Dr Wyatt!

Robert Wyatt, Dick Annegarn, Anthony Braxton, Arvo Pärt, Henri Pousseur (posthumous),Frederic Rzewski and Archie Shepp are appointed Docteur Honoris Causa at l'Université de Liège (17 September)!
Read more over at the great Wyatt site Une Discographie De Robert Wyatt.
And I have started to call the man Robert! It´s Dr Wyatt from now on I guess.

Lol Coxhill - By the Paths of the Deep River

According to the information given on YouTube, Lol Coxhill is filmed by Helen Petts, and the film is part of a project called "Adventures in the House of Memory", an exhibition with people who worked with Paul Burwell (Matts Gallery, London 2010).

VINYL

Lydgalleriet (The Sound Gallery) in Bergen started their autumn season this weekend. The first exhibition focus on vinyl records, and the artists presented are Christian Marclay (vinyl on the floor picture), Flo Kaufmann (the man with the recording booth), Doug Pray, Janek Schaefer and Otomo Yoshihide.
I heard a great concert with Yoshihide at the Molde International Jazz Festival this summer, but at Lydgalleriet they screen a video where he´s really rough on the vinyl! Cool to look at and listen to, but keep this guy at good distance from my record collection. (Watch a presentation of Otomo Yoshihide on YouTube).
Flo Kaufmann let me start my career as a recording artist, with a version of "Free Will and Testament" (Hey, remember Elvis started this way too!, with another song that is). My record is a one copy only output, and must be one of the rarest Robert Wyatt covers ever. It is a vocal version with a friend of mine doing the chorus, and I´m sad to say you may also hear some blabbering from a stressed debut artist. Better listen to the real deal.

Some stuff happening in Norway

- HITS. Hole in the Sky. These days Bergen is filled up with metal fans all dressed in black. On my way from work today, I listened to an acoustic afternoon set by Cynic at the Garage bar (picture). People told me these guys usually play LOUD!
- Numusic. Exciting festival in Stavanger, starting 13 September.
- PUNKT. A must-visit festival I haven´t visited yet. Happening in Kristiansand 2 - 5 September.
- Ultima. Contemporary music festival in Oslo 9 - 19 September. I just got an invitation to visit the opening concert! My God, I feel chosen.
- Høvikodden live! Great program for the autumn at the Høvikodden Art Center in Oslo, but you better hurry up. Stephen O´Malley is on with a commissioned work this Sunday.

Note to self

Spend less money on records, more on clothes!

Poetic noise

Maja Ratkje at Weltklang – Nacht der Poesie, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (27 June 2009).

Susanna and The Magical Orchestra: 3

Susanna and The Magical Orchestra are back with album number three on Rune Grammofon. Morten Qvenild and Susanna Karolina Wallumrød have made four songs each, and several of them are beautiful, to tell you the truth. We also get a duet with Fredrik Wallumrød on "Palpatine´s Dream".
I´m quite happy that they have included a couple of cover songs on this one too: Roy Harper´s "Another day" and (of all songs) Rush´s "Subdivisions".
Great album!
Cover design: Kim Hiorthøy.

"Captain Bob"

Finally The Word (issue 79, September 09) is for sale in Norway too. Robert Wyatt is cover boy, and one of several "cult heroes" interviewed in the magazine. "Captain Bob" by Rob Fitzpatrick is quite good, with great portraits by photographer Shamil Tanna. Wyatt salutes straight pop artists like Cliff Richard and Chuck Berry, artists he didn´t like at all when he was younger.
On expectations Robert says: "I don´t want to be cornered. People say they can always tell my voice, so one day I´ll release a record called something like The Lost Tapes of East Van Solihull and I´ll do a series of songs in other people´s voices". I´ll be waiting for that one!
I´m a bit disappointed that Robert Wyatt is not represented on the CD, together with Norwegian artist Thomas Dybdal. I could have extended this very important list then.

Among the other cult artist in the magazine, I´ll just mentioned another great musician: Martin Carthy.

Listen to the minister!

The Norwegian Minister of Education and Research Bård Vegar Solhjell chose Robert Wyatt´s "Rock Bottom" as this week´s record in his blog! This happens just a few weeks before the election. Trying to get my vote for The Socialist Left Party I guess.

The Unthanks

It seems like Rachel Unthank & The Winterset is history, and that the two sisters Unthank are ready with a new band, and also a new record (Here’s The Tender Calling’ released 14 September). See Financial Times on the new band; The Unthanks.
The video show the old band perform their beautiful version of Robert Wyatt´s "Sea Song", at a festival in Germany this summer.

You´re wondering now

I just like Amy Winehouse, The Specials and sunshine!
Smiling and counting myself lucky.

La musica rock-progressiva europea

A friendly person made a comment in my blog about an Italian book with Ivor Cutler on the cover. It´s called "La musica rock-progressiva europea", and here is most of the comment: "There is a book in Italian which is about to be reprinted. It sports Ivor on the cover - actually a beautiful pix Silvia Lelli (wife of Roberto Masotti, the great ECM photographer) did in London at Cutler's house. In the book you find all the stuff Ivor did from Magical Mystery Tour onwards. To date, in Italian."
My Italian is more than a bit rusty, but if there are lots of nice pictures of Ivor Cutler and his friends, I might consider ordering it. Anyone out there seen this book?

And after another friendly comment: Here you may see Robert Wyatt and Dagmar Krause on the front cover of the first edition of the book.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

From time to time I buy records that I know nothing about, just to get some new artists in the house. This time I ended up with The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, a band the rest of you probably know all about. Their record was released in February on Fortuna Pop, and I´ve seen some smart guys call it "American Brit-pop". It´s music I feel I have heard before, and it´s well spiced with The Smiths, and I guess some Belle and Sebastian and Jesus and Mary Chain and so on. But how much fun is it to listen to old guys who think they have heard it all before? Not much. So if you are young enough to move your body around with some speed, get out on the floor and dance. Call it post-shoegazer too if you have too.

Formats

Motorpsycho made some people a bit angry by releasing their "Child of the Future" only on vinyl, but thank God they are not alone! Lots of other people tend to make things difficult (read: fun) for collectors too.

On Lasse Marhaug´s site, he writes that there is a split 10" with Jazkamer and OffonOff on Gaffer Records. Visit Gaffer and you´ll find a split 10" with MoHa! and Tape That too.

The great saxophone player Mats Gustafsson has released several limited edition LPs already, and on his news site I found (among other stuff) a very special record by Artfarmer and a solo casette made in 100 copies (soon to be released).

I like these guys!

Listen to what Mats Gustafsson is telling you: ONE PIECE OF VINYL PER DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY!!!!!!

Radio Experiment Rome

In 1981 Robert Wyatt was invited to Rome, to spend a week in Rai´s studios, to document and broadcast his ways of working. What we get to hear on "Radio Experiment Rome, February 1981" (Rai Trade 2009) is improvised and playful. Wyatt uses his voice, plays keyboards, percussion, jew´s harp, and samples news broadcasts. On one track ("Holy War") we get a mix of "God Save The Queen", "The Internationale" and "Anarchy in the UK" and we also get a version of "Born Again Cretin".
If you are new to Wyatt through "Comicopera", better buy your way backwards in his discography before you get this one, but the rest of us:get it! My copy arrived from Amazon-UK, but they seem to be out of stock already.

Added the day after: Back in stock at Amazon!

Ida Maria and Iggy Pop

Ida Maria and Iggy have recorded "Oh my god" from "Fortress Around My Heart", an album that has been on heavy rotation on my iPod for some time. Listen over at SPIN. You have to settle for the official video to the original song in this blog post, while we wait for the Ida Maria and Iggy video. One of the best Norwegian rock songs in a long time, if you ask for my opinion.

Kind of Blue

Today is a day of celebration! 17 August 1959 Columbia Records released Miles Davis´ "Kind of Blue" . 50 years ago today, and if you still have not got this one (OK, I know you got it), better get a luxury edition or just the "plain" original at once.
Musicians on the record are: Miles Davis (tp), Julian "Cannonball" Adderley (as), Paul Chambers (bass), Jimmy Cobb (drums), John Coltrane (ts), Bill Evans (p)– piano and Wynton Kelly (p).

And I just might end up with one more book: Richard Williams "The Blue Moment: Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and the Remaking of Modern Music" (Faber). Williams is tracing inspirations from "Kind of Blue" outside the jazz scene too. Mike Hobart in Financial Times says in his review that : "Minimalist composers La Monte Young and Terry Riley, funk innovator James Brown and his saxophonist sideman PeeWee Ellis, Soft Machine’s Robert Wyatt and the Nordic jazz associated with ECM were directly influenced. With Velvet Underground, Mike Oldfield and Brian Eno the influence was more oblique but, as Williams argues, just as discernible".

Bowed piano

I promise not to start a series on strange instruments, even if we had the contrabass saxophone yesterday and a "bowed piano" today. This is new stuff to me, but I checked out a YouTube video of The Bowed Piano Ensemble playing "Entrada" by Stephen Scott, after some people I follow on Twitter tweeted it. At first I found this very beautiful and poetic, but now I wonder if it´s not a bit spooky?

Size do matter

Contrabass saxophone! So big, and so rare. I must have some Braxton albums where he blows it, but can you recommend an album where this huge saxophone is the main instrument?
I think I hear them say "country bass saxophone"!? That would have been something I guess: snakeskin boots, cowboy hat and this saxophone in the band. The next big thing!

Hatfield and the North in AAJ

We have already mentioned the reissues of the Hatfield and the North albums "Hatfield and the North" and "Rotters Club".
Now read John Kelman´s piece in All About Jazz. A review with lots of Canterbury history added.

Fire!

Here you have another vinyl from Rune Grammofon (also available on CD): Fire!: "You liked me five minutes ago" (Rune Grammofon 2009).
Fire! is Mats Gustafsson (saxophones, fender rhodes, electronics), Johan Berthling (bass, guitar, hammond organ) and Andreas Werlin (drums). Gustafsson is a regular in this blog, but I knew nothing about the two other guys (sorry!). Werlin is a member of Wildbirds and Peacedrums with Mariam Wallentin, who is singing on "but sometimes I am" on this album. It is jazz, rock and a bit of noise in a nice mixture, and I would choose the two longest tunes "but sometimes I am" and "can I hold you for a minute", if I had to. (The titles are inspired by Robert Creely, if they sound familiar).
Buy it on vinyl and you will get a code to download mp3 files from Rune Grammofon. Cover: Kim Hiorthøy.

Another Great Victory

Another great victory by MILLENNIUM(vocals : Robert Wyatt)
Robert Wyatt sings "Another Great Victory", from Millennium: "A Civilised world" (1995).
Subscribe to the newsletter from "Une Discographie De Robert Wyatt", and you might get info like this.

Motorpsycho

Motorpsycho´s last LP "Child of the future" (Rune Grammofon 2009) arrived by mail today, and what a package! Cool cover and inner cover, white vinyl and two sided poster! Designer: Kim Hiorthøy.
And the music? It sounds just fantastic, at least after one listening. Lots of rock references in there, but all done in the proper Motorpsycho way. Buy it in good record stores or from Rune. Only on vinyl.
Motorpsycho is: Kenneth Kapstad, Hans Magnus Ryan og Bent Sæther.

Word!

Robert Wyatt is cover boy on the new issue of "The Word"! No Wyatt tracks on the CD. In Norway in a couple of weeks if we are lucky?

Dan Rhodes

My favorite reading has always been novels, and some of them quite long too, but in these times of multitasking and doing social activities on the net (all day long), let me recommend a thin book. Very short short stories have a tendency to have neither head nor tail, but check out "Anthropology and hundred other stories" by Dan Rhodes! Here you get 100 stories, all of them 12 - 13 lines, and all of them close to perfect. They are witty, absurd and quite sad too, and are mostly about love, or lack of love (told by a man). The story "Blind" starts like this: "My girlfriend used my going blind as an excuse to start dressing sloppily".
The book was published in 2000 (my borrowed one:Canongate 2005), so you might have read it already of course. If not, you better read it.

On Twitter you may find several people who write stories of no more than 140 letters/signs. One of them is arjunbasu.

Nocturnes

Once more I have been walking around the house, looking at all the books on shelves, floors and in boxes and getting some silly ideas : Get rid of lots of old books! Don´t buy new books (at least only the ones you really need)!
Yeah, sure. I ended up reading in old books, and even ordered some new ones from Amazon too. Weak person indeed!
One of the books that will fill up my house even more is Kazuo Ishiguro´s "Nocturnes". I liked Ishiguro´s first books very much, but I seem to have forgotten the poor guy. But this summer I read a piece by Magnus Eriksson in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, and he seems to like Ishiguro´s short story collection "Nocturnes" very much, and he even recognizes some Canterbury references in there.

Eriksson is a Robert Wyatt fan (I bet on it) and sees connections between Charles Mingus and Wyatt, and even between Frank Sinatra´s recordings from the 50s and Wyatt´s versions of ”I’m a Believer” and ”Yesterday Man”. Did you ever get the same ideas?

If i like the book, I just might come back to it in this blog.

Shouting in a bucket blues

I don´t think I have posted this Kevin Ayers video earlier, so it´s about time. Great music, great vocal, great hair! And don´t forget to buy "Songs for insane times".

Antony

Pitchfork recently did an in-depth profile on Antony that should be proper reading for people who have tickets to see him on his tour (and verybody else too). Antony and the Johnsons will perform on the roof of the Oslo Opera House Sunday 9 August, as part of the Oslo Jazz Festival.
Antony and the Johnsons just released a cover of Beyonce´s "Crazy in love" , and if the Oslo audience will experience something close to what we see on the video with Amsterdam´s Metropole Orkest, I might get just a little bit envious.

Hatfield and the North reissued

Two of the Canterbury rock´s central albums are reissued by Cherry Red/Esoteric these days, that is Hatfield and the North´s first album "Hatfield and the North" (1973) (Robert Wyatt sings on the track "Calyx") and "The Rotters´Club" (1975).
The reissued first album also contains the band´s first 7" "Let's Eat Real Soon"/"Fitter Stoke Has A Bath", and some stuff from the Virgin V sampler (1975) (never been on CD before) (not sure about this, see Amazon). The five bonus tracks on "The Rotters´ Club" have been on CD on a previous edition. And I hope the sound is great, and the printed material fantastic.
Hatfield and the North is Richard Sinclair, Dave Stewart, Phil Miller and Pip Pyle.
I got the news (and stole some info) from the DownTown Music Gallery newsletter.

Glastonbury 1971

Paul Misso´s pictures from Glastonbury 1971 is on his own site, and now also on Flickr. Those were the days! Here you will find Gong, Edgar Broughton, Nicolas Roeg, Julie Christie, Arthur Brown, and Alfie (Alfreda Benge), and several people showing off all kinds of body parts.

Peter Neal directed a film on the festival (Nicolas Roeg was the photographer) called "Glastonbury Fayre".

Since we are looking at pictures, please check out Simon Fernandez great Robert Wyatt portraits (not from 1971!) here and here.

Hardcore till death!!

Bergen is invaded by bats these days, and they seem to speak English and Polish. I´ll hunt them all down, and collect them in a bat Flickr set for you.
"Hardcore till death!"
"Yeah..!....And justice 4 all!"

Some links

- Mats Gustafsson in The Quietus.
- National Health in All About Jazz.
- At the Avantgarde Festival in Schiphorst (near Hamburg) you may hear Peter Blegvad, John Greaves, Chris Cutler og Dagmar Krause!
- Mark Corcoran is said to cover Robert Wyatt´s "Sea Song" on his new album "Moonlight Is X-raying The Earth".

Concertinome

Espen Sommer Eide has made a new instrument called "Concertinome"! According to the information on YouTube it is "combining the concertina accordion with the monome style keyboard and electronic air pressure sensors". For some reason I missed this performance , but I have seen Somemr Eide play "barrel organ".

Taking Tiger Mountain

At Amazon.uk it seems like a new remastered edition of Brian Eno´s "Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy") is released today, and even if I´m not sure this is a new edition, let´s have the album in Wyatt and Stuff´s classics series (we have waved it pretty high in the air in a previous post too). It´s not much to say really, but you have to have this fantastic album, and also three other Eno albums from the 1970s, where i works with people like Fred Frith, Robert Fripp, Phil Manzanera, John Cale and Robert Wyatt. Here is your shopping list:
"Here come the warm jets" (1973), "Taking Tiger Mountain" (1974), "Another Green World" (1975) and "Before and After Science" (1977).
Cover: Peter Schmidt. More on Eno here.

Oh no, even more from Moldejazz

- This was supposed to be the final post from the Molde Jazz festival, but if Gaburu continues to upload videos and Flickr pictures I might come back with more. Here you get Christian Wallumrød Ensemble with Wallumrød (harmonium), Arve Henriksen (trumpet), Nils Økland (Hardanger fiddle) and Per Oddvar johansen (drums).
- Svennejanson uploaded a shaky morning video from "Break of day in Molde" with Arve Henriksen (at seven o´clock in the morning).
- A trumpet solo from the Jaga Jazzist concer here.
- Han Bennink finally got his own band, and after the Molde concerts he sold the fine one from Han Bennink Trio called "Parken" (ILK 2009). Here you get band compositions and tunes by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Bennink also made the cover, and please note the minimalistic autograph to the right.
- Unfortunately I missed Jaga Jazzist´s concert, but got to hear Maja Ratkje and bass player Joëlle Léandre instead. Sometimes you just have to choose. Léandre was just as eager as Bennink to sell records, shouting "Don´t go, don´t go!" after the concert, asking people to do some shopping. I bought a bas duo album with Joëlle Leandre & William Parker "Live at Dunoís" (Leo records 2009). . Great album!
Maja Ratkje had a more laidback selling style, but anyway I bought Fe-mail (Ratkje/Tafjord) "Voluptuous Vultures" (PsychForm 2006).

Megaphonic Thrift

A young Norwegian band for you today. I heard them live yesterday in a club in Bergen, and at it was quite nice actually, even if if the place was packed with happy young people, and the sound level was a bit too high (I´m being positive here). (I hid myself as best as I could, standing out in the corridor). They do pop and rock with noise elements. Check out the "Acid Blues" video.
Megaphonic Thrift is Richard Myklebust, Fredrik Vogsborg, Njål Clementsen and Linn Frøkedal and the latter two may also be heard and seen in Low Frequency In Stereo.