One of my favorite releases from one of my favorite fingerpickers. I think this came out on Private Music, a "new age" label that was at the time releasing stuff by everyone from Suzanne Ciani to Yanni. Highlights include his cover of "Little Martha," "The Ice Field" and the beautiful closer "First to Go."
Total escapist (en cavale >>>"on the run"), French chanteuse pop by way of Rio bossa nova feel/Mediterranean sun. Some tracks are reminding me of Chic too. Smooth jazz is a good thing. "Seaside Weekend" is like the thesis statement of the whole work (forgive me, I'm grading papers and dreaming of the beach/no responsibility). Pastels on the horizon, breezes, endless summer...
Heard about this duo when "Swizzle" was featured on Jason Urick's excellently curated Fly Room mix.
"Swizzle" is a great example of what these guys were able to do: make totally locked-in yet exploratory, funky melodic music using modular synths (I believe Charles Cohen is a Buchla man).
This is arpeggiated music that doesn't feel repetitive; there's a new idea, a shift around every corner.
And silly! The Peter Gunn intro to "Sleedermauseman" before things get really "out" at the halfway mark.
It's a real pleasure to listen to. That's all I have to say.
Oh yeah, "Emotional Momentum" is also utter joy.
This one seemed too fun not to share right away. The Godfather of Soul and genre-hopping whiz dude Haruomi Hosono, together at last with F.o.E.! It sounds like what you'd expect - which means you probably want to get down with it. The rest of the album is a treat too, all over the place in terms of style. "Total Eclipse" is an electro-tribal burner with some great female vocals, "Opera" is old-school Hosono MIDI spazz shit. There's a nice Dr. John cover. For my $$$ though, check out "In My Jungle," an exemplary sexy synth jam with some lovely piano touches halfway through...
annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd I'm back. For how long? Who knows.
I've got this one for you. Still going through it, I basically picked this up because 1.) Compass Point Studios and 2.) Todd Terje's killer cover of "Johnny and Mary" with Bryan Ferry was burning up my iPod so bad I had to check out the original, and it's still kicking my ass.
What you're getting into - some super tight new-wave/power-pop whatever-you-want-to-call-it, clean studio trickery, some straight ahead rockers that suck in a good way, and... "Johnny and Mary." Chris Frantz, Gary Numan, and others guest. Good times! Combed-back hair! Cassette tape Walkmans! The Bahamas!
Here's Todd Terje's rendition of that song I keep talking about:
And the original video, complete with mime dancing:
Some other highlights on this first listen: "I Dream of Wires", "Woke Up Laughing"
Tasty collection of instrumental tracks from this prolific guitarist with quite a solid track record (founding member of Roxy Music, collaborator with Brian Eno, Robert Wyatt, Yuki Takahashi...). I really like how he describes his approach to the guitar ("guitars that don't sound like guitars" being a key element of my own taste). Some of these tracks haven't aged so well, and I could do without the muffled studio interludes, but tracks like "Rimto de LA," "Europe 70-1" and "Bogota" knock it out of the park. Great approach to effects, perhaps some guitar synth in there? I'm sold. Recommended if you love those out-there double tracked solos on early Eno albums (Warm Jets, Tiger Mountain).
Another one I've been searching for for quite a while.
If I had to sum it up in one word - make that two: "Sports Men."
This was my introduction to Hosono's solo career (via the excellent root strata mix). As I listen to it on repeat while writing this, the song's got to top anything YMO ever put out. This is a non-argument, like when Freud says it's a manifestation of your unconscious.
Released in '82 on his and Yuki's Yen label, this is a freewheeling, joyfully disorganized record, with aforementioned pop tunes rubbing shoulders with a cover of a well-known 19th century Italian song, takes on traditional Japanese percussion ("Luminescent/Hotaru"), and one-man choral pieces ("Philharmony"). Some of the sonic risks he takes on numbers like "Birthday Party" remind me of Ryuichi's dance soundtrack "Esperanto" - or some of the MIDI play employed by contemporary sound artists like Oneohtrix Point Never or Demdike Stare. A joy to listen to.
I've been searching for this one for a while... Leonidas over at Warm & Gooey does a great job of telling the story of Harry Hosono and Yuki Takahashi's Yen Records (or the lack of story thereof) and the grail quest for collectors of finding their records/information about them (Also, check out the nice mix he made!). Fortunately, the far reaches of Google offer up gems like this from time to time.
This label sampler offers 4 tunes from Interior to start us off (you might know their excellent eponymous LP that root strata was kind enough to supply). These have a slightly different vibe from the Interior sound I was familiar with (except 'Hot Beach' from the LP) - and vocals - but still solid. Side 2 is more my speed: 3 tracks from Koji Ueno, whose music is pretty unavailable online (anybody got a copy of "Music for Silent Movies" they'd be willing to share?) and two non-LP songs from Testpattern, one of my all time faves. The Ueno stuff is in the same vein as the Ryuichi soundtrack I posted last time - speedy orchestration that would sound at home in video game or anime scenes. And "Friday" is the most blissful of Testpattern tracks IMHO.
Here's to hoping someone reissues the Yen Box. Until then, happy hunting!
As the internet and the back cover attest, this is Ryuichi's (stellar) soundtrack for the Japanese release of "Milo and Otis." I feel like my young life would have been cooler had I been hearing these MIDI-fied jams instead of whatever stringy schmaltz Disney cooked up. Lots of lovely numbers ranging from songs that sound teased up from the Synclavier-type technology Ryuichi was using at the time to seemingly fuller orchestra numbers (but who can tell?). He brings it, as always. If you're as into the 80's Japan scene as me, you'll want to hear this.
I've been looking for this one for quite a while, ever since Jiro posted "Truth of Palm" over at the old Ying Yangs site. Very enjoyable world music sounds, invisible MIDI threads making for a bubbly addition to your morning coffee routine. Another stop in the neverending YMO journey of good vibes (Hosono on the boards).
Very little about this guy on Discogs, his website is completely in Japanese. Any help, sinophiles?
These scans of the CD booklet tell the story of "Different Trains" best (here's a link to all the scans someone generously posted on discogs) :
I like the idea of the piece incipient and brewing in Reich's mind as a child making cross-country trips on trains...
Really, I wanted to post Pat Metheny's lovely recording of "Electric Counterpoint" after hearing it for the first time, with fresh ears, after many years this past week (scrounging up burned CDs you've left at a friend's place can be a Proust Jr. memory hunt...!!!). Certainly some of the most inventive looping guitar music I've heard...even if it was overdubs.
"Pat Shreds"... I should really make a T-shirt that says that...
Jiro over at Panther Club turned me on to this group, his description is a great place to start to learn about Tri Atma. What's important to know is that Clara Mondshine (aka Walter Bachauer) and Claude Larson (aka Klaus Netzle) are involved. If you're familiar with their output, you'll know a little better what to expect.
Nothing like Germans getting a little silly. On first listen, I was thinking of Oregon and Between, and then the electronics enter, channeling the best of Pyrolator and Netzle's solo work as Larson (which I should really put up soon).
Some really enjoyable music, crossing Eastern/folk/kosmiche/new age styles, blurring the lines between "depth and surface."
(There's an alternate posting of this song on youtube with nude beach bums throughout! Saucy!)
According to the record's back cover and discogs, Double Fantasy was made up of these two fellows, Charly McLion and Dreamstar (I think the back cover has the latter listed as dREAMSTARRR, or something silly like that - and yeah, I feel like Dreamstar is the one w/ sunglasses on. Blondie looks more like a McLion).
Beyond all that silliness, this is a pretty tight record. I would describe it as faux kosmische, like some dudes really indebted to Gottsching and Rother but with cheesier production value. So, great.
I can't get over that cover... I like to imagine this as the soundtrack for the choreographed dancing with silk scarves that happens on this otherwise deserted baseball field at twilight, each twilight...
(???)
Floating trumpets, electronic rhythms that sound like they came from the percussion bay of an 80's digital keyboard, swelling themes on ride cymbals that ride onto infinity... (stop me)
(By the by, this is one long .wav file zipped to a .rar, I dled it originally as an .ape file, had no idea what that was, then converted it to .wav - so no breaks! Enjoy the ride)
So...I've been gone a bit. This is where I am right now:
C'est nuageux, mais ça n'est pas grave.
These electro jams provide a nice soundtrack for this promeneur solitaire. There's a strange Franco-Japanese 80's pop connection I've got to figure out, stay tuned.
À bientôt!
(Not on this album but oh so nice summer vibes:)):
So, last night I re-watched Roman Polanski's "Frantic" and loved it again, for different reasons and the same reasons. The music really captured me this time - and I noticed for the first time that Ennio Morricone did the soundtrack. Something about those swirling synths and prominent, high-register bass was making me think that Scott Walker's one 80's album might have been a good fit for the film - but I'll get to that in a second.
It's not just the Morricone backing that I liked, Grace Jones' re-working of Astor Piazzola's "Libertango" was great, as well as this one haunting number that plays during the scene where Emmanuel Seigneur's character is changing in her room and H. Ford shuts the door (I'll buy whoever can give me the title to that one a beer). Really, the whole movie gives you feel, the sense of this American doctor scrambling in a seedy Polanski Paris... and Morricone's stellar at conveying this, as usual!
Someone should really do a montage of scenes from "Frantic" set to this album - it would work. I've been really enjoying this one lately. It's got that "too good to be so short" feel - you got to give Scott his room, but I would like another few albums with this sound before we get to the heebie-jeebies of his latest style (really I shouldn't be making this claim, I haven't tread too deeply into his work from Tilt on). But yeah, this is the one for me - this and the first four tracks from Nite Flights.
For my money, the best of their albums (we won't count "Secret Dub Life", which is pretty great, too). I was reminded of it on picking up the first Michael Nyman Band album at Amoeba today and noticing that "Hands 2 Take", one of my favorite songs here, is built out of edits of Nyman's "Bird List Song". Nice!
The weird pop of the S/T album is here (the hooks of tracks like "Move on Up" and the title track can't be denied), but what takes the cake are David Cunningham's forays into instrumental synth/tape music, like "Cirrus" with its vocal loops or the incomparable "New Voice". I wish I could find more of this stuff - maybe one day a vault will open with tons of his unreleased solo work. I can dream, can't I?
For the past week, I've been pretty locked into individuals on the fringe of rock, people whose work I've loved and respected for years, but who I never sought out apart from their well-known stuff...Robert Wyatt, Scott Walker...but my fascination with David Byrne has been going on for a while now. And there's so much to love right now! I'm afraid to post his new album with St. Vincent, for fear that some nebulous internet overseer will have my head, but here's the first song from it, which I can't get out of my head:
The video's not too shabby, neither. So, there's his great new album with St. Vincent, the tracks he did a few years ago with the Dirty Projectors, this recent TED talk that takes up an egalitarian approach to music and its production/use, his label and all the great stuff they put out...
The man's a fine wine, people. What he's doing is the proof! But hey, what more do you expect from someone who spent their formative years around Baltimore?
So, instead of that new release, I've got "The Catherine Wheel", a series of songs DB was commissioned to do for a dance performance in the early 80's. Sounds very close to the stuff he was doing with Eno on "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" around the same time. Really tight, funky studio band, this is my favorite moment of the Talking Heads years.
P.S. From some inexplicable reason, the song "Ade" is missing on my copy of this album. As I listen to it now, I realize what a shame that is! Oh well, I'm having trouble finding the track anywhere else but youtube, and since these links are for preview purposes only (riiiight?), if you love it, go find it and support your local record store. A used vinyl copy'll run you 2.99.
So, this seems appropriate, considering this has been playing all night on repeat on my iPod. I've been on a dreamy 80's kick for a little while (never knew how good Roxy Music's "Avalon" was! Maybe I'll put that one up too). Don't know all the guests on this first TMC album, but the songs really hit home. Liz Fraser's vocals on "Another Day" knock me out. Here it is:
(Disclaimer: this is not my rip, and it definitely sounds sped-up on a few tracks...I can tell the difference on "Another Day"...still sounds good to me)
A day late, but if you stuck around for the second post, hopefully it's worth the wait.
A record that sounds effortless, as if the synth tones, beats and guitar lines stretched themselves across the mix of their own accord. Really, who records albums like this? So crisp. Definitely the right album to play in these first autumn breezes, windows down a crack, cruising the streets of LA. Sure makes that stop-and-go a lot less noticeable.
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