Jenny Hval Video portrait

Jenny Hval Video Portrait from The Wire Magazine on Vimeo.

This seems to be the first in a series of video portraits of artists, dircted by IJ Biermann. Jenny Hval (aka Rockettothesky) was filmed in  Oslo 7th March 2011, and the music is from her new Rune Grammofon release"Viscera" (recommended!). Some more info over at Vimeo, or at  Wire.

The very same  Biermann is also making a documentary on Maja Ratkje  (as mentioned in the blog already),  and it´s probably being finished this year.

Singing A Song In The Morning

John Wesley Harding and friends sing "Singing a song in the morning" by Kevin Ayers, at a benefit concert for Japan. Check out the theremin!

(Oops. Not a benefit concert obviously, but at least a song dedicated to the victims of the tsunami).

Stian Westerhus at Jazz Maastricht

According to a comment on YouTube Stian Westerhus scared off some of the audience at Jazz Maastricht. What do we care?  Here you all have 14 minutes of  Westerhus improv ! This happened 25 March 2011.

Oh, hello, I´m back again the day after the original posting, to share with you a description made by the reviewer in  Telegraph, who obviously must have been quite shell-shocked by Westerhus at the Gateshead Jazz Festival: "Guitarist Stian Westerhus is a maker of that portentously mystical, Northern-lights-glimmering-over-the-tundra “jazz”, which must be Norway’s biggest export after natural gas (and not so different from it, some might say)". 

Wyatt´s otherworldly voice

Mira Arayo from Ladytron chooses Robert Wyatt´s "Shipbuilding" as one of her favorites, saying this: "Robert Wyatt is one of my favourite musicians. His voice is totally otherworldly and I can never tire of it, his haunting fragile production and interesting chord changes".

Since Mira is such a well spoken lady, Ladytron will have a video in this blog!
OK, I´m for sale!

Marhaug: All Music At Once

Lasse Marhaug is at it again with "All music at once" (Smalltown Superjazzz 2011). This time using only the "Marhaug" name, and working with some of Norway´s finest noise makers (a new band perhaps?)
The gang: Jon Wesseltoft, Stian Westerhus, Hild Sofie Tafjord, Lasse Marhaug, Kevin Drumm and Maja S.K. Ratkje.

Marhaug has made a varied album. We get brutal metal ("Born cold"), electric storms hiding wild beasts ("Blood of the beast", "Don´t buy bread, buy dynamite", "All music at once") and deep, dark ambient noise ("Feed the earth and master it" and "Mountain of the seven vultures").

I know you seldom find me doing some deep analysis in this blog (OK, never then!), and I see no reason to try here. Just turn up the volume!
This works best when you really feel the noise.

Borealis Avgarde Extreme

Borealis 2011 is over. The hardest working musicians the last day of the festival must have been Le Jury: Ricardo Odriozola (violin), Jostein Stalheim (accordion) and Einar Røttingen (piano), who improvised for twelve hours during the Borealis Avgarde Extreme happening (Avgarde being the organization of new music in Bergen). The guys had short breaks to order food  and have necessary timeouts, but most of the time all three were playing.
The musicians had electrodes attached to their scalps, and we were able to see the EEG, a graphical representation of electrical activity in the brain. The signals were also used by electronic media artist Trond Lossius, creating a live visual display.

I visited five or six times during the performance, and was impressed by the energy! The video in this post was filmed when they had been playing for eleven hours, and the violin player had recently been dancing so hard that he pulled out all the wires!
Towards the end they had burnt most of the fuel, and I guess it was just as good that the brain activity was not monitored then.

Take a look at another video filmed after one hour of playing, and this one filmed after five hours of playing, and my pictures from Borealis Avgarde Extreme, and other Borealis concerts, on Flickr.

I Should Have Known

Soft Machine - I Should I've Known (1967) by Tushratta

I posted a YouTube video of this once, but this Soft Machine video of "I should have known" from 1967,  with Kevin Ayers, Mike Ratledge and Robert Wyatt is so cool, that we are having it once more!

Borealis on a Thursday

A report from a Thursday evening at the Borealis Festival in Bergen coming up.

Thomas Bonvalet (France) and his solo project "L’Ocelle Mare" started the show. He plays banjo, harmonica and kicks percussion instruments! I can´t really explain what he does, but the concert was fantastic and intense, and I think I´ll go for the genre contemporary-classical-blues? No? Great anyway.

Japanese drummer Tatsuya Nakatani was next, delivering a sweaty solo set, both attacking the skins (I mean it!) and carefully stroking cymbals with bows. Nakatani invited Norwegian cello player Tanja Orning for a short set to end the concert. Very nice!

Nakatani told me after the concert that he really enjoyed playing in an intimate setting like the Landmark club, with the audience being very close to the drums.
He also said I was the first man in Europe to buy the new album (CD-R with hand made cover) named "Bigger Country Boobs" (!), that he recorded with the one and only Eugene Chadbourne. Alternative Country this!

Pierre Bastien & Phonophani (Espen Sommer Eide) were on as the last act, playing electronica-ambient-minimalism on self made instruments and machines (including mekano). Very fascinating stuff! Unfortunately I missed the open workshop they had on Friday, but hopefully someone filmed or took pictures to share?

Ice

Icemusic by Terje Isungset from Sven-Erling Brusletto on Vimeo.


IceMusic Festival 2011 from flextatowa on Vimeo.

Hey, I´m so ready for spring, but the weather does not seem to agree here on the west coast of Norway. So i give in, and here is some more ice music for you.
First a video with Terje Isungset and Lena Nymark (I believe!) from the opening of the Nansen/Amundsen-year in Tromsø, January 2011, and a stop-motion video from the Ice Music Festival at Geilo this winter.

Isungset is being interviewed in Norwegian, explaining among other things how difficult it is to know how the ice will sound.  Old ice is sounding different from new ice, and the sound at the beginning of the concert may be different from the sound check.
He also says that he is preparing for the seventh and last ice album, where he will play on instruments made by ice from areas where the ice is melting due to rising temperatures. That´s environmental music for you!

Smoke ´em if you got ´em

We are still waiting for the results of  Jason Parker Quartet´s workings on  jazz versions of Nick Drake´s songs (but the album is almost ready now). This is probably the first album ever (?) that have gotten a remix album prior to it´s own release, and you may download Spekulation´s "Smoke ´em if you got ´em. Jay-Z and The Jason parker Quartet" for free. I have posted the single "Can´t knock the hustle" some time ago.

I think this is pretty cool stuff, but it might be too little Nick Drake for the Drake fans and too little Hip Hop for that camp? What do you think?

ASA Trio

Organ trios don´t appear often in this blog, but today we have one and it´s from Iceland! ASA Trio  is Andres Thor (guitar), Agnar Magnusson (Hammond B3) and Scott McLeMore (drums), and they recently released "ASA Trio plays the music of Thelonious Monk" (2011).

They play "Straight No Chaser", but stay clear of several obvious Monk tunes (like "Round Midnight"). Not making your standard "hit parade" is probably smart, making the music on the album sound more fresh.  I have to admit that organ jazz is not my primary choice, but this one swings real good!

You may buy it from ASA Trio´s site.

Pure Psychedelic Rock

Sony released a compilation of four CDs called "Pure Psychedelic Rock" in 2010. This is some mix! You will find (among lots of others) Melanie, Spirit, Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, Miles Davis, Weather Report, Laura Nyro and Robert Wyatt!
Wyatt´s tune is "Las Vegas Tango. Part 1" (Gil Evans), taken from his first (and most experimental) solo album, "The End of an Ear" (1970). A pretty tough choice?

Check out all the tracks on "Pure Psychedelic Rock" here, and listen to "The End of an Ear" on Spotify, or from iTunes. Neville Whitehead (b), Mark Charig (cornet), Elton Dean (alto saxello), Mark Ellidge (p), Cyril Ayers (perc) and David Sinclair (org) joined Wyatt on "The End of an Ear".

Wilde Flowers

If you are interested in early Canterbury music, and the Soft Machine pre-history, you will find "The Wilde Flowers Family Tree - Gig List" at "The British Sound".
In the first versions of the band you will recognize familiar names from this blog, like Kevin Ayers, Hugh Hopper and Robert Wyatt.

Wilde Flowers never released an album while active, but in 1994 "Tales of Canterbury. The Wilde Flowers Story. Brian´s Tale" was released by Voiceprint. The Brian who is telling the tale by writing the band´s history in the leaflet is Brian Hopper. The album is hard to get I guess,  but you may buy files from  Amazon,  or listen on Spotify, if you have access. Wilde Flowers had a long list of songs they used when playing at dances (Rolling Stones, Kinks, The Who, Chuck Berry, Small Faces, The Beatles, Eddie Cochrane, Booker T and The MGs and so on), but the songs on the Voiceprint album are mainly written by band members. Great fun for hardcore fans!

You may read more about Wilde Flowers in "Soft Machine. Out-Bloody-Rageous" (2008) by Graham Bennett and in "Wrong movements" (1994) by Michael King, if you can get them anywhere!
Isn´t it about time for a decent Robert Wyatt biography?

Hymns

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Håkon Kornstad play "Eg veit i himmelrik ei borg" at the Energimølla club (Kongsberg, Norway). Let me just remind you about, and once more recommend, the albums "Elise" and  "Mitt hjerte alltid vanker - 1".

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten is working with trumpet player Dennis Gonzalez on a similar project. Over at Amulets it is written that "The hymn project" is based on hymns that Flaten and Gonzalez grew up with. The album is released this month (March 2011), and you may read more at The Stash Dauber blog.

John Surman: Flashpoint

In April 1969 John Surman visited NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk) Jazz Workshop to record with English and German musicians.  You may all listen in on "Flashpoint: NDR Jazz Workshop - April ´69" (Cuneiform 2011). Here you get an ordinary CD with three Surman tunes written for the occasion ("Mayflower", "Once upon a time" and "Flashpoint"), and "Gratuliere" by Fritz Pauer and "Puzzle" by Erich Kleinschuster.

What you may hear is great, fresh sounding jazz, small big band style. The music is good on it´s own, but even better when watched with the DVD of the session. In the liner notes Surman says that the style was supposed to be informal, and that is certainly true! We suddenly see camera number two, photographers walking around and microphones dangling in the air. It may come as a surprise to some of you young ones, but they were smoking in studios in 1969.

The musicians: John Surman (ss, bs), Alan Skidmore (ts, fl), Ronnie Scott (ts), Mike Osborne (as), Malcolm Griffiths (tb), Erich Kleinschuster (tb), Kenny Wheeler (tp, flugelhorn), Fritz Pauer (p), Harry Miller (b) og Alan Jackson (dr).

A great release from Cuneiform! Favorites so far in this house are two Surman tunes: "Once upon a time" (with flugelhorn solo by Kenny Wheeler),  dedicated to Alan Skidmore´s daughter, and the energetic title tune "Flashpoint".

Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör

Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör (2009) from Olle Corneer on Vimeo.

Yes,  i know it is springtime, and no time for harvesting, but I fell for this down to earth contemporary music!
The Alunda Church Choir play "Harvest for terrafon, traditional music ensemble and cropland" by  Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübke. That´s Swedes for you!

The Unthanks: Last

Just pull out your credit cards, The Unthanks are back with a new album called "Last" (!) (Rabble Rouser 2011). They blend traditional folk songs and cover songs into fine modern folk (as they have done on previous albums too).
Since they already made covers of Robert Wyatt´s "Sea song" and Nick Drake´s "River man", and have done concerts with songs by Wyatt and Antony and The Johnsons, I want to mention the cover songs on "Last" here.
We get Jon Redfern´s "Give away your heart" (Redfern being a new name to me), Tom Waits´ "No one knows I´m gone" (a bit nicer than the original, and perhaps not so terribly sad) and my favorite,  King Crimson´s "Starless". "Starless" is great on Crimson´s "Red" from 1974, but The Unthanks makes it their own song, with beautiful vocal and letting a trumpet (played by Lizzie Jones) play the guitar melody.
Adrian McNally writes this in the liner notes: "Like Robert Wyatt, King Crimson are one of the few prog acts from that time that outside the prog world still have some cred...".

The Unthanks are: Rachel Unthank (voc), Becky Unthank (voc), Niopha Keegan (violin), Adrian McNally (piano) og Chris Price (bass).

Till The World Ends

Isn´t it about time for another Britney Spears song in this blog? Yes, I think it is!
How about Norwegian singer Hilde Marie Kjersem doing "Till the world ends" on Norwegian radio channel  P3´s "Popsalongen"?

And I´m not kidding, of course we already had Britney in the blog (almost!).

Deaf Center: Owl Splinters (2011)

This is so beautiful, so dark and so sad that it is hard to believe.
The Norwegian duo Deaf Center, Erik Skodvin and Otto Totland, are at it again, with a great album called "Owl Splinters" on Type. This could have been the soundtrack to a dark movie (or life?),  where we get lighter moments of melancholia when Totland´s piano is in the lead ("Time Spent", "Fiction Dawn" and the ending of "Hunted Twice"), but to be honest it is pretty gloomy!

People seem to think that the sound is better, than on the previous albums on the same company, "Neon City" and "Pale Ravine", but my ears where happy with both of them too. Visit Type, they stream all the albums, or buy them right away from iTunes, emusic or Boomkat.

Robert Wyatt - Memories of Jimi Hendrix

Robert Wyatt did an interview session at the Hay Festival in Wales in 2007. I paid to see this interview once, but haven´t seen it on YouTube before (I think!). Well, here is a part of the interview, where Wyatt remembers meeting Jimi Hendrix, and it is quite clear that Hendrix was a really nice guy in Robert Wyatt´s eyes.

And you may see the whole interview too actually! (19 March 2010)

Shinjuku Growl

The hard working power jazz warriors of  The Thing, Paal Nilssen-Love, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Mats Gustafsson, have visited Japan several times (and our thoughts are going to the people of Japan for other reasons too these days!). In 2009 we got "Shinjuku Crawl" with Otomo Yoshihide (guitar) on Smalltown Superjazzz. This was a live recording from Shinjuku Pit Inn (Tokyo) October 2007, and it was great!
Now is the time for  "Shinjuku Growl" recorded at the same club in February 2008, this time with  Jim O´Rourke on guitar, and it sounds just as good!
They start quietly on the 22:30 minutes long "If Not Ecstatic, We Replay", but we know The Thing, and they soon are going full speed, as they often do, on three of the tracks on this album (9 - 23 minutes long).  The track "I Can´t, My Mouth Is Already Full" (!) is a bit different, since it´s more like a slow and very sad lament from Gustafsson. Strong stuff!

According to a newsletter from Rune Grammofon, received today, it seems like another Mats Gustafsson band, Fire!,  is releasing an album with Jim O´Rourke in May.

Cover: Rune Mortensen.

Soft Machine in Hyde Park

Thanks to VideoheadsNL who uploaded a recording of Soft Machine, filmed at a free Hyde Park concert 20 September 1969. The band is Mike Ratledge, Hugh Hopper and Robert Wyatt.
Please watch with care! There are some pretty wild dance scenes!

The sound of dead languages

Friday evening (before the CTO concert two posts ago!) I went to hear Espen Sommer-Eide (Alog, Phonophani) present the language project "Language Memory".
In "Language Memory" all the words from the skolt sámi dictionary are read out by 23 of the approximately 300 people still speaking this language.  You may hear all the words, and read more about the project here. Sommer-Eide also played us some music he has made, by using this material. Nice!

Wes Montgomery and Han Bennink

I just had to post this video! I have seen and heard  the drummer Han Bennink live several times the last years, and realize that he may be up to a lot of strange drumming behavior!  Check my picture from his duo concert with Frode Gjerstad at Moldejazz 2009. But the man can play!

This is Wes Montgomery, playing "Nica´s Dream" with Dutch musicians in 1965. They are Pim Jacobs (piano), Rud Jacobs (bass) and the very same Han Bennink (drums)!

CTO live in Bergen

Friday night the free jazz warriors of Circulasione Totale Orchestra played in Bergen. Frode Gjerstad seemed to be smiling his way thriugh most of the concert, guiding his troops with nods and hiddden signs. It may sound strange to some of you, but this is free jazz that swings and rocks.

Check out this bunch of musicians: Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums), Morten J. Olsen (drums), Anders Hana (guitar), Nick Stephens (bass), Paal Nilssen-Love (drums), Per Zanussi (el-bass), Børre Mølstad (tuba), Sabir Mateen (saxophone, flute), Kevin Norton (vibrafon), Bobby Bradford (cornet) Lasse Marhaug (electronics), Frode Gjerstad (saxophone, clarinet) and John Hegre (sound).

This big orchestra does not travel much, but if you get the chance to see them, do it! The concert was close to perfect, with the audience near the stage, and with great sound (at least for us wearing ear plugs).
It was a bit difficult to see all the musicians in action, and the light was too bad for the amateur photographer, but come on, a great evening!

I hope they recorded the show, and don´t forget "Bandwith" released by Rune Grammofon.

Hexvessel

Hexvessel - "Invocation Summoning" from stereogum on Vimeo.

Check out Hexvessel´s "Invocation summoning" from the album "Dawnbearer" (Svart Records 2011). I know nothing about these people, but according to Stereogum  this is a solo project by Kvohst from the bands Dødheimsgard and Code. Crustcake claim Kvohst and Aort, who also plays in Code, is Hexvessel.
 The music is a strange mix of psychedelia, prog rock, Canterbury and folk, and if you have access to Spotify, the whole album is streamed there.

And after I finished the post, I found this info on Hexvessel´s YouTube channel:

Mathew Kvohst McNerney - Voice & Guitars
Andrew Aort McIvor - Guitars
Daniel Quill - Violins
Jaime Gomez Arellano - Additional instrumentation
Marja Konttinen - additional voices
with
Andreas Voie Juliebø - Drums
Kjartan Magerøy Aarseth - Mandolin, Banjo
Fredrik W. Sørensen - Bandoneon
Rigmor Hanken - Upright bass
and guest vocals by Carl-Michael Eide - Virus/VBE

Bill Bruford

After 40 years as a drummer, Bill Bruford stopped drumming in public, and wrote his biography "Bill Bruford The Autobiography" (Jawbone 2009). Let me just be honest, and admit that except for King Crimson, I never was a big fan of his bands (Yes, Genesis, UK, Earthworks) not that it matters much when it comes to the book!
Bruford writes well, and describes how it feels to play in a band with all the personalities involved, how it is to tour, the studio work and all the time you have to spend away from your family. The book chapters are named after questions often asked, like "Yes, but what do you do in the daytime?", "What´s it like working with Robert Fripp?" and "Do you like doing interviews?".

It seems like Bill Bruford was not very happy when playing with Gong (for a short period only!), describing them as a "traveling misunderstanding", but being Norwegian I just have to smile at the thought of this drummer doing a winter tour in Norway in 1974, driving around without winter tires (OK, I know it´s not funny!). I´m also a bit shocked to hear that two members of Earthworks were fighting with sharp kitchen utensils at the student center in Bergen during the Nattjazz festival in 1988. Just as well I missed that concert!

The book has its witty moments, but Bill Bruford seems to be a serious, hard working  guy and a family man,  and you won´t find many wild party scenes in this book. Disappointing for some of you I guess, but me, I really liked the book!

Free The Jazz!

The Ex with Mats Gustafsson and Paal Nilssen-Love have been traveling Ethiopia, and it sure looks like they were having a party! This video is from Debre Berhan, and you´ll find more at Terprecords channel.

Fjorden Baby!

Prepare yourselves for some local Bergen rock in the blog today!  The guys in Fjorden Baby! managed to  get street artist DOLK to illustrate the cover and the inlay for their album  "Se deg rundt i rommet" (ie "Take a look around the room") (Fjorden Biznizz 2011). This is DOLK´s first record cover, and I guess I should get the vinyl version to get some size to the art (so far I have only bought files, and  hope that makes it OK to take a picture in the shop  of the inlay).

And the music is OK to, think Manchester and Happy Mondays or thereabout? At least that is what most reviewers already said, and the splattervideo for the track "Rendezvous" below makes me think of the "colorful" Stone Roses.

The Norwegian all round saxophone player (from free jazz to Datarock) Kjetil Møster may be heard on two tracks too.

Ludo

Ivor Cutler Trio´s "Ludo" has been reissued on CD (Rev-Ola 2010). "Ludo" was originally released in 1967, and this new version seems to be exactly like the previous CD version from 2002.
Cutler normally recorded as a solo artist (vocal, harmonium), but is here joined by Trevor Tomkins (perc) and Gill Lyons (b). If you buy the album you will find witty tunes like "Good morning! How are you? Shut up!", a story about how difficult it may be to buy a balloon ("The shapely balloon"), and quite a lot of other strange stuff. All this in just half an hour.
If you have not heard Ivor Cutler yet (there just might be a couple of readers who haven´t!), consider yourselves lucky, because you have a lot of great music to discover. Why don´t you start with this one, and then get the rest of Mr. Cutler´s records and books?

David Gilmour 65

Congrats to David Gilmour on his 65th birthday today!
Here he is with Robert Wyatt in one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs, "Comfortably Numb", recorded at Robert Wyatt´s Meltdown in 2001.
The concert is still available on DVD.

Light painting WiFi

I first found this video on Espen Sommer Eide´s site "Eyes on your instruments", and let me just tell you that I am not going to even try to explain what these guys are doing, except that they do some "Light painting WiFi"! It looks so cool that it could have been taken straight out of a William Gibson novel (Norwegians may read my old (and a bit confused) blog post on "Spook country", where Gibson describes "locative art", using GPS and WiFi and stuff).

Read  more over at Touch , and please note that the music is by Phonophani .

PANIC

Robert Wyatt´s version of "Shipbuilding" (remastered version, from the eps Box Set) is one of the tracks on "PANIC. 15 Tracks of Riotous ´80s Indie Insurrection", glued to the front of Mojo issue 209 (April 2011).

Mojo celebrates that it is 25 years  (what??) since the The Smiths´ "The Queen Is Dead" was released, and Robert Wyatt is one of the artists interviewed. Wyatt compares  Morrissey´s directness and simplicity with words, with the one and only Ivor Cutler!

As if this was not enough,  Wyatt´s version of "Shipbuilding" is on Q´s list of "50 Ultimate British Songs" (April 2011 issue).

Hirschgebrüll

Don´t forget to check out the cooperation between Norwegian  Bjørn Hatterud and German Conrad Schnitzler, well known from solo projects, Tangerine Dream and Kluster (yes, with a K)?
The short version of the story is that Hatterud contacted Schnitzler and received material Schnitzler picked from his waste basket. Maja Ratkje did the finishing and mastering, and the product is called "Hirschgebrüll" (meaning stag call) (Fysisk Format 2011).
This is an album filled with dirty electronica, in fact quite varied, and it works like hell!
Norwegian speaking readers may click on  this link for an interview with Bjørn Hatterud.

Soft Machine 1967 og 1969

Soft Machine - Clarence In Wonderland (Rare Live 1967)
Uploaded by Tushratta. - Explore more music videos.

Soft Machine - Hope For Happiness (Tous En Scene 1969)
Uploaded by Tushratta. - See the latest featured music videos.

First out today is "Clarence in Wonderland" from 1967, with Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge, and lights by Mark Boyle.
Then we really get going with some French dancers with gas masks and all, dancing to "Hope for happiness", recorded in 1969.

Charles Bukowski and Peter Blegvad

The Man with the Beautiful Eyes from Jonathan Hodgson on Vimeo.

Jonathan Hodgson and Jonny Hannah have cooperated to make an animated film to Charles Bukowski´s poem "The man with the beautiful eyes", with Peter Blegvad reading.
The poem was published in the collection "The last night of the earth poems" in 1992.

Mathias Eick: Skala (ECM 2011)

Mathias Eick - Eksklusiv dokumentar from Morgendagens Helter on Vimeo.

One of these days (or was it yesterday? - I seem to find new dates on all the pages I visit!) ECM will release Mathias Eick´s new album "Skala".
Watching two very different videos, an office concert recorded by the Norwegian Broadcsting Co., and a slick Statoil (national oil company) produced documentary, might show you what to expect, and you may even read the full   press release (PDF)! It sounds like it is going to be more funky than Eick´s beautiful album "The Door" from 2008 (also on ECM).
The musicians on the album are  Mathias Eick (tp), Tore Brunborg (ts), Andreas Ulvo (p), Morten Qvenild (keyb), Audun Erlien (b), Gard Nilssen (dr), Torstein Lofthus (dr) and Sidsel Valstad (harp).

It´s no surprise I guess, but I´m quite sure I will buy this album.