A response

 I've tried to notice when people have responded to my blog posts. There are two friends who have written responses, neither of whom use their birth names for online purposes when possible, so I won't either. 

Today however, I received an email from one Robert Carey of (or really, is) Orchid Spangiafora. The link for my original posting is at the top of the pasted message.

He wrote that Blogspot wasn't permitting him to respond to my posting. (I assume it's my fault, some setting I probably need to change.) Because this is the primary source, the genuine article, I thought I'd include his email as a separate posting and not just paste it into the responses myself. 

Something I mentioned to him when writing back: I wrote to him once before, asking if he knew anything about the Conglomerate Records tape collection. Like everyone else I asked, the answer was no. If you have no idea what I'm referring to, I'll write more in a future message.

Re: http://benopie.blogspot.com/2023/10/votd-10252023.html

Thanks for the review! It is very cool to be able to read people’s takes on FPAE.  I remember thinking when I made the record I would never get to hear people’s reactions to it.  The web has changed that. 

I have a few comments.

I am certain she is the reason WRCT bought the Orchid Spangiafora LP. "It's really good" as she would say in her quiet manner. Curiously, the original album was released on Twin/Tone Records. Twin/Tone was a Minnesota indie that released the likes of The Replacements, Soul Asylum, The Mekons, Yo La Tengo: guitar-driven stripped-down new wave bands. Yet, somehow in 1979, the Orchid Spangiafora LP was released. 

I forgot Yo La Tango was on Twin/Tone.  Georgia was in elementary school at Friends Seminary when I was in high school.  I got to know her and Ira better in the late 1970s when I was seeing Georgia’s sister Emily and Ira was working at NY Rocker.  Before Flee Past’s Ape Elf I made a 7” record of Dime Operation.  My college roommate, Chris Osgood, was in a band called The Suicide Commandos and they put out some EPs via Paul Stark, who founded Twin/Tone.  So my record came out on PS records.  Later Chris worked for Twin/Tone and he proposed an Orchid Spangiafora album to the other guys there.

So what is it? Musique concrète, audio cut-ups, Plunderphonics before such a word existed. (I assume, I think John Oswald would create the word some years later.) 

I always thought of it as Concrète, but historically that genre typically emphasized found sounds other than voice.  It has a little in common with Come Out by Steve Reich, but it is not as formal, and I think it owes more to Burroughs and Gysin.  I first heard of Plunderphonics when Byron Coley played me the record with Michael Jackson on the cover - particular the track based on Trout Mask Replica.  I think that was in the late 1980s.   Plunderphonics to me is more about repurposing selections of existing music to create a new piece that sounds like it could have been assembled by the original artist.  Somewhere in between you find things like 448 Deathless Days by Steve Fisk (which I highly recommend.)

The emphasis is on voices, particularly found voices; the first work, "Dime Operation", is a furious collage of voices that sound like they were recorded off of television. (I recognized Monte Hall's voice in there.) 

“I had so much fun with those dolphins.”  Yep, a lot of television and radio combined with friends’ voices and anything else that happened along.   The first one was Coarse Fish.  I came into the Hampshire College electronic music studio in 1973 to find that John Kilgore had left me a huge pile of loose recording tape on the table with a note on top saying, “Robbie, knock yourself out.”  It was recordings of a nature show about the ocean.  It became Coarse Fish.

One phrase stood out, from two speakers edited one after the other: "Fashioned to a device behind a tree." This would become the title of a Nurse With Wound piece, first appearing on a Come Org compilation in 1982.

Stapleton misheard that.  It actually says, “Fastened to a device - behind a tree.”  Not that it really matters at all.

The reissue comes with a second LP of unreleased (at least to vinyl) works. The first side is different, more of a low-tech electronic work, but again with some emphasis on editing. The second side though, it's all voices. One after another after another after another, cut/cut/cut/cut/cut. It's listed as four pieces, but it runs continuously and I'll be damned if I can hear where one ends and the next starts.

I did Asafoetida in October 1972.  The studio at Hampshire had an Arp 2500 synthesizer which was a great teaching machine but somewhat noisy.   A lot, but far from all, of the sounds in that piece come from the Arp, but nearly all of the composition was done with loops and edits on the tape decks and combining tracks with the mixer.  There are many many tracks layered in that piece.  Unfortunately it is a little muddy because it was, in fact, somewhat muddy to begin with due to certain constraints of the studio but mostly due to my inexperience.  Also the original tape was lost long ago, and the recording on the album is from a not-very-carefully made dub.  Secondhand Smoke was done on a computer when storage and processor speed was just barely up to it.  Hold Everything was done after Hampshire in my parents’ apartment on a cheap Akai tape recorder.  There is more Orchid material from feeding tube if you are interested.  Visit https://feedingtuberecords.com/.  There are also some odds and ends on bandcamp.

*Regarding Boyd Rice: Hoo boy. I guess he still has his defenders, it's not a scene that I've followed closely. 

Boyd sent me some records by Non in the late 70s or early 80s.  They were interesting.  He had drilled alternative spindle holes in them so you could play them off center.  I met him when he did a performance at Hurrah in NYC.  The performance was good.  I found him interesting but somewhat hostile.  I recently bought a book by him called “No,” but I have not given it the attention it deserves. Beyond that I do not know much about him.  I believe you can find more personal notes about him in Drugs Are Nice by Lisa Carver, another book that is sitting unread on my shelf.  I should get around to it.

Bonus post!

It's been a few days over a year that I starting blogging regularly, then not so regularly, here. As I wrote recently, it was an intended discipline to give purpose to my record and CD collection: write my thoughts on my current listening, and give a reason for pulling out records from my archive. Ultimately, I find I'm writing about myself more than the music itself (such as in this very instance). I'll probably continue now and then, once again for myself than any intended audience. I feel like I've reached a point where I'm starting to repeat my own anecdotes. I might be repeated the comment below.

I have a friend, who for simplicity's sake I'll refer to the masculine "he." (I don't need a discussion regarding pronouns, please.) This is someone I've known for decades, but haven't seen in person for years. We are Facebook contacts. When he responds to a posting by me or others that I see, it inevitably comes in the form of, "I saw that band in 1984" or "My band opened for them" or "I drove around that musician one weekend" or other comments that almost invariably come back to "I" or "me." He's even taken credit for things I didn't believe he should, and I've called him out on it.

This is my long-winded example of the hesitance I feel just writing about myself. I, I, I, me, me, me. And if I do write about myself, maybe I should focus that energy into documenting more of my work? I don't consider myself to be all that interesting or with a unique point of view. 

Yet I once again sit at my laptop, writing about myself. Our lives are not without contradictions.

And I find myself facing contradictions and conflicts  more and more as I age. What will my legacy be? Why should I care, if I'm gone anyway? What do I do now that I know I have fewer years ahead of me than behind me? Why am I not working on my music at this very moment? Will it matter? What does "matter" even mean? 

Truth is, I'm in too deep to back away now. And I am grateful for the fact that playing music continues to give me purpose. 

I've kept track of the artist recordings I've posted here. I'll post below. Draw what you will from the list, and it's hardly everything I've had on in the past year. It's surprisingly lacking in so-called jazz artists, but I don't know what that word means sometimes.

I'll probably continue, but not on a regular basis. There are so many things I need to do.

-Ben

VOTD 12/28/2023

 Fuzzhead:  El Saturn (Ecstatic Peace/Ecstatic Yod)

Purchased (used?) at Get Hip Records

So what about today's record? Fuzzhead. Knew nothing about them when I bought this, and in a sense I still don't. The cover is a mockup/parody of the BYG Actuel series, a tremendously important French label from 1969-1972 that released albums by Archie Shepp, Anthony Braxton, Sun Ra, Dewey Redman, Jimmy Lyons, among others. The back label is pasted on, reading: fuzzhead/"el saturn"/an entirely subjective visit to the sun ra musical omniverse". It also reads having been recorded August-November 1994 in Kent, Ohio. I might have bought the record anyway, but that last detail nailed it down.

With the name Fuzzhead, I expected something maybe more garage-rockish. And there's definitely that element to it, though the apparent addition of additional horns and voices it starts to sound more like El Saturn Records sessions at times. I discovered that the labels were reversed, so the well known "It's After the End of the World" and "We Travel the Spaceways" didn't occur when expected. The intended second side is more of a free-ish session, possibly recalling an even more primitive Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra or other Saturn releases.

Immediately dropping the needle, there's a haze of background noise and ambience. I'm not bothered by lower fidelity recordings, but I question them from a standpoint of "authenticity." In this case I''m recalling a conversation with Bruce Lentz, dedicated rock-n-roll fan and singer in straightforward punk/garage bands like Forbidden Five and Volcano Dogs. He was trying to produce an album at the time, and was dealing with varying opinions on the fidelity of the recording. He said that some people think that albums must have low fidelity and raw sounding to be any good; high quality ruins it for them. I told him I thought that was bullshit, that intensity does not mean it has to sound like garbage. To quote my friend Myles Boisen, "We can always make it sound shittier."

This album wouldn't have been the same if it was recorded higher quality. But, is it to evoke certain eras of Sun Ra's recordings, or just an attitude that the band needs to sound low fi? I mean, I've captured gigs on a Zoom H1 (not available to them at the time) that are noticeably sharper than this. 

As for the performances? It is unquestionably a view of Sun Ra's sound world. In that respect it is largely effective, albeit rather primitive in performance. Sun Ra always had a band with highly varied talents, often to his advantage. John Gilmore playing alongside Marshall Allen. 

I guess the world need reinterpretations of music such as this. My own instinct has been to dig into the compositions more, to continue to play some of the range of his pieces. We need more of both I think.

Some viewing

 23rd Century Giants: The Story of Renaldo and the Loaf (2021)

While watching this film (available on Tubi and other streaming services), I was pondering the pros and cons of digital technology with respect to music and film production. The cost of making a feature film has been tremendously reduced. It's no longer necessary to shoot on film stock, and feature films have been made on iPhones. Besides those of travel, dubbing, and hired personnel, the cost is mostly for the cameras and storage media. I know that's a simplification, but mostly true.

While theatrical presentations have substantially been reduced, streaming services have opened more possibilities for getting work seen than physical home video media ever have.

This mostly sounds like a positive, which indeed it is. And yet, how much do we need? Are all the movies necessary?

Which brings me to 23rd Century Giants. Here's where I back up and get a little more autobiographical. The Ralph Records bug bit me as a senior in high school. I went away to college as a music conservatory student, but in my spare time listening to Ralph releases. 

For such a small label, the quality and variety of music on the label as amazingly high. Between 1978-1984, Ralph released albums by The Residents, Snakefinger, Tuxedomoon, Yello, MX-80 Sound, Art Bears, Fred Frith. Fred's album Gravity nearly hits my "desert island discs" consistently. Tuxedomoon released two great but highly different albums on Ralph. Yello also released two albums on Ralph before being signed to the big leagues.

And then there's Renaldo and the Loaf. Not my favorite of the bunch, but their LP debut Songs for Swinging Larvae is a solid, funny, interesting slab of primitive weirdness. So much so, that I guess there was some accusation that R&TL was The Residents. I don't hear it myself, despite the sliding scale of the descriptor "weirdness." The voices don't match (essential for The Residents), and R&TL were far more involved with studio production (editing, tape loops, backwards playback, etc). 

I like the album. Much of it is memorable and strangely catchy. I later bought their followup, Arabic Yodelling, and I don't remember it at all. I also found the R&TL/Residents collaboration, Title in Limbo, a rather unmemorable release. Maybe I'm the one who's selling those releases short; maybe one LP by the group is all I need.

Nonetheless, I have an affection for that time and scene. There were a few years where, if it was on Ralph, it was worth checking out. 

This all leads me to this documentary. I don't want to say it's bad (it's not, it's well made), but I found that their story is just not that interesting.  It's mostly the story of two friends, frustrated folk musicians. They got more and more involved in their own musical world, eventually releasing a tape of their oddball songs.

Long story short, they get attention from Ralph, release Songs and several other albums, and then their lives go in separate directions for several decades. They're eventually reunited, start releasing new music, and actually perform live for the first time. 

It's lovely. But it's not a particularly compelling story, in and of itself. The movie is largely a fan piece, albeit a very good fan piece. I felt more or less the same about Zappa and Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents. 

Similar to those two films, my favorite element in this film is the archival materials presented. There are quite a few photos and even some brief films of the two of them, and I say, more! I've never seen any of those things before, and it was fun to see images of the two young self-proclaimed Surrealists/primitive folk weirdos. 

The film has its usual parade of talking heads, both fans and people associated with Ralph Records. A telling moment was Homer Flynn of Ralph Records/Cryptic Corporation talking about business strategy for the label. They thought that by signing more groups, they'd have more of a revenue stream to support The Residents. The problem was, recording studio time costs money. But R&TL bought their own recording equipment (similar to The Residents) so the cost of producing music was significantly reduced. It's why Ralph released more albums by the group while others were dropped.

All in all? I mean, I liked this even if I wish it had more archival materials. Will it introduce more people to the music? Maybe, but I suspect it's mostly for those of us who are already there. Still, if like me you have any affection for that time and place, it's worth a view.

VOTD 12/20/2023

Dawn of Midi: Dysnomia (Erased Tapes)

Purchased used at Mind Cure Records

In my previous missive, considering the passing of Andre Braugher and listening to some of the Disintegration Loops, I started pondering my own age and the state of my body. As I listen to this I think, this music is a young men's game, music created by someone at an age where you can just devote the time to develop something such as this.

I didn't know who Dawn of Midi was when I came across this record (really, an album length split over four 12" sides). There was a sticker on the cover: "Great". Used. Because it was opened, I could give it a spin on the store turntable. A few seconds in, I knew it be my next purchase.

At this point in my life it takes a lot for me to think, I haven't heard that before. Nothing is entirely separated from any other music, and I'm sure I could string together a "This artist meets that artist in a dark alley on a Sunday night" kind of cute comparison. While I don't take my blogging terribly seriously, I also don't want to resort to that sort of lazy record reviewing.

The lineup: piano, upright bass, drums. Sounds like it could be the Bud Powell Trio, but there isn't so much of a whiff of jazz here. The piano is a combination of muted and open strings; the bass tends to play percussively; the drums play without cymbals. There's clearly the influence of sequenced music, particularly drum machines, and yet it doesn't sound like a beatbox at all. Ideas play over time, a polyrhythm at one tempo becomes a simple rhythm in a shifted tempo. I think there's a touch of Steve Reich-ian style minimalism, but even that doesn't adequately explain what's going on here. 

What is clear is that they spent a tremendous amount of time developing and rehearsing this work, which despite separate work titles (two or three a side) is played as one long evolving composition. Hence the comment about a young men's game. All of the pieces are credited to the pianist, or co-credited to the bassist. It's brilliantly performed and sounds like a continuous performance.

That's entirely possible, because I saw the group a few years ago at the Warhol Museum. It was exciting to hear this performed live, but a touch disappointing too. I don't hear that there was a note difference between that performance and this record, which I knew well enough to know that it was very close. I didn't expect them to stretch the material. The entire performance was basically this record. I thought, anything else?

And similar to Disintegration Loops, this actually might have been better experienced as a single CD rather than four 12" sides. The limited edition clear vinyl does look very attractive though. And if Michael from Mind Cure hadn't put the "great" comment on a sticker, I might have paid attention to it. I later found out that Michael would occasionally open a new LP and play it in the store for his own enjoyment and curiosity, then mark it down a few dollars and sell it used. That's probably how I found the soundtrack to Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers used on vinyl.

I started writing this blog to force myself to dig into my own library of records and CDs and give purpose to listening to different things. While I maintained that discipline regularly at first, now I do it when I can spare the time and effort, as well as for my own satisfaction. I'm reminded that I need to keep plugging away at my own work too, keep putting in the time to continue to create while I still have the ability to do so. 

CDOTD 12/13/2023

 William Basinski: Disintegration Loops II (Temporary Residence Ltd)

Purchased at Sound Cat Records

Here's Ben, sitting and writing another blog post, once a regular occurrence, now far less so. What's the point? Perhaps the discipline is the point.

Furthermore, what could be added to the volumes of information and accolades this particular set of works? I'm so far out of keeping track of what's current in any world, be it jazz, "new music", or whatever, that I didn't know about these works until I heard an NPR story about the CD reissue in 2014.

The concept is simple, if you are unaware of it. Basinski used (analog) tape loops in his work, and discovered that if they ran long enough, the magnetic recording medium would start to wear off. He then set about to record the results of his tape loops deteriorating until there was nothing left but the plastic tape, sans medium. 

Part of what is interesting about the results is the way in which the tapes deteriorate. The loudest moments stay the most stable; the tails of sounds tend to strip away the fastest. The final moments before all sound stripped away are jittery, percussive. 

To add to the poignancy, he was finishing this recording project on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Photos of his view from Brooklyn are the cover images used in the series.

I guess there's a highly prized ten LP set of these pieces that's highly prized. For as much as I enjoy and perhaps fetishize vinyl, CD is the right medium for these works. This particular disc has two pieces, clocking at 33:00 and 42:00, around the length of three or more record sides. It's better to put it on and let it run, than to have to get up and flip the platter over to complete the playing. 

The first and shorter of the two pieces on this edition is curious, because it seems to have two elements? The deteriorating tape loop, but also a soft-edged synth line? I'm unsure, because the former element definitely dies away in the manner described, the latter does not. The second work definitely sounds like the disintegrating tape loop.

There's an elegiac quality to the pieces, even without taking the 9/11 connection into account. I find it interesting that this concept, which is based on a mechanical process, plays like very human music. Maybe that interpretation is based on the feeling of my own body slowly deteriorating with age.

Which brings to mind that Andre Braugher's death was announced yesterday. Damn. He was only 3/4 of a year old than me. Anyone who saw him on the television show Homicide: Life on the Streets couldn't help but be impressed by him. As a friend wrote on Facebook, "Pretty much guaranteed to steal every scene he was in". Truth. Homicide could be uneven, some characters and storylines forgettable, but at its best (probably the third season) it ranks with some of the best television produced. There's little question the center of the show was Braugher's forceful Det. Frank Pembleton, playing off the more naive Det. Tim Bayliss, played by Kyle Secor. The show was a network broadcast predecessor to later limited cable series such as The Wire. The Wire and others benefitted from shorter and more focused seasons, not to mention fewer limitations on things such as language and content. 

Here's Ben, sitting and writing another blog post, listening to the second piece on this disc yet again, thinking of Andre Braugher. I'm not usually one to quote Bible passages, but I found this on an album dedication, coming from James 4:14: "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are mist that appears for a little while, then vanishes."

VOTD 12/11/2023

The Medieval Jazz Quartet: The Medieval Jazz Quartet Plus Three (Classic Editions)

Purchased at Jerry's Records

I can be a bit of a hoarder, and on top of it I'm chronically disorganized. Sometimes I get ahead of both things, other times it feels like a losing battle. Thankfully I've fought my impulses enough that I try to limit my purchases, both in number and category. I continue to buy records, which been fueled in part by picking pieces from the Duquesne University collection, on the cheap.

In my various stops by Jerry's, The Attic, and whatever record stores I might find, sometimes I'll spring from something that I later think, "well, maybe I didn't need that." But I'm always interested in oddities, and I guess that's what caught my fancy in this case.

The Medieval Jazz Quartet seems to have been a one-off project of Bob Dorough, mostly famously the vocalist for some installments of Schoolhouse Rock, and "Blue Xmas" the odd closer to Miles Davis' Sorcerer LP. He's a good vocalist but sounds a bit like a cartoon character. 

This is Bob mostly on tenor recorder, leading a quartet of recorder players (mostly) through jazz standards, plus a guitar/bass/drums trio. The recorder parts are largely through-arranged, though Bob solos occasionally. He's not bad, but it's an instrument with a limited range of expression. He wisely keeps solos brief, and cracks notes with some frequency. I mean, how could you not? He also sings a few times, which definitely breaks things up.

Strangest (and probably most interesting) of all the tracks is the arrangement of "Nature Boy" which includes bouzouki, two crumhorns, and a baroque flute. Hearing the latter whip a few lines around does serve to remind that the recorder is such a limited instrument.

While the guitarist's name is unfamiliar to me (Al Schackman), the bass and drums are very familiar: George Duvivier and Paul Motian. Paul does his work but at no time stands out. It's not a put down; a single strike of a tom or kick drum could destroy the entire front line of this group. George gets to show off a little more, albeit in the background. Hey, it's a paying gig, right? And who knew what Paul would go on to do? This was well before the days of the Liberation Music Orchestra and the Keith Jarrett Quartet, let alone the great Paul Motian Trio.

The record? It's pleasant enough, some of the arranging is pretty good. But in the end, it is recorders. How about more crumhorn?

VOTD 12/6/2023

 A. Blonksteiner: Cannibal Apocalypse OST (Death Waltz/Mondo)

Probably ordered by mail from Death Waltz

Cannibal Apocalypse, AKA Apocalypse Domani, AKA Cannibals in the Streets. The only film disowned by John Saxon, a major player in exploitation circles. It is a rather nasty bit of business, but in all it's not a bad horror film. The title was definitely meant to play off the earlier and much harsher Cannibal Holocaust, in classic exploitation form. 

In this case, Vietnamese war vets come back to the US with a disease that compels them to start biting and chewing on other people. It becomes them vs. law enforcement, and, I forget many of the details. I saw it years ago, and it's not exactly the sort of film that turns up on Svengoolie. It also starts Giovanni Lombardi Radice, who gets a drill through the head in Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead, and is also in the other notorious Video Nasty, Cannibal Ferox. I read somewhere he didn't like horror movies, but seems to have built something of a career having appeared in some of the most gruesome. 

Video Nasties was a movement in the 1980s in Britain akin to America's Satanic Panic, and the scapegoating of heavy metal. They were responsible for the ills of society, with no real evidence. Video rental places became the rage, and any twelve year old go pop down to the corner store and rent Make Them Die Slowly  (alternate title to Cannibal Ferox). It was begging to be regulated, but the response was in extremis: titles were banned unless they were cut, titles had to be pulled, and even titles that weren't on the list could be confiscated by the police. This could include something like Night of the Living Dead, which is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. 

Many of these titles were Italian in origin, including this one. I am a fan of the music in Italian horror films in general, largely due to the works of Goblin (Suspiria, Deep Red, Dawn of the Dead), Fabio Frizzi (City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, Zombi) and Ennio Morricone (Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Autopsy, Lizard in a Woman's Skin). 

A. (Alexander or Allesandro) Blonkmeister isn't a familiar name to me, and it's not surprising. I've looked up his IMDB page, and he only comes up as composer for three titles, another of which is The Erotic Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. (Oh what a time when films were titled The Erotic Adventures of...) His name turns up as conductor on more than a dozen other films (all Italian as far as I can see), and his last credit is "composer: additional music" for Fulci's House By the Cemetery. 

That was 1981, and nothing further. I can't find much information on him, though I haven't looked particularly hard.  There are enough composers and musical figures I want to know more about, minor obsessions, I probably don't need to add him to that list.

The music is reasonably good, fairly typical 70s fair, more funky than the prog leanings of Goblin or even Frizzi. The opening theme, "Jane", is a light melody that borders on lounge or even Muzak. There's a more extreme example of this in Riz Ortalani's soundtrack to Cannibal Holocaust, which has the sweetest of Italian pop themes, followed by a completely grimy, ugly synth cue. This particular work doesn't go to quite such extremes. The music was clearly taken very seriously by the composer, even for a production that surely wasn't very respectable.

Or was it? The horror film scene of the 1970s is notable for its extremes. Fulci, Argento, Deodato, Mario Bava, Lenzi, D'Amato, these guys made some at times pretty extreme films. A few are great, many are trash, some are awful, many play on exploiting large American productions like Alien or Dawn of the Dead. I've become interested in this scene and continue to watch some of the films, but generally fall short of the cannibal film sub-genre. Despite its title, this film has more in common with David Cronenberg's Rabid than the other cannibal movies listed.

Cannibal Apocalypse is largely filled with some funky grooves. Like many soundtracks, they're in part interesting due to the film they're written for. It's a little on the light side, but some good grooves with a turn or too that I didn't predict. There's even a brief bit of saxophone overblowing on the second side.

I've probably written this before, but one of the big unrealized projects I had planned for my band OPEK was a performance of all film score music. I had arrangements already from a number of themes and cues including Last Tango in Paris, The Taking of Pelham 123,  and Godzilla Vs. Mothra. 

Could I arrange something from this? Without question. It would be fun to blow on some of it. Would I? Probably not. There are many great grooves on many soundtracks like this, and I'd sooner find some Morricone to play before this. But who knows?

Also a passing thought, as my fall 2023 semester wraps up at Carnegie Mellon: what would my students think about the depth of my knowledge of gruesome Italian horror films? Not that I particularly care, almost none of them have seen me with an instrument in my hands. 

VOTD 11/7/2023

 Betty Davis: They Say I'm Different (Light in the Attic)

Purchased at the Government Center Outpost

Probably like many others, I didn't pay any attention to Betty's music for many years. I mean, I didn't even know about her for a long time, and then later only in the context of being Miles Davis' second wife. 

I'm a man of sixty, and sometimes reflect back on my interests and taste in music. When I say I didn't pay attention to something for a long time, I might still be referring to something from twenty years ago or even more. So when I say I didn't especially study Miles' so-called "electric" period for a long time, I was probably pushing 40 when I started to listen more closely to those albums: Bitches Brew, In A Silent Way, and particularly The Cellar Door Sessions 1970. 

And then there's Betty (nee Mabry). She was younger, hipper, and urged Miles to update his look and music. Her influence had some effect those records, and I'm sure there are people who would partially blame her too.

It's such a positive thing that her own records, of which there have only been a few, are being given more attention. It's six albums in all, and a few scattered singles; one is of then-unreleased demo sessions.

They're...shocking? Surprising at the very least. The Columbia Years 1968-1969, the first of the recent vinyl issues/reissues, found her sounding either like a blues singer, or at times sounding highly influenced by Jimi Hendrix (a friend of hers). Her debut LP, Betty Davis, IS shocking. Not just because it's so sexually raw, surprisingly blunt, and is hard hitting and funky as hell. If I compared it to anything, Funkadelic would come much closer than Hendrix.

She continues on this album. Do I need to say it's great? I consider the Funkadelic comparison to be fair, but from what I've heard, her records are more generally consistent. I'd even dare to say, this predates Prince at his rawest and hardest-hitting.

I feel like I'm just rambling as I write this, so let me suggest what I think is a great playlist pairing. Listening to the title track of this album, I heard similarities to Captain Beefheart's "I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby", a song from The Spotlight Kid from two years earlier. I am in no way suggesting Don's song was being aped by Betty, I just think both songs make an amazing pairing. Then I think, imagine it: even though they're separated by two years, think of what a The Spotlight Kid and They Say I'm Different bands playing a bill, even touring together would have been like. I don't know if a human could have handled that in a single sitting.

VOTD 10/25/2023

 Orchid Spangiafora: Flee Past's Ape Elf (Feeding Tube) 2LP reissue

Purchased used at the Government Center

Before there was Plunderphonics, there was Orchid Spangiafora.

Hold on! While that statement is true, it's the sort of mildly sensationalist line you might find in lazy music journalism.

Hold on X2! Ben is back to blogging again? I suppose. I wrote here regularly for the first half of the year, making over one hundred postings (I think, I've lost track). Then it trailed off, and stopped. I liked doing the writing as an exercise, but it started to feel hollow. I don't have a problem with reaching very few people (I won't say it's my narrative overall, but at least it happens in my performing occasionally), there just didn't seem to be a need or a point to it. Maybe I was inspired by this vinyl oddity.

Autobiographically, this album takes me back to my college radio days, including the time I was bouncing between schools. More specifically it takes me back to WRCT, and to Clare Rosen. Clare was an art major at CMU, from Chicago, returning there some time after graduation. Clare was a character: low-key, played unusual music on the radio. Most often she'd go on as Clare, and had a term for the music I don't recall. Something like "psychotronic", but I'm certain that's not right. Once in a while though she'd call the show "Brain Death with Karen Ann Quinlan". She later admitted to me that it was in exceedingly bad taste, but isn't that what college days are all about? That's when she'd play the most extreme music: Whitehouse, Ramleh, MB. 

I am certain she is the reason WRCT bought the Orchid Spangiafora LP. "It's really good" as she would say in her quiet manner. Curiously, the original album was released on Twin/Tone Records. Twin/Tone was a Minnesota indie that released the likes of The Replacements, Soul Asylum, The Mekons, Yo La Tengo: guitar-driven stripped-down new wave bands. Yet, somehow in 1979, the Orchid Spangiafora LP was released. 

So what is it? Musique concrète, audio cut-ups, Plunderphonics before such a word existed. (I assume, I think John Oswald would create the word some years later.) The emphasis is on voices, particularly found voices; the first work, "Dime Operation", is a furious collage of voices that sound like they were recorded off of television. (I recognized Monte Hall's voice in there.) One phrase stood out, from two speakers edited one after the other: "Fashioned to a device behind a tree." This would become the title of a Nurse With Wound piece, first appearing on a Come Org compilation in 1982.

I started looking over the testimonials on the cover after noticing that phrase, and sure enough there's a quote from Steven Stapleton, as well as David Thomas, Mark Mothersbaugh, Steve Fisk, and members of Severed Heads and New Blockaders. In the enclosed booklet, there are reproductions of letters from Boyd Rice*, Gary Panter, and Williams S. Burroughs. Burrough's letter was enthusiastic, and it seems to be the shadow of Burroughs hangs over this project. His tape experiments, for as primitive as they maybe be, were certainly a precedent to Orchid Spangiafora. 

It's a delight personally to hear this record again, though it can be annoying if you're not interested or in the mood. It often moves fast, the editing is downright furious, and there are times when there's intentional repetition that can be grating. It calls to mind some works by Nurse With Wound a few years later, particularly the notorious "Dueling Banjos". 

The reissue comes with a second LP of unreleased (at least to vinyl) works. The first side is different, more of a low-tech electronic work, but again with some emphasis on editing. The second side though, it's all voices. One after another after another after another, cut/cut/cut/cut/cut. It's listed as four pieces, but it runs continuously and I'll be damned if I can hear where one ends and the next starts.

But if I put on Orchid Spangiafora, that's what I'm after. "Hold everything! Hold/hold/hold everything!" Having bought some disappointing drone and "experimental" albums in recent months, it's good to hear the uncut stuff again. Even if it is thoroughly cut-up.

*Regarding Boyd Rice: Hoo boy. I guess he still has his defenders, it's not a scene that I've followed closely. When I read the Re/Search Industrial Culture Guide, Boyd seemed like he was less involved with occultism, modern tribalism, and other things I thought were bullshit. He liked noise music, and created records to have things he wanted to listen to. It seemed like a reasonable and even pure rationale for creating noise music. I'd say I even like some of his records.

But since then, he's hung out with white supremacists, fascists, has advocated for "men's rights", and other provocations. Some say he's not those things, and I don't know. It seemed pretty convincing to me. I have read that he more or less abandoned his special needs son, but I don't know the whole story.

So I don't want to promote Boyd. I want to be fair to him, but from what I've read he's a special level of asshole. So I'll leave it at that, and if I'm wrong, I'll happily withdraw my comments. 

Carla Bley in memorium

 Why hasn't Carla Bley been a larger part of my consciousness, my art? She was a major artist, a great composer. I have played a few of her pieces: some version of "Ida Pupina", "Syndrome", "Utviklingssang", "Vashkar". Not that many, though I'm probably forgetting some. 

Two particular pieces of hers have really stuck with me: "Jésus Maria" and "Musique Méchanique pt.1". There's a live recording of the former by the Jimmy Giuffre Trio (with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow) from 1961, released in 1993 by hatArt that completely floored me. It's exquisitely beautiful, hushed, played loosely. It's interesting that Paul placed as much emphasis on his then-wife's compositions as he did. In the notes for a book of her music that was published, she wrote that the first piece she wrote was recorded. That's a pretty good start. I had an acoustic quartet with Daryl Fleming, Lindsey Horner, and Jim DiSpirito once (soprano, guitar, bass, and tabla) that focused on ECM/Ralph Towner style material, and I tried to introduce this piece to the band. I don't recall if we ever performed it. 

The latter: "MM pt1" is made to sound like a big mechanical orchestra wheezing to life, speeding up, and then completely breaking down at the end. It sounds silly, and like the sort of thing I generally dislike: trying to tell a story through sound. And yet, it absolutely works and is incredibly beautiful and dramatic. Even without the programmatic trappings of representing a semi-broken street organ, the music is catchy but with an unpredictable chord sequence and rousing ascending scale line. All of which means, go find a copy and listen to it!

(Part 3 is good but not as amazing, which at times intentionally sounds like a skipping record. Part 2 was sung by Roswell Rudd and...is hard to take. They can't all be home runs I guess.)

What a strange character Carla presented herself to be, with her wild red hair just covering her eyes, her sometimes humorous or even silly song and album titles. But consider her accomplishments: releasing albums on two different labels she ran with second husband Mike Mantler (JCOA and WATT), composing a piano concerto, various trio, quartet, and big band projects through the years. And then of course, Escalator Over the Hill, released as a three-LP set that's practically an opera. Please look up the liner notes to see everyone involved, but image one project bringing together Linda Ronstadt, Jack Bruce, Dewey Redman, and John McLaughlin. 

And a career that spanned from the late 1950s to 2020s.

Carla died at 87 from brain cancer. Ugh. Not exactly a young age (with a lot of mileage behind that time) but I've had friends die from brain cancer and it's harsh. 

I'm digging through my Carla vinyl, more than I remember owning. Time to spin them all. I'll have to pull out something on my Thoth Trio gig this coming Saturday; David and I have played "Syndrome" with Jeff Berman and I could pull that out. But I think I'll see if "Jèsus Maria" translates well to our format.

I had some thoughts about what distinguishes her composing, there are some things she tends to do. But you know what? Who cares? I'm not writing an academic treatise, just reflecting on an important artist who, despite her accolades, still probably deserved to be better known. Thanks Carla, I'll be spending more time with you, if from a distance. 

VOTD 8/6/2023

 Gesualdo: Madrigals, Book VI (Complete) (Columbia)

purchased at Jerry's Records

Gesualdo is one of those figures who helps make music history more interesting. Gesualdo (Don Carlo Gesualdo di Venosa) was a 16th century Italian prince. His first wife was notable for her beauty, so much so that other men (including her uncle, if I recall correctly) really wanted her. Gesualdo himself was supposed to have been a rather plain man despite his royal station. 

Turns out, his beautiful wife was carrying on with another man, and he found out. His solution? To pretend to go out on an overnight hunt, leaving her alone with her paramour. When he sneaked back into his bedroom, he found her in bed with another man, and he proceeded to run them both through with a sword. 

Being royalty has its advantages, though. Despite this event, it did not disqualify him from marrying again. It was not a particularly happy union, and Gesualdo became both passionately religious, and threw himself into composing. 

(That is the short version of the story the best I can recall; I'm always willing to accept corrections.)

Gesualdo's music is noted for being strangely unpredictable given the madrigal format (generally five voices), shifting harmonies in unexpected ways. This is not unique for the period; Orlando di Lassus had a particularly chromatic period of his composing. Listen to his "Prophetiae Sibyllarum" on the Lassus CD on ECM for the best example of this strange era in his music. 

The question for some over the years had been, did Gesualdo know what he was doing? Or did he lack fundamental skills? Step in Igor Stravinsky. When introduced to Gesualdo's music, he essentially said, "Shut up jerks, this guy knew what the hell he was doing." (That of course is very liberally paraphrased.) I don't live and die by Stravinsky, but if Igor says something's going on there, then something's going on there. 

Listening to this album, it's sometimes difficult to understand what the fuss might have been about. Not in terms of quality, but of its supposed strangeness. A cappella music of this period all sounds a little strange to me, this no more than many other composers going back more or less a hundred years from this time. Robert Craft, the conductor, believes Book VI is a sunnier set of works than Book V, which might contribute to its diminished weirdness.

Then of course there's Gesualdo's story, which I find interesting and adds to the experience of listening to this. I suppose I'm interested in how our perception of an artist might shift over time. Which sins are forgiven, which are not? Does time dull our outrage of the person's acts, or in some cases sharpens it? Gesualdo, talk about a pre-"Me Too" moment in time. But it was centuries ago, the great-great-great-great-grandchildren of anyone involved have themselves long since passed away. 

What will people think about Bill Cosy in a hundred years' time? Three hundred? Will he be remembered at all? Cosby didn't murder anyone (as far as we know), but he didn't also lash out in a moment of passion. He was a calculating serial rapist. I think it's impossible to consider his work in the future without knowing that, regardless of how long it's been since the actual crimes occurring. 

Miles Davis and Charles Mingus could both be abusive people, but their behavior has continued to recede into the past. In no way do they compare to Cosby, just that they could be bad men at times. Like Gesualdo, the life stories of Miles and Mingus are part of the larger picture, but the music rises above all else. 

Recent dream

 Noting this so I don't forget it myself.

This hot and muggy weather really messes with me. I don't sleep well, and sometimes I go into my basement and sleep in my daughter's former bedroom/my studio. 

Night before last I woke at 3am with an intense itching in my left ear canal, a very rare occurrence. I was in the midst of almost a fever dream, pieces of which I recall.

For some reason, I was explaining to Adam MacGregor the meaning of The Residents' song "Loser=Weed". Now the truth is, I don't know the meaning of the song apart from the obvious. But for some reason, I was pontificating on how it was about about a person who could raise his temperature up to dangerously high levels, almost like the Human Torch or Firestarter. 

This was happening on some sort of compound, a large one-story structure. I don't remember the nature of this building.

Also for some reason in the dream, I had to pick out a kitten. 

Put that in your smoke and pipe it, Dr. Freudenstein!

VOTD 7/23/2023

 Mere Phantoms: Famine for a Slow Death (Undesirable)

Purchased at Jerry's Records

Well. For the several people who have read this blog regularly, I've been absent for a couple of weeks. Part of it has been being busy; part of it has been, why exactly am I doing this again? I've written at some length in the past about my rationale and even my questioning of it, so no need to continue to go on about such things. I guess it seemed to me that there wasn't much point to writing things almost nobody would read. That hasn't stopped me from playing music that almost nobody will hear, but at least that's my primary artistic venture. 

But there's not point in abandoning this either, if I feel like it.

Obviously I've have more on the stereo than just this album, but it's something of a curiosity and therefore worth mentioning. I don't always want to be a sucker for unusual packaging, but here's something that turned up at Jerry's. Single sided LP with a screen print on the B side, clear-with-smoke colored vinyl, edition #31/40. And an insert using the cover image of Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation as a cover image with new text. Then I looked up that the band came from Pittsburgh. Okay, goodbye $7. 

They describe their sound as "grime". I suppose that's appropriate. The metal scene, something I am thoroughly not involved in, has splintered into so many sub-genres and sub-sub-sub-genres, who knows if I'm using the appropriate lexicon? 

With my limited capacity at comparisons (and comparisons are rarely fair), at times they sounded like Zao, a touch of Big Black here and there, and vaguely like Black Metal. That's based on my own limited listening experience, but I think it's also all true. Lots of feedback between songs, grinding riffs. There's a bit of what sounds like shortwave sounds (morse code, HAM operators) blended into the mix. I like that attempt at experimentation and think music such as this could use more similar attempts.

I've looked up their Facebook page. There hasn't been a posting in three years. They did some attempts at touring I suppose, listing gigs in Gainesville and Virginia. Locally, there are listings for gigs at Mr. Roboto and The Shop. Makes sense.

It's hard to keep bands going. It's work and there's rarely fair money to be made. Back in my Water Shed 5tet days, for some years none of us took any money from the band take, and it largely paid for our first CD, entirely our second, and took us to San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley to perform. After that, fees came more and more out of my pocket. 

Who were these guys? Are they still active in other bands? They must have believed in themselves enough to not only released vinyl (more expensive than CD) but with labor-intensive packaging. Only the vocalist (rather typical shout-screaming) has a back catalog according to Discogs, and even then this is the most recent listing. 

Have they all given up? Nobody said this would be easy. Personally I'm in far, far too deep to give up. 

By the way, there's a French duo named Mere Phantoms too, who do interactive papercut shadow shows. I don't know who came first. 

VOTD 6/28/2023 #2

 Michael Abels: Get Out OST (Waxworks)

Purchased at Jerry's Records

Hello once again, dear reader, second time today. I find myself wondering why I'm doing this blog at all. It has nothing to do with the numbers of people who read it (most times five or fewer per post) because I really don't actively promote this page. It's tied to the fact that I enjoy collecting records (and less commonly these days, CDs) but I know that I've been accumulating a lot of stuff. These are things I've written here before. I guess part of this has been a personal but public journal, part of it analysis and history, part of it record review, part of it routine.

I mentioned in my post yesterday about being away from home this past week, in Oregon where I have family. I didn't mention that one of the things I came home with was COVID. I assume you've heard of it? Let me tell you, COVID sucks. Bad. If I felt this shitty after four shots (or five? I've lost track), I can only imagine what might have happened if I wasn't vaccinated. I seriously wouldn't rule out fatality.

I'm mostly over it and was able to venture out today for some errands. CMU has a vending machine that supplies a COVID test and two KN95 masks for free each week, so I have been well supplied and masked up with the good stuff today. I've also been cleaning my hands often. Previously, it was protection for me, now it's making myself safe for others.

I've written how Jerry's had a dump of a number of Waxworks vinyl releases, and to my surprise several of them haven't been sold off yet. The soundtrack to C.H.U.D. has been sold apparently, which I might have bought but I knew it would be 80s FM-synth stuff that I didn't need to buy. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, but too late to regret it now.

I decided to splurge on one more, the two-LP Get Out soundtrack by Michael Abels. Here's a case where I actually have seen the film, and remember small bits of the score even if it was largely unobtrusive.

If I'm remembering correctly, that was a great year for films. The Shape of Water, Baby Driver, Logan, The Disaster Artist were all better-than-average commercial releases, and I saw two of my favorite documentaries ever: I Called Him Morgan and Dawson City: Frozen Time. I highly recommend them both. 

Get Out (or at least the people behind it) accomplished something amazing: it was a kind of event film that harkened back to an older age of cinema. "It is required that you see Psycho from the very beginning!" shouted that film's ad. Get Out didn't do that directly, but it was a similar word of mouth campaign. I heard repeatedly, "I can't tell you what happens, just go see it" or "Don't tell me what happens!" There was applause at the end, even in the all-white Manor Theater audience. I might have one or two quibbles with it, but by and large it really is a good film, Jordan Peele's best so far in my opinion. I've liked the other two as well, but this one came as such a surprise, it packed a stronger punch. 

Michael Abels' score is solid. At times the music recalls Bartók or Penderecki, as good horror movie music is likely to do. There's occasional chanting, words I don't understand, that to me being more African roots to mind. I'm certain that's intentional. It tends to be broken into smaller segments, as opposed to the longer, flowing statements that Bernard Herrmann would create for Hitchcock. That's not a criticism, just an observation. 

I was thinking while I was listening, what would this music suggest to me if I didn't know the film? The feeling I had more than anything else was of loneliness. Perhaps it's due to the extensive use of solo harp. It's befitting, since I suppose the Armitage family preys on loneliness in the narrative of the film. 

When reading the credits, I noticed "orchestrated by." That credit goes to Drew Krassowski. Neither Drew nor Michael have more than a few discogs.com credits. I don't know much about either of them. Drew must be given much of the credit for the success of the music though. I'm sure the composer was specific about some of the orchestrations, but I don't know how much. It's very well orchestrated, occasionally bringing Morricone colorations to mind. I'm pretty certain it's all done with orchestra and voices, but in a few spots I wasn't initially certain.

Are there any film composers who do their own orchestrations anymore? Perhaps Howard Shore. Maybe John Williams. Hans Zimmer? Probably, though he's also involved with electronic sound design and production. The days of auto-orchestrators such as Morricone, Herrmann. Waxman, Korngold, has largely passed. I know one reason Herrmann orchestrated and even conducted his scores was to earn more coin out of the deal. Thankfully he did, because nobody could have matched his inventive orchestrations.

I think I'm going to have to sit down with this one again soon.

Oh, and as of today, Jerry's still has a vinyl copy of Michael Einhorn's Shock Waves score, which I recommend. 

And by the way, COVID sucks. Really. 

VOTD 6/28/2023

 Jon the Postman's Puerile: Puerile (Bent Records)

Purchased at Fungus Books and Records

Another vinyl oddity. Like yesterday's post, this has a handmade cover, rubberstamped. Befitting the artist, it appears to have been sent through British post in 1978. 

This turned up in the Fungus racks. What the hell is it, I wondered? I know a great deal, and if I don't, there's usually enough information on the cover to figure it out. This just had the title on the thin cover, no inserts, while labels on the record. 

Whoever was at the desk at Fungus put it on for me. Was it serious? One side, cut at 33 1/3, is a super sloppy, mostly spoken version of "Louie, Louie" with no attempt at recreating the original lyrics. And that sounded remarkably like Mark E. Smith from The Fall speaking at the beginning. It just keeps going and going and going, a real room clearer.

Side two was cut at 45rpm. Some moaning vocals, followed by super-primitive punk rock. 

I was almost surprised to find there there is a discogs.com page for this artist and release, and discovered that I'm missing the inserts with credit information. For example, that IS Mark E. Smith at the start of the first side. "Guinea Pigs" is/are credited with backing vocals on one song, and in fact I think it's a literal recording of Guinea pigs mixed into the song. 

So what was Half Japanese doing at this time? Their earliest tapes precede this, but their first commercially released records came later. No New York was released the same year.

I guess I'm trying to find a context for this record. There was a lot in the air at the time, and I think it's fair to say that punk rock was a much more vital cultural force in England than the US. JG Ballard said so. The Sex Pistols documentary, The Filth and the Fury, has some good insights as to why it all began too. 

And is this any more or less listenable than any Jandek record? 

One commenter on discogs: "This is arguably the worst thing I've ever heard on record." Not much arguing with that, yet here it is, 45 years after its release, and I'm trying to say something serious about this. Maybe there just isn't that much to say, and it's another snapshot of a time and place.

VOTD 6/27/2023

Spider John Koerner with Willie and the Bumblebees, also featuring Tom Olson: Music is Just a Bunch of Notes (Sweet Jane Ltd.)

Purchased at an export shop in Portland, OR

For the two-three people who check this blog regularly, you would have noticed my output of writing has gone from less regular to non-existent for over a week. I've been away from home, visiting family in Portland OR and vacationing on the coast. Unlike a generation that seems to want to publicize every movement they make and each meal they eat, I'd prefer to not tell people that my house will largely be empty for an extended period of time.

There's a fun export shop in Portland named Cargo, on the eastern side of the Willamette River. It's largely Asian goods, much of it clothing, Manga books, Chinese propaganda, the like. I didn't know they also carried a number of boxes of used records. I find looking through collections such as those more frustrating than ever. Everyone thinks they have treasures and charge too much money.

This record stood out. I'm always on the lookout for vinyl weirdness, and this immediately checked a lot of boxes. Handmade cover: check. Unusual location (Minneapolis): check. Strange title: yup. Three pages, copied from typewritten originals, with needlessly extensive liner notes: indeed. Price: $8. Sold. 

Music is Just a Bunch of Notes dates to 1972, which itself seems strange. Bona fide artist-run labels would be common in under a decade, but not so at this time. Thinking as I do, December 1972 was when the first record produced by The Residents/Ralph Records was issued. 

This record isn't nearly as weird (not even trying to be). It's largely charming, lo-fi folk-rock. Think lower-end The Band, that might put you in the right territory When I say lo-fi, it's not that it's grungy or murky. All the band cuts (voice, guitar, bass, piano, drums, often augmented by horns and strings) were recorded live. The voice is audible but a touch low in the blend, and more importantly could used  better microphone. The record is also underproduced to the point of making the silent time between tracks entirely too long, long enough that I wondered if i should pick up the needle and move forward.

Where it goes into stranger areas are the spoken word pieces, with Tom Olson affecting an exaggerated Minnesotan accent. In one, he depicts sitting at a red light hoping not to run out of gas (he does), in another he's on a boat that won't stop. Is he funny? Not even remotely, but that adds to the "just what is this?" weirdness vibe. 

I should be more specific about the cover. It's rubber stamped with magic marker accents. The image below is taken from discogs.com, but mine looks different. 

Here's an example of the specificity from the notes: "The room measured 15' x 30' with 11' ceilings and had plaster walls, skylights, and an attached six by four hallway/alcove. The control room was an 8' x 8' x 8' frame construction covered with wallboard, insulated and set in one corner of the room." Etc etc etc. More often I find records having too little data, but this is ridiculous. He lists all of the recording gear, microphones, mastering, budget, wholesale and retail costs. If this session was of major historical significance, this could be valuable information. Even then I would guess it's too much, and it's not a session of major historical significance. 

VOTD 6/18/2023

 Various artists: Musique Concrète (Candide)

Purchased used, not certain where

I've written before that I'll pretty much collect any early electronic music LPs if the price is right. I left the $4 sticker on the cover of this one, making it a prize find. 

The pieces on this collection are all from the French RTF studio, the center of musique concrète production in the early post-war era. The composers included: Pierre Schaeffer, Françoise-Bernard Mache, Michel Philippot, François Bayle, Luc Ferrari, Ivo Mallec, and Bernard Parmegiani. Schaeffer makes perfect sense, as he ran the studio. I know Bayle and Ferrari's names, the others not so much. 

The phenomenon of French musique concrète vs. German elektronische musik seems silly in retrospect. I have to check myself a little; the story of the French vs. German schools makes for an easy narrative, but the truth is more complicated. It ignores the studios and schools popping up in the US, Italy, Japan, and other places during the 1950s. If I'm teaching current (traditional) music composition students who have no sense of history at all, it does make for a convenient source of both a narrative and assignments. 

I had a thought while listening to this record. The early German WDR studio-generate works (entirely synthesized sound sources) are sometimes difficult to tell one from another, or at least whose hands are on each one. How do you tell one composer from another? There are ways in some cases, but the sound sources tend to neutralize the the differences. 

At times I could say the same of these works. When many of the materials consist of short edits of percussion sounds, frantically moving in and out of a sonic field, how does one composer distinguish himself from another? A reversed piano sound for Schaeffer sounds the same was one for Philippot. 

Or am I being far too critical? The same could be said of any genre. As I quoted Nizan Leibovich in a previous post, how can you tell one second movement from an 18th century symphony from another?

Listening to this, my mind seems to be leaning towards the questions more than the answers. 

What strange music this can be. That's something I find especially interesting about the post-war era, how far composers and other artists intended to take their work. It's so easy to say that this isn't casual listening, something you put on for "entertainment." These works aren't simple. Often the sources of sound are difficult or impossible to identify. It's an interesting collection though, and does demonstrate some of the variety of works coming from the RTF studio. Bayle's work "L'Oiseau-chanteur" adds some range to the works included. Its sound sources are largely traditional instruments, playing most likely composed passages, at times with quick editing of bird-like sounds and other things. (They happen very fast at times.) Several of the pieces have such fast editing, it all feels like the works have short attention spans. 

And yet, every one of those edits was work. It's SO easy to edit audio digitally now. I do quite a bit on Audacity and it couldn't be much simpler. And that brings me back to a point I've made before: one thing I like about this music is the sweat on it. It took a lot of work. 

The collection was compiled by Ilhan Mimoroglu, a significant electronic music composer and producer himself. He'd have an ear for collecting solid examples for an album like this. 

CDOTD 6/10/2023

 Alexander Skryabin (Scriabin): The Mystic Skryabin (Altarus)

Given to me by Donna Amato

I know some talented people. I guess we all do, don't we? I mean scary talented. Donna Amato comes in at the top of that list for me.

I came to know Donna when working with her in a Quantum Theater production in 2003 (jeez, where does the time go?). The chamber opera, Kafka's Chimp, required the musicians be on stage with the singers and dancers. I was asked to take part because there's a soprano saxophone part in the score, requiring me to act almost as another character. It's a gig, right?

The production was at an all-purpose room at the Pittsburgh Zoo. A scaffolding was erected for the stage and seating, making the audience look like it was in a cage, viewing the work. Behind everyone and in the middle, Donna played a baby grand piano. She was essential for keeping everyone together. When I looked over the score, it became clear she was playing some difficult passages so gracefully, they didn't sound nearly as difficult as they looked.

Donna showed me what she had started to work on: the Sorabji Piano Symphony #5, a monumentally difficult, long, and demanding work. Despite having been written decades before, the work had never been premiered. She told me she wanted to play the work before she got too old to physically be capable. 

Later, I attended a preview of her debut in New York. It's 2.5 hours of hard piano playing. Yes, difficult, but I also mean pounding. Demanding of the performer. Donna played it through with no break except to stand up once or twice between movements, and only one page turn gaff the entire time. 

Impressive isn't a strong enough word. 

Donna and I have remained friendly; it's nice to run into her once in a while in the halls at CMU. I've given her my recordings when I've released them (and she's clearly listened, commenting on the interesting setting of my duet session with Anthony Braxton), and she's given me hers if she has them on hand. 

So here's Scriabin/Skryabin. He might be most famous of attaching colors to different pitches, and creating some sort of "color organ." I can't speak for certain whether he truly had synesthesia, or as I suspect with Messiaen, he had an intuitive response to sound, pitch and harmony.

The pieces on this disc represent Skryabin's final works, opp. 66-74, before his untimely at age 44. The last movement of the final work possibly even sound cut off. Skryabin's music is pushing past triadic harmony at this time, sitting in a kind of ambiguous space between tonality and atonality. There are passages that will end with a chord that's astray from any sort of traditional Western harmony, and I think, how did he arrive at that point? What's that sound?

Donna told me she planned to record all of Skryabin's solo piano works, which would take up about three CDs of length. She also said she wanted to record the last (and strangest) works first, in the event that she wasn't given the chance to record the complete cycle. 

And that's what happened. Donna has other releases on the Altarus label, but this is her only program of Skryabin. 

I probably wouldn't have known about the Altarus label if not for her releases on it. Most of their releases are solo piano music, ranging from the impossibly obscure (Sorabji, Sewickley's own Ethelbert Nevin) to the familiar (Messiaen's Vingt Regards). The label appears to be inactive now. Which I understand, I mean, how can a label producing physical CDs of unheard piano music possibly sustain itself in this day and age? 

Skryabin makes an interesting contrast to his contemporaries. Not as floaty and low-key as Satie, not as expressionist as Schoenberg, more ambiguously tonal than late Debussy. He's kind of in between all of them. 

And I'll always support that. that in-betweenness is some of the most interesting territory. Once again I think, where was he headed to, had he lived longer? 

And Donna, thanks. 

VOTD 6/09/2023

 Penn Sembles: Introducing the Penn Sembles (Marjon)

Purchased at that weird hoarder store in Greensburg

I've just checked out of the library Dust & Grooves: Adventures in Record Collecting. It's a coffee table book about record collectors, with pictures of their collections, holding prized records, with a few interviews. Perusing it at the library, I opened the book almost directly to the pages with Jerry Weber of Jerry's Records. One collector hunts down so-called private pressings, the kind that sometimes have the same cover image with different text superimposed. 

I say so-called because, well, is that what my one and only LP is? I knew I've never be able to sell 300 hundred copies, why press even that many? I'm referring to the Flexure LP, by the way. Each has a unique cover, sometimes painted and mutilated records glued to the cover, sometimes torn-up record covers. https://www.discogs.com/release/5080382-Flexure-Insert-Title-Here

There are particular kinds of records I collect without hopefully being too obsessive about any of it. I'm always on the hunt for early electronic music LPs, old school industrial records, in addition to always looking for recordings of particular artists. It's rare that I'll pay premium prices for things, just as I'm trying to resist the temptation to buy too many $3 Duquesne University records put out at Jerry's. 

Almost surprisingly, there is a discogs.com page for the Penn Sembles, for a listing of one record. It's on a regional label, Marjon International Records, from Sharon, PA. This is listed under their "Custom Series." Does that make it a private pressing? The artist page lists them as starting in 1969, the release as being from 1974. From the indistinct pictures on the front cover, I doubt anyone is younger than their 50s. 

It's Tamburitzan music. Lots of tremolo-plucked strings, mostly with vocals and largely choral. Imagine being in a Slavic social hall, with a group of about forty pluckers and singers, playing songs that everyone knows. Professional it ain't, even if there is a strong solo voice or two in the bunch. 

I don't know if I'll put this on ever again. My wife and I were in Greensburg, where in the center town there's a major hoarder thrift store. I mean, really, I wouldn't be too surprised if the floors were to cave in one day. And typical of stores of this nature, he generally wants too much money for his junk, with an occasional deal to be found. On a previous visit, I found a decent copy of the Mothers' We're Only In It For the Money for $10, a very reasonable price. This record was a dollar or two, which I bought with a couple of other things, just so we could buy something without spending too much money on trash. 

How many of these types of western Pennsylvania records are there? There's a pretty serious Slavic presence in the region, particularly when you head towards Johnstown. 

How many copies of this even still exist, in playable condition? Who cares about them? Nearly fifty years later, do any of the Penn Sembles players remain alive?

VOTD 6/08/2023 #2

Richard Einhorn: The Prowler OST (Waxworks)

Purchased at Jerry's Records

Here's the second of my purchases of someone's Waxworks vinyl dump at Jerry's. I wrote about Altered States yesterday. 

I might have passed on this one.  I don't know the film The Prowler at all, I guess it's an early entry into the 80s slasher craze. It's not a genre of film in general known for their standout soundtrack music, with the exception of Halloween of course. 

What caught my eye was the composer, Richard Einhorn. He's not someone I know anything about except that he did the music for the excellent Shock Waves. It's more-or-less the first Nazi zombie movie. It's a bit slow at first, but gets eerie when the dried up yellow-skinned undead Nazi supersoldiers start ascending from the water in and around a remote tropical island. Peter Cushing and David Carradine may get top billing, but the real star is Brooke Adams from The Dead Zone and 1978's Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

It has an excellent electronic sound track by Einhorn, something of a favorite of mine. That was enough reason to take a chance on this.

The biggest surprise is that it's not really electronic at all except for a little bit of processing, maybe a synth in one or two spots. It's a studio orchestra playing the music, telling me that it was very thoroughly scored. Einhorn has some skills, to be sure, even if this isn't exactly what I was expecting. There's a bit of lush romanticism. I saw the trailer and the beginning is set at the graduation dance in 1945, so no doubt that's the connection. It's a bit later in we start hearing more of the horror movie tropes: glissando strings up and down, tone clusters, flutter-tongue flute, driving percussion. A later cue, a chromatic figure, would sound especially at home in a 70s-era Italian horror movie.

I don't want to say nostalgia, because it's not quite the right word. But, this seems like a well budgeted soundtrack for a real orchestra (albeit probably not a large symphonic orchestra), something that probably wouldn't exist for such a film within a few years. And when MIDI production becomes a factor, forget it. So much can be accomplished by a single person sitting at a desktop. I like the power that puts into a single person's hands, but it would take a tremendous effort to make something that sounded as rich as Einhorn's orchestrations. 

I've noticed that the mastering on this and the other Waxworks I bought is by Thomas Dimuzio. He appears to be their go-to as a mastering engineer. Good for him, I'm happy to see him earning off projects like this. Being a Buchla-based free improvisor will only earn you so much. The audio itself sounds great, though the pressing a little questionable, especially on disc one. It looks great, fatigue-green, light green, and rose splattered vinyl. But ultimately, I guess black vinyl still sounds best.