Saturday 27 September, 2008

Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble - Toward the Margins (1996)



British saxophonist Evan Parker was one of the first musicians to record for ECM, appearing on the label's fifth album in 1970 as a member of the Music Improvisation Company; his partners in that collective included Stockhausen associate and electronic composer Hugh Davies.
Over the past three decades, electronics have been one of Parker's abiding interests and his collaborations both with improvisers using electronics and with composers of electronic music have been many. In 1992 he formed the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble to explore more fully the potential of live electronics in improvisation, a potential that has grown as the technology has become more sophisticated.
The Ensemble pools musicians from the worlds of free improvisation, jazz, contemporary composition and computer music research, with most of its members straddling more than one idiom or area of activity. The Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble has toured widely, and its North American debut at the Victoriaville Festival was widely hailed as the event's highlight: "An orchestral music of panoramic scope, full of spatial detail...cascading layers of morphing transmutations ... the electronic manipulations charged the music with a sense of spontaneous discovery" - Cadence, "Ardent ... grandly ambitious ... broadly sweeping schemes, mating improvised activity with MIDI-fied crosstalk" - Jazz Times.
There is a great deal of slowly-evolving tone colour and space, with the opening track almost entirely textural and hung around Guy's sonorous bass. Sepulchral gong-sounds echo behind Parker's whirling soprano sax, there are spooky percussion solos of slithery whispers and sounds like buckets of broken glass being emptied onto concrete, and the leader's remarkable capacity for contrapuntal solo playing acquires even more voices as the electronics echo it. Serious play, in every respect. John Fordham, The Guardian (Jazz CD of the Week)


Evan Parker - soprano sax, gong
Barry Guy - double-bass
Paul Lytton - percussion, live electronics
Philipp Wachsmann - violin, viola, live electronics, sound processing
Walter Prati - live electronics, sound processing
Marco Vecchi - live electronics, sound processing

1. Toward the Margins
2. Turbulent Mirror
3. Field and Figure
4. The Regenerative Landscape (for AMM)
5. Chain of Chance
6. Trahutten
7. Shadow Without an Object
8. Epanados
9. Born Cross-Eyed (Remembering Fuller)
10. Philipp's Pavilion
11. The Hundred Books (for Idries Shah)
12. Contra-Dance

Recorded in May 1996 at Gateway Studios
Released in 1997 by ECM

link@320

Sunday 21 September, 2008

Bill Doggett - Wow! (1964)


As Bob Porter says in his notes for this reissue, Bill Doggett was "a pianist, an organist, a composer, an arranger, a conductor, a sideman, a bandleader, a studio musician, an international touring attraction, a recording artist, and a music publisher." The areas of music on which Doggett had an impact were equally diverse: jazz, bug-band swing, blues, vocal groups, even jazz and popular vocals (through his relationship with Ella Fitzgerald) and gospel (through Sister Rosetta Tharpe). Along the way he became one of the founding fathers of the rhythm & blues movement, although his own music was too diverse to be pigeonholed into any one category.
Like his 1956 blockbuster hit, "Honky Tonk", this classic 1964 album showcases the three thing that made Doggett famous: his keyboard playing (he helped put jazz organ on the map), his bluesy compositions, and his tight and funky bands. "Wow!" indeed.


1. Wow
2. Oo Da
3. Ol' Mose Blues
4. Happy Soul Time
5. Kicker
6. Mudcat
7. Ram Bunk Shush
8. Slow Walk
9. Fatso

Bill Doggett - organ
Elvin Shepard - alto & tenor saxophones
Andrew Ennis - tenor & baritone saxophones
Billy Butler, Lamar McDaniels - guitar
Al Lucas - bass
Emmett J. Spencer - drums
Charles E. Hatcher - percussion


link@320

Sunday 14 September, 2008

V/A - She's Your Cook But She Burns My Bread Sometimes



PART I
LEMON SQUEEZERS
1. Bo Carter - Banana in Your Fruit Basket
2. Bo Carter - She's Your Cook But She Burns My Bread Sometimes
3. Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe - What Fault You Find in Me?
4. Son House - My Black Mamma I & II
5. Big Bill Broonzy (w/ Black Bob) - Milk Cow Blues
6. Maggie Jones (w/ Satchmo & Fletch Anderson) - Anybody Here Want to Try My Cabbage
7. Lil Johnson (w/ Charles Avery) - You'll Never Miss Your Jelly Till Your Jelly Roller's Gone
8. St. Louis Bessie (Bessie Mae Smith w/ Peetie Wheatstraw & Charlie Jordan - Sugar Man Blues
9. Sara Martin ( w/ the Clarence Williams Orchestra) - Kitchen Man Blues
10. Lucille Bogan (w/ T.A. Dorsey & Tampa Red) - Coffee Grindin' Blues
11. Robert Johnson - Milkcow's Calf Blues

Part II
GRINDERS & OTHER SEX METAPHORS
12. Washboard Sam & His Washboard Band (w/ Black Bob & Big Bill Broonzy) - Barbecue
13. Bessie Jackson (w/ Lucile Bogan, W. Roland, Josh White) - Barbecue Bess
14. Jimmie Gordon (w/ H. Malcolm, Charlie McCoy, Harrison) - She Sells Good Meat
15. Lil Johnson (w/ Myrtle Jenkins, Big Bill Broonzy) - My Stove's in Good Condition
16. Lil Johnson & Her Chicago Swingers - Hottest Gal in Town
17. Bessie Smith (w/ Charlie Green, Porter Grainger) - Empty Bed Blues
18. Lonnie Johnson (w/ Blind John Davis, Andrew Harris) - He's a Jelly-Roll Baker
19. Lil Johnson (w/Black Bob, Bill Settles) - Get'em from the Peanuts Man
20 Lil Johnson (w/ Black Bob, Bill Settles) - Sam the Hot Dog Man



Recorded 1924-1942
Selection by Jean-Paul Levet
Cover Photo: Stove in John Fredrick Kitchen, Maryland 1941.
Illustration: Robert Crumb

If you don't like my sweet potato
What made you dig so deep,
Dig my potato field
Three or four times a week?
Lil' Johnson, "You'll never miss your Jelly".

Part 1 : Lemon Squeezers @320
Part 2 : Grinders & Other Sex Metaphors @320

Friday 5 September, 2008

Suicide - American Supreme (2002)

"Pop, of course, is built on daydreams conjured up in suburbia. Pop comes from the outside looking in, from howling at the moon, from wanting a way out. Pop is a dream mass-produced, packaged and repackaged, replicated, copied and sold back to us. It is the sound os creativity spawned from boredom; a souce of ideas raised only to be pillaged. Pop is the last gasp before the day job grabs you, a scream in the face of the nine to five, a futile alternative to washing the car. Pop is an inevitable failure, a second and a lifetime of grey. Pop is disappointment in multiple". CRASH, 2002
>>Download

Courtesy of Double Avenue Tentacles

Thursday 4 September, 2008

Bravo Clippings #35





Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge Adventures #39 (Series II, July 1996)

Wednesday 3 September, 2008

Tipsy - Trip Tease (1996)



On their debut album Trip Tease, the electronica-lounge duo Tipsy seem to get as much pleasure from playing around with their music as they do playing it. Given that Tim Digulla and David Gardner were involved in industrial and ambient projects previously, it's not a surprise that there are bizarre juxtapositions of mood, tone and texture on this album.
What is somewhat surprising is how well the group's blend of state-of-the art editing and retro-exotica-sci-fi kitsch works that goes beyond the intellectual, studio experiments they could have been, blossoming into hothouse hybrids that transcend genres and just sound good. The album's remarkable arrangements feature bouncy drums, sitars, harps, horns and all sorts of unclassifiable "space" effects that jell into a collection of songs that are retro and cutting edge, bachelor pad and launching pad. Trip Tease is an invigorating debut that only gets better with each listen.
- Heather Phares, All Music Guide


"Easy listening collaged and reorganized for 90s taste, with the same absurdly upbeat emotional impact as the orginal genre." -- The Wire


1 Mr. Excitement
2 Space Golf
3 Grossenhosen
4 Tuatara
5 Nude On The Moon
6 El Bombo Atomico
7 Liquordelic
8 Cinnabar
9 Fuad Ramses
10 Oops!
11 Ugly Stadium
12 Something Tropical
13 Zenith

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

TIPSY is brought to you by:
*** Tim Digulla and David Gardner

>Executive Producer Naut Humon (Asphodel)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Credits:
Accordion, Organ - Rob Burger
Artwork By - John Borruso
Bass - Trevor Dunn
Flugelhorn, Trumpet - Tom Dambly
Guitar - Alex Oropeza , Joe Gore
Keyboards - Mark Wyman , Michael Padilla , Mitzi Johnson
Percussion - Jeremy Brooks
Recorded By - Jessica Wing
Saxophone [Tenor] - Scott Rosenberg

> Live Recording by Tim Digulla, Jessica Wing & Xopher Davidson
> Engineered by Xopher Davidson, Tim Digulla & David J. Gardner @ Bloody Angle Studios, San Francisco
> Mastered by mixture 151

link@320