NOT NIT NOT NIT NO NOT

NOT NIT NOT NIT NO NOT from Nika B on Vimeo.

Nika Breithaupt is probably a German performance artist, and we will just have to check back later, when her site is up and running again (nikabreithaupt.de).

What I can say, is that she has made a quite strange performance of Robert Wyatt's "Alifib" (from "Rock Bottom"), where she is singing to a video of Wyatt, recorded in 1975.

About eleven minutes into the video below, you may hear Robert Wyatt's own voice from the same piece.

Professor Tip Top: Aoum

In January I had a cosy little blog post on Professor Tip Top´s album, "Are you Empirical?" in my Norwegian blog (Google translate will get you through I hope), and now they are here again with another album called "Aoum" (Fossbakk Hansen Prod, 2012).

They call their music psykedelika/prog/jazz (Facebook), and I think I will dare to use the C-word (it´s "Canterbury"!) here too.
A bit nostalgic (in a good way), with traces of Gong and Pink Floyd, and quite a few catchy melodies too.

"Living in the past, is my future right now"
("Living in the past")

Musicians: Svein Magnar Hansen (voc), Sam Fossbakk (g, synth stuff), Mette Soele Zachau Mathiesen (dr), Sonja Otto (voc, hammond), Stein Høgseth (bass) and once again (I´m quite impressed!) Jon Irabagon (Mostly Other People Do The Killing) on sax!

Music: Sam Fossbakk.
Lyrics: Svein Magnar Hansen.
Cover: Øyvind Lothe, Reine Linjer.

If you want to check them out, downloads are available and easy to find (iTunes, eMusic). CDs and LPs exist too, but might be harder to get (try asking at their FB site).

Jimi Hendrix 70!

Let´s celebrate what would have been Jimi Hendrix´s 70th birthday, with an interview where Robert Wyatt shares his memories of the guitarist and singer.

Recorded at the Purcell Room, London 15th October 2007.

Benedicte Maurseth / Knut Hamre: Anima

How about some folk music again? I suggest you check out Benedicte Maurseth / Knut Hamre: "Anima" (Heilo 2012). What you get is a beautiful mix of traditional Norwegian folk, music by Tobias Hume and Henry Purcell (and others), and commissioned works by Nils Økland.

They play on Hardanger fiddles and violins from the 16th century, borrowed from museums and private collections.

The musicians are: Knut Hamre, Benedicte Maurseth, Nils Økland, Philippe Pierlot (viola da gamba) and Elisabeth Seitz (tympanon).

"Anima" is a further development of the album "Rosa i Botnen" (Heilo 2006), with Knut Hamre, Benedicte Maurseth, Sigbjørn Apeland and Nils Økland.
If you buy this one you will also get a quite charming (we are talking microphones dipping into the picture) DVD about the old fiddles and fiddle makers (subtitled I hope).

There are probably people who believe these old instruments belong in museums, but in my ears these albums sound just great!

The video with Benedicte Maurseth was recorded in 2009, and don´t worry, she speaks English.

St. Pussy Riot

Bergen street artist Argus salutes Pussy Riot!

Read his own comments on his blog, and if you are in Bergen, go here to find the picture.

The Cherry Thing Remixes

I have not bought my copy of Neneh Cherry & The Thing: "The Cherry Thing Remixes" (Smalltown 2012, release 12 November) yet, but the stuff on SoundCloud sound good.

Any remix experts out there, who care to share their views?

Here is a list of all the tracks, and from the top in this blog post, you may listen to track number 1,5,2,3 and 6:

01 What Reason Could I Give (Kim Hiorthøy remix)
02 Dream Baby Dream (Four Tet remix)
03 Accordion (Hortlax Cobra remix)
04 What Reason Could I Give (Carmen Villain remix)
05 Accordion (Jim O’Rourke remix)
06 Cashback (Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas remix)
07 Sudden Moment (Merzbow remix)
08 Golden Heart (Nymph remix)
09 Dirt (Kurzmann remix)
10 Golden Heart (Poole Blount Legacy Dub) (Lasse Marhaug remix)

Sculpting Sound with Maja S K Ratkje

Voice - Sculpting Sound with Maja Ratkje (footage demo) from ijb on Vimeo.

We have already had a post or two on I.J. Biermann´s film "Voice" in this blog, but here we go again, because the filmmakers need some more money to finish this portrait of Maja Ratkje.

Do you want to help? Spread the word, or run over to indiegogo with the amount of money you can spare right now!

A November Festival

- Stian Westerhus - Birmingham 2012.
- Maja S.K. Ratkje and Ikue Mori - LUFF 2012.
- Evan Parker, Peter Evans and Okkyung Lee - Unlimited, Wels 2012.
- Fred Frith, Jordan Glenn and Jason Hoopes - Berkeley Arts Fest 2012.
- The Thing - Blue Tomato 2012.
- Neneh Cherry & The Thing - Konfrontationen 2012.
- Nils Bech - Henie Onstad Kunstsenter 2012.

Cleo T

Cleo T has released an album called "Songs of Gold and Shadow" (Folkwit 2012).
The record sounds good, and I guess the description on the Bandcamp site fits well; it is a mix of folk and cabaret music. This info also interest me:

"The album, Songs of Gold and Shadow was produced by John Parish who is probably best known for his work with PJ Harvey and Robert Wyatt. In fact, Robert Wyatt wrote the lyrics of the hidden album track So Long Ago Yesterday specifically for Cleo".

John Parish best known for his work with PJ Harvey and Robert Wyatt? Is this our man Wyatt? Anyone?

Moonjune on Bandcamp

Get yourself a dead cheap 60 track sampler from Moonjune Records for a minimum of 1 $, over at their Bandcamp site (before 12 December!)

Among the artists are Soft Machine, Soft Machine Legacy, Soft Works, Phil Miller In Cahoots, Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper, Mark Hewins, Alan Holdsworth, The Wrong Object and Delta Saxophone Quartet.


Moonjune on themselves:
"MOONJUNE RECORDS came into being in 2001. The company represents the fruition of vision from entrepreneurial producer, tour manager and promoter Leonardo Pavkovic, and draws its name from Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt’s famous 1970 epic, “The Moon in June”.

MoonJune has already long established its' pedigree with “in-the-know” progressive music fans. The focus of MoonJune is to discover and release music by artists from a variety of international settings -- exploring the expanding boundaries of genuine, challenging, "non-over-produced music" that cannot be easily categorized into any specific format or genre."

Richard Thompson: Same Music, New Technology

Richard Thomspon on the relationship with fans on social media: "The way I get around it, I just lie".

Cooling it?

I have been posting in this blog and in Wyatting almost daily for about six years now, and have to admit I sometimes wonder what the hell I am doing with my time!

At a meeting with myself I had these points up for discussion:

1: Keep on blogging like a mad man.
2: Let´s have a pure Robert Wyatt blog (that was the intention when I started blogging; sorry for drowning Wyatt in other stuff!).
3: Cool it down a bit, and have some breaks.
4: Stop blogging.

After some serious fighting ("discussion"), number 3 won.

Suddenly it may be quiet in here for a day of five. Probably will be better for all of us!?

Expedition: If only I were R.W.

The Greek band Expedition were active only for a couple of years (2000-2001), but they were able to compose a melody dedicated to Robert Wyatt (by Giorgios Nikas).

"If only I were R.W." smells quite nice of old Wyatt/Soft Machine?

The band: Sergios Voudris-guitar/vocals,Andreas Paparousos-organ,Christos Pierros-bass,Giorgos Nikas-drums.

All info stolen over at YouTube.

John Cale in Conversation

John Cale In Conversation At Rough Trade East, London from Red Bull Music Academy on Vimeo.

John Cale at London´s Rough Trade East, with Matthew Herbert, Richard King (author of "How Soon Is Now?") and host Emma Warren.

The Wild Duck

I have to confess that theater isn´t quite my stuff, but when the Bergen International Festival upload a promo video for Henrik Ibsen´s "The Wild Duck" (1884), performed at the 2009 festival, we just have to have a blog post on it!

Now beware, this is the splatter version of Ibsen, so please don´t watch if you consider classic theater a sacred thing!

Directors: Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller.

Music by Trond Reinholdtsen and noise by Lasse Marhaug, and over at ibsen.net you will find the names of the actors (and other info).

The played this piece 6 evenings at the festival, and the first night it lasted almost eight hours, when the festival director finally had enough and stopped it!

The Social Media Tapes

Selling CDs, LPs, mp3/FLAC, or streaming? Norwegian sax player Petter Wettre seems to think that it is not possible for a musician like him to get his money back that way any longer, so he is trying something else: Like him on Facebook, or follow him on YouTube or Twitter, and you will get his new album for free!

He is hoping to get lots of followers, and to attract advertisers. I´m in doubt, but will wait and see if it´s possible for a jazz musician to get a fair amount of well deserved money that way!

Anyway, it is quite easy for you to get Petter Wettre Next Generation: "The Social Media Tapes" (Household Records 2012), a great album with four compositions by Wettre, and one each from Andrew Cyrille, Julius Hemphill, Steve Colson and Thelonious Monk. Highly recommended!

The band : Petter Wettre (saxophone), Kim Johannesen (guitar), Dag Erik Andersen (drums) and Jon Rune Strøm (bass).

For those of you who can read Norwegian, here is an interview with Petter Wettre in Ballade (Oct. 2012).

Movember

Unfortunately I have a slow growing beard, so I have to offer small blog post, instead of growing a mustache for Movember, to raise the awareness of men´s health issues.

The picture shows the mustache of Bergen´s student house, Det akademiske kvarter.

And later the same day I realized that street artist Habitus had grown several mustaches!

David Gilmour In Concert as iPhone/iPad App

You techno freaks out there, are the days of the DVD soon over too?
David Gilmour will be releasing concert videos from 2001 and 2002 as apps for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch (19 November), and an app for Android will follow.

David Gilmour played a concert at Robert Wyatt´s Meltdown in London in 2001 ( DVD of course), and "Comfortably numb" from that concert, with Wyatt singing, is on this app version too.

Looking at the Sun

Apehouse posted another video from Peter Blegvad and Andy Partridge´s new album "Gonwards".

This time we are "Looking at the sun", and you will find the other videos (all posted in the blog) right over here.

Extended Techniques - Phil Minton

New York based Extended Techniques made an almost two hour long podcast on Phil Minton. You will find the details on their site.

I have heard Phil Minton live a couple of times, the last time as part of Maja Ratkje´s curated concerts series for The International Festival of Bergen in the spring of 2012.

"Extended" vocal techniques, that´s an understatement when it comes to Minton!

Robert Wyatt - Covers and Tributes

Since you have bought all the Robert Wyatt albums now, why not go hunting for records where other people play Wyatt?
I have mentioned several of them in the blog of course, like Mop Meuchine, The Unthanks, Orchestre National de Jazz etc, so today just a mention of two albums released before my blogging days started.

All the way from Austria, Cpt. Kirk & The More Extended Versions deliver "Round About Wyatt" (1994), and various artists (led by Annie Whitehead) serve "Soupsongs Live. The Music of Robert Wyatt" (2000).

Once upon a time, I decided that shopping on eBay would not be healthy for my bank account, so I probably lack releases some of you feel I should have promoted.
Since you all have better self control (or are richer) than me, I bet you will find the records you want!

Right here is everything you need to know about Robert Wyatt covers and tributes.

Bobby Bradford et al: Kampen

Please check out this band:
Bobby Bradford - cornet
Frode Gjerstad - clarinets and alto sax
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten - bass
Paal Nilssen-Love - drums

Both the band, and each of the musicians, have visited the blog several times of course, and now they are back with a new album named "Kampen", on NoBusiness (Lithuania).

What you get is probably free jazz, but it sounds pretty straightforward too. Think Ornette Coleman, who Bobby Bradford played with.
You may have noticed that I never (seldom?) pretend to be much of a music expert, outside of being a fan ("great album" style), but here I must be allowed to at least say that the interaction between the musicians is fantastic!

The music was recorded live during Kampenjazz in Oslo, november 2010, and "Kampen" is the name of an area in Oslo (in case you wonder).

300 copies of "Kampen" were made, only on vinyl and (unfortunately) no download codes given away. I had my copy in my house in Bergen less than a week after I ordered it, and that´s impressive!

The naming of the tracks is my kind of humor:
1: This is
2: A live
3: Recording from
4: Kampen, Oslo

Cover design: Dansas Mikailionis

Let me also remind you of the album "Reknes" by the same musicians (Circulasione Totale 2009), recorded at the Reknes club at Moldejazz 2008 and "Dragon" by Bradford, Gjerstad and Nilssen-Love (PNL Records 2012). The last one was recorded at Klub Drago in Poznan (Poland) a couple of days prior to "Kampen". Buy all of them!

Robert Wyatt - Wiki Article

Wiki articles on YouTube! Here is Robert Wyatt´s.

Håkon Kornstad - Jazz vs Opera -- a Tenor Battle

Håkon Kornstad on jazz and opera in his TEDx Talk in Oslo in October 2012.

PGA - Corrections

I have mentioned Va Fongool´s first two albums (by Wolfram Trio and Ich Bin Nintendo) in this blog, and if they caught your attention, you might want to check out their third release; PGA´s album "Corrections".

PGA is Fredrik Luhr Dietrichson (b) and Jan Martin Gismervik (dr), both of them also playing in Wolfram Trio.

The first track, "Out of Tune", might be considered humorous, but most of the time it is pretty dark impro we get here (not so strange with bass and drums perhaps?), and a little spooky too. But it is sounding good!

Guest musicians: Torstein Lavik Larsen (tp) and Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø (tb).

PGA might be "Poor Guy Alone", according to some track titles.

Cover: Danny Gretsch.

They have invited both Sigbjørn Apeland and Nils Økland for some of their release concerts. Now, that would be interesting to hear!