the podcasts I intermittently catch is "Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast". I probably found it hunting for someone talking about Messiaen. That particular episode gave a nice summation of Messiaen's work, though the host (whose name I can't recall) didn't go into Turangalîla because he though another orchestral piece demonstrated Messiaen wanderlust more effectively. Meh. But then, being a big fan of that particular work, I guess it colors my opinion.

I've recently listened to his episode about Charles Ives' Three Places in New England, described with great enthusiasm. While I knew Ives blatantly and almost shamelessly quoted other peoples' melodies, even I wasn't aware to what extent. In the three movements, there's really only one significant original theme, the opening to "Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut", itself an adaptation of Ives' own "Country Band March". 

Indeed, the host pointed out a particular spot where four distinct melodies, all quotes, are playing at the same time. It's not even the densest section of the movement. 

The work itself wouldn't be performed for almost two decades after its composition and orchestration. What exactly did Ives have in mind for this music that he wrote mostly for himself? Surely he did intend this to be performed at some point, but outside of possibly living room reading sessions, it wouldn't have been heard by anyone until long after its completion. By pushing through this collage of melodic materials, what is he asking of an audience (if he is indeed asking anything)?

Perhaps he wouldn't put it in these words, but I think Ives was playing at perception. What are you able to pick out? What do you recognize, what do you think you recognize? If four melodies play simultaneously, what if anything will you pick out from the combination? Will you heard different things with each subsequent listening?

Ives seems to have a gift for polychordal and polymodal composing; inside of a denser chord, it sounds as though there's a major or minor chord lurking. Or, he often places a tonal melody superimposed over a chord with which it has no clear relationship. If you were to pick apart the elements they'd all seem perfectly sweet sounding. It's his way of combining them that sound unsettled and unsettling. 

I have a copy of the score for Three Places, thanks to a certain guitarist's yard sale. The podcast host mentioned that there are several different edits of the work. And indeed, there are distinct differences between my copy of the score and the version heard here, conducted by Eugene Ormandy.

I enjoy Three Places and consider it the strongest work of this collection. But looking at the score, it's clearly not an easy piece to perform. I can picture many schooled orchestral players bristling over some of the demands and sounds of the work. I also suspect the general American classical music concertgoer probably doesn't go to the symphony hall of have their perception challenged. I on the other hand might actually attend more often if this was the sort of work they'd program, but I guess I'm not where the money is.

CDOTD 03/17/2025

 Africa Express Presents...Terry Riley's In C  Mali (Transgressive)

Purchased used at The Government Center

NPR's Weekend Edition just did a story on Steve Reich, celebrating the 27-disc retrospective boxset of his works. (My wife: "You don't need to buy that.") In the it was mentioned that Reich, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass were all friends. Yes, I suppose that was true at one time, but I'm doubtful about current circumstances. Reich indeed played on the premiere of In C in 1964; Glass and Reich both played in one another's ensembles, if briefly. When Glass came to the music school at CMU a few years back (pre-COVID), someone asked him about being being lumped together with other composers under the "Minimalism" banner. He said what was interesting was how different his music and that of Louis Andriessen, Fred Rzewski, and John Adams all were. Not even a hint of a mention of Steve Reich. 

In C is the work credited with starting, or at least jumpstarting, the so-called Minimalist movement. As with most things, the reality is more complicated. Its 1968 LP release on CBS Records gives it special merit for bringing this style of pulsing, modal music to the public.

(From here on, I'll dispense with the descriptor "so-called" and use the word Minimalism for the convenience. What else to call this inclusive music? New Modalism?)

Part of Reich's development as a young composer had to do with traveling to study in Ghana. Glass in part developed his Minimalist style in part after working on a film soundtrack, transcribing and arranging Ravi Shankar's works. Riley also had a deep interest in Indian music in particular, if I'm not mistake. The non-Western roots of these composers' music run deep. Reich most directly connected what he does to Africa, but surely African music relates directly and indirectly to all of these composers' music. (Keeping in mind, Africa is an entire continent and not a single cultural force or entity.) The modes, the repetition, the interlocking patterns, there are deep correlations if not connections.

So then, In C, in Mali, certainly makes perfect sense. The original score is very easy to find, it's printed inside the cover of the original LP. What this recording is not is a traditional reading of the composition. It starts very much in character with other versions, a regular pulse with the first phrase/melodic cell introduced over it. It becomes clear pretty quickly that it's not going to be a traditional through-reading of the work though. There are brief improvised solos by some players for example. The density of the ensemble play waxes and wanes multiple times through the recording, not always with the insistent C pulse assigned in the original. Sometimes I hear other melody cells turn up, sometimes I'm not so certain. There's even a brief narration in the latter portion of the album, layered on top of the music.

I guess the question is, is it actually In C? It is and it isn't, I suppose. If you went into this expecting a more straight-forward reading of the work on African instruments (as I did), you're going to get something different. But if the nature of In C is semi-improvisational, is this just as much a reading of the piece as anything else? If this version only briefly quotes the original and intermittently, is calling it by the original Terry Riley title as much as selling point as an interpretation of the work?

I did enjoy the recording, but I think there might be an element of truth to that: that the realization in this case isn't directly In C but more "based on" or "impressions of". I mean, the CD was cheap but I noticed it and bought the thing, so as a selling point it was effective. But where do Terry Riley's intentions as a composer end and something new begin?

CDOTD 03/10/2025

 Tristan Perich: Open Symmetry (Erased Tapes)

Purchased used at The Government Center

I played a gig for Manny Theiner last night. Improvised saxophone duet preceding Microwaves and The Flying Luttenbachers. Not for the first time, I wound up spending more on CDs and vinyl than I made on the gig. It's true that the pay wasn't amazing, but considering the size of the show I was satisfied making any money at all.

This disc caught my eye, not knowing a thing about it. The description caught me: Open Symmetry for 3 vibraphones and 20-channel 1-bit electronics. And at $5, that's a price point where I'm willing to take a chance.

The 1-bit electronics is an interesting selling point. 1-bit just means there are exactly two levels of amplitude: 100% and 0%. On or off. 

What would it be? Phasing and difference patterns as in Alvin Lucier? Driving minimalism more similar to Reich and Glass? Intentionally or not, the title evokes Feldman's Crippled Symmetry, though with the electronics component I didn't anticipate this to be Feldmanesque. 

The work comes closest to the Reich/Glass side of things. The mallets evoke Reich, the electronics recall Glass' use of Farfisa organs. The piece is tightly composed, so the word "open" in the title might be somewhat misinterpreted. It possibly means there isn't such an adamant pursuit of patterns such as the phasing in Reich's pieces. It does fall into a general category of, I don't know, New Modalism? opened up by those composers and Terry Riley.

I've been meaning to find more newer works and recordings, this being released last year. I realized I've encountered the composer's works before without really knowing who he is. In the Cleveland Museum of Art, I noticed on previous visits they were carrying self-contained electronic compositions playback systems, housed in a CD case. I know now that it's Perich, his 1-Bit Symphony. (I've just been to that same gift shop, and didn't see them carried there any longer.)

There's a comment I make about some of the listening assignments in my college courses, most notably Iannis Xenakis' Concret PH. The work was first presented in the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 World's Fair, a building Xenakis himself designed. We can listen and appreciate (or not) the piece as a standalone work, but we'll never experience the work in its original presentation. So to this piece: it's perfectly fine to listen to this CD (also on vinyl, but maybe the CD is a better format in this case). The stage photo shows the three vibraphonists with ten pairs of speakers behind them. It must have been an immersive experience in a concert hall. 

I understand that it's an easy out to compare this to Reich or Glass (there is a chordal shift in the final section that definitely recalls the latter), but there probably isn't much getting around that comparison either. And who's to say there isn't room for more composers to explore these general ideas? I wouldn't mistake Perich's composition for those other two guys, just that they're in the same general territory. If anything, it's refreshing to know someone is exploring the more severe side of so-called Minimalism with gusto.

Recent viewing

Becoming Led Zeppelin

Viewed at the Manor Theater, Squirrel Hill

At one time I regularly read biographies, and occasionally still do. All but a few have been musician bios: Sun Ra, Miles Davis (both by John Szwed, both excellent), Billy Strayhorn, Spike Jones, Charles Mingus, John Cage (The Roaring Silence, not recommended), Thelonious Monk (two! one very good, one not), Frank Zappa, Iannis Xenakis, others I'm probably not recalling. 

I made an observation, or perhaps a realization, while reading the Xenakis book. When covering these creative people, the author begins from a perspective of being in the artist's corner. That is, even if there are criticisms or mention of negative behavior on the part of the subject, the author starts from the viewpoint of being a fan. A possible exception seems to have been John Baxter's biography about JG Ballard, The Inner Man. Baxter seemed lukewarm towards some of Ballard's novels, particularly those generally accepted as being among his best (High Rise, for example). The book is often informative but highly incomplete, mentioning Ballard's estrangement from his son only in passing in the final chapters.

Otherwise, each of the book subjects mentioned above was treated with at least some reverence by their biographers. But then, it's not as though the subject was Hitler or Stalin.

I had been thinking about several relatively recent musical biopics, if you can call them both that word: Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents (2015) Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary (2016) and Zappa (2020). A comment I've made previously concerning Theory of Obscurity was that I thought it only briefly rose above being a fan piece and celebration of The Residents. Likewise, Zappa was entirely a celebration of Frank without directly touching on the many reasons he can be criticized. Those two films in particular were rich in footage I hadn't seen before, but I felt like important things had been left out. 

Before seeing Becoming Led Zeppelin, I a review on rogerebert.com including this passage:

"But before we absolutely abandon the realm of gossip/dirt/legend, we should say that “Becoming Led Zeppelin” wouldn’t truck in any of that stuff in the first place because to make a documentary about Zep, you need Zep’s music, and to get Zep’s music you need Zep’s approval. So what we’ve got here is the only kind of documentary you can make about Zep and its music: an authorized one. This picture was made with the full cooperation and—to judge from the interview clips—enthusiastic participation of the group’s surviving members."

I thought, yeah, okay, maybe I've been dense about this. Have I been expecting too much? Is it necessary to dig up the dirt under these circumstances? Can these films simply be a celebration of what makes these artists great, and not go digging for something negative?

Becoming Led Zeppelin does several things right. The first of which is that the only interview subjects are the three surviving members, with pieces of an audio taped interview with John Bonham. There isn't an endless succession of talking heads saying how great LZ was. That was an issue I took with Chasing Train; I simply don't care what Bill Clinton or Kamasi Washington have to say about Coltrane. Likewise for the more recent Ennio. I really don't care what the bassist for The Clash has to say about Morricone, especially within the framework of a 2.5 hour film. At least I Called Him Morgan, about Lee Morgan, stuck with people who knew and worked with him (and his wife) directly. Unlike the latter film, there are no staged elements; all filmed segments are either new interviews or historic footage.

Another element that happens briefly twice in the film: isolating individual instruments to hear how every player contributed. I suppose that could have gotten tired if done too many times, but I found this interesting. Show us what made each part important, each musician essential. I still say, more!

There are two substantial live performances from television: one from their first tour (pre-LP) playing "How Many More Times". What becomes clear is that they don't look like a band playing to the crowd. They're positioned pretty tight on stage, and it's a loose performance in the best possible way. I've always found Robert Plant my least favorite element of LZ, but I have been reminded by more than one friend that nobody else could have done what he did. I have to begrudgingly agree. A point made during the narrative was that he was an improvisor, he was mixing it up with bands unlike other singers. Another point, pro-Plant. 

A second clip, one I hadn't see before, features them playing "Dazed and Confused" after the first LP's release, on the road and recording the second. It's clear there's been editing for time. Again, they're even looser, more limber, and relatively close on stage playing like a unit. 

Less positive? Seeing what look like home movies of them performing, with studio recordings dubbed in to look like they're playing it live. It's nice to see visually some of the energy, but I don't like the suggestion that it's what they sounded like. Do I have a different cinematic solution? I do not! I know, it's easy to complain and not offer constructive alternatives, but I'm not a filmmaker.

Two things were mentioned in passing that, in a more complete story of the band, deserved elaboration. There was a passing mention of the availability of drugs and women during even that first tour. LZ's backstage debauchery on later tours was legendary. I'm sure it didn't reach those levels at this time, but it was a very small hint as to what things were like backstage.

More interesting to me was a quick mention Robert Plant made of basically throwing in some Willie Dixon lines when coming up with lyrics for "Whole Lotta Love". This is the sort of thing that would become a point of litigation for the band for decades to come. 

On the one hand, LZ was at its heart a mutant blues band, or at least began deeply rooted in blues playing. The blues was very much an oral tradition, with songs and lyrics passing from one person to another, often before any sort of documentation would happen. Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" would eventually morph into the Bluegrass rendition, "In The Pines". Similar songs but not identical. Did Leadbelly base his song on some other traditional piece? I don't know. These pieces, these bits of lyrics, passed from one person to another, that was part of the nature of blues practice.

When I did a recent performance about Sonny Clark, I took some time to talk about ownership. Specifically, regarding Thelonious Monk and "Rhythm-a-ning". The essential phrase that opens that melody is known to have been a sort of stock riff that many people would have known at the time (or so I've been told). To what degree does he deserve credit? I don't have a firm answer to that question.

The fact remains, fully admitted by Plant, that he copped some Willie Dixon lyrics when creating that song. Dixon is now given co-credit, but "Whole Lotta Love" is not a Willie Dixon song and LZ didn't wholesale steal it. I suppose he deserves co-credit, but I have to ask if Dixon himself picked up those lines from someone else? 

All that said, I consider the lawsuit on the part of the heirs of the band Spirit again "Stairway to Heaven" to be total bullshit.

So, working under the assumption that my opinion means much of anything, how do I come down on LZ? I wasn't a superfan as a teen (I always thought "Whole Lotta Love" was kind of a silly song) but I had a yard sale copy of Houses of the Holy, a dub of IV, a cassette copy of In Through the Out Door. At one time I completely eschewed them, when I was going through a later time of establishing my tastes and starting to find my voice as a musician myself. I guess now it's on a case-by-case, song-by-song basis. Sometimes even within a song. For example, "Carouselambra" is far longer than it needs to be but has a slow guitar break in the middle that sounds utterly incredible to my ears. Maybe it comes back to something I've expressed on this blog before, being wary of liking or disliking something simply due to it's relative obscurity or strangeness.

Will there be a follow-up to this film? Being Led Zeppelin, Leaving Led Zeppelin? I doubt it. And maybe this is enough. It's interesting and well made enough to be worth the time, even if you're not a devoted fan. With so many films being made and so few actually seeing theatrical release, I should be happy that the story of a creative venture (such as the forming of a band) is being celebrated.

VOTD 03/03/2025

 Anthony Braxton Creative Music Orchestra: RBN---3°  K12 (Ring/Moers)

Purchased mail order from Half Price Books

Well, here's a find. I suppose it's become relatively easy to find whatever you want by way of websites such as discogs.com, if you don't mind paying a lot. In this case, I found it through Half Price Books. I only recall ever having seen one copy before in a Tower Records somewhere (I want to say DC), and would come to regret not pouncing on it then. 

Even if this was a more commonly found item, it's not the recommended entry point into the Braxton sound world. A three-LP box of a fourteen-piece big band playing a multi-section single composition? One section being devoted primarily sounds originating from balloons? 

Therein lies one complaint I have with this set. I knew from reading about this piece there was a section for balloons (if I hadn't guessed just from listening to it), but balloons aren't credited anywhere. Is that too fussy on my part? I believe I hear an oboe on side one which is also not credited, and I know it's not Anthony himself playing it. He may have explored as much of the saxophone and clarinet families as he could (and flute), but he's never credited anywhere with double reeds.

The set was recorded live in 1972 in France with an ensemble of European or Europe-based musicians. The names are largely unfamiliar to me except of Joachim Kühn on piano (he recorded a duet album with Ornette, and have sometimes recorded with his clarinetist brother) and Oliver Johnson on drums (I think he played with Steve Lacy). This would be his early creative career, pre-Arista Records contract. 

By the way, for those who are sticklers for the Braxton opus numbers, this is Composition 25. It's not his first work for big band/creative music orchestra, which according to his catalog of works dates as far back as 1969. The notes indicate something that would have been apparent from listening: that it's an extended piece in multiple sections with different sound states. There's the previously mentioned balloons (an inexpensive alternate sound source), the opening is all breath/wind sounds. You have to go about half way through the work to hit a section of Braxton's particular brand of atonal post-bop. It's at this point that the work presages some of his writing for the landmark Creative Music Orchestra 1976 on Arista.

It's a live set and the quality, while not studio, is largely pretty good. The notes mention a technical glitch on side two, left in for continuity. The notes were mostly written on a typewriter and not typeset, adding a small bit of charm to the release.

Record nerd completist talk: the album was released on Ring Records, a name that was changed to Moers Music short afterwards to avoid confusion and conflicts with a Canadian label of the same name. There are supposed to be releases of this under both the Ring and Moers imprints. My copy has LP one on Ring, and two and three as Moers. Curious! Did some of them come this way? Is it a hybridized copy of two different releases? The latter is hard to imagine.

Composition 25 is dedicated to Ornette Coleman. The shadow of Ornette's music surely hangs over Braxton's early jazz quartet recordings. In this case, I believe it's Ornette's ambition to write works such as his woodwind quintet and pieces for his group plus classical musicians that might have been a general inspiration. (Skies of America was recorded about a month after this, so it's doubtful that was on Anthony's mind.) Anthony himself demonstrates his broad ambitions on this project, being the first recording (but not first release) of his larger ensemble work, and his first single work to take up the length of an entire concert.

I wonder: do the score and parts still exist? It would be great to stage this piece again, though I'm not on the inside of the Braxton orbit to really be able to pursue such as idea. It's nice to visit this piece of history though, and taken as as while I think this is a solid addition to his recorded output.

VOTD 02/24/2025

 Riz Ortolani: Cannibal Holocaust OST (Mondo)

I think I bought this through mail order through Mondo.

It seems like a running theme or even joke in this blog, me sitting down with a soundtrack album to a film I haven't even seen. I have watched the trailer, and the film looks like an extremely nasty bit of business. 

I don't object to films being weird, or even violent at times. Cruelty and torture are a different story. I have noted that I've previously blogged about the soundtrack albums for Cannibal Ferox (which I also haven't watched) and Cannibal Apocalypse (which I have). In the latter's case, "cannibal" is overstated, even if the theme of the film is soldiers returning from Viet Nam carrying a disease that gives them a sometimes insatiable desire to bite into fresh human flesh. Okay, I admit it's a rough one. The title was no doubt meant to trade in on the notoriety of the other two films, in great exploitation fashion. It's the only film starring John Saxon (whose credits include Black Christmas, Enter the Dragon, Tenebrae) the actor disowned. 

I'm definitely interested in the history of Britain's Video Nasties panic. Spearheaded by Mary Whitehouse, an outspoken hyper-conservative activist, it was an attempt to officially ban VHS titles deemed irredeemably violent and offensive. It made splashy headlines the way that the Heavy Metal backlash and Satanic Panic did in the US. And I don't mean to sound as though I am defending Whitehouse and her group, but video rental stores were popping up everywhere without any regulation. 12 year olds could walk to the corner store and rent Cannibal Holocaust or Faces of Death. Maybe a little oversight would have been appropriate, at least something similar to the US' MPAA ratings. 

Though really, teens seem to be able to handle most horror movies just fine without psychological trauma, so what do I know. Anything with the word "cannibal" made the Nasties list, regardless of content.

As its own listening experience, Ortolani's score is a bizarre and sometimes even laughable experience. It opens, with "Cannibal Holocaust (Main Theme)", an Italian folky-pop ballad I suppose you could say. Wordless vocals bring Morricone to mind. The second cut, ""Adultress' Punishment" (already suggesting more exploitation themes) begins with the grimiest synth sound imaginable, leading to semi-tonal lines for studio strings. Again, the comparison to Morricone is undeniable, plus that Moog or Arp or Korg synth sound so prevalent in other Italian soundtracks of the time. And more that whatever particular synth was being used, there's a Space Drum or some sort of synthesized that gets hit over and over in the latter half of side one. 

"We paid for the damned Space Drum and by God you're going to hit that thing!" At least that's what I imagine someone yelling.

Things dart around from track to track: light poppy funk, nasty synth, quasi-tonal strings, returns to the saccharine opening theme. Sounds like an Italian horror soundtrack to me, or at least one type. 

It is amazing that this low budget Italian vomit inducer could have the budget for a studio band with string orchestra. The Italian film industry must have been receiving its strongest support at the time. Dario Argento has complained in more recent years just how impossible it is to get anything funded in Italy anymore.

I hate the idea of any country producing films should see its industry falter. There was a small but bona fide Mexican film industry for example, which I believe is essentially a thing of the past. Even if it means cranking out movies like this, some of the time.