VOTD 12/31/2022

 Krzysztof Penderecki: Works (Naxos) double LP

Purchased at The Government Center

This came up in the used section at TGC, and I thought, "You don't see used Penderecki records every day." But then I corrected myself: you don't see this Penderecki record used every day. Others? All the time. 

Jerry's Records always has some Penderecki on hand, if nothing else a space copy of his opera The Devils of Loudon. Just earlier this week, I had to look up if I had a different recording of Passion According to St. Luke than the one that came up in the Jerry's bins. (I do.) 

I can run hot and cold on Penderecki. I generally like his work as a sound mass-style composer, which generally called for large forces (such as orchestra). He can at times sound like a perfectly ordinary, uninteresting academic composer too. I listened to some of his chamber music and it didn't do anything for me. 

So we have this double LP of Penderecki orchestral music, where I find he's usually at his best. It's textures, sounds, motion. Don't go in looking for traditional melody. I have 1/3 or so of this elsewhere? Polymorphia, Anaklasis,  and the famous/infamous Threnody are included in other records I have. The remaining works, Fluorescences, Intermezzo,  and Kosmogonia, are of a generally similar flavor.

Though I'm sympathetic to the sound mass approach, I'm also not without some criticisms. Sometimes I wonder if the (perceived) lack of overall form leaves things hanging in the wind, so to speak. Unmoored, not really adding up to much. On the other hand, maybe everything doesn't need to be so formalized? Maybe more people should be writing more freely for the orchestra.

Then there's moments such as the ending of Polymorphia. It's a work of generally fast-moving sound and action, which ends definitively on a major chord. Well, I guess I like that there's some humor to that, but I also thought, really? THAT is how you're going to end this piece?

The works at times also feel a little short? There's a thing with post-war composers that Morton Feldman noted, and that's writing the 20 minute work. There's some of that here (Fluorescences,   Kosmogoni). The shorter pieces maybe feel like that could have added up to more, though. 

Apart from Threnody, I think Intermezzo and Kosmogonia might be the strongest works here. The former is the most "classical" in the truest sense. It takes a melodic texture and tosses it around the ensemble, on top of itself in layers. It's a simple principle that works well.

The latter adds a chorus with soprano soloist. How any chorus accurately sings Penderecki (or Ligeti or other post-war composers) is beyond me. I have to admit it punches up the drama, or even that this piece has a sense of drama to it.

I'll get back to more Penkerecki soon. I've had some on recently (his opera, Dies Irae) but there's always so much to listen to.

CDOFTD 12/31/2022

 Marc Ribot and the Rootless Cosmopolitans: Requiem for What's-His-Name (Les Disques du Crépescule)

Purchased directly from Marc

What made me pick out this particular disc? I haven't listened to this in decades and wasn't even sure I still had a copy. 

I saw Chris Parker play at Kingfly Spirits on Thursday. Chris is one of the best musicians I've worked with, a great guitarist with a self-effacing humor.

There's a song on this disc, "Clever White Youths," that I think Chris could pull off effectively. In a sing-songy spoken delivery, Marc's voice EQed like an AM radio, he says lines such as, "More clever white youths with attitudes, that's what the world needs today/Singing songs about their alienation, hey hey hey."

I saw Marc play at least twice in the years after this recording (1992), opening for him one of those times as loft space in Brooklyn. That song stuck out for me, reinforced by listening to this disc.

1992, seems like an optimistic time. Projects such as this could get their music released by labels of varying sizes. I bought this from Marc when he said it really wasn't distributed in the US and he was selling the copies he was provided.

I suppose this was the period after his time with Lounge Lizards. While missing the singular voice of John Lurie on alto saxophone, much of the music has a similar feel to Lurie's compositions. There are several vocal tunes ("Pony,", "Yo I Killed Your God, "Commit a Crime") none of which Marc really sings. He's joined here by Ralph Carney, Anthony Coleman, Roy Nathanson, Simeon Cain, and Wilbo Wright, plus a few others. They make a great band. Unsurprisingly, he was already on to another playing group when I saw him in that 93-94 era. The group at the time was named Old Baby. (Not a great choice in my opinion, that's long gone now.)

The star throughout is Marc's guitar. He's in turn melodic, aggressive, noisy, sweet. He always sounds relaxed even as he's pounding out intense lines.

With fifteen tracks on this disc, occasionally I find myself wanting a piece to linger a little longer. I also accept that maybe everything doesn't need to be stretched in  Coltrane or Pharoah manner, right? I would sometimes defend my own super-short compositions, everything doesn't need to be hyper-extended. 

VOTD 12/29/2022 #2

 Bruno Nicolai: La Dama Rossa Uccide 7 Volte OST (CAM Sugar/Decca) 2X LP, red vinyl

Purchased at The Government Center

I play largely instrumental music. It's always been my orientation, it's what I prefer. 

I found that I'd often draw comparisons to film scoring. This irritated me, that people's only connection to to instrumental music was through film music.

Over the years, I turned around my opinion and became increasingly interested in film scores. I wanted to know about composers who were primarily known for film scoring (Ifukube, Elmer Bernstein) vs. "classical" composers who did occasional film work (Copland, Prokofiev, Takemitsu) vs. composers in popular idioms (jazz, rock, etc) who created interesting scores (Zappa, Herbie Hancock, Curtis Mayfield). I've come to think that the highest level of film composing is music that works effectively in the movie but can also be worthy of listening when separated from the visuals. 

Bernard Herrmann is (and probably always will be) my #1 man in the field. I'd say 90% of the time, he's instantly identifiable, even though there's a wide range of expression in his scores.

My second favorite is Ennio Morricone. Unlike Herrman, Morricone is harder to pin down to a definitive style. Take for example is somewhat surrealistic scores to Serge Leone's somewhat surrealistic Westerns. (The Leone/Morricone "Man With No Name" trilogy is a director/composer pairing that stands toe-to-toe with Hitchcock/Herrmann.) There's Morricone's 60s-70s Eurocrime/giallo/horror/thriller scores, with its Italian pop tossed together with jazz-rock rhythm sections, distorted guitar, and string clusters. Then there's the later, lush Morricone of The Mission and others. He's very good at it, even if it's what interests me the least. And there are outlier scores, such as for The Thing, in which he created a John Carpenter-style score for a John Carpenter film.

Bruno Nicolai's name is closely associated with Morricone's. Often scores are listed as, "Composed by Ennio Morricone, conducted by Bruno Nicolai." Morricone's credits are on something like 500 films. That's an immense body of work, and it makes sense that some of the heavy lifting would be done by someone other than he. After all, in this day very few film composers do their own orchestration, let alone conducting or even arranging. I've never personally found John Williams to be all that interesting (there are exceptions), but I gave him major credit for being someone who can and often does all of those things.

I've been told there was a bit of jealousy on Nicolai's part, not being given enough credit for his involvement in Morricone's credited scores. I can't vouch for that one way or the other. Having listened to this and other Nicolai-specific scores, they sound very much like Morricone's thriller scores of the 1970s. I can't speak to who influenced whom, there's no doubt some on both men's parts. I see it as beig a little like the Picasso & Braque early cubist era, in which their works are often indistinguishable except by true experts. 

This scores with a brief passage of wordless singing by a woman (or girl even?). It's not Edda Dell'Orso, who is Morricone's vocalist of choice. Had it been, this would have really sounded like Morricone. 

We hear the familiar elements I've come to know in these types of scores: a kind of poppish instrumental theme, bouncy and light despite the menace that might occur later in the film. the theme is bounced around several times, in different keys and arrangements. There's the occasional string cluster and fuzz guitar I know so well too. 

It would have been a solid single LP, but the double record presents the full score. That's fine. It's my complaint with many releases of this type. Even when some of the material is amazing, wonderful, stands up by itself, a full CD or double LP of the score is often too much for a separate listening experience. Another good example? Herrmann's Vertigo score. The main themes, the best moments? As good as film scoring gets. It's wonderful. Over an hour of cues? More than I need as a whole.

Still, I have a real affection for this style of soundtrack, even if this is not one of the absolute best I've heard.

VOTD 12/29/2022

 Tape Loop Orchestra: Interiors One (Bedroom Tapes [label?])

Purchased at The Government Center

In yesterday's blog post, I wrote of the importance of Thomas Dimuzio hearing me play a track from the first Faust LP on WRCT in 1983 or 4. One of those "this record changed my life" moments. I brought my original copy and gave it to him. He was, as one would expect, delighted . He said he'll frame it and hang it on his wall.

I want to return to the question of why I'm writing these blog posts in the first place. I suppose I mentioned this in the first of these, but it's largely about the discipline of sitting down and doing it. But given that, what should I even write? It seems a little silly to only write quickly created reviews of records for which I give very little editing. So why not write about myself? My relationship to the music, in music in general. That's a bit self-serving. These have been seen so far by almost nobody, and that's fine. Maybe there's something of a legacy project here, seeing my thoughts and internal voice extended into the future. Maybe there's a desire to increase my digital footprint.

Mike Shanley referenced me in his own blog (https://shanleyonmusic.blogspot.com/). He's writing a session-by-session review of Ivo Perlman's digital/virtual box set of reed duets, comparing it to my series of writings regarding Ennio Morricone on this page. It's nice of him to do so. He's a better writer than me, and I think there's a greater purpose to his blog posts than mine. If I've in any way inspired him or any other creative pursuit, that's a positive thing. It's like I discussed with Thomas last night, we often don't know when we do something that turns out to be very inspiring to someone else. 

So, the music. I'd seen other records by Tape Loop Orchestra at The Government Center, and I couldn't help but be intrigued by the name. It's a good name, not only for the sound of it, but suggests an approach to the music. This LP/CD/booklet came up used, slightly cheaper than the new issues, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Something of an aside: I was pondering last night that there was a time many years ago when I could look over a new or used record section and have a good idea if a record was something that interested me. I knew either by reputation, label, writings I had read about the artist, or often just by its appearance. Those days a long gone. Now, I often struggle to figure out who the artist is by lookin at the cover design. Hipster design, decreasing eyesight, and low light levels in some record stores, keep me from reading the information. 

Now I've had the chance to hear this project, from Manchester England. I haven't looked up much information, whether this is one person or several. It's not surprisingly an ambient music project. The booklet is of black and white photos of room interiors.

Brian Eno is credited with created the term ambient music. Like any categorization of genre, keep mean a certain range of possible outcomes. You've heard or said it: "This is pretty ambient." When I listen to this record, it sounds very Eno-ish to me. That's not something I'd say about all ambient music. It recalls vaguely Music for Airports and Apollo, though different from the latter because it's only two long tracks. 

It's perfectly pleasant to listen to. What I don't want to do is write, "I was expecting it to sound like this," and take what the artist has given me. That said, with a name like Tape Loop Orchestra, I was expecting something a little more analog-sounding. William Basinski's use (and breakdown) of analog tape loops, give a soft-edged, even slightly grungy sound to the results. This is cleaner. 

A note, and something I try not to complain about. I know I should probably probably replace my turntable stylus, but there seems to be a major pressing glitch on the second side. It sounds first like somebody bumping a microphone, then there's outright needle skating over a few grooves. That would be distracting under any circumstances, but it's seismic under these. Maybe it's why this turned up used.

Another aside: I have often been going to sleep while streaming ambient music stations on Radio Garden on my phone at very low volume levels. If you don't know Radio Garden, get hip! Its both a website and a mobile app that's absolutely worth your time. And when you do, try searching for SOMA FM Drone Zone or Ambient Sleeping Pill for some intentionally unobtrusive listening. 

VOTD 12/28/2022

 Faust: s/t (Recommended)

Bought mail order from Wayside Music

I plan on going to see Thomas Dimuzio play tonight, making this particular missive very timely. I've met Thomas just once before, in 1994 or 5 when Water Shed 5tet played in San Francisco. Thomas is originally from Bethel Park, and knew Jeff Stringer (our bassist). 

I have Facebook contact with Thomas. A few years back, he did one of those Facebook lists of ten records that had an impact on him. One of the records he mentioned was the first Faust record. He heard the track "Why Don't You Eat Carrots" on WRCT as a high school student. WRCT was probably still a ten watt station at the time, and its coverage was sketchy even within the city let alone outside. There's a chance the wattage had been bumped up to 100 by then, I don't know the specific timing. Either way, WRCT had a weak signal, and he wrote about just barely being to pick it up out in the suburbs.

In his Facebook post, he described how important it was hearing that articular piece, that he'd never heard anything like it before. It's fortunate that I saw this string of postings, because I responded to tell him that I was without a doubt the person who played that record. I'm certain I was the only person who had a copy, and probably few DJs even knew Faust's music.

The record is elegantly and unusually (for its initial release) packaged, a clear vinyl record with cover art and notes printed on transparent plastic. The labels are silver with no information printed on them. Originally it was released on Polydor in 1971; my copy was the Recommended Records reissue from 1979.

Listening to it now, I didn't look at the index listing on the inner groove to see which side I put on first. It was the second side first, listed as "Miss Fortune, recorded live at Wümme, September 21 1971." It's certainly not a live concert recording, or if it is, not entirely. Things are mixed in and out, and the acoustic piano indicates a studio creation. Faust in a most post-psychedelic tone here, with distorted guitars and jamming. This puts them firmly in the Krautrock category along with Can.

Listening to the first side second, Faust sounds crazier, with pieces of ideas sometimes floating in and out, sometimes abruptly introduced. There's a kind of prog-ish melody (in the sense of Henry Cow) in the previously mentioned track, flipping back and forth with noise, text, etc. The second track has more vocals, and is perhaps generally even more unhinged.

What amazes me is that anyone thought they could make money off this music. Well, a label I mean. but then this is the era of Henry Cow on virgin (a few years later?), Velvet Underground and Mothers of Invention on Verve, Can on United Artists, to name only a few. Of course I've never been a good judge of what will or won't sell, but how these artists were ever expected to be big sellers I beyond me. It does mean that there's a certain era of music that's well distributed. 

My guess is that Thomas wasn't the only person to get flipped over this record, and for that we can be grateful.

Note: this record came with a strange sort of film on it from the beginning. I don't know if it is due to the packaging. I'm sure it would sound better if it had a proper cleaning.

VOTD 12/27/2022

 Frank Martin: Five Songs of Ariel and Other Festive Choral Music (Opus One)

Purchased at Jerry's Records, formerly in the Duquesne University collection

What do I choose for listening? A great deal of the time, it's due to having purchased the record or disc, and just need to take it in. I bought this today at Jerry's Records out of a bin of Duquesne recordings. The university sold off its vinyl collection to Jerry's, who in turn have been selling most for $3 apiece. I've made a few pretty amazing finds (BA Zimmerman's opera Die Soldaten being a good example), but at the price point, I've bought up things I might not have otherwise. This is an example.

I know nothing about Frank Martin, nor Steven R. Gerber, the other composer on this album. It's largely a choral album, one reason I wouldn't normally bite at this. I put out the money (really $2.50 each, frequently flyer discount) because of the Opus One label, one of the better composers' labels back in the pre-CD days. 

Martin's music in the case of these pieces has a strong Renaissance-era flavor to it. I can't speak to how that might compare to his instrumental music, which as far as I remember I've never heard. The "Dédicace" of 1945, a song setting with piano, starts to bring the music much closer to the late 19th/early 20th centuries. 

Ned Rorem's music has been a topic of discussion among friends after his recent passing. My position has been, I recognize his talents but have never been especially interested in the work itself. I give him credit however that he wrote very effectively for the voice. Composing for the voice has some limitations you don't have with most instruments, it's more challenging to really do it right. Frank Martin seems to write vocalistically, it all sounds very natural for the voice.

The five Dylan Thomas Settings by Steven R. Gerber would have recalled Stravinsky's vocal music to me, even if the maestro wasn't a dedicatee. In that sort of vaguely tonal-on the verge of atonality. 

VOTD 12/25/2022

 The Residents: Santa Dog 50th Anniversary Collection (Secret Records) purchased through mail order

Fifty years ago this week, a hippie art collective from San Mateo, CA released a double 7" titled Santa Dog. A spurious band name was given to each side (The Singing Lawnchairs, for example). There is mention inside the cover of Residents, Uninc, the movie Vileness Fats,  Ralph Records, and the graphics division Porno/Graphics. (The latter would have multiple spellings over the years.)

The story leading up to the record, the name The Residents, whatever happened to their feature length film, is better documented elsewhere. I will mentioned a few parts of the story here. The four titles on the sides were named from an insurance brochure: "Fire" (AKA "Santa Dog"), "Explosion", "Lightning", and "Aircraft Damage". It was a surrealist exercise in found materials,  "Santa Dog" itself is an anagram of God/Satan. That said, I once saw the polaroid of a dachshund dressed in a Santa suit when I visited Ralph Records in 1986. The record was not generally made for commercial sale. The band tried to send a copy to Richard Nixon at the White House, to be stamped "rejected" and returned.

I was, in and some respects remain, a fanatical fan. But definitely to a point. The band's early music, from Santa Dog through Commercial Album is some of my favorite music. Even within that time period there are ups and downs. I admire Eskimo more than I enjoy it; it is an interesting production to say the least. Duck Stab!, on the other hand, I consider to be a desert island disc. No doubt much of my continued interest in the first decade of the band's existence has to do with me discovering them in high school. I was really looking for something different, and they and the Ralph Records roster at the time delivered.

Commercial Album was followed by Mark of the Mole, a record I like but definitely don't love. I think it partially has to do with my personal disliking of programmatic nature of it and Eskimo, the storytelling through sound.

After Mark, as The Residents entered into their early digital period, I found myself decreasingly interested in what they were doing. I rather enjoyed the Intermission  EP, the first record to significantly be produced on the Emulator sampling keyboard. And while I found things to enjoy about the subsequent several records, it all honestly became less and less interesting to my ears more-or-less with each release. 

I hate to blame the tools, but the ease of production using sampling technology drained much of the charm of the early recordings. I liked the sometimes primitive, rough-hewn quality of the music and production. The cleanliness of the more recent albums makes me long for the determinately out of tune piano that was so prevalent on Fingerprince and Not Available. 

I'm writing my take on things, without apology. I like what I like. But I am willing to question even my own opinions on The Residents' music for most of the past four decades. Am I judging the music based on something I want to hear, rather than what is presented to me?

Nonetheless, listening to this collection that spans the band's earliest to nearly their most recent recordings, reminds me of their highs and lows. Again, just to my ears if nobody else's, but I know I am not alone in my strong preference for the early recordings. 

I admire their determination, I'm happy some version of the group still exists, despite the retirement and  passing of Hardy Fox. The recent pREServed series of reissues has turned up a few good moments, but largely the unreleased material hasn't been essential. I guess I'll have to be satisfied to continue to revisit this band's 1970s work. But, oh what a time, what a time.

VOTD Dec. 24 2022

 The Art Ensemble of Chicago: with Fontella Bass (Prestige) Don't recall where I bought this.

I have mixed feelings about the AECO. I recognize their importance, and sometimes I think their recordings are great. Unfortunately, sometimes they're not. Is that too much to expect of an artist or band? I think one of the indicators of a great artist is consistency. I wouldn't consider all of their records to be essential, but I'd be pressed to find recordings by Sonny Rollins or Stan Getz in which they didn't sound really good. The program might be weak, the backing band might be lesser, but they're likely to sound excellent.

Which brings me back to AECO, part of the jazz vanguard in the generation following the "new thing" of Coltrane, then Pharoah, Shepp, and Ayler. The AECO generally draws more directly on African sources for inspiration, though as a whole their interests are very broad. 

I of course know Fontella Bass' song "Rescue Me", but I wouldn't have known the name of the recording artist attached to it. I don't know how this collaboration came about. She sounds strong here, on the first side. The perhaps cliched word would be "soulful," but there it is. Her singing with/above the collective improvisations on the first side reminded me a bit of June Tyson with the Sun Ra Arkestra, but then that's just my orientation. June can be a bit of a shouter, but she always sells a song hard. Fontella is a bit lighter here. She mixes it up with the guys just fine, possibly bringing focus to what might have been a wandering or even rambling improvisation. Not that everything up to the end of the side is strictly improvised, but the side ends with a short burst of composed material, and boom they're done.

Side two is sans Fontella, playing on a work by Roscoe Mitchell. Each player is credited on no fewer than four instruments each, with Roscoe and Joseph getting an "etc" after a long list of things. AECO was known for the "two ton tour," traveling with huge array of instruments.

My opinion on this approach has probably shifted over the years. As a young improvisor, I often collected different sound sources This included toy instruments, but not of especially good quality, such as a nice toy piano. It could get silly. And silly isn't even necessarily bad, but I don't think it necessarily advanced the music.

The side opens a drum solo (a bit meh) followed by some composed material, which quickly opens up into freer territory. It stays free, shifting instrumental color frequently, until there's a brief coda at the end for bass and soprano sax. I find myself sometimes wanting the individual players to focus on one or two instruments they play will, rather than shifting from bass sax to bicycle horns to vibes, or whatever might have happened. 

There's also a, how can I put this? A procedural issue I have with this? I like the idea of "open field" improvisation. What I mean by that is, it's not specifically free improvisation because there is a composition to launch the performance. Play the piece and just let things open up. But if the improvisation doesn't somehow reflect on the composition, why have a composition at all?

VOTD #1

Vinyl of the day #1

    John Eaton: Mass, Blind Man's Cry, Concert Music for Solo Clarinet (CRI)

    Purchased at the Government Center

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There's always discussion each late December/early January about so-called New Years resolutions. Lose weight is always at the top of the list, something that I most definitely must try harder to do.

I find staying disciplined and on-track to be difficult. I guess that's why it's discipline, right? We'll see how effectively I maintain some routines I have planned for the coming months.

I have a substantial record and CD collection. As I've been looking through some of it recently, it occurred to me that I didn't remember buying or owning some of them. It seems to me that I should make a point of sitting down and listening or relistening to many of them.

So why not write about them? I don't expect this to be taken especially seriously by anyone, and it's not a serious musicology project. I did something similar when I bought the 32-CD Messiaen collection during the COVID lockdown, and then later listening to my collection of Morricone vinyl albums after the maestro's death. I started writing about the individual discs in a Pierre Henry box set I bought, but I didn't stay with it. I'll have to return to that.

Writing this now is more an exercise in personal discipline and self motivation. If someone gets something out of it, good for us both then.

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Why of all things would I make this initial blog post about a John Eaton? Truth is, I purchased this LP a few days ago and needed to get around to listening to it anyway. In general I will almost always buy records of historic electronic music, whether studio creations (i.e Schaffer, Henry) or performed on early electronic instruments (this). 

I know little about John Eaton's music, apart from another LP and a compilation track. He is associated with an electronic musical instrument named the Syn-ket. There's more than I know about the instrument listed here: https://120years.net/tag/synket/

I only know of one other place Syn-kets appear outside of Eaton's music, that being in Italian soundtrack music. Ennio Morricone used one in his score for Sacco and Vanzetti, for example. 

Based on the pictures on the site listed above, it looks like a pretty practical device. Not terribly large, clear layout of components, and microtonal tuning capabilities. The first two works on this record use not only Syn-kets, but Moog modular systems. 

The Syn-ket was never intended to be a commercial product, and only about a dozen were ever built. This points out a challenge of composing for electronic instruments. Even when composing for commercially available instruments, what happens when the company goes out of business? How dependent on the particular device is the composition?

I know of no attempts to recreate the Syn-ket, despite the current fashionability of analog-based modular synthesis. Therefor, all we have are these recordings of Eaton's music for the instrument. Strict performance live would at best involve substitutions. 

Mass and Blind Man's Cry both involve ensembles of synthesizers (Moog and Syn-ket), with voice. Mass also uses a solo clarinet (no credit that I can find, in a virtuoso role) and tape delay elements. Both works were written for soprano Michiko Hirayama, and she's a dazzler. I was certain I knew that name, and it's because of her performance of Giacinto Scelsi's Canti del Capricorno. She has amazing range and expression, but does not sing in that broad, European operatic style. And I'm glad. She is well suited to the material here. My easy go-to for comparisons for extreme vocal techniques is Diamanda Galàs. Ms. Galàs is mostly involved with creating her own works, or interpreting old songs. Nonetheless, there is fair comparison to be made here. Hirayama shrieks, sighs, and generally has a wide range of expression. The score must be a complex jumble of notations. 

The record ends with a work for solo clarinet, played beautifully by William O. Smith. It's the sort of work you might expect: ideas darting around, trills, some complicated note passages played fast. I find sometimes there's a question of, if you could improvise something that doesn't sound significantly different than this, why not choose to do that instead? Smith has great, sharp articulation and a big sound, so it is a good feature for his playing.