Comicoperando program

The Robert Wyatt tribute "Comicoprando" is happening in Modena (Italiy) 1st March. I steal the program from Hibou, Anemone & Bear:

Pataphysical Introduction (arr. Alex Maguire), September The Ninth (arr. Annie Whitehead), Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road (arr. Cristiano Calcagnile), Unmasked (arr. Michel Delville), Gloria Gloom (arr. Cristiano Calcagnile), Alifib (arr. Annie Whitehead), Just as You Are (arr. Gilad Atzmon), Sea Song (arr. Annie Whitehead), Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road (arr. Annie Whitehead), Calyx (arr. Phil Miller), Fol de Rol (arr. Richard Sinclair), Memories (arr. Michel Delville), Alien (arr. Annie Whitehead), God Song (arr. Phil Miller), Was a Friend (arr. Michel Delville), O Caroline (arr. Dave Sinclair), Maryan (arr. Cristiano Calcagnile), Dondestan (arr. Gilad Atzmon), Forest (arr. Annie Whitehead).

Somebody will record this I hope?!

Jaga Jazzist @ Bylarm

Jaga Jazzist - "220 V / Spektral" at the Bylarm festival in Oslo 2010. Watch, listen and buy.

Danse Macabre

I suddenly realized that I seldom play my cassette tapes. When Maja S. K. Ratkje´s "Danse Macabre" (Kassettkultur Kult 004, 2009) arrived by mail, it was just impossible to hear anything from my cassette player.
Instead of my standard two lines on the music, let me just cite from the cover (designed by Lasse Marhaug): "Free improvised chaos at Podium, Oslo, 16 June 2009". Tempted? Shop at Looop, but don´t wait too long, there are only 100 copies made (numbered).

Roxy Music Remixes (Blue)

Lindstrøm & Prince Thomas remix "Avalon" on the EP "Roxy Music Remixes (Blue)" (Virgin 2010).
The other tracks are "While my heart is still beating" (Abakus ), "To Turn You On" (Disco Pusher) and "Always Unknowing" (Cinnamon Chasers).
Lindstrøm & Prince Thomas are the ones who mix themselves farthest away from the original version, lowering the nostalgia factor for the old ones like me (not a bad thing I guess).
This seems to be number four in a series of Roxy remix records , and if you want to know more, visit Roxyrama.
All original songs remixed here are on Spotify, if you for one reason or the other do not know the originals. I bought the remixes on iTunes.

Ex and Brass

I have warned you against this lot before, but here they are again, in a video from The Dome i London: The Ex and Brass Unbound, with Ken Vandermark og Mats Gustafsson. Let me see these guys at some Norwegian festival, please! Some more info over at Flashmama01.

A novel implementation

Summer of 2009 I posted a wish for a grand scale Wikipedia in Bergen. This did not happen of course, but now I find small pieces of what may end up as a novel, if I can sort them. After some Flickr searching I realized that this is not a completely new way of publishing.
If I find more, I´ll add them to my Stickers set.

The Phenomenal Handclap Band

I know nothing about The Phenomenal Handclap Band, but I think "Baby" is a great song, and director Stephen Agnew´s video is pretty cool too, even if it is a bit bloody. I avoid horror movies, so any references to movies like that, are lost on me.
The album "The Phenomenal Handclap Band" is out on Gomma.

Richard Thompson boss of Meltdown

Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Ornette Coleman and Robert Wyatt are among the artists who have directed the Meltdown festival in London, and in June 2010 Richard Thompson is the boss.
Read Graeme Thomson´s piece in The Guardian, where he even tries to guess some of the artists Thompson will choose. I think he will choose some jazz artists too.

Walk the Nile

Elephant9´s "Walk the Nile" (Rune Grammofon) should be available in all good record stores today. Elephant9 is still Ståle Storløkken (keyb), Nikolai Hængsle Eilertsen (b) and Torstein Lofthus (dr).
"Dodovoodoo" (Rune Grammofon 2008) had a couple of Joe Zawinul tunes, but the new album is home made (mainly by Storløkken).
It´s a bit shocking, but this album is just as good as the previous one (my taste at least). It still smells of electric jazz from the 70s, and it grooves like hell several places in there. The bird Phoenix from the first track ("Fugl Fønix") uses it´s claws and wings, and lifts you all the way to the end of the album.
Buy the vinyl and get a code to download the mp3 version too. Way to do it Rune!
Judging from the covers of the two albums, Kim Hiorthøy seems to think this is a colourful band too.

Sarah Gillespie

I just read an interview with Gilad Atzmon in Cyprus Mail today, and realize that I have never heard Sarah Gillespie, one of the artists he has produced (one other being Robert Wyatt). That song and the video is just fine, and I will have to find more music by Sarah Gillespie, no doubt about that. You may spot Gilad Atzmon in the video too, playing accordion and harmonica.

The interview is not only about music, because Gilad Atzmon (describing himself as a "proud self-hating jew") is a critic of Israel´s politics towards the Palestinians. Follow his writings on http://www.gilad.co.uk/.

Robert Wyatt at Radio Popolare 1994

This blog post is a copy of Alessandro Achilli´s comment (two comments in fact) to another post on the topic Wyatt and radio. Thanks to Alessandro.

"Another Wyatt radio experience, this mainly as a dj: in late November - early December 1994, he was in Milan for the book launch of "Falsi movimenti" (Italian edition of Mike King's "Wrong Movements", translated by yours truly). Radio Popolare asked him to do an interview and a short series of radio programmes.
The full Italian transcription & translation of both interview & series -- including all playlists -- is in http://tinyurl.com/gv7r9 and now you can also listen to that radio series, bucause hi-res mp3 versions (320 kbps) of all five shows are linked to a Wyatt Chronology I've uploaded on Radio Popolare website: it's all in Italian but all links (bar a couple) go to non-Italian webpages (including of course this one).
So, in order to get the Wyatt's radio series at Radio Popolare, just go to http://tinyurl.com/rwcron and scroll down to "1994": when you find the sentence "registra la prima, seconda e terza puntata", click on "prima" to download the first show, and then on "seconda e terza" to download the second & third shows. And in "1995" you must click on "due puntate conclusive" to download the fourth & fifth shows.
Enjoy!
Alessandro"

Making it short

Here is a list of albums I listen to (and enjoy) these days:
- McPhee, Brötzmann, Kessler, Zerang: "The Damage is done" (Not Two 2009). Joe McPhee (sax, tp), Peter Brötzmann (sax), Ken Kessler (b) and Michael Zerang (dr). Here you even get a death cycle with "With Charon", "On the Acheron" and "Into the Hades". Energetic, but with quiet moments.
- Dave Rempis and Frank Rosaly: "Cyrillic" (482 Music 2010). Hot sax-drum-duo, with the new Scorch Trio drummer Frank Rosaly.
- Satoko Fuji Ma-Do: "Desert ship" (Not Two 2010). Satoko Fujii (p), Natsuki Tamura (tp), Norikatsu Koreyasu (b) and Akira Horikoshi (dr). Cling to the desert ship, this is not a smooth journey all the way.
- Mural: "Nectars of emergency" (Sofa 2010). Jim Denley (as, fl), Kim Myhr (g) and Ingar Zach (perc). Minimalism, and more sounds than melodies.

Motorpsycho 7"

The new Motorpsycho 7" from Rune Grammofon is out now (1000 copies made).
Side A is a shorter version of X-3 (knuckleheads in space) from "Heavy metal Fruit", named "kåres kommers-klipp" here ("kåre´s commercial cut"). Kåre being producer Kåre Chr Vestrheim I guess. Side B is an exclusive outtake from the Heavy Metal Fruit sessions called I.C.U. (bonganoid). This is a real rocker, and I bet it really lasts for 20 minutes. We´ll get the rest later perhaps.
Cover: Kim Hiorthøy (not named on his own cover).

The Norwegian magazine Jazznytt (number 01/2010) has a piece called "Det indre livet i Motorpsycho" ("Motorpsyco from the inside"), where the band members list their 10 favorite albums ever. Wyattandstuff is pleased to see that Snah lists Robert Wyatt´s "Rock Bottom" and Soft Machine´s "Third". Nice bloke that Snah!

Lelekovice

If you have visited this blog regularly, you already know that I´m quite fascinated by Fred Frith and his way of mistreating guitars. Here we meet him as a composer of music of a kind I hardly knew he made. Calder Quartet play Frith´s "Lelekovice, String Quartet #1 (for Iva Bittová)", a piece that may be found on the album "Quartets" from 1994.

Soft Machine double vinyl

This is just a reminder: Smalltown Supersound´s Soft Machine "Live at Henie Onstad Art Center 1971" double vinyl, with cover by Kim Hiorthøy, is out there somewhere. Some of the albums we want to pay for (hey!) are not that easy to find, but Big Dipper in Oslo claim on their Facebook profile that they have it in stock (not on their site), so I guess it will be Bergen next, and then the rest of the world.

O Caroline

kidvicious0147´s version of Matching Mole´s "O Caroline" must be one of the cutest covers ever! Great guy!
Check also out a jazz rocked version of Soft Machine´s "Facelift" Mind Capsule´s Myspace.
Thanks to the forum "What´s Rattlin´".

international Total improvisation

Another band to keep track of, involving Ken Vandermark (reeds) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)! It is pretty tough work to follow these guys, but I don´t mind! In iTi the two gentlemen improvise together with Johannes Bauer (trombone) and Thomas Lehn (synth, elektronics).
I have to admit that Thomas Lehn is new to me, while I saw Bauer do two concerts at All Ears in Oslo this January.
This video is recorded in Linz 15 February (2010), and check out wotan66´s channel for more.

Winter Songs

In Bergen we have been covered in snow and ice for two months now, and still I will recommend music played on ice. Terje Isungset´s sixth ice album "Winter Songs" was released in January, and this is not cold music at all! All instruments are made from ice, and these musicians participate: Terje Isungset, Nils Økland (fiddle), Sissel Walstad (harp), Espen Jørgensen (guitar), Lena Nymark(vocal) and the boy choir St. Hallvardguttene. The music was recorded at the Geilo Ice Festival in 2009, and on a glacier in Val Senales in Italy, 3.000 meters above sea level. A fantastic idea turned into fantastic music.
I bought my album from eMusic, and had to steal the info from Terje Isungset´s blog.

Supersilent live in Bergen

Friday evening I went to see Supersilent at the Bergen Jazzforum. I was a bit surprised (but happy for the band) when I had to que up among lots of people. After a while I realized I had to leave, because they were all waiting to get in to see the Norwegian rock band Dum Dum Boys, so I had to go looking for the hidden entrance to Supersilent.
Supersilent is now Ståle Storløkken (keyboards), Helge Sten (guitar, electronics) and Arve Henriksen (trumpet, drums, song). I would not mind if Arve Henriksen played more trumpet and less drums, but the concert was fantastic. The band fed us some quiet music focusing on Henriksen, some ambient soundscapes and some electric storms, making a fine mix of it all.
The place was far from packed (the band might have scared some people off with their hammond album), but people looked quite happy, and didn´t mind only a deep bow as an extra, after 90 minutes of music. Enough is enough, even from a cool trio like Supersilent.

Satellite Sweetheart

Dave Formula,keyboard man in Magazine and Visage, releases the solo album ‘Satellite Sweetheart’ on Monday 15 February. Check out this interesting info on Wire-Sound: "Additional performances are supplied by guest vocalists and musicians David McAlmont, Robert Wyatt, Corinne Drewery, Joel Purnell, Dennis Rollins and Clint Boon, even".

Susanne Sundfør: The Brothel

Song: Susanne Sundfør "The Brothel".
Video: Eric Alvin Wange.
I just love this song.

Ballrogg

Wednesday I went to a marathon contemporary music concert in Bergen, mainly to hear Ballrogg, being Klaus Ellerhusen Holm (sax, clar) and Roger Arntzen (bass). Arntzen is known from In the Country and I heard Holm with Holm/Storesund/Narvesen (Norwegian link) a couple of days ago. They played music from their new CD called "Insomnia" (Bolage 2010). A very fine concert (and album!) indeed, and even if a lot of the material is pretty far away from jazz, I will still call it contemporary jazz. Check them out on Myspace, and you´ll find a short video from the concert on YouTube too.
Please remember double l´s and g´s when searching for Ballrogg on the net!

This night was some kind of kick off for the Borealis festival too, and composers Helmut Lachenmann, Gerhard Stäbler and Kunsu Shim were all present. I´ll just have to admit it was all a bit too much for me, and I even had to hide in the cafe for a while, when Kunsu Shim and Borealis boss Alwynne Pritchard wanted volunteers up on the stage!
Applause, humming and some foot stomping is OK, but never involve the audience in the show! Please!

February trad video festival

I´m not going to say I´m sorry, but after several hours of contemporary classical music, at a concert in Bergen yesterday, I just had to get down to earth and do some foot stomping.
I have been playing Johnny Cash´s "American V" lately, thinking this one was his last one (and sad and beautiful it is), but number VI is coming out towards the end of February. Enjoy the video to "God´s gonna cut you down", or pretend it´s a pop quiz.
Then go back to the 20s with Carolina Chocolate Drops and their song "Cornbread and Butterbeans", before Loudon Wainwright III comes along. He might not have been the most glamorous at the Grammys, but damn if he didn´t win the best folk album category for "High Wide & Handsome - The Charlie Poole Project".
The young Swedish sisters of First Aid Kit are playing in Bergen Friday night. I hope they are old enough to get in. Nice girls!

DOLK

Street artist DOLK´s commissioned work for the student house Kvarteret in Bergen.
More DOLK pictures here.

Syd Barrett

Mojo (196, March 2010) finally arrived in Norway too! Syd Barrett is cover boy, and we get a piece on the solo album "The Madcap Laughs" (Harvest 1970), an album that in fact turned 40 years of age a month ago ! This album has been one of my favorites, and deserves it´s place in my (not too serious) classics series, no doubt about that!
Barrett made the album after he was kicked out of Pink Floyd, due to stuff that rock myths are made of. Buy Mojo and get parts of the story, and an album where other artists cover the tracks on "The madcap laughs". Look for the original too!
Robert Wyatt played on "The Madcap Laughs" (not credited on the cover), and he tells Mojo that Syd Barret called him out of the blue, and he brought Soft Machine (without Kevin Ayers) to the studio. "We thought it was the rehearsal, but it was the finished take", Wyatt says.

You Had Me At Hello

The 7" single seems to live on, even for music far from the standard pop song. I heard bass player Adrian Myhr with Lars Rudjord Ensemble in Bergen some days ago (link to Norwegian post), and picked up a blue vinyl single with You Had Me At Hello. The band is Myhr the bass man, Alexandra Grimal (tenor sax) and Christian Skjødt (drums).
This is laid back and nice contemporary jazz/improv, with Ab Baars (clarinet) and Michael Moore (clarinet & alto sax) guesting.
Tonometer Music released 500 numbered copies, and you might have to look for it at concerts (no info on their site at least).

Selected

Bergen performance artist Kurt Johannessen has made lots of books covering important aspects of life, like science, football, frogs and noses. I count a total of 76 publications on his site (books 1984 - 2003, books 2004 - 2010).
In January he published some kind of "Best of Kurt Johannessen" in his book "Selected" (in Norwegian "Utvalde") (300 copies, 2010), where he chose from 25 books. I have only read him in Norwegian, and this is strange stuff that may make you laugh or shake your head in disbelief. He has some "read texts"-links on some of the books listed on his site, if you want to try.
If you are interested see e-mail here.

Musculus Trapezius

This is not a record I like every day, but today it was just fine! The record is number 13 on Lasse Marhaug´s Pica Disk, and "Musculus Trapezius" was recorded at the Sofienberg church in Oslo two years ago.
The musicians Tony Conrad (harpsichord, violin), C. Spencer Yeh (piano, violin) and Michael F. Duch (double bass) play 70 minutes of what sounded like elegant minimalism (spiced with some droning and noise) today. Last week it felt like too much, and that may be the case tomorrow too, but hey, you won´t get fed up by this album. Buy it from Looop (and remember three times "o" on your PayPal payment, if you don´t want a recycling firm in Oslo to get the money).

On Pica Disk´s site they go all scientific (or ironic) and cite: "EMG Trapezius Muscle Activity Pattern in String Players:: Part I—Is There Variability in the Playing Technique?" authored by Anncristine Fjellman-Wiklund, Helena Grip, Jan Stefan Karlsson, and Gunnevi Sundelin, published in International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics (Volume 33, Issue 4, April 2004), where they write: "Work-related neck and shoulder disorders are a great problem for string musicians; a playing technique with more relaxed muscles and a greater variation in the muscle activity pattern, i.e., with shorter sequences at a varied number of amplitude levels... might prevent pain."
M.F. Duch is in Lemur, I heard C.S. Yeh in Bergen and at All Ears in Oslo in January, you may read about Tony Conrad in Wikipedia where you also may improve your knowledge about Musculus Trapezius.
The album was mastered by Jim O´Rourke.

Freestyle Oslo

Paal Nilssen-Love and Maja S. K. Ratkje have chosen the program for the concert series Fristil (meaning Freestyle) at Nasjonal Jazzscene ("the official Norwegian scene for live jazz music") in Oslo this season.

10 February: Maja S. K. Ratkje & Paal Nilssen-Love duo + Streifenjunko

17 February: Buttercup Metal Polish with Jaques Dernierre (CH) + Else Olsen Storesund solo

24 February: Fireroom (N/US) (Nilssen-Love, Vandermark, Marhaug).

3 March: David Moss (US) + Okkyung Lee & Guro Moe duo

24 March: Petter o Hanna + David Stackenäs solo (S)

7 April: SPUNK

14 April: H-Alpha (US) + Ikue Mori live video feat Maja S. K. Ratkje and Håvard Skaset

More here (in Norwegian).

The Triffids

We might get a The Triffids revival this spring, when Domino will release the box "Come Ride With Me ... Wide Open Road – The Best Of The Triffids" on april 5th. Domino claim the box will hold approximately (!) 8 CDs, and will span the bands whole career. A celebration is planned in London on April 9th.
These good Australians made lots of good music, and I´m glad I was able to see them perform live in Bergen early in their career.

Check out this band, if you don´t know them already. You´ll find melancholic pop music on the studio albums: "Treeless Plain" (1983), "Born Sandy Devotional" (1986), "In The Pines" (1986), "Calenture" (1987) and "The Black Swan" (1989).

The band is of course named after John Wyndham´s book "The day of the triffids" from 1951, a book turned into a movie too (more than once).

The Granite Countertops

I´m sorry if you end up here looking for furniture, but we are talking about the band The Granite Countertops here, even if we already have had a post with the same topic a couple of months ago.
The album "Crashing Into the Future" is now out on (Ear Candle Productions 2010), and on it you will find a beautiful, tender version of Robert Wyatt´s "Lullaby for Hamza" (from Cuckooland, 2003).
So far I have only downloaded this very song, but there might be more, and among them Donovan´s "Riki Tiki Tavi".
The Granite Countertops is J Neo Marvin and Davis Jones, and these guests were also invited: Matthew Grasso, Lizzie Borden, Junko Suzuki, Mark Parsons, and Stephen Abbate.

Comicoperando

Dagmar Krause, Richard Sinclair, Gilad Atzmon, Annie Whitehead, Michel Delville, Alex Maguire, John Edwards, Chris Cutler og Cristiano Calcagnile all participate in "Comicoperando. A Tribute to the Music of Robert Wyatt". It all happens 1 March in Modena (Italy).
Thanks a lot to Aad.

The imagined village

January saw the release of "Empire and Love", the second album from The Imagined Village. This project was started to explore the musical roots and identity as English musicians and music makers. Read more on their MySpace-page and their own site here.
On the first album, Billy Bragg, Paul Weller and Sheila Chandra participated, while the band now is Andy Gangadeen (Drums), Eliza Carthy (Fiddles, Viola, Voice), Martin Carthy (Guitar, Voice), Simon Emmerson (Cittern, Guitars), Simon Richmond (Keyboards, Electronica), Ali Friend (Bass), Sheema Mukherjee (Sitar, Voice), Chris Wood (Fiddles, Viola, Voice), Barney Morse Brown (Cello) & Johnny Kalsi (Percussion, Dhol, Tabla).
Jackie Oates is guesting on "The Lark in the Morning".
Both albums may be checked out on Spotify, and please note Eliza Carthy´s great Ewan McColl song "Space Girl", and Martin Carthy´s version of i Slade´s “Cum On Feel The Noize”!
While you are on Spotify, listen to Peggy Seeger´s "Space Girl's Song" too.

Rune vinyl

Today I will just pass on a message from Rune Grammofon:

"Because of overwhelming demand we have pressed another 300 copies of Elephant9´s great debut album. This is the same as the first edition, white vinyl and the same fantastic gatefold sleeve.

The same goes for the Shining two-pack, 300 copies, but this time on white vinyl. Both the original Rune Grammofon releases are included in full and the sleeve is the same as with the first edition.

For international customers it´s smart to order these at the same time as they are just under 1 kg and will save you good money on postage. But please note that even one cd in addition will make it over 2 kg and much more expensive. The difference in postage for Norwegian customers is smaller.

Please also note that on 22. February we will release the new Elephant9 album on both CD and LP and the first Motorpsycho 7” for quite some time. This is a shorter version of X-3 (Knuckleheads In Space) b/w I.C.U (Boinganoid), an outtake from the HMF sessions, and comes in a Kim Hiorthøy picture sleeve. Please note that this little beauty comes in a limited edition of 1000 copies for the world and only on Rune Grammofon. Please don´t email us orders, these will be ignored. We will accept pre-orders soon.
www.runegrammofon.com".

Gong: "2032"

I´m afraid I soon may turn into a hippie, after listening to Gong´s "2032" (2009) too many times lately . Last autumn the original gang materialized with the strong album "2032", with glissandos and space whispers, like in the good old days. The album might be a little too much for my taste (or too long), but the first part is fantastic, with songs like "City of self fascination", "Digital girl" and "Dance with the pixies" (the folk track).
Not that I have listened intensely to Gong lyrics through the years (that might even be strictly forbidden in Norway), but it seems like they inhabit the same universe they lived in 40 years ago.
The band: Daevid Allen, Steve Hillage, Gilli Smyth, Miquette Giraudy, Mike Howlett, Chris Taylor, Theo Travis, Didier Malherbe og Yuji Katsui.

This should be enough for a straight guy like me, but I just finished Daevid Allen´s "Gong Dreaming 1. From Soft Machine to the Birth of Gong" (1994, ny utg. SAF 2007) too. "Gong Dreaming 2. The Histories & Mysteries of Gong from 1969 -1975" (SAF 2009) is also published, and two more books are planned. They consumed and transported substances no parent will admit they tried, performed bodily activities I´ve only heard about, and our good friends Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers are part of the history too (behaving well of course!). Get both books from Amazon UK.
You have probably not even heard about Daevid Allen if you think this is a straightforward story.

Poor SAF try to explain the copyright rules for us (that is: don´t do anything, but read the book), but some pages later Allen´s rules occur: "All rights unreserved. All parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored, transmitted, used in any way at any time forever without anybody´s permission".

The Godforgottens

In January I suggested that you should try to get Sten Sandell Trio´s great "Face of Tokyo". I don´t regret that, but what happens when they invite trumpet player Magnus Broo, and Sandell finds a Hammond B-3 organ in the studio? The result might be even better, and they call themselves The Godforgottens. "Never Forgotten, Always Remembered" was released on Clean Feed in 2009. I call it jazz, but may be completely wrong. It doesn´t matter anyway, as long as the music is as exciting as this, and it´s made by Magnus Broo (tp), Sten Sandell (p, org), Johan Berthling (b) and Paal Nilssen-Love (dr).
2009 was quite an average year for Paal Nilssen-Love I guess, participating on 15 albums.
(And who made the dramatic cover? Anyone with a CD version out there, might be kind enough to comment?).