One More Blue Nightmare
What has Aram Bajakian been up to since the release of his remarkable debut, Kef, in 2011?
Not much. He’s been on the road with both Lou Reed (RIP) and Diana Krall. Let me repeat that: he has played guitar with both Lou Reed and Diana Krall. Quick, how many musicians do you know who are versatile enough to pull that off? It speaks volumes to hear Sweet Lou introduce Bajakian as “guitarist extraordinaire” in of the many, highly recommended clips available on YouTube.
Bajakian has also managed to write and record another set of original compositions, and the results are stunning. Considering the depth and originality on display in Kef (which is an Armenian type of dance music known for incorporating traditional and western instruments), it is at once remarkable and refreshing that Bajakian has recorded a cycle that manages to be more direct and accessible, yet expansive in terms of style and effect.
The year is young but there were flowers also in hell will be on my list come December; the only question is whether anyone else will take top billing.
For guitar nerds, this is an album that can—and should—be appreciated and savored for the multiple nuances that exist within practically each number. Bajakian indulges in his love of pedals and pyrotechnics, but the music is never indulgent. An obvious example is the tribute to his former employer, “LouTone”: it is a suitably fuzzed-out affair, ambling along with just the right attitude, but in the middle Bajakian breaks it down with some echoed distortion that is a tip of the cap and a passing of the torch. Moments like this will make music aficionados smile and nod the way a baseball fan can understand, without the announcer, the ways a pitcher paints the corner with his fastball.
And Bajakian brings the heat. He blasts out of the gate with the scorching “Texas Cannonball”, a tribute to the great Freddie King. In addition to being a suitably blistering opening salvo, it serves notice that this young man knows his history, and more, is capable of delivering convincing celebrations for the types of guitar heroes video game players have never heard about. And, as sensitive and subtle as his playing often is, he can absolutely kill when he wants to. Another tribute, “Orbisonian”, balances a punkish aggression with a winking rockabilly flair. This song should be featured in a video game.
In the liner notes Bajakian thanks his uncle for helping initiate a love affair with the blues that continues to this day. “Sweet Blue Eyes” is a worthy tribute to the idiom, taking Stevie Ray Vaughan on a late night cab ride to the East Village. “Rent Party”, which showcases the solid support offered by Shahzad Ismaily (bass) and Jerome Jennings (drums), is so full of glorious filth you"ll need fresh Q-tips after each listen. Yet, even on these hard-charging numbers, Bajakian can’t help enhancing things with multi-tracked embellishment: the middle section of “Rent Party” is an exercise in well-calibrated chaos. “Labor on 57th” lets the intensity build like an electrical storm, all menacingly gorgeous heat lightning, alternating between explosive release and retreat: it is a history of the hustle-bustle of our city that never sleeps.
The aforementioned “LouTone” and “The Kids Don’t Want to Sleep” are showcases for the huge, varied sounds Bajakian can conjure, unfiltered enough so they are fresh and raw, but shrewdly restrained enough to avoid noise-for-noise’s sake extravagance. Bajakian, in short, uses skill and instinct to assault your system, where so many other players simply turn up the volume.
It is, ultimately, the quieter numbers that fully reveal the mastery Bajakian is developing. Album closer “For Julia” is a soulful tone poem that uses a less-is-more understatement to concentrate feeling, where “Japanese Love Ballad” would not sound remotely out of place on one of John Zorn’s more exotic Filmworks studies.
Two tracks in particular elevate the proceedings and will stay with the listener for a long time. “Requiem for 5 Pointz” is a solemn shout-out to the “graffiti mecca” in Queens that was whitewashed this fall. In terms of subject matter and delivery, Bajakian is not simply cementing street cred for this city he loves; he is solidifying a distinctive imprint as a son of the cultural and musical capital of the world. “Medicaid Lullaby”, another political commentary that needs no words to make its case, offers majestic evidence of Bajakian’s uncorrupted heart. While he is often, and flatteringly, compared to Marc Ribot, this album in general, and this track in particular, conjures up the man who balances light and dark, heavy and soft, intellect and adrenaline better than just about anyone: Robert Fripp. One also thinks of Vernon Reid, another indefatigable explorer who distills his countless loves and influences into a vision that is brazen and uninterested in compromise.
None of this is to suggest there were flowers also in hell is a mere amalgamation of various, albeit disparate source materials; rather, it is a testament of Bajakian’s love affair with his instrument. The inspirations he has absorbed infuse practically every second of this recording, but the sum total is anything but reductive. This album contains multitudes, and they are original as they are exhilarating.
This is not jazz, nor is it necessarily rock or blues; it’s a reflection of the mind and soul of the man who made it, like all great art must be. As such, it is also a reflection of the frenzied times we live in: the turmoil, apathy and information overload, yet it prevails as an antidote for the very urgencies it addresses. The best instrumental albums are always soundtracks. They are soundtracks to the worlds they create, and his second album is the soundtrack of Aram Bajakian’s world, right now. We are witnessing the evolution of a significant talent, and we should anticipate important work from him for many years. --- Sean Murphy
Posted by Pausts
Duo collaboration between the Japanese female accordionist à qui avec Gabriel, who previously released a solo album on John Zorn's Tzadik label, and Acid Mothers Temple guitarist and guitar-drone soundscape artist Kawabata Makoto. Kawabata's guitar traces heretical designs through the stoically beautiful illuminated manuscripts of à qui avec Gabriel's accordion and voice. The combination is deeply phantasmal. (importantrecords)
Peter Walker, the American acoustic guitar pioneer, re-emerged as a recording artist in 2006 with four tracks on A Raga for Peter Walker, an all-star tribute recording on Tompkins Square and a collection of unreleased '70s tapes. Since that time, there have been four new albums of Spanish and steel-string guitar recordings, and the re-release of Rainy Day Raga, his 1966 Vanguard debut. Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms? is a previously unreleased album, cut at New York's Mercury Studios. The reasons its tapes have remained in Walker's "vault" (a converted bread truck) are unclear -- but it hardly matters. Where his previous studio albums featured other musicians as accompaniment, this date is completely solo, just voice and steel-string guitar, one take, no overdubs. It is his song cycle for the end of the 1960s, composed and recorded during the heat of an era intent on ending the Vietnam War, and culturally reshaping everything that came after. But these are not "protest" songs; they are snapshots of a man's life in the process of living. His mature playing style, which weaves his formal studies of the Indian carnatic tradition, American folk styles, and Spanish and Andalusian folk and flamenco lineage seamlessly, is fully present. Even in his vocals, Walker uses the raga form, offering his lyrics as a seldom deviating drone. And his lyrics, which revolve around various poetic and storytelling forms, are as compelling as his melodies and harmonic investigations. "Me and My Lady" is a love song that slips through Spanish, Celtic, and Appalachian folk as well as modal concerns; it illustrates longing and delight. "Johnny Cuckoo," an instrumental, is more urgent, offering a dazzling display of fingerpicked and rhythmically complex strumming. "Early in the Morning," another love song, uses the raga form as it encircles flamenco, binding the two traditions. His reading of the public domain "Pretty Bird" is haunted by the folk-blues even in its dramatic modal presentation. The song "Fifty Miles" is a labyrinthine recounting of Walker's initial journey to Puerto Vallarta in 1964. "Wonder," the closer and longest cut, is a driven, kaleidoscopic number; its illustrious implementation of raga, adapted flamenco, and a collision of Andalusian folk forms is staggering. The song's narrative is equally engaging. In addition to the music, there is a self-penned 4,300-word essay by Walker, distilled by Delmore Recordings' Mark Linn from a 40-page essay (that we'd love to read in its entirety) as it details his travels and experiences that, at least tangentially, connect to the spirit of the music. Even the cover photo -- of Walker with radical attorney William Kunstler at Detroit's famed Garwood Mansion commune -- is a testament to the era. Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms? adds immeasurably to his musical and cultural legacy, and is a must for any fan of American guitar music. ---- Thom Jurek
Peter Walker is an American original, as eclectic and enigmatic as the songs he writes. The legendary seventy-five year old raga/psychedelic/folk acoustic guitarist, who was schooled by masters such as Ravi Shankar, and Ali Akbar Khan, has been described by Larry Coryell as, “One of the most original practitioners of contemporary music” and proclaimed by the Beatles’ press agent Derek Taylor as “Perhaps the greatest guitarist in the world.” His music, celebrated by the late Jack Rose, James Blackshaw, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Thurston Moore, and Greg Davis, all contributed original compositions to the 2006 tribute album, A Raga For Peter Walker. In the mid-‘60s, while musical director to Timothy Leary’s LSD explorations, Walker released the classic Rainy Day Raga LP in 1966, and 1968’s influential Second Poem to Karmela or Gypsies Are Important, both on Vanguard Records. Following that, he disappeared from recording for almost forty years, but never stopped practicing, learning, reaching. Now, Delmore Recording Society is proud to announce the November 26th release of a lost studio session from 1970, Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms?
Recorded at Mercury Studios in NYC, Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms? is Walker’s manifesto. A solo guitar/vocal album, all one take, no overdubs, that could have been Peter’s classic third album had it been released at the time (Peter had been storing the reels in a converted bread truck for decades). While his previous two records are incredible collaborative efforts – the playing of Bruce Langhorne, Jeremy Steig, and John Blair as important to the final product as Peter’s – this album is pure Walker. A requiem to the 1960s, chronicling lovers on the run, anti-war movement adventures, and living off the grid in Mexico, California, Detroit, and NYC. (source)
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band is the avant-garde debut album by Yoko Ono. The album came after recording three experimental releases with John Lennon and a live album as a member of The Plastic Ono Band.
With the exception of "AOS", a 1968 live recording, the entire album was recorded in one afternoon in October 1970 during the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band sessions at Ascot Sound Studios and Abbey Road Studios, using the same musicians and production team. Also recorded on this day were "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)" which ended up on the next album Fly, and "Between the Takes" which was released on Fly's 1998 CD reissue. "Greenfield Morning I Pushed an Empty Baby Carriage All Over the City" was based around a sample from a discarded tape of George Harrison playing a sitar and a Ringo Starr drum break with an added echo effect plus Ono's vocals with a lyric referencing a miscarriage. Ono's vocalisations on tracks such as "Why" and "Why Not" mixed hetai, a Japanese vocal technique from kabuki theatre, with modern rock 'n roll and raw aggression influenced by the then-popular primal therapy that Lennon and Ono had been undertaking. According to Ono, the recording engineers were in the habit of turning off the recording equipment when she began to perform-- which is why, at the end of "Why", Lennon can be heard asking "Did you get that?".
Initially on Apple Records, through EMI, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band was released to considerable critical disdain in 1970, at a time when Ono was being widely blamed for the break-up of The Beatles. Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band failed to chart in the UK but reached number 182 in the US. Notable exceptions were the estimations of Billboard who called it 'visionary' and critic Lester Bangs who supported it in Rolling Stone. More recently, the album has been credited (like those of The Velvet Underground) with having an influence, particularly on musicians, grossly disproportionate to its sales and visibility. Critic David Browne of Entertainment Weekly has credited the album with "launching a hundred or more female alternative rockers, like Kate Pierson & Cindy Wilson of the B-52s to current thrashers like L7 and Courtney Love of Hole".
The covers of Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band albums are nearly identical; Lennon pointed out the difference in their 1980 Playboy interview ("In Yoko's, she's leaning back on me; in mine, I'm leaning on her"). The photos were taken with a cheap Instamatic camera on the grounds of Tittenhurst Park (their home at the time) by actor Daniel Richter (as listed in the album's credits), who was working as their assistant.
The album was reissued on CD by Rykodisc in 1997 with three bonus tracks from the era ("Open Your Box", "Something More Abstract" and "The South Wind") and an "LP replica" special edition was issued by V2 Records in Japan in 2007.
Chausse Trappe (french) : A trap hidden in the ground used to capture wild animals.
The definition suits the band perfectly hence the band 's name was carefully selected. Chausse Trappe is hidden. The four-piece doesn't use any 'mandatory' modern promotional tools such as facebook or others. The band's efforts are aimed on energy, focusing on music in order to capture as many wild animals as they can. And they will tame all of us: dandies, local music maniacs, travellers, punks...They will unite around this uncommon ever changing wall of sound, unrelated to any scene or aesthetic in particular. Music. Simply music.
Chausse Trappe is the lonely child of four men living somewhere in the country side of western France. No words in their music, just feeling.
Indie, Kraut-rock, Concrete music and Trans are some of the constituting elements that make the band chemistry. They never separate conceptual music and popular music.
The people here think, work but overall they give, all that they've got. In the end, only the energy is left.
Your body will need to be brave to endure this journey. Contracted in an endless autistic sway then liberated letting all the nervousness out. Something like an intercourse that keeps on going and that never ends. Too much for some, unbearably exciting for others. It's depends how much you can lose control. (mandai)
Posted by Pausts
For thirty years Maioli (Milan, 1950) applies the results of his research on the origin of sound, music and musical instruments (paleorganology) in a great variety of performances, using all kinds of artistic and scientific media: concerts, dance and theatrical performances, art works, expositions, sound tracks for film, video and theatre, music cassettes and CD’s, books and articles, lectures and demonstrations, laboratory workshops, music therapy sessions, in many different contexts including archeological and natural sites. Since 1996 his work concentrates on the presentation of his findings by the group Synaulia. (soundcenter)
Posted by Savage Saint
fully licensed legit deluxe reissue of this completely unique slab of outsider private press psychedelia. long whispered about by the most inner circle of obsessive psych collectors, but up till now heard only by a lucky few. a true legend for sure, and rightfully so, as the bizarre story surrounding the lp is nearly as twisted as the music itself. ex-road runners drummer stephen david heitkotter recorded and pressed the lp in california sometime before 1971 as a demo only edition of no more then two dozen copies in blank white covers, then distributed it only to a handful of local san joaquin radio stations before the pressing plant destroyed the masters due to non-payment. within months of his failed attempt at radio stardom stephen was committed to the state mental ward, and that was that… but what an album he left behind… deeply damaged outsider/real people westcoast basement loner acid-garage-blues from a genuinely insane person, recorded at the very edge of oblivion. the sound of a last gasp at the teetering edge of the darkest void. a murky disjointed trip wobbling between acid-scorched un-reality and pure all-encompasing blankness… full electric band setting, but whether this was a purely solo endeavor or an actual band recording will remain a mystery forever. those close to stephen at the time swear he was already too far gone to assemble even a jam session, so the solo theory seems likely, making the musical deconstruction meltdown that much more disturbing. semi-tight playing disintegrates into meandering sonic smear at every turn, then somehow resolidifies and churns onward while bent deadpan vocals funnel garbled surrealisms from nowhere to nowhere. the scarily hyper-real yet ultra-weird otherworldly presence is as thick as it comes, and only enhanced by the raw/crude/muffled recording fidelity… not recommended for the weak of heart… (time-lagrecords.com)
Mostly no information about this band except that this is pre-Hard Stuff featuring great John Du Cann on guitars & Pete French on vocals. This album has never been released in 1970, released only on vinyl by great UK obscurities label Kissing Spell (now long OOP). Musically, this is some fiery live heavy psych-prog rock in the vein of Hard Stuf & Daemon - two of John Du Cann's other bands. The sound quality is raw & there lies the charm of this album. Fans of UK heavy prog will certainly enjoy this!
This is what Pete French has to say about this recording:
Thank you for your inquiry, I yes I have heard rumor of the existence of this taped recording once before. To tell the truth I have never heard any of the recorded material myself, I can only presume that Mr John DuCann has tried to capitalize on some rough rehearsal ideas that he had taped and kept hidden away, this must have been during the very early days when I had just joined Atomic Rooster, John invited me over to show me some rough ideas he had recorded on tape. and if I remember correctly I messed about with some vocal ideas at the time, this was before Vincent had fallen out with him and decided to sack him from the band.It would appear that he even went so far with this recording as to even try to capitalize on my group Leaf Hound by using the name Hell Hound in order to try to sell it.I personally would out of interest, would dearly love to hear this so called recording?Vincent Crane and myself both found him upon my joining Atomic Rooster to be quite a difficult individual to get along with.Vincent had suspected that John was trying to destroy Atomic Rooster in an attempt to start his own band at the time.I so I unexpectedly had walked into a War that was going on between them.!... I hope that my information is of some help to you.
P.S. I do hope you manage to get a chance to hear my latest bands release, Leaf Hound "Unleashed", recording distributed on Repertoire Records as I think you would enjoy it.My kindest regards to you... Pete French
In the early 1970 they shambled forth from their respective lairs, gathering at an unholy place where cold stone walls dripped like the nose of the Nameless One. Guitars were plugged, drums taken - the session commenced.
A tape documented the day's proceedings. It was a day of hard rock access, vocal ravings and bludgeoning instrumentation, for such was Hellhound. The ephemeral beast disbanded when the session ended, going on to join Leafhound, Daemon etc. Side one consists of finished songs, but Side Two as been expertly edited from jams recorded towards the end of the session, by which time the vocalist had fallen into the drumkit, his voice failing to reach the microphone.
Quality is sublimely bad & the songs pure indulgence, but the roots of "Leafhound", "Daemon" & "Hard Stuff" can clearly be heard within the sonic maelstrom of Hellhound. (source)
Caldera was the duo Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, who met at Media Sound in New York where they engineered and produced music for film and television. They befriended Bob Moog in 1969 and worked through Moog distributor Walter Sears to acquire their first Moog components. Margouleff became the maestro of the Moog at Media Sound. He was hired by producer John Hammond to program the Moog for the album Space Hymn (1970) by Lothar and the Hand People. During this same time, Margouleff and Cecil helped Bob Moog conceive and package large Modular systems for studio use while Bob Moog himself was readying production of the Minimoog. The pair gradually created a large, custom modular system of their own that they dubbed The Original Neo-Timbral Orchestra (TONTO), and as a recording duo they called themselves Tonto’s Expanding Head Band. By 1971, they worked at Motown on synthesis for a series of highly innovative albums by Stevie Wonder. Somewhere between Lothar and the Hand People and Stevie Wonder, they produced this first record of their own music, A Moog Mass. This was a concept album revolving around the Stabat Mater Dolorosa, a 13th Century Catholic Hymn to Mary. The creepy image of Mary on the cover might make you think you were looking at another satanic mass album. But, not to worry. This album was very Catholic, Latin and all. This might seem like an odd choice of subject matter for a Moog record, but at the time composers and producers of electronic music were exploring many genres of music with the hope of producing another blockbuster like Switched-on Bach. A Moog Mass is remarkable for several reasons. It is important as an early collaboration of Margouleff and Cecil and it skillfully combined music composed for the Moog with cello and harpsichord plus spoken word and electronic vocalizations. Perhaps most interesting, it represented an early exploration of voice synthesis techniques although it is unclear if this was done using an actual vocoder (Moog was selling one by 1970) or a more creative use of the synthesizer’s fixed filter bank modules for voice modification. Wendy Carlos, whose famous synthesized vocalizations would appear on the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange (December 1971), reports that she was working on this technique long before she worked on music for the film. Her creative approach to voice synthesis used a ten-band Moog fixed-filter bank and corresponding envelope followers and voltage-controlled amplifiers to encode and decode the vocals. Caldera’s vocalizations were also wonderfully harmonic and uncannily like those of Carlos, so it seems that they were using filter banks instead of a vocoder as well. The Billboard reviewer assigned to write about A Moog Mass wasn’t sure what to make of the album, writing, “So straight it’s freaky. Or so freaky that it’s straight. And when was the last time you had a talk with The Man Upstairs?” (November 14, 1970). (source)
Gatefold, black and white cover. Text for side one left of gatefold with text for side two on the right. Most likely due to budget shortcomings, the cover is engineered with a design using one single piece of cardboard - simply folded - without any glue or adhesives. For example, the spine has no text on it, and the crease is a "V" shape, rather than a "|_|" shape. Instead of housing the record within a sort of pocket (the way most gatefold designs would) the disc sits between two folded flaps.The labels on the vinyl (white w/black writing) only state "Special Promotions - Promotional Use Only," the Cat #, Side #, and "33 1/3".
Hendrix's name is nowhere to be found on the entire release.
Excellent sound quality ... Highly recommended.
Adonai & I is yet another side project of bassist David Gould, whose primary gig is with the excellent New York-based roots reggae band John Brown's Body and whose other primary part-time job is playing for the somewhat more dub-flavored 10 Foot Ganja Plant. With Adonai & I he moves further afield, experimenting with a fusion of traditional Hebrew prayers and melodies and dubwise reggae. This has been done before -- remember King Django's Roots and Culture? -- but never in such a dark, mystical vein. "Adonai Adonai" opens the program with an explicitly nyahbinghi-influenced chant, and then "Leha Dodi" takes a traditional song celebrating the Sabbath and sets it to a sturdy, clavinet-driven reggae beat. On a slow, funky arrangement of the familiar "Shalom Alechem," Amy Glicklich contributes vocals that are at once silky and smoky; the horn section of Boston's crack Pressure Cookers band provides tight and supple support throughout. For an even spacier experience, check out the dub version of this album (Adonai in Dub) on the Tzadik label. Highly recommended. --- Rick Anderson
Listening to the opening track of Ed Sanders' recently reissued solo album, Sanders Truckstop (Collectors' Choice Music), I couldn't help thinking about time's passage. A satirically mawkish country narrative in the manner of Hank Williams' "Luke the Drifter" cuts or Red Sovine, "Jimmy Joe, the Hippybilly Boy" tells the story of an Ozark Mountains hippie who loses his life after rescuing two car passengers from a raging big blue river. (His long hair gets entangled in the rear-view mirror.) These days, the very word "hippie" has become so degraded that the idea of a comic pastiche saluting the freak flag doesn't have the same charge that it did back in 1970. More's the pity.
But before we look too closely at Sanders debut solo album and its follow-up – 1972's Beer Cans on the Moon — we should probably backtrack to the man's career as a once and future Fug. The most underground of underground group, the Fugs were a poets' band; both Sanders and fellow songwriter Tuli Kupferberg were fixtures in the New York beat scene and their first releases as the Fugs appeared on a label primarily known for avant-jazz releases. Though they eventually graduated to a major label, Reprise, they still remained known as a cult group, primarily because of their anarchically satirical political songs and their explicitly sexual lyrics.
In terms of subject matter, the Fugs' closest peers were the Mothers of Invention, but where big Mother Frank Zappa generally approached his sexual themes with a dollop of puritanical distaste, the Fugs were more openly hedonistic. Too, while Zappa once famously proclaimed that his lyrics were primarily in the service of his music – a means of getting us musical illiterates to pay attention to his bizarre compositional creativity – Sanders and Kupferberg's first loyalty remained to the spoken word.
You can see this creative dynamic at play in Truckstop, Sanders' first album after his group's big break-up. A mocking country album, the disc – despite the presence of musical smarties like David Bromberg and Bill Keith – feels musically half-realized. You hear it in a track like "The Maple Court Trajedy," (sic) with its laborious tempo changes or the indifferently played "Heartbreak Crash Pad." Both sound like they could've benefited from another week of studio play.
But, as the song titles hint, Sanders' lyrics are frequently quite risible in a stick-to-the-straights kinda way. A cut like "Crash Pad," which details the fall back into hippiedom of a straight-arrow family man, is the lyrical equivalent to Zap! Comix. When Sanders sings in his exaggerated twang that he's never "going back to Honkville again," you can visualize it coming out of the mouth of one of Gilbert Shelton's furry comic dopers. And in what has to be the album's signature piece, "The Iliad," Sanders amusingly talk/sings in the persona of a homophobic hippie basher named Johnny Pissoff. Subtle, this ain't, but it's definitely true to its era.
Perhaps in the hands of a more musically focused artist, Truckstop might've been a minor satiric masterwork, instead of just an interesting sixties artifact. But Sanders' decision to give all the songs a faux country treatment ultimately works against the record, which grows flat over eleven tracks – sounding in the end like a snarkier version of Ringo Starr's weak Nashville tribute, Beaucoups of Blues. The only overtly political track, "The Abm Machine," gleefully slaps at Nixon's then-Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird ("Are you caught in the Transylvanian transvestite timetrap, Melvin Laird?" Sanders asks, three years before Dr. Frank-n-Furter proclaimed his sexual proclivities), though those who weren't around at the time might wonder what all the snipe is about. Those seeking a bit of the Fugs' old sexual outrageousness have to make due with "The Plaster Song," a mild tale of a country musician's encounter with a "plaster-casting girl" that would've probably come across funnier in a more diverse musical setting. (source)
A classic compendium from the early era of French underground music, Groovy Pop Session captures a few cornerstone units in their infancy, with Ange delivering their typically wrenching Gallic spin on the early Genesis sound and Pulsar offering a glimpse of what their epic Floydian grandeur sounded like four years before hitting the studio with the same eponymously titled track. Other notable tracks include ones by Absinthe (no idea otherwise about 'em) who turn in a powerhouse bit of spooked and Leslie cabinet-filtered psychedelia and Tac Poum Systeme, who managed a few other singles in their lifetime and here churn out the quite odd "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love". which singlemindedly grinds though a relentless 10+ minute Delay '68-style psychic noogie over which is spattered recordings of symphonies, crowd hysteria, gurgling electronics, backwards tapes and guitar fireworks. (mutand-sounds)
Między Nigerem a Wybrzeżem Kości Słoniowej leży kraj, o którym nie wiemy nic. To dobra okazja by zaimponować wiedzą rodzicom i znajomym, tym bardziej, że pochodzi z niego zajebiście gorący afro beat z nietuzinkową gitarą i świetną, bo niemożliwie połamaną sekcją rytmiczną. Trochę bardziej roughowi bracia Fela Kuti czy Mulate Astatke, z których najczęściej reprezentowany jest tu Amadou Balake, zasługują na więcej niż chwilę uwagi, więc połączcie przyjemne z pożytecznym i propagujcie przeboje ze spoconych klubów stolicy Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou. (necro666)
For its commemorative 10th release, Analog Africa indulges in Burkina Faso, one of the jewels of the Sahel, a harsh and arid strip that straddles the southern Sahara, stretching from Dakar in the west to Djibouti in the east. Formerly known as Haute Volta, Burkina Faso's sound was organized and nurtured during the country's time as part of a vast patchwork making up French colonial West Africa.
The rise of a post-independence urban middle class willing to invest in the Burkinabé arts spawned a cadre of singers, bands, orchestras and, most importantly, competitive record labels who all played their part in ushering in a golden age of music in their landlocked nation during the 1970's - a decade marred by political instability in the country and an era of artistic enlightenment empowering the whole of Africa.
The Sahelian climate fortunately bore no influence on the Burkinabé sound, which is cosmopolitan as it was raw. West Africa was and continues to remain deeply interconnected. In search of better gigs, well-to-do producers and sufficient recording equipment, Burkinabé musicians ventured across the surrounding region, returning home with a wealth of knowledge of their neighbors' distinctive styles.
The raw sound of Burkina Faso combined Afro-Funk, traditional Islamic rhythms and subtle Afro-Latin sounds brought over by visiting Cuban ensembles. Mandingue melodies and guitar techniques from Mali and Guinea, however, were by far the most defining traits of a potent African mix that distinguished the Voltaic style between 1974 and 1979.
Beginning with L'Harmonie Voltaïque and Orchestre Super Volta (both featured in this compilation), the pioneering orchestras from the capital Ouagadougou, several groups followed suit. Regional orchestras outside of the capital proudly boasted the contemporary sound through ensembles such as Echo del Africa National and Volta Jazz, and exported much needed skilled musicians back to the capital.
Record labels across Burkina Faso sprung up to capture the newly born mystic and soulful sound taking over the country. Volta Discobel and Club Voltaïque du Disque (CVD) emerged in 1974 and competed for the modern music of their people. Despite its humble beginnings as a record shop, CVD came to dominate the industry. Both labels worked with the heavyweights of the time, such as the majestic Amadou Ballaké, a national icon who is featured extensively on this compilation.
By the mid 70's, Ouagadougou had become a hotbed for African music, filled with touring bands, gifted instrumentalists and hypnotic vocalists. Talent was abound, to say the least. Jean Claube Bamago, the founder of Afro-Soul System, went from being a "musician's tailor" to a celebrated singer. Legendary singer Amadou Ballaké himself jumped from job to job before being recognized for his graceful voice.
While it might be Analog Africa's venture into possibly the most obscure of African sounds thus far, the sounds of the golden age of Burkinabé music deserve to be heard and the varying styles that came to define the era are completely covered in this 16-track release, accompanied by a 44-page booklet. (analogafrica)
Gorgeous German acid rock project. The obscure and underrated "Dawn Defender" is constantly mysterious, abstract and experimental, delivering interlocking electronic soundscapes punctuated by electric guitar manipulations and echoing effects. The album was originally released Tony Robinson for Pyramid label. A serious "kosmische" krautrock manifestation, a perfect & strange dreamy-like musical journey throw ultra psych textures. Pretty closed to the Cosmic Jokers (first) and A.R & the Machines. (progarchives)
This third volume of the Inside the Dream Syndicate series is also the fourth to feature John Cale, his Sun Blindness music, recorded during the same period is somehow outside this series. As on volume two, this set features Cale in collaboration and solo with producer Tony Conrad (who owns these archive recordings), Sterling Morrison, his mate in the Velvet Underground, Terry Jennings, and Angus MacLise (oh yes, and the New York Fire Department). All of the pieces date from the early to mid-1960s. The set opens with the title cut, with Morrison and Cale performing on something called a "cembalett" (small cimbalom) and a fretless guitar. Here, as in many of the early minimalism pieces, the concentration was on modulation and pitch, here recumbent themes payer upon one another as a main pulse flows through the center of the mix. Various tonalities and timbres glint in and out of the musical body creating an entirely new set of sonorific pulses. On the album's longest work, "At About this Time, Mozart Was Dead and Joseph Conrad Was Sailing the Seven Seas Learning English," at nearly half an hour for wollensack, viola, and guitar, tape edits are sliced into the mix, altering whole tones and creating intervals out of seeming half and semi-quavers. Interestingly, since the notion of the piece is to move ever upward, these cuts seem to create intervals of modulation where there were none. There is also an awesome, fearsome piece between Cale and Conrad (who plays something called a "thunder machine") to accompany Cale's electric piano on "After the Locust." It feels like John Cage's early experiments with amplification combined with the dense aggressiveness of the Velvet Underground. The tape experiment with the Fire Department is akin to something Luc Ferrari would create in the late 1960s, and is interesting in that it gives nothing of its source material away in the mix. The piece with MacLise and Jennings, "Terry's Cha-Cha," is a lighthearted bit of musical misanthropy that has nothing whatsoever to do with minimalism, but everything to do with MacLise's later involvement in studying Eastern music. There is melody, harmony, and a sense of rhythm from MacLise that is otherworldly. Again, this is another revelatory chapter in a music from a bygone yet ever present era. Even today, this series of discs sounds more revolutionary, more forward thinking and looking than just about anything else. (amg)
Jedna z najlepszych polskich płyt 2014 roku. To nie żart - kolektyw Innercity Ensemble, który tworzą: Radek Dziubek (Dwutysięczny), Rafał Iwański (HATI, X-NaVI:et), Wojtek Jachna (Contemporary Noise Sextet, Sing Sing Penelope), Rafał Kołacki (HATI), Artur Maćkowiak (Something Like Elvis, Potty Umbrella), Tomek Popowski (Ed Wood, Alameda 3) i Kuba Ziołek (Stara Rzeka, Alameda 3), zaprezentował wstrząsającą wizję kraut rocka XXI wieku.
- Przed nagraniem pierwszej płyty część z nas w ogóle się nie znała, a teraz jesteśmy stale w kontakcie, spotykamy się na koncertach. W przypadku części z nas to spotkanie zaowocowało dalszymi przygodami muzycznymi w innych kierunkach. Pierwsza płyta powstawała atmosferze takiego wzajemnego "badania się" i skupienia, druga sesja nagraniowa była bardziej odważna, swobodna i naturalna - tłumaczy Kuba Ziołek.
"Zzyskujemy pełną wizję kolektywu, w którym oczywiście duży akcent pada na rozbudowaną sekcję perkusyjną, ale poszczególne części formacji się doskonale uzupełniają, odbierając od siebie płynnie ciężar rozgrywania całości. (...) Jeśli miałbym jednym zdaniem zachęcić kogoś do słuchania tej płyty, próbowałbym go zwabić w pierwszej kolejności tym, że płytą Innercity Ensemble trudno się znudzić, łatwo też dostać kilka dobrze mierzonych emocjonalnych uderzeń" - pisze Bartek Chaciński (Polityka).
Album dwupłytowy, wydanie slipcase z grafiką autorstwa Kuby Sokólskiego, limitowane do 500 sztuk. (instant-classic)
"II" is a second album from Poland's improvising supergroup Innercity Ensemble consisting of members of the following bands: HATI, Stara Rzeka, Alameda 3, Dwutysięczny, Contemporary Noise Sextet. "II" is double album and will come out in a limited run of only 500 copies courtesy of Instant Classic label.
Innercity Ensemble came into public attention thanks to "Katahdin" - a debut album released two years ago. - Since then almost everything changed, mostly the fact that we finally got to know each other - says Kuba Ziołek (of Stara Rzeka, Alameda 3 fame). - We're constantly in touch, we meet at the concerts. Thanks to that album we even started some musical collaborations leading to different musical directions. "Katahdin" was created on a strange basis of being very focused. The recordings of "II" were quite different and felt more natural, liberating - he adds.
"II" is divided into two cd's - "white" and "black" covered with artwork by Kuba Sokólski (Merkabah). - Black and white are the most radical opposites. Between them there is everything else. And I guess "everything else" is what we find most interesting - explains Ziołek.
Innercity Ensemble's debut was recorded on a course of three days in Mózg club in Bydgoszcz. This time they decided to hold the recording session in a beautiful Palace in Ostromecko. Engineered by Jarek Hejmann, mixed by Ziołek and mastered by Michał Kupicz, the album is still largely based in improvisation. - We had only one track composed before the recording but even this one on the cd sounds different than it was supposed to - says Ziołek. - Improsation that productive and leading to such interesting compositions wouldn't be possible if we didn't carry the music in ourselves - those rythms, melodies and sounds - adds Rafał Iwański (HATI, X-NaVI:et).
Cymbrowski - muzyk, poeta, artysta; jedna z najbardziej niedocenianych postaci lwowskiego półświatka artystycznego.
Zaczynał od oryginalnych interpretacji ukraińskiej poezji eksperymentując z wokalem pod monumentalne partie fortepianu. Nie znajdując należnego oddźwięku zniknął, by po latach uporczywej izolacji i programowego "milczenia" (nagrywał do szuflady) ujawnić się w pełnym skupienia i magii projekcie.
Niejeden krytyk zęby stracił próbując rozgryźć muzyką Cymbrowskiego. Z "krytykanckiego" obowiązku wspomnieć należy o inspiracjach minimalem, jazzem, muzyką współczesną, etniczną i medytacyjną. A także o wierności poezji.
Cymbrowski wirtuozem nie jest; prostymi fakturami wyczarowuje przestrzenie, po których oprowadza swym pełnym skupienia głosem. Muzyka Cymbrowskiego - to muzyka wielowymiarowa, magiczna, terapeutyczna, pełna nieprzeciętnej wrażliwości i ciepła; to muzyka do x-krotnego w niej udziału. (koka)
Cymbrovsky - a musician, a poet, an artist; one of the most underestimated musician in the Lviv artistic world. Many critics pulled their hair out trying to get to the bottom of Cymbrovsky's music. It has been inspired by jazz, minimal, modern, ethnic and meditation music. Cymbrovsky is not a virtuoso, however he creates whole worlds with his astonishing falsetto. Although Cymbrovsky's music is simple it is made of many elements. Filled with magic and unusual sensitivity and warmth it can be therapeutic for the listener. This is that kind of music, which can be listened to many times - in different way each time. (koka)
Posted by Savage Saint
Doc Pilot i Zouka Dzaza stworzyli w latach 80. własny, abstrakcyjny język dźwiękowy. Nazwali go "minimum naive new wave". Zresztą mniejsza o nazwę, mając bowiem do dyspozycji klawisze Casio PT-20 i automat perkusyjny Yamaha MR 10 prochu wymyślić nie mogli… Mogli za to dobrze się bawić, grając na nosie nobliwym francuskim artystom.
X Ray Pop are a group of whom are easy to scratch the surface, but almost impossible to get the bottom of. With an iconic moniker, telltale graphic style and demanding buy me Day-Glo colour coding policy the French vinyl output of X Ray Pop as a specialist subject is, at first glance, memo- rable and achievable. Cocksure fans of Euro wave pop often proclaim X Ray expertise from behind many a record shop counter or blog page but the truth of the matter is that no-one, not even the band members them- selves, have the knowledge or mental capacity to truly understand the splatter range of the god speed anti-tactics that have turned this inter- changeable, unarrangable and thirty-year sustainable auto-pop combo into one of uber-legendary status. For those that tread the chemins of 80s Gallic record racks, from agit pop to Zeuhl-school (bridging synth pop to Celluloid) these 7" square flags reading El Gato, L'Eurasienne, Alcool and Fuzzy Christmas are merely alluring landmarks pointing to another seba- ceous underground of magnetic tape that flows swiftly (like Magma) await- ing Pirates and liberators alike. X marks the spot!
Peeping out of a warren of unexplored passages their seminal self-distrib- uted debut singles and appearances on the genre defining alternative funk Alternative Funk Folie Distinguée compilation in 1984 made them an omnipresent fixture for the French tape wave scene that shaped a genera- tion and influenced many more to follow. But beneath the trademark fluo- rescent sleeves stands the highly stacked foundations of endless cassette only releases that give this pocket punk husband and wife duo one of the most impressive and elusive back catalogues of all their cut n paste French funk contemporaries. Plundering the depths of a self-estimated 400 recorded songs, X Ray Pop founder Didier Pilot has joined up with Finders Keepers sister label Cache Cache to reassess, rescue and reissue some of the bands most underexposed sonic snapshots, many of which were distributed in issues of less than 50 up to 500 for exclusive global releases in France, Spain, Portugal, Japan and America (where bands like Brian Ladd and Julie Frith's Psyclones and The Beastie Boys championed the band as a likeminded inspiration. (amazon)
Posted by Pausts
Koncertowe nagrania z 2003 roku wydane wcześniej prywatnym nakładem w mikroskopijnym nakładzie na CDR. Teraz dostępne na CD w pięknej okładce. Koncert odbył się w osobliwym miejscu – zabytkowej wieży ciśnień w Brunszwiku, Niemcy – miejscu o specyficznych warunkach akustycznych. Warto zaznaczyć, że muzyka jest w 100% intuicyjna, spontaniczna i improwizowana. Polsko – niemiecki kwartet prezentuje muzykę na styku minimalu, muzyki współczesnej, ambient i drone z nutą wziętą gdzieś z najlepszych płyt ECM i New Albion (zwłaszcza Deep Listening Band i Pauliny Oliveros). (nefryt)
Free improvisations – live at the historic water tower in Braunschweig, Germany.
Pavel Fajt (ur. 26 grudnia 1957 w Brnie) jest czeskim awangardowym muzykiem, perkusistą i producentem.
Należy do grupy alternatywnych nurtów muzycznych, na granicach world music, art-rocka, folk-rocka oraz eksperymentalnej muzyki elektrofonicznej. Występuje od czasów studiów na politechnice w Brnie. Najbardziej znane są jego występy z pieśniarzem Václavem Koubkiem oraz Ivą Bittovą, z którą występował najpierw w duecie, a później w trio Kolektiv, z którego powstała grupa Dunaj. Odegrała ona znaczącą rolę pod koniec lat 80. do początku lat 90 XX wieku. Z Ivą Bittovą występował na wielu koncertach w Europie i poza jej granicami. Był też producentem kilku jej solowych płyt.
Od roku 1992 występuje samodzielnie. Oprócz rozbudowanego zestawu perkusji korzysta też z jednego lub dwóch kręgów akustycznych (metalowy elektrofoniczny instrument o kształcie kręgu z kilkoma strunami podłączony do aparatury z efektami dźwiękowymi).
Z inicjatywy Pavla Fajta powstał również festiwal muzyczny Zlot perkusistów, który odbywa się co roku. (wikipedia)
Pavel Fajt is an exceptionally prolific drummer, percussionist and composer hailing form Brno in the Czech Republic. He has been active on the Czech music scene since the early '80s when he began composing music for dance and theater in collaboration with the Husa Na Provázku Theater. In 1983 he became a professional musician performing with groups such as Nucleus, Manana, and Jeste jsme se nedohodli. That same year he also became a founding member of the band Dunaj (originally named "Collective"), who produced six albums before they disbanded in 1990. In 1985 he began collaborating as a duo with Iva Bittová. The work of the duo attracted the attention of avant-garde guitarist Fred Frith, with whom he participated in the Mimi Festival in France in 1988. Fajt soon came into the focus of Western audiences via his appearance in the film and on the soundtrack (with Bittová) of Frith's Step Across the Border of 1990.
The 1990s began for Fajt with the project Joseph Boys with Vladimír Václavek and Marcus Therofal (of The Blech). Fajt soon embarked upon another duo, this time with American drummer Jim Meneses (producing the CD Songs for the Drums). In '93 he began performing as a solo improviser, working with the usual drums and percussion, as well as with voice and electronics, when he was invited to participate in a festival for solo performers in Geneva. He also worked on music for film and theater this same year (Ctibor Turba in Prague and Christine de Smedt in Belgium). In '94 Fajt toured with Anna Homler and Geert Waegeman and also with Mikolás Chadima. The former creative incarnation produced two albums that are quite breathtaking, Macaronic Sines and Corne de Vache; the latter the album Transparent People. In 1995 he formed the band Pluto who released two albums; the first of these was self titled (1996), the second (1998) titled Tri. The end of the decade found him working for theater again.
In 2000 Fajt became an assistant on faculty of Fine Arts in Brno (sound installations, acoustic, media). The first record he worked on for the new century was the eponymous cd by The Danubians, with Amy Denio, Csaba Hajnocy and Gabi Kenderesi of Hungary's Dolores Kampec, which was released by the American label Cuneiform Records. He once again participated in numerous duos - with Wendy Zulu, Stepanida Borisova, and Vaclav Cilek to name just a few. From 2000 through 2008 he was the leader of the project The Gathering of Drummers, an international meeting of percussionists from across the globe who gather in a one-week workshop to "create a unique and specific art forms - a composition of 10 drum sets and percussive instruments, eventually adding melodic instruments". Afterwards the project is presented live. "Organizers promote new, innovative art - using contrasts between different musical genres (jazz-classical-world music-alternative music-ambient, etc.), and between each musician's natural feeling based on their respective roots ..." The group has released two CDs - a self-titled double disk released in 2004 on the Indies label, and Drumming Brew, also on Indies, released in 2006/2009; as well as a DVD entitled Gathering of Drummers in 2008. Throughout most of the decade he was also a member of the band Autopilote who released a CD entitled IDO on the EMI label in 2008. In 2009 he was a member of the improvising group Mia Zabelka Trio. Fajt's current band is the Pavel Fajt Drummers, a multi-ethnic band whose music is based on rhythms and grooves.
Fajt's sensibility towards his work is very elemental, as is his sensibility toward all music, "Even if I don't like some music, I like the truth [in it] because it's the essence, and it inspires me to find the essence in myself." This has manifested itself in many different forms over the years from high energy art rock that can kick hard, to ethnic forms which resonate with the sense of a very distinctive ancient intimacy; to RIO that is indicative of an avant attitude; one aimed at the multifarious possibilities within the creative exploration of numerous genres and their various voices. Fajt treats each object from which he draws sound with the acute awareness of discovery. His solo improvisations explore the elemental nature of the roots of sound and music which he consistently returns to, often via their ethnic expression, as if coming home; while at the same time incorporating a well versed jazz and/or post-jazz vocabulary. For Fajt, the aim is doubtless - to explore and create the "essence of rhythm." (progarchives)
Psych-rock z elementami heavy. Mario Schifano artysta, grafik (autor okładki a także sponsor projektu muzycznego) bliski przyjaciel zespołu The Rolling Stones. Cztero-osobowy zespół nagrał niesamowity album gdzie na stronie A mamy wyróżniającą się 17-minutową kompozycję w klimacie ciężkiej psychodelii - długa improwizacja coś w rodzaju rytuału (klimaty wczesnych Floydów i grupy Deviants) strona B - zawiera pięć krótszych ,wokalnych kompozycji z keyboardami, drapieżnymi solami gitary oraz partiami fletu. (abraxas)
Le Stelle di Mario Schifano are (nowadays) a little known (one-shot) band in the world of the italian progressive scene. Their name derives from the italian pop artist (painter) Mario Schifano who, during the second half of the sixties was fascinated by multimedia and abstract artistic expressions. In a similar vein to what Velvet Underground made at that time with Andy Warhol.
"Dedicato a..." is probably among the most wanted, rare and expensive italian vynil album of any time. It was released in 1967. this means it's the first example of prog in Italy. And that's the inrteresting thing. Despite the official vulgata describes it as the product of a beat band, it is clearly more, very far from a beat work. Probably one of the less commercial outputs in all the italian prog experience. The band itself, after a brief but intense success split up
It mixes improvvisation, medieval evocations thanks to guitar's arpeggio, acid psychedelia, noises, voices, choruses, quotes, blues and even tv jingles.
A musical anarchic orgy. A post-modern madrigal.
Keyboardist and singer Nello Marini tried a solo career with a commercial single, issued in 1968, and later appeared on Venetian Power's LP. In 1993 he released a self-produced CD, entitled "Artista" with saxophonist Carlo Ponara. (progarchives)
Promyshlennaya Arkhitektura (Industrial Architecture) was Dmitri Selivanov's (ex- Калинов Мост , Путти , Гражданская Оборона ) unique post-punk / new wave / industrial project from Novosibirsk, Russia, formed in late 1988. On April 22, 1989, at the age of 25, Dmitri commited suicide by asphyxiation.
A dead band from a dead genre, as my acquaintance once described them, Industrial Architecture was an important pillar for the Soviet underground. Russian post-punk only started to take took strong roots around the late 80's, with proper post-punk bands like Петля Нестерова, Mатросская Tишина, Hародное Oполчение, Монумент Страха etc. honing their chops and gaining prominence and the more pronounced cold-wave groups such as Дурное Влияние, Закрытое Предприятие coming around the same time. Yet, anything deserving the "industrial" tag was far and between, at best sequestered, with only a handful of exceptions like some experiments of, notably, Центр, Поп-Механика, Коммунизм, Зга and Ночной Проспект worthy of mention.
Interestingly enough, due to the limited and belated flow of information from the West, everyone more or less wallowed in their own juices and evolved in their own, often fairly unique manner. That is to say that the global flow of information is not always a good thing, as it often makes everything sound the same, while regional insulation sometimes tends to produce its own somewhat unique strains.
In case of I.A., technical and informational limitations managed to trigger a creative rise, where the mastermind Dmitry Selivanov journeyed from professing his undying love for the Dead Kennedys, writing a song called "The Red March" and collaborating with the Russian punk legends Гражданская Оборона to creating minimalist fusion of post-punk and lo-fi EMB in less than a year's time and doing so ingeniously. Sure, it might be a bit problematic trying to appreciate a non-Western band from a bygone era... Hell, what am I saying, that's what makes it so brilliant! Lyrical content is probably the most conventional part of this album (but not without healthy doses of black humor - "Church of Reason" "Погранвойска"), although considering Selivanov's suicide, they were more percipient (the lyrics to "Точки (инструктор)" - "If I really wanted to run away/Then this is it - I'm gone" pretty much became the self-fulfilling prophecy) than those coming from many of his Western brethren, who lived happily ever after (Graeme Revelle anyone?). Selivanov's homegrown guitar style is entirely his own (I will never play a song the same way twice, - he used to say). Along with cheap Soviet equipment, it captures the aural essence of third world industrial decay with such simple and coldly direct authority, it almost turns Ian Curtis' legacy into the needlessly poignant emo tear-jerking the latter unwittingly helped spawn down the line.
Local underground heroes like Регион-77 and Ожог attempt to carry the legacy forward. It is not quite the same, and it could and should not be, yet the thought does count for a little something. (rym)
Cerebrum were remembered for their two singles, once re-released on Wah Wah Records as a 10inch, now sold-out. Thomas Hartlage from Shadoks music traced the band and found out there have been more recordings, recorded live at Spanish National radio and decided to release them. They surely fit well with the previously known material. It becomes in fact more clear how the band had a primitive garage-sound of bluesrock with heavier tendencies, with from speeded up moments to a slightly chaotic mix of creative confusion. On the singles there has been some studio experimentations (with reverb effects and voice distortion, and a classical piano piece brought in confusingly into the mix) that make the music more interesting in a different, progressive way, also compensating a bit for the noise, the chaos of energy it creates and the distorted tendencies. The band on the radio recording is pretty similar but without any effects, as raw and Americanised boogie blues rock. This might not be better than foreign examples but it has a talent its development to be noted. Unfortunately for the band the lack of interest for the two singles led to the end of the band.
Luis Navarro - vocals,harmonica
Javier Esteve - guitar
Jose Maria Pellico - bass
Pedro Moreno - drums
Hard psychedelic blues with harmonica, weird spanish vocals, fuzzed geetarsolos adn just about all trippy weirdness this genre has to offer. Not the most important songs in the world but its still great garagefun, and hey, thats not bad at all in my book. Copies of Cerebrums two singles go for about 30-40 pounds each on the rare occasions when they are up for sale.
From The spanish progressive rock encyclopedia:They recorded two singles by late 60s-early 70s and rapidly they splitted, giving birth to a new band named Delirium Tremens. Other members of the group kept on as Cerebrum without any new recordings. The journalist Jordi Serra i Fabra wrote: "Cerebrum are the summit of spanish progressive music. Their music is revolutionary and experimental. They components are young and unquiet, hopefull and plenty of that force that pushes to succeess, to security... Cerebrum is with no doubt a musical experiment, a synthesis of strengthin the grooves of a single." It seems that the second version of Cerebrum hosted the first musical steps of the guitarrist Salvador Domínguez. (source)
Nino Rota (1911 - 1979) – włoski kompozytor muzyki filmowej. Urodzony w rodzinie muzyków, studiował w mediolańskim konserwatorium u Ildebrando Pizzettiego. Dyrygent Arturo Toscanini doradził mu kontynuację studiów w Filadelfii. Tam pracował, między innymi, pod kierunkiem Fritza Reinera. Po powrocie do Mediolanu ukończył studia pracą o kompozytorze renesansu Gioseffo Zarlino.
Obdarzony subtelną wyobraźnią i niezwykłą inwencją melodyczną, dbały o efektowną instrumentację, sięgający świadomie do rozległych pokładów tradycji (jak barok lub Richard Wagner) stał się mistrzem wyrafinowanej muzyki filmowej. Zaprzyjaźniony z Federico Fellinim przez lata ścisłej współpracy stworzył do jego filmów wyrazistą stylistycznie ilustrację muzyczną.
Mniej znana jest jego twórczość autonomiczna (np. symfonie, balet La Strada, opery, utwory kameralne). Ceniony przez krytykę za muzykę do filmów następujących reżyserów:
- Federico Fellini: Na drodze (La strada, 1954, z rozpoznawalnym motywem na trąbkę), Słodkie życie (1960), Osiem i pół (1963, z cyrkowym, tanecznym motywem w scenie finałowej), Giulietta od duchów (1965, z psychodeliczną muzyką ilustrująca urojenia bohaterki), Rzym (1972, tu współtworząca syntezę sztuk ilustracja epizodu pokazu mody kościelnej), Amarcord (1974, z motywem przewodnim powtarzanym w różnych wersjach instrumentalnych), Casanova (1976, próba asymilacji klimatu muzyki XVIII wieku oraz Wagnera), Próba orkiestry (1979, gdzie pomysł filmu wyszedł od kompozytora, a ilustracją jest suita Roty, zmarłego wkrótce na wylew krwi do mózgu).
- Luchino Visconti: Lampart, Rocco i jego bracia.
- Franco Zeffirelli: Romeo i Julia.
- Francis Ford Coppola: Ojciec chrzestny (1972), Ojciec chrzestny II (1974), Ojciec chrzestny III (1990)
Like many fine concert music composers, such as Serge Prokofiev, Toru Takemitsu, and Bernard Herrmann, Rota created a unique film soundtrack style for which he became known worldwide.
Rota was born into a musical family: one of his grandfathers was the pianist-composer Giovanni Rinaldi (1840-1895), and he studied the piano, on which he was to become known as a gifted improviser, with his mother. He also studied solfège and began to compose at the early age of eight. His oratorio L'infanzia di S. Giovanni Battista (The Infancy of Saint John the Baptist) for soloists, chorus, and orchestra was performed in Milan and Lille in 1923, when he was only 12.
Rota entered the Milan Conservatory in 1923 and wrote his (unperformed) first opera Il principe porcaro in 1925, basing his original libretto on Hans Christian Andersen's tale. About this time he established a lifelong friendship with Igor Stravinsky. He studied privately with Pizzetti and Casella, and received his diploma at the Accademia di S. Cecilia in Rome in 1930. In the U.S., he studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia from 1931-32, and received an arts degree at Milan University (1937). During this time he composed several minor chamber works.
He became a teacher of harmony, solfège, and composition at the Taranto music school (1937-1938) and the Bari Conservatory (1939-1950) where he became director (in 1950).
Rota's first film score was for Renato Castellani's Zazà in 1944. He then went on to create music for many classic films by Luchino Visconti (Rocco and his Brothers), Franco Zeffirelli (The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet), Mario Monicelli, H. Cass (The Glass Mountain), Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, which received an Oscar for best score), King Vidor (War and Peace), René Clément (Plein soleil), Edward Dmytrik, C. Borghesio, M. Soldati (Le miserie del signor Travat), L. Zampa (Anni facili), M. Monicelli (La grande guerra), S.F. Bondarchuk (Waterloo), and Eduardo de Filippo (Napoli milionairia). His 80 scores for Federico Fellini extended from The White Sheik (1952) to The Orchestra Rehearsal (1979). He also composed the music for many theater productions by Visconti, Zeffirelli, and de Filippo. These film scores have a distinctive "Rota" sound made from clear, directly expressive melodies and rhythms, unusual progressions of tonal chords, and often an earthy humor.
Of Rota's 10 operas, the exciting Il capello di paglia di Firenze (1946) and the philosophical allegory La visita meravigliosa (1970, The Marvelous Visitation) were the most successful. Of his five choral works, the Mysterium (1962) and La vita di Maria (1970) are considered especially fine in compositional technique. He also composed five ballets, including Amor di poeta (1978) for Maurice Bejart, many chamber and piano works, several symphonies, and other orchestral works including the brilliant Harp Concerto (1948). In February 1995, the Nino Rota Foundation was established at Fondazione Cini in Venice. --- "Blue" Gene Tyranny
Elektroakustyczny improwizator, autor soundartowych projektów, perkusista. Był stypendystą Museums Quartier w Wiedniu, oraz Ministerstwa Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego. W roku 2009 wraz z Mariuszem Warasem stworzył instalację Fabryka w CSW „Znaki Czasu” w Toruniu, a także prezentował utwór Folk Science jako część projektu Pandemonium w AC Institute [Direct Chapel] w Nowym Yorku. W jego pracy kluczowe pojęcia to noise i soundscape. Interesują go poszukiwania w sferze perkusji oraz live electronic, muzyka improwizowana i elektroakustyczna, komponuje przy użyciu komputera, tworzy instalacje dźwiękowe i interaktywne. Organizuje prezentacje i wykłady poświęcone muzyce współczesnej i sztuce dźwięku oraz prowadzi warsztaty. Grał na perkusji w zespołach: Kobiety oraz Ludzie.
Electroacoustic improviser, author of soundart projects, drummer, field recordist, curator. Key concepts in his work are noise and soundscape. He explores the area of percussion and live electronic, improvised and electroacoustic music. He composes with the use of computer, creates interactive and sound installations, organizes presentations and lectures on contemporary music and sound art and also runs workshops. He is a member of PSeME (Polish Society for Electroacoustic Music) (krzysztoftopolski)
Great lost French psychedelic acid fuzz gem.Totally instrumental includes strange complex compositions with great guitarwork and the much recognisable "basement sound" of fuzzy acidic guitar in the vein of Freidhof and Grave. In some parts reminds me of Silberbart or the heaviest moments of Guru Guru. Released in 1973 in 200 copies and reissued in 2002 in 500 copies. Of course both releases are long deleted.
Guy Descombes - guitar
Bernard Farant - bass
Christian Copier - drums
Posted by Savage Saint
Strange tongues comfort me;
Darkened rooms calm me down.
Make overtures to your insanity…
Good to have friends around.
—‘Strange Tongues’ by Vivian Stanshall, Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead
So-called ‘lost’ records are almost inevitably fetishised. The notion of unheard, unreleased music by some big bruiser of a talent, kept from us by nefarious circumstances, is often too tantalising for our imaginations to let go of. Like diehard conspiracy theorists who cling to the belief that a single deleted CIA memorandum will unravel every sinister mystery of the past century, musical obsessives will sometimes build mental shrines to albums they have never heard, fuelled by fantasy more than curiosity, convinced that such music could answer all artistic challenges, if only it could be heard.
For almost 40years, the classic case of this was SMiLE, Brian Wilson’s “teenage symphony to God”, begun in 1966 and then fragmented and abandoned until Wilson’s surprise decision to rerecord the album live in concert in 2004 (and pretty good it was, too). Others still pray they might one day hear Songs From the Black Hole, Weezer’s abortive space-rock opera, which supposedly exists only on an 8-track tape possessed by lead singer Rivers Cuomo, or John Cale’s Music For A New Society, often declared to to be his masterpiece by those few who were lucky enough to grab a copy before it became infuriatingly unavailable. But these are the exceptions; many records considered ‘lost’ are usually kicking around somewhere—legitimately or otherwise—or will provide material for future, more evolved projects, such as Ryan Adams’ The Suicide Handbook (rejected at the time for being ‘too sad’), much of which turned up on Adams’ subsequent records.
So it’s worth noting that, in terms of actually being ‘lost’, Vivian Stanshall’s debut solo album Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead was very much the real deal. For decades, the thing was damn near impossible to get hold of; infamously, when it came out in 1974, only 5,000 copies were pressed before it was deleted by Warner Bros, following poor sales. The closest I ever came to a pre-rerelease copy was at a middle-of-nowhere reggae festival in France, where the most venerable member of a touring English ska band proudly revealed he had it back home on vinyl—and even he may have been lying. But he also described it as “like nothing else in the world”, and that is certainly no lie. Unlike many, it’s a lost album that lives up to the legend.
Barry St. John, Doris Troy, Madeline Bell - Backing Vocals
Deryk Quinn - Cabasa
Ayus Ape, Gani, Gaspar Lawal - Choir
Gaspar Lawal, Reebop Kwaku Baah - Congas
Jim Capaldi - Drums
Steve Winwood - Bass, Organ
Bubs White - Guitar
Neil Innes - Guitar, Organ
Ric Grech - Violin
Vivian Stanshall - Vocal, Ukulele
A unique piece of art by an artist who never released anything otherwise, Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead was the first musical solo outing of Vivian Stanshall, former lead singer of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, poet, painter, comedian, playwright and showman - the man who Stephen Fry described as “one of the most magnificent Englishmen ever to draw breath.” It’s experimental, satirical, surprising, ramshackle, crude, philosophical, psychedelic, old-fashioned, ground-breaking, genre-straddling, genuinely progressive, painfully honest, often imperfect and frequently beautiful. It’s not an album everyone will understand or appreciate, but those who do will find manifold rewards with every listen.
So we have ample cause to celebrate the fact that this May, after a lengthy struggle, a remastered version was released internationally by the UK label Rev-Ola Records with full cooperation from Stanshall’s family, allowing a new generation of listeners to finally rediscover an album—and an artist’s legacy—that has long failed to get the recognition it deserves.
“That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.”
—John Stuart Mill
“If you are normal, I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life.”
—‘My Pink Half of the Drainpipe’ by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
In recent years, devotees of Stanshall will often employ the term ‘national treasure’. It’s perfectly true, but it’s also a polite way of saying that outside of the UK, Stanshall is still a difficult concept to explain. I search for suitable parallels—Peter Cook? Billy Childish? Edward Lear?—and fail every time: to this day, he rejects comparison. Though he is sometimes thought of as quintessentially English, Stanshall defied and rejected the conventions of ‘normal’ English society at every turn. Throughout his remarkable, complicated life, he wrestled both with his own enormous talents and the demons of depression, anxiety, and twin addictions to alcohol and tranquillizers. And as with many great artists, he found a way to let those demons inform his art as much as they may have hampered it.
Like John Lennon and Ian Dury—both of whom he later became friends with—Stanshall was the product of an art school education, which lent him a perspective on his life and work that never went away. He was particularly intrigued by Dada, the movement which celebrated nonsense and proclaimed that art was whatever the artist decided it was—a statement made fact the moment Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal ‘R. Mutt’ and submitted it for exhibition. It was while studying at London’s Central College of Art that Stanshall joined several of his fellow students in a large, unruly jazz band, and soon began practicing the Dadaist technique of ‘found art’ by performing raucous, parodic covers of old jazz and novelty songs, culled from the 78rpm records they bought by the armload at local flea markets. So it was that the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band came to be.
Dismissed by some as a mere musical comedy act, the Bonzos defied simplistic definitions, always striking a fine balance between the music and the laughter, always fearlessly experimental in both. By the mid-‘60s, with Stanshall advanced from tuba player to frontman and overall mastermind, the Bonzos moved into uncharted creative territory. Whereas before they had belted out pastiches of British trad jazz numbers, they now extended their range to rock, blues, folk, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Noel Coward, and of course the burgeoning psychedelic scene that took itself so very, very seriously. None were sacred, all were ripe for subversion, and it added up to a style that, even all these years later, is still tricky to define, but a joy to listen to.
Although the band had only one bona-fide hit (1968’s ‘I’m the Urban Spaceman’, ironically one of the few tracks Stanshall did not sing on), the Bonzos’ popularity grew throughout the second half of the ‘60s, as Stanshall assumed the role of, in the words of John Peel, “court jester of the underground rock scene.” The Beatles were both fans and friends, recruiting the band to guest-star in Magical Mystery Tour, while a pre-Monty Python Michael Palin and Terry Jones performed alongside them and were arguably indebted to the Bonzo brand of humour.
However, after eight years and four albums, the fun had gone out of the experience. “I wanted to do something that was far more theatrical,” Stanshall told Q magazine in January, 1989. “Which I did. I went into the loony bin.”Poetry In a Slaughterhouse of the Soul.
As a result of the relentless touring that now dominated the band’s lives, Stanshall began to suffer from debilitating panic attacks, for which he was prescribed Valium. The dangers of the drug, which were only increased when combined with Stanshall’s prodigious appetite for alcohol, were almost completely unappreciated by the ‘60s medical establishment that routinely doled it out like aspirin. In 1969, Stanshall suffered the mental breakdown that had been building for so long; soon after, the Bonzos split. Though they reunited briefly in 1972 for a contractually obliged final album, the manic energy that had fuelled them from art school onwards could not be recreated. It was time for something new.
“Lennon would have howled for the memory of his mother. Nick Drake would
have patted his black dog and turned to face the wall. John Cale might have told
us how fear is a man’s best friend. Syd Barrett would have wondered who was
writing this song. Stanshall calls on all his phobic dread of drudgery, mundanity
and debilitation, and emits a blood-curdling cathartic cry…”
—Rob Chapman, ‘All-Time Classics: Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead’, Uncut Magazine, June 2004
By the early ‘70s, with the other Bonzos scattering into their own solo careers, Stanshall took furious advantage of his newfound creative freedom, but also sank deeper into his inexorable addictions, bouncing between spells in clinics and monstrous bouts of binge-drinking. “I am going through a complete purgatorial metamorphosis,” he told an interviewer from Melody Maker in 1970. “I go through periods of terrific elation and work like stink, and then I feel deep depression and want to go up to the lavatory and screw a hook in the ceiling.”
Various short-lived bands bloomed and then collapsed almost immediately, yet he busied himself with side-projects, radio specials and a typically eclectic series of guest appearances on, among others, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, Robert Calvert’s Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters and Traffic’s Where the Eagle Flies. Meanwhile, in the background, in fits and starts over the course of two hazy years, Stanshall slowly began to record the album that even he seemed to have difficulty articulating; an album that fit the esoteric design which the past few years had burned into his brain: one part imagination, one part agony.
How to explain Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead to a modern audience? When I asked the writer Ki Longfellow, Stanshall’s widow, she described it thus: “You won’t be hearing anything like this ever again. Few artists go this far inside themselves to mine the gold of self… This was the album that told me who Vivian was, about who I’d been captured by. This is the album that made me fall in love with him. It was a crash course in Vivian Stanshall, no holds barred.”
Some have described it as an English answer to Trout Mask Replica or We’re Only In It for the Money, but those of us who consider Captain Beefheart an overrated bore and Frank Zappa an unfunny huckster will see how lacking such comparisons are. In some ways, the album is more like a ‘70s answer to the Mars Volta’s Deloused in the Comatorium, a similarly fascinating and unapologetic voyage through the murky surreality of one man’s mind—except while the Mars Volta explored the could-be coma dreams of their friend, the artist Julio Venegas, in the aftermath of his suicide, Stanshall delved into the very real nightmares of his own self.
“I was really pretty sick at the time I made it,” Stanshall said about the album later. “It’s one long squawk. It’s a fairly articulate squawk—it’s pretty painful in parts. It’s very personal to me. I think it was all I was capable of at the time. Not only was I drunk and full of Christ knows how many tranquillizers, but I was absolutely furious. It seems to me now that at that point I was inevitably plunging into the abyss and there was no way out.” (Ginger Geezer)
The band assembled for the album is extraordinary in itself, including Stanshall’s old Bonzo collaborator Neil Innes on piano, slide guitar and organ, Traffic’s Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi on guitar and drums, and Stanshall himself, displaying his intimidating multi-instrumentalism on recorder, euphonium, ukulele, and chelonian pipes. Famously, when the bass player failed to arrive for a recording session, the West Indian taxi driver who had dropped off Winwood said that he could play and volunteered his services. Such was the nature of the extraordinary project.
Alone in his career, Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead reflects Stanshall’s fascination with all aspects of African music and culture; Afro-Caribbean style and rhythm permeate several of the tracks, most notably ‘Lakonga’ and ‘Baba Tunde’ (two mesmerising songs from the album’s recording sessions included as extras on the rerelease), and ‘Afoji Ti Ole Rian (Dead Eyes)’, a contemptuous mystical chant against the sins of music industry scumbags. Following this is ‘Truck-Truck’, a rollicking rockabilly tribute the boozy, hard-working roadies who were one of Stanshall’s few fond memories from the Bonzos’ touring days. ‘Yelp, Bellow, Rasp, Etc.’ is a blisteringly satirical stab at the self-conscious fakery of white blues, couched in wordplay every bit as freewheeling as Lewis Carroll, laden with Nabokovian double-meanings and allusions.
Following the Afro-rock instrumental jam session ‘Prong’ comes ‘Redeye’, a caustic fable/rant against the amorality of all those zombified pop stars and gurus whose ranks Stanshall had left without regret, who “fly back to New York in comfy first class compartments, yet he can still talk about ‘The People’.” Who specifically was being so brutally parodied is open to guesses, but the breed of vacuous, hypocritical celebrity described, cushioned from reality by their own empty-headed self-importance, is not difficult to recognise- - they are with us now more than ever.
‘How The Zebra Got Its Spots”, changing pace entirely, is a five-minute one-man sex comedy and a fulfillment of Stanshall’s promise that, left to his own devices, he could be ‘ruder’ than the Bonzos ever dared; set to a jaunty calypso beat, he describes the relationship between a man and his reproductive organs with poetic rapture and a near-religious mock-seriousness, which is immediately punctured on the next track by the short, post-coital exchange of ‘Dwarf Succulents’ (“How was it for you?” “So-so.”)
‘Bout of Sobriety’ is a ruthlessly (and hilariously) honest look at the disgusting day-to-day realities of alcoholism, and sounds like the kind of track the Big Bopper might have cut if he drank like Shane MacGowan: “But I’m trying real hard, think I’ve served my time / in the purple-stained arms Of the daughter of the vine / I’d like to settle down, but first I gotta settle up / With the understanding man in the embalming-fluid shop.”
After ‘Prong and Toots Go Steady’, another Afro-rock instrumental that becomes sonorous and iridescent thanks to Stanshall’s haunting recorder, the album reaches its astonishing psycho-musical peak. “‘Strange Tongues’”, Ki Longfellow told me, “was the killer. Poetry in a slaughterhouse of the Soul. He suffered. He was tormented. And in Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead he not only told us about that torment, he made us FEEL it. I listened to ‘Strange Tongues’ on our houseboat, the Searchlight, over and over and over. There’s no end to its depth. That song alone is a masterpiece. I still shiver to it. Or cry.”
‘Strange Tongues’ is undoubtedly Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead‘s centrepiece, a sombre elegy to the fears—specific or nameless, grim reality or paranoid fantasy—that had infected so much of his life, and the means of relief, healthy or not, that held off the monsters at the door. It’s psychedelic, gothic, defiant, meditative, pleading, obscure and honest all at once: he prays to music itself for help, relishes the horror of his own situation, spits hallucinatory imagery and croons nonsense poetry, and hints darkly about what might happen the moment he no longer has friends around to protect him.
As Chris Welch put it in his excellent 2001 biography of Stanshall, Ginger Geezer: “Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead comes across as a sometimes chilling documentary. Its entirely personal nature means that the voice of an anguished man, stripped on his pretensions, occasionally slips through. It is the unscripted asides that reveal the most about the man alone in front of the microphone, desperately trying to communicate.”
As a whole, the album is not without flaws—slapdash production and shaky sound quality saw to that—but undeniably stands as a cohesive piece of work. Its melding of genres resulted not in sonic schizophreniak but a genuinely unique sound. It fulfills the true definition of ‘progressive’, while also serving as a rebuttal to the excesses of Prog that had swamped so much of British rock at the time. Absorbed in its entirety, it is funny and frightening at the same time, always telling you more than you want to know, but daring you to ask more.
“Personally. I don’t think I am bizarre. It would be silly to say I don’t notice that I’m different from other people, but my difference is a result of me being ruthlessly myself. I don’t from day to day strive for effect, but I am not unconscious of the effect I cause. Perhaps it would be more comfortable if I ‘normed’ up, then I wouldn’t get touched and gawked at and that would alleviate things, but I would be losing more points personally, you see.”—Vivian Stanshall (Vivian Stanshall site)
When Warner Bros, already uncomfortable with the content of the album, decided to only press 5,000 copies, not to release it the United States, and to delete and abandon the whole mess as soon as possible, Stanshall did not take it well, to put it mildly. To put it specifically, he destroyed one of their boardrooms and stormed out of the building, but not before secreting several hundred bluebottle maggots behind the radiator of the label president, nice and warm for when they hatched a few hours later.
It was by no means the end of his career. Books could (and should) be written about the full range of Stanshall’s lifetime of work: his second album, 1981’s Teddy Boys Don’t Knit, no less brilliant but more reflective and less bilious; his much-beloved surrealist musical radio drama Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, which was adapted into one of the most underrated British films of the ‘80s; Stinkfoot, the comic opera he wrote for the Old Profanity Showboat, the magical floating theatre and art-space than became Stanshall’s home (after the Searchlight, his first houseboat, sank).
However, it did put an end to Stanshall’s relationship with Warner Bros, and until this May, seemed to kill off any hope that subsequent generations might have the chance to stumble upon Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead for themselves. Ki Longfellow explained to me the circumstances of the long-anticipated rerelease:
“Joe Foster [owner of Poppydisc], Silky [Stanshall’s daughter] and I worked as a team so this could happen. It began when something called Harkit Records bootlegged the album. Friends told us as soon as they saw it appear on Amazon UK. Silky and I talked to everyone we thought might know about what we could do… but got nowhere… It was heartbreaking. This is a beyond special album and to have it so shoddily treated—we felt helpless. And then, along came the very wonderful Joe Foster who said the hell with Harkit, we’ll do it again on RevOla, a special reissue section for very special artists. RevOla is part of his primary label: Poppydisc (www.poppydisc.com). But this time, said he, we’ll do it right and with love.”
Footage and photographs of Stanshall at the time of Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead‘s recording show a man who was living far beyond the easy label of ‘eccentricity’—an alien but endearing figure in strange hats, octagonal glasses and a Prospero-esque knotted beard, noodling on a ukulele in the shape of a flying duck, surrounded by instruments from every culture, rotting theatrical props, bubbling piranha tanks, memorabilia from bygone ages and the paint-splattered detritus of a life that could only find adequate expression through art. Stanshall had almost entirely abandoned the ‘normality’ of regular society, just as it had seemingly abandoned him. For the rest of his life, he seemed to become an escapist almost in self-defence, turning his curious homes into castles, building his own little worlds where he could compose and paint and recuperate, impregnable to the ever-hostile forces that lurked in waiting outside. His art could be said to function in much the same way.
Some might argue that such a retreat from the ‘real’ world only led him further into addiction, out of the reach of those that might offer the help he needed, and ultimately sealed his fate. After years of steadily worsening health, Vivian Stanshall died in a fire at his North London flat in 1995. But if it can be argued that Stanshall’s life as a lonely, vulnerable but unapologetic outsider contributed to his death, it can be argued just as forcefully that it saved him far more often.
Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead may bare the scars and symptoms of those dark forces which plagued Stanshall, but ultimately, it is a defiant howl against them. It is a celebration of strangeness, a defence of the outsider, and a demonstration of how to try and save your own life with art. That, above all else, is heroic.
“Do have an unusual day, won’t you?” —Vivian Stanshall, From Essex Teenager to Renaissance Man
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