Facelift, a reminder

It seems like it is still possible to buy most issues of the old Canterbury fanzine "Facelift"!
Check "The Polite Force" blog and Phil Howitt´s FaceLift site.

Alog: Unemployed

If you hurry up, you might be able to get your hands on Alog´s "Unemployed", a "box" with four LPs on Rune Grammofon (300 copies)! You will get three white vinyl albums and one black and a numbered fold out paper (no proper cover, and no proper box).

Alog´s Dag-Are Haugan and Espen Sommer-Eide have made some weird electronica, using custom made instruments, samples and guest artists.
I love the sad version of a well known Swedish song called "Båklandets vackra Maja", and a pretty wild story in Norwegian, sung by Jaap Blonk ("Bømlo brenn om natta", libretto: N. H. Møllerhaug). The other guests are Sigbjørn Apeland, Jenny Hval, Signe Lidén and The Sheriffs of Nothingness (Kari Rønnekleiv, Ole Henrik Moe).

This is great fun, but to be honest with you, you really don´t have to fight for a vinyl copy. The CD (or download version) might be just the selection you prefer after all.

Tracks not on the CD: "Kompass", "Leisure", "Solitaire" (10,11,12), "September", "Working the streets of San Francisco", "Piraeus", "De arbetsskyggas förening" and "Avis".

Cover: Kim Hiorthøy.

Unthanks

I´m still waiting for my copy of the new Robert Wyatt and Antony & The Johnsons album by The Unthanks, so while waiting I checked some Unthanks links

The Guardian present "Rachel Unthank: soundtrack of my life", where Rachel claims that Robert Wyatt´s "Rock Bottom" is the album that "--framed my marriage".

Independent.ie use The Unthanks as an example on artists that think outside the box, to make contact with the audience in these times of "shrinking revenue streams".
The band invited fans to hang with them, join them for music sessions in local bars and even dine with them.

Fan-friendly artists are great, but come on folks, let them eat in peace.

How I Invented Time

The Archimedes Quartet is David Thomas, Peter Blegvad, Chris Cutler og John Edwards, and I wish I was going to see them at Cafe Oto in London 3 December!

A little info stolen from the project blog "How I Invented Time": "Five years ago David Thomas described a bath tub epiphany to Peter Blegvad at a chance meeting outside an architectural college in Oxford. "Edison, Einstein, Eisenhower and Elvis - The Four 'E's Who Invented The 20th Century." This evolved, in the way of these sorts of conversations, into a Big Idea - a lecture / symposium slamdown to be refereed by Chris Cutler", and now they go live.

I hope this happening is being recorded, filmed or painted!

Fire Room Live

Fire Room with Ken Vandermark, Lasse Marhaug and Paal Nilssen-Love have been touring lately. Here they are in Geneva, and if you are lucky you may find their new album too.
The LP "Wels 2008/11/08" is a limited ed. release on Pica Disk (2011).

More vinyl from Rune

Message from Rune Grammofon: To be released on 9th December, all vinyl only releases in numbered, limited editions of 500:

Elephant9 - Live at the BBC (LP)
Scorch Trio with Mars Williams - Made in Norway (2LP)
Fire! with Jim O´Rourke - Released! (10" EP)
The Last Hurrah!! - The Great Gig in Disguise (10" EP)

Dans Les Arbres

I have to admit I get a bit stressed, when I´m the first one to arrive at a concert in a big church, ten minutes before they are supposed to start playing. But there were obviously no reason to worry yesterday, when Dans Les Arbres played a fantastic concert for ten grown ups an one little baby in the Korskirken church in Bergen. Ivar Grydeland (guitar, banjo), Ingar Zach (drums, percussion), Xavier Charles (clarinet) and Christian Wallumrød (piano, shruti box) are professionals to their fingertips, and even played an extra number for the small "crowd".

The music was quiet and beautiful, and Birk Nygaard´s lights made me feel like I was swimming with the fish in a church aquarium. Now that may not sound positive to all of you, but it is!
Thanks a lot!

Christian Wallumrød was sitting in the dark all the time, and is not present on any of my unfocused pictures, and the baby slept all through the concert.

You will find several releases by these artists on SOFA.

Brötzfest

Peter Brötzmann has been partying over in Japan. Here Brötzmann and friends really get going at the Shinjuku Pit Inn in Tokyo (15 October 2011).
Musicians: Peter Brötzmann (sax), Fred Lonberg-Holm (g), Paal Nilssen-Love (dr), Michiyo Yagi (koto) og Jim O´Rourke (g).

The video was uploaded by EigenKino, and make sure you check out his (or hers) YouTube account!

The Golden Goose of Statoil

How about this new piece of street art in Bergen? The artist calls him- or herself Gaia and the artwork´s name is "The golden goose of Statoil".

Statoil is the Norwegian state´s oil company, and the hero of the Norwegian version of this fairy tale has the same name as this installation. Now start wondering.

Symphonies In My Head

Oops, I thought I had blogged this one already, and now all of you have probably heard Håkon Kornstad´s solo album "Symphonies in my head" (Jazzland 2011) already?
I liked (and still like!) Kornstad´s previous solo albums "Single Engine" (Jazzland 2007) and "Dwell Time" (Jazzland 2009), but this one beats both of them.
The pieces are pretty strong melodies, and I was sure they were composed, but all of them are probably improvised. Håkon Kornstad with saxophone and loops in the Sofienberg church in Oslo. Absolutely wonderful!

Kornstad pins several of his most beautiful tracks on the map: "Sweden" and "Turkey, Texas" ("Single Engine"), "Oslo" ("Dwell Time"), and "Damaskus" and "Mandal" ("Symphonies in my head"). I´m waiting for "Bergen".

Here are a couple of videos. The first one is a full office concert (Norwegian Broadcasting Co., NRK) and then "Sweden" played in Perugia (Italia) in July 2011.

Charles Mingus

Do you want to help financing a documentary on the great bass player Charles Mingus?
Now you have got the chance, because Mingus´ grandson Kevin Ellington Mingus is at it, but he needs some money,and is running a campaign through Kickstarter. Can you spare a dollar or more?

Check out Mingus and friends in Oslo (Norway) in 1964.

Stian Around A Hill

You might want to check out some (not so well known) young Norwegians today? Listen to the the quartet Stian Around A Hill. Their new album "Alle skal få" (meaning something like "It´s enough for everyone") (Atterklang 2011), is being released as a magazine with download code, but it´s been hard to find the magazine (strange, considering the title). I found the music on eMusic, but if you choose iTunes you get the digital version of the magazine (in Norwegian I´m afraid).
The music is really nice jazz, quiet and beautiful as in "God natt" and "Vals", and energetic stuff like "Action" and "Driva kro". Over at Stian Omenås´site he says they work with his chamber jazz compositions with room for improvisations. Call it whatever you like, it´s a good album anyway.

The band: Stian Omenås (tp), Svein Magnus Furu (sax, clar), Ola Høyer (b) and Øyvind Skarbø (dr) (Skarbø also drums in the folk-improv trio 1982).
I pushed their previous album "Lille Stille" (2009) too. That one had Jo Berger Myhre playing the bass, instead of Høyer.

The magazine contains:

• An interview with Stian Omenås.

• A history of improvisation by Svein Magnus Furu.

• Håkon Kornstad interviewed by Øyvind Skarbø.

• Ola Høyer´s recipe for white wine steamed mussels (!).

The Songs of Robert Wyatt and Antony & The Johnsons

The Unthanks will release "The Songs of Robert Wyatt and Antony & The Johnsons, Live from The Union Chapel (Diversions Vol 1.)" on November 28th. Looking forward to this one!

The tracklist:

Antony & The Johnsons
01 Bird Gerhl
02 Man is the Baby
03 You Are My Sister
04 For Today I Am A Boy
05 Paddy’s Gone
06 Spiraling

Robert Wyatt
07 Stay Tuned (Anja Garbarek) from Comicopera
08 Dondestan (Wyatt) from Dondestan (revisited)
09 Lullaby for Hamza (Wyatt/Benge) from Cuckooland
10 Lisp Service (Hopper/Wyatt) from Dondestan (revisited)
11 Free Will and Testament (Wyatt/Kramer) from Shleep
12 Out of the Blue (Wyatt/Elfriede Ellidge) from Comicopera
13 Cuckoo Madame (Wyatt/Benge) from Cuckooland
14 Sea Song (Wyatt) from Rock Bottom
15 Forest (excerpt) from Cuckooland

Mercury Heart

Anton Octavian made this animated video for Nils Petter Molvær's "Mercury Heart" (from "Baboon Moon" 2011).

Piksel 2011

If you happen to be near Bergen these days, please note that the 9th annual Piksel festival for Electronic Art and Technological Freedom is happening here 17 - 20 November.

This will happen (schedule):

Thursday:
-UKI Game level One (infect the city) Workshop
-MP19_SCHMUTZ||DISRUPTER ∆NALOG TOOLS. Workshop
-Streaming Experiences. Presentasjon
-SketchSpace. Presentasjon
-The Impossible City. Urban installasjon

Friday:
-UKI game level one [infect the city] Workshop
-Visual Live Coding with Texture Workshop
-Electromagnetic Cityscape Workshop
-din is noise Workshop
-Be Your Own Souvenir! Urban Intervensjon
-Ohanda Working Session
-Xth Sense, wearable, biophysical open source technology. Pres.
-Human Mobile Medium. Presentasjon
-Zero Dollar Laptop. Presentasjon
-UKI game level one [infect the city]. Presentasjon
-City Fireflies. Urban intervensjon

Saturday:
-UKI game level one [infect the city] workshop
-Bruk av Milkymist One Video Synthesizer. Workshop
-C/overt operations med CCTV sniffing. Workshop
-Cámara Lúcida. Presentasjon
-Be Your Own Souvenir! Urban Installasjon
-The 120 Days of *Buntu. Presentasjon
-Proxy. Presentasjon
-Pueblo Nómade. Presentasjon
-Re-framing the world wide web. Presentasjon
-Hacking Dinner – Remote eating with KIBLIX
-City Fireflies. Urban intervensjon

Sunday:
-UKI game level one [infect the city] workshop
-din is noise. Workshop
-Sudamerica experimental workshop
-Icestream- a new free software in the live streaming world. Pres.
-Sonic drift. Workshop
-Ecology of precariousness. Presentasjon
-Lumibots presentasjon
-Network topology as a site of resistance. Presentasjon.
-A popular guide to unpopular cinema. Presentasjon/performance.
-The impossible City. Urban Intervensjon

My pictures from previous festivals here.

Vandermark and Nilssen-Love (again!)

Ken Vandermark and Paal Nilssen-Love never give in! They seem to be all over the place, in one setting or the other. Here you get some solo drumming by Nilssen-Love at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival (Norway) in 2011, and a concert with both of them, that took place in Moscow some days ago.

Go "Like" Ken Vandermark on Facebook, to follow him around. He still writes on the good and bad sides of playing gigs. In Moscow smoke machines and strip tease seemed to be planned for the concert. I won't tell it all!

Ribbon of rust

Now this may give you some ideas on how you may combine two interests, like plants and music. The artist Cecilia Jonsson visited Bergen´s Galleri Fisk (transl: "Gallery Fish"!) this weekend, with her exhibition "Ribbon of rust".
I usually don´t post local exhibitions from Bergen in this blog, but this one was too good to hide. Jonsson combined sound installation and plant growing. She had scraped iron oxide from a cassette recording of Vivaldi´s "Four Seasons", and mixed this into the earth where a nettle was growing. The plant then just sucked Vivaldi up through it´s roots, and the artist (some way or the other) managed to recorded the plant, and let us hear.

It was pretty hard to recognize Vivaldi, but still quite interesting! What next? Metal, jazz or country? We could get some serious Wyatting in the greenhouses!

Robert Wyatt documentary

"Free will and testament. The Robert Wyatt story" (BBC 2003).
Please let this documentary be on YouTube for a while!

The Unthanks: "Last"

The title track of the latest album by The Unthanks, has got itself a beautiful and sad video, made by Nick Murray Willis.

Head on over to YouTube, to find the lyrics too.

Motorpsycho at the Nidaros Cathedral

Oh! How about that?! Motorpsycho and Ståle Storløkken at the Nidaros Cathedral (Nidarosdomen, Trondheim, Norway) (early November 2011?) Lights: Pekka Stokke.

Eloquent Vandals

The publishers Kontur Forlag (who also gave us the book "Street Art Norway") recently published a book on Stavanger´s street art festival Nuart.
In "Eloquent Vandals" we follow the festival from it´s beginning as the little brother of Numusic in 2001, with a focus on digital art, and from 2006 the kind of street art festival it still is.
The book is peppered with great photos of street art by Nick Walker, Chris Stain, Herakut, Blek Le Rat, Dotmasters, Swoon, Blu, Pøbel, Dolk MIR and lots more, and the texts are written both in Norwegian and English.

Editors are Martin Reed (the founder of both Numusic and Nuart), Marte Jølbo and Victoria Bugge Øye.

The book will probably soon be sold by Amazon?

Since Stavanger is a marked city after the festivals, I have managed to catch some of the festival art too.

Attitude & Orbit Control live

It seems like Jeanette Lindström will perform her fine album "Attitude and orbit control" (2010) live in Gothenburg 14 November.
Robert Wyatt is not present I guess, but he sure is on the album! Why don´t you first listen to a remix of the song "River", then "Morning", before you find the whole album somewhere?

Jeanette Lindström - River (Lidbo Remix feat. Robert Wyatt) by Playground Music

Jeanette Lindström - Morning by Playground Music

Corroncho

I have had Phil Manzanera and the Columbian artist Lucho Brieva´s album "Corroncho" on my iPod for a long time already, and now it seems like it will be released in the USA too (8 Nov). "Corroncho" is a name given by people from the capital Bogota, to people from Barranquilla, and the Spanish lyrics tells the tale of two latino males. I don´t speak Spanish, but still smile from these songs, and please be careful, I guess the weak ones might start humming or dancing too!

These musicians participate: Robert Wyatt, Paul Thompson, Enrique Bunbury, Chrissie Hynde, Annie Lennox, Quimi Portet, Gilad Atzmon og Aldo Lopez Gavilan.

Anders Hana

Anders Hana (Noxagt, Ultralyd, MoHa!, Circulasione Totale Orchestra) has released a solo album on Drid Machine. "Dead Clubbing" is another beautiful piece of vinyl on this company, with music (six tracks) only on one of the sides. 300 copies made.

The first track on the record ("Iskoras") is on SoundCloud.

Anders Hana: Iskoras by kjetildb

Orient House Ensemble in Trondheim

Gilad Atzmon and Orient House Ensemble have been to Trondheim. here is a video from 1 November. Musicians: Gilad Atzmon (sax), Eddie Hick (drums), Frank Harrison (piano) and Yaron Stavi (bass).

And I allow myself to remind you of the very fine Wyatt/Atzmon/Stephen´s "For the ghosts within" (2010) too.

Maja SK Ratkje and Stephen O´Malley

(Uploaded by Kunstsenteret).

"Engebøfjellet; Where were you when they cut me down from the gallows?"
Commissioned Work for Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Oslo), October 2011.

Roy Harper cover

Twelve Hours of Sunset by Susanna Wallumroed

Susanna Wallumrød (Susanna and The Magical Orchestra) recently started her own company, SusannaSonata, and released a nice cover version of Roy Harper's "Twelve Hours of Sunset".

Listen here, via SoundCloud, and head on over to iTunes to shop.

News from Frode Gjerstad

If you collect Frode Gjerstad, I hope you have some money to spend!
Here are some new albums I have heard recently:

Circulasione Totale Orchestra: "PhilaOslo" (Circulasione 2011). A double album recorded in Philadelphia (30 Jan 2010) and Oslo (9 March 2011). Tough enough, this electro-acoustic gang: Louis Moholo Moholo (dr), Morten J. Olsen (dr), Anders Hana (g - only on "Oslo"), Frode Gjerstad (Sax, clar), Nick Stephens (b), Paal Nilssen-Love (dr), Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten (el b - only on "Phila"), Per Zanussi (el b - only on "Oslo"), Kevin Norton (vibtraphone), Børre Mølstad (tuba), Sabir Mateen (sax, clar), Bobby Bradford (cornet), Lasse Marhaug (electronics).
Cover: Lasse Marhaug.

Frode Gjerstad Trio:"East of West" (Circulasione 2011).
Frode Gjerstad Trio: "MIR" (Circulasione 2011).
The trio is Frode Gjerstad (alto sax, clar), Jon Rune Strøm (b) and Paal Nilssen-Love (dr). "East of West" was recorded in Stavanger in April 2011, while practicing for the May tour, and "MIR" was recorded live at the club MIR (surprise!) in Oslo in September 2010. Good stuff on both of them.
Cover:Lasse Marhaug.

Motland/Lonberg-Holm/Solberg/Gjerstad: "VC/DC" (Hispid 2011). Stine Janvin Motland (Voice), Fred Lonberg-Holm (Cello), Ståle Liavik Solberg (Drums) and Frode Gjerstad (Clarinet). A fine first release from the new label Hispid. Great playing and singing!.
Rock cover by Dirty Deeds Design.

And there are more albums to! Check Frode Gjerstad and Paal Nilssen-Love´s sites for more info.

Watch Frode Gjerstad Trio live in Austin (August 2011).

The Icicle Works: "Sea Song"

In 1983 the band The Icicle Works released a cover version of Robert Wyatt´s "Sea Song", on the EP "Up here in the North of England". This spring saw the release of a 3xCD box version of the album "If you want to defeat your enemy, sing his song", and on this one we find "Sea Song".
Buy the album at Amazon, or do as I did, download "Sea Song" from iTunes.

You may listen to "Sea Song" over at DailyMotion.

November festival

Lemur at Gråmølna from Lemur on Vimeo.

To kick off November, we are having a little festival today. The artists (top to bottom):

Michiyo Yagi Double Trio : Michiyo Yagi (21-string koto, vocal), Todd Nicholson (bass), Takashi Sugawa (bass), Tamaya Honda (drums), Noritaka Tanaka (drums) Live at Shinjuku Pit Inn, Tokyo (Japan), 2 September 2011.

Decoy: Steve Noble (drums), Alex Hawkins (piano), John Edwards (bass) + Joe McPhee (sax, trumpet). Cafe Oto (London) 29 October 2011.

Liarbird: Ola Kvernberg (violin), Bergmund Skaslien (viola), Håkon Kornstad (sax), Eirik Hegdal (sax), Ingebrikt Håker Flaten (bass) ,Ole Morten Vågan (bass), Torstein Lofthus (drums), Eirik Nylander (drums), Mathias Eick (trumpet). Bergen Jazzforum (Norway) 28 October 2011.

Lemur: Bjørnar Habbestad (flute), Michael Francis Duch (bass), Hild Sofie Tafjord (French horn) and Lene Grenager (cello). Gråmølna Art Gallery, Trondheim (Norway) (2011).