Over Tones

Oh my, you just have to check out the beautiful (contemporary-improv-) folk album "Over Tones" by Benedicte Maurseth (Hardanger fiddle, voice) and Åsne Valland Nordli (voice) on ECM (March 2014).

There are some Norwegian lyrics, but don´t you worry, you will understand the music.

Watch the video for some music and interviews in English, and then start shopping!

Televisione

Italian band Afterhours recently released a remastered version of their 1997 album "Hai Paura Del Buio?" (Universal Music It., 2014), with what looks like a bonus record with guests singing all the tracks from the original album.

Of most interest to us of course is the track "Televisione", with vocals by Cristina Dona and "The Friendly Ghost of Robert Wyatt"(YouTube).

Ghost or not, it´s a really nice tune! Available on iTunes (and you may listen here).

Thanks to Jean-Paul for the tip!

The Thing at La Dynamo France, Feb. 2014

IDA - Darwinius massilae

How about a science lesson on a Friday evening? Yes?

Check out The Science Slam Sonic Explorers, and here is how they describe themselves:

"The Science Slam Sonic Explorers group was formed in 2013 to produce audio realizations of scientific concepts explained to a mass audience.

Mission: To bring science concepts and new ideas to the populace at large in language they understand combined with music they can dance to!"

Today´s topic: The controversy behind the Earth's most magnificently preserved primate fossil: 47 million years old IDA, as described by Norwegian scientist Jørn Harald Hurum.
The music is by Gator Bait Ten.

Read the text over at YouTube.

We know how to party in this blog!

The Voices Of Robert Wyatt (again)

We have already had a couple of blog posts on the Falling Tree Productions´ portrait of Robert Wyatt, called "The Voices Of Robert Wyatt".

It was first broadcasted by BBC Radio 4 in October 2012.

Now Falling Tree Productions have uploaded it to SoundCloud.
Nice one, and well worth another listen!

Arve Henriksen & Elektronik Meditation

Live, Athens, Greece, 20th March 2014

Arve Henriksen : trumpet, voice,
Jannis Anastasakis : guitar, live-sampling
Deniz Angelaki : live painting

More info on YouTube.

And how about the 2014 Punkt Festival program? Should be out soon!

There Is No Expedient to Which a Leaver Will Not Resort

exit UNKNOWN FIGURE: he wastes everything but time from PK Worryshop on Vimeo.

Video from the installation "There Is No Expedient to Which a Leaver Will Not Resort to Avoid the Real Labor of Leaving" show at Cooper Union in April 2014, a Senior Presentation of Porter Diteman & Ruairidh Macleod.

Featuring WKL Dickson's experimental sound film for Edison Laboratories, and the music of Robert Wyatt ("Unmasked" from "A short break" 1992).

From Vimeo.

Charles Mingus - Arild Andersen

One of the most talked about jazz concerts that ever happened in Norway, is the Charles Mingus Sextet concert at The University Aula in Oslo in April 1964.

Now, fifty years later, Oslo Jazz Festival invited Arild Andersen Sextet to pay homage to Mingus and that concert (12 August), the music being arranged by Petter Wettre.

Arild Andersen Sextet:
Mathias Eick – trumpet
Klaus Holm – alto, bass clarinet
Petter Wettre- tenor
Bugge Wesseltoft – piano
Arild Andersen – bass
Gard Nilssen – drums

See and hear Mingus and his Sextet do "Take the "A" train" at the Oslo concert in the video.

Musicians:
Charles Mingus - Bass
Eric Dolphy - Bass Clarinet
Clifford Jordan - Tenor Sax
Johnny Coles - Trumpet
Jaki Byard - Piano
Dannie Richmond - Drums

Bergen International Wood Festival 2014

We have had a few posts here on Bergen´s own "Woodstock" already, and now designers, architects, artists, craftsmen and students from all over the world have been building wood structures / sculptures again.

On the festival site we find: "Bergen International Wood Festival (BIWF) has its focus on the use of wood as material, and its constructive, structural and tactile qualities. As part of this, BIWF arranges a biannual competition in construction of experimental spatial structures in wood".

Since I only have got thumbs, I look upon people who can build like this, with great respect (and some envy!).

It´s nice to have the structures built in the city center, but unfortunately some people had been partying too hard this weekend (National Day 17th of May, and 200 years since our own constitution), unfortunately paying no respect to the results of hard work.

More photos on Flickr.

Stalin Wasn´t Stallin´

Nothing Can Stop us Now. 2014. from richard grayson on Vimeo.

Richard Grayson has made a 5 screen video installation called "Nothing Can Stop Us Now", using Willie Johnson´s song "Stalin Wasn´t Stallin´" (1943).

Music by Leo Chadburn, based on "Stalin Wasn´t Stallin´".
The singers: Bishi Bhattacharya, Leo Chadburn, Tom Herbert, Laura Moody, Sophie Ramsay.

Robert Wyatt did a great version of the song for Rough Trade, released on a 7" in 1981 and on the collection "Nothing Can Stop Us" (1982).

And here is The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet´s version.

Soft Machine "Live in 1970"

Soon to be released: A 4 CD compilation of live recordings of Soft Machine in 1970, called (hold your breath!) "Live in 1970" (Retroworld 2014).

This seems to be a collection of tracks already present on other releases, but is said to be "re-mastered with extensive liner notes".

If you have any info, please share.

The band: Robert Wyatt, Mike Ratledge, Elton Dean and Hugh Hopper, with Lyn Dobson present on two of the CDs.

Tracklist over here.

Stine Janvin Motland Outdoor Concert in Oslo

I was in Oslo for a couple of days last week and was able to attend the release concert of the two new Stine Janvin Motland albums (9th of May).

One of them, "Labour" (Pica Disk, vinyl 2014), is already in the blog and I bought "OK, WOW!" (+3dB, CD 2014) too. While the "Labour" tracks are Motland doing vocal acrobatics to sampled sounds of the city, and different natural habitats, "OK, WOW!" is just vocals. Not a singalong album that one either, but as they say in Germany "Das ist anstrengend, zuweilen auch beim Hören, aber von einer bizarren Schönheit, die man so nirgendwo sonst findet".

They probably say that all the time, but still!

Well, I usually stay away from outdoor concerts, but this one was OK (even if we couldn´t see the artist)! The concert was held in a packed and hot bookshop called "Cappelens Forslag" (well worth a visit!), and when the show was about to begin, Motland suddenly disappeared, transmitting the vocals from cold downtown Oslo, making it sound like the music on the "Labour" album.

"OK, WOW!" is in a series called "Music for one" (first release: Kjetil Møster: "Blow Job" from 2011), and Morten J. Olsen and Hild Sofie Tafjord (of SPUNK fame) have also recorded solo albums for this series. I´m not sure if they are in the shops, but check out the +3dB site.

The photos (even lousier than the usual ones):
- The first one: Stine Janvin Motland all smiles after the concert.
- The second one: Audience wondering; where the hell is she?

And added value: The shocked pedestrians walking by the shop believing that a lot of people were staring at them through the windows!

Janek Schaefer: Clouds from Cuckooland

Clouds from Cuckooland from Janek Schaefer on Vimeo.

Info from Vimeo on Janek Schaefer´s commissioned work for the Sounds New Festival, Canterbury 2014:
"'Clouds from Cuckooland' was commissioned for an exhibition about the legend of the 'Canterbury Scene', and in particular the work of Robert Wyatt. I was invited to create an installation from his 'Cuckooland' album, which I evaporated into a 21 minute cloud of sound that floats around and around the gallery. Using 3 x FM transmitters I broadcast the composition to 3 groups of radios set out on a vinyl circle, accompanied by lasers, feathers, mirrors and glitter".

More on janekschaefer.com.

Matching Mole, Paris 1972

I´m sure I have posted this one several years ago, but it might be one of the videos that come and go on the net.
Anyway, here is Matching Mole in Paris 1972, broadcasted on some French program called Live Pop2, with interviews too.

Phil Miller (g), David Sinclair (keyb), Bill MacCormick (b) and Robert Wyatt (dr, voc, keyb).

The Thing - Mediawave, May 2 2014

Unfortunately I missed this spring´s The Thing concert in Bergen, and I missed their concert at Blå in Oslo this week, not being able to attend even if I was near by.

Here at least we get a short video from the Mediawave International Film and Music Gathering in Fort Monostor, Hungary, 29 April - 3 May

The trio:
Mats Gustafsson - bass saxophone
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten - bass guitar
Paal Nilssen-Love - drums

And if you want to hear them at the club Blå in Oslo, you may listen to (as a lot of you know of course) the album "Live At Blå!", released in 2005, recorded in 2003.

Stine Janvin Motland: In Labour (Pica Disk 2014)

Stine Janvin Motland has visited this blog several times (All Ears Festival, concerts, the band VC/DC, the duo Motsol etc), and now Lasse Marhaug´s Pica Disk has released her first solo album "In Labour" (LP).

The music is field recordings with Stine Motland´s vocals. She is breathing, humming and screaming to the sounds of cities, shops and natural environments, sometimes making it hard to know for certain if you hear human vocals or animal/machine sounds. Fascinating and fun stuff indeed, demanding concentrated listening.

From Pica Disk´s site:

"The recordings were made at various outdoor and indoor locations in Norway during the summer and autumn of 2013. The idea was to place Stine in challenging sonic environments, and to explore how the surroundings affected the performances. The locations were picked for their sonic qualities".

And as if this is not enough, the record company +3dB is releasing a solo album by Motland too, called "OK, WOW" (CD)!
This one is a bit late I guess, since she was promoting it in Bergen in March 2013!

A double release concert is happening at the bookstore Cappelens Forslag (Norwegian link) in Oslo on the 9th of May.

The Whole Point Of No Return

Here is a stop motion animation (by Tom Nihiski) for the Paul Weller penned track "The Whole Point Of No Return", taken from Robert Wyatt´s great album "Shleep" (Domino 1997).

Robert Wyatt:trumpet and keyboard.
Chorus: Alfreda Benge, Jamie Johnson, Charles Rees and Robert Wyatt.

Now buy the album, please! How about a beautiful double vinyl edition released by Domino in 2008?

Maja Ratkje live at the River to River Festival

EX-SITU: MAJA SK RATKJE from OMW on Vimeo.

Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, Ex-Situ at the River to River Festival, NY, July 2013.

More info on Vimeo.

By The Waterhole

By The Waterhole is the German-turned-Bergen artist Eva Pfizenmaier.
Her debut solo album "One" was released in November 2013 on PlayDate Record, and I have played it regularly since I got it earlier this year.

What we get here is Eva´s voice along with some keyboard and effects, adding a nice touch to the songs that may in the style of singer-songwriter, art pop or whatever. On PlayDate´s Bandcamp site we may read that her "influences range from pling plong music to alternative pop, from contemporary music to good old fashioned blues", and that sounds reasonable too.

Call it whatever you like, it´s a very fine album. Have a listen to one of the more melancholic tracks "Then and There" here in the blog, or run on over to PlayDate on BandCamp to listen to all of it, before you buy it for next to nothing.
The lyrics may be studied here.

The Søren Andreasen remix of "Then and There" is not on the vinyl version (only for sale at concerts?).

Co-produced and mixed by Stephan Meidell and mastered by Jørgen Træen.

Jü and Kjetil Møster

The Bergen sax man Kjetil Møster (solo, The Core, Ultralyd, Datarock etc. etc.) has been to Budapest to play with the "experimental psychedelic free rock whatever trio" Jü.

They played at the A38 venue (December 2013), and it sounds like it must have been a rocking show.

The videos in this post are two out of four from neuigkeiten, and they have some interviews too (in English and Hungarian).

Another video here, lasting almost 20 minutes.

On Jü´s Facebook it seems like an album might be on it´s way.

Let´s hear it for May 1 (again)

1982: "A/B" (Hubro 2014)

"A/B" (Hubro), The fourth album from the trio 1982, is out in record shops (and on digital shops too I hope) tomorrow (2 May 2014).

This time they move a bit away from the folk-improv they have stuck to until now. I only have the CD version so far, but the album is easily recognized as an old fashioned LP with two quite different sides (A/B).

The first track is an eighteen minutes long contemporary classical piece (named 18:16 of course!), where Stian Omenås composed music for five horns, that was overdubbed on music recorded during the sessions for the Pintura album (Hubro 2011). A fascinating and really nice piece!

The 1982 trio is Nils Økland (hardanger fidle, violins, voice), Sigbjørn Apeland (harmonium, piano) and Øyvind Skarbø (drums, percussion).
The extra musicians on the track "18:16" are: Fredrik Ljungkvist (clarinet), Erik Johannessen (trombone), Sofya Dudaeva (flute), Hanne Liland Rekdal (bassoon), Matthias Wallin (tenor horn) and Stian Omenås (conductor).

Even if Sigbjørn Apeland plays the piano too , not only the organ, and Nils Økland sings on one track, the music on "side B" is more like the old folk-improv we all love, and some of it is so beautiful that it almost hurts.

Cover: Elisabeth Færøy Lund / Yokoland.

Buy or borrow this album (and their previous ones), don´t steal.

Taken from Hubro´s site:
"Recently 1982 has also made a recording, not yet finished, with a fourth person. The group will participate in a live project related to animated film, and will compose a commissioned work for NOTAM (the Norwegian Center for Technology in Music and the Arts). The members of the group have also begun thinking about yet another recording project to be completed for the trio’s 10th anniversary in 2017".

Concert and festival organizers beware!

Jazzfestivalen (The Jazz Festival)

May will be one hell of a month for music in Bergen.

We already have Bergen International Festival (21 May - 4 June) and Nattjazz (22 May - 31 May), and now we also get Jazzfestivalen ("The Jazz Festival") (link to Norwegian site) (29 May - 31 May).

The Jazzfestivalen artists are: No Balls, Xavier Querel, Horacio Pollard, Paul Lovens / Thomas Lehn, Consumer Electronics, Jean-Philippe Gross / Axel Dörner, Okkyung Lee, Axel Dörner / Kjetil Møster and Marcus Schmickler / Thomas Lehn.