Alan Lomax

Today it is 100 years since folk music collector Alan Lomax (1915 - 2002) was born.

Let us celebrate by visiting the YouTube archive with his field recordings once more!

The video: Dewey Balfa & Robert Jardell: "Waltz of the Broken Family" (1983).

Robert Wyatt Covers - Spotify

I am late, but have finally started to subscribe to Spotify, and have been listening around for the last few weeks.

Lots of good stuff there and a fantastic place to be for the end user.
Not for the sound freaks I guess, lots of artists missing in there and artists are still far from happy with the money they get from the streaming of their material.

I´m diving into the stream anyway and am testing playlists today.

Let´s see if this playlist is working then, a list of Robert Wyatt covers for your pleasure (I hope!).

Kreng

"The Summoner", A new album by Kreng (Pepijn Caudron), is ut on Miasmah.

You will not be surprised to hear that the track "Depression" is not a happy melody, and Miasmah writes that the album is "His most personal album to date, The Summoner is based around the 5 stages of mourning and is made after a year of losing several close friends. Hard enough material to work on, he decided to add a 6th stage, entitled The Summoning to be able to arrive at the finalé, Acceptance."

The music is made by the help of 12 string players and the Belgian doom band "Amenra".

I am absolutely sure I will check out this album.

Robert Wyatt 70

Happy birthday to Robert Wyatt, and thanks for all the music!

Marcus O´Dair: Robert Wyatt at 70: Happy birthday, Old Rottenhat! (The Guardian 27 Jan 2015).

Der zarte Gigant. Robert Wyatt wird 70 (Der Tagesspiegel 28 Jan 2015)

Tubby Hayes and Robert Wyatt Birthdays BBC Radio 3 (26 days left to listen now).

Ingar Zach and Miguel Angel Tolosa

Ingar Zach and Miguel Angel Tolosa’s debut album "Loner" was released on SOFA 23 January 2015.

To cite the label: ".. LONER is a result of many years of working together and of mutual admiration. The duo has collected material for LONER during the past ten years, and with a common facination for the mix of electronics, field recordings and acoustic percussion, they decided to start working towards an album with the material they had at hand".

Ingar Zach - percussion, electronics, field recordings.

Miguel Angel Tolosa - electronics, field recordings, electric guitar.

Arto Lindsay and Paal Nilsen-Love in Bergen

Arto Lindsay and Paal Nilsen-Love at Bergen Jazzforum 23 January 2015.

Joy in Bergen

Street artist Joy has been out working in the cold Bergen weather lately.

Some more or less obvious messages here?

- "Be online!"
- Hard to get a place to stay these days.
- One turtle says to the other: "Run for your life mate!".

Wyatt, McRae, Windo, Sinclair

If I understand this correctly, the French magazine Improjazz will release an album called "One Night Stand" with Robert Wyatt (drums, voice), Dave McRae (keyboards), Gary Windo (tenor saxophone) and Richard Sinclair (bass guitar)!

Vinyl, 300 copies only and out in March 2015. No info on recording dates or track names, so this is all i know. And I stole the idea for this blog post from Hibou, Anemone & Bear.

You may order from here.

Alltid annerledes

Nice Robert Wyatt piece by journalist Geir Rakvaag in the Oslo based newspaper Dagsavisen 17 January (pages 34 -35), focusing on the new biography and the new Domino sampler.

The title "Alltid annerledes" is the Norwegian way of saying "Different every time".

Biographer Marcus O´Dair will present his book at the Off The Page festival in Oslo on Saturday (24 Jan.), and the festival will also screen the documentary "Free Will & Testament: The Robert Wyatt Story" (2002) (Screening programme right here).


Off The Page Schedule:

11:00 – 16:00
Music fair

12:00
Totally Wyatt
by Marcus O’ Dair

13:00
The Man Who Bought An Echo
by Sarah Angliss
Lunch & market mingle

15:00
Stunt Rock
Okkyung Lee & Lasse Marhaug

15:45
Sounding the Labyrinth
by Ken Hollings
Coffee break

16:45
How to Give a Lecture
by Kim Hiorthøy

17:15
Records Ruin The Landscape
by David Grubbs, w/ Camille Norment & Maja S.K. Ratkje
Coffee break

18:30
Sonic Comix
by Savage Pencil
Dinner break

20:30
Arto Lindsay
interviewed by Anne Hilde Neset

21:30
Do Witches Dream of Electric Broomsticks?
performative lecture by Jenny Hval


Added 23 January 2015:

Audun Vinger "Omsider fri" ("At last he is free") in newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (online 22 January).

Little Red Robin Hood - Robert Wyatt Docu

There are plans for an online re-release of "Little Red Robin Hood" - a Robert Wyatt documentary by Carlo Bevilacqua and Francesco Di Loreto (1998).

Follow this new Facebook site for updates and feel free to see my blogpost from August 2014 on the same topic too.

The Unthanks: Flutter

Here is "Flutter", a Becky Unthank penned song for The Unthanks album "Mount the air"
(Rabble Rouser 9 February 2015).

About the album on The Unthanks´ site:

"The Unthanks invite you to Mount the Air.

An invitation to be free, weightless, airborne, to transcend reality, to enter your imagination, to raise the possibilities above the ordinary, to become one with nature, to give yourself up to nature and let the wind carry you to new places. To fly."

Video for the title song over here.

Documentary: The Killing Of Tony Blair

So Robert Wyatt is making some new music?

Yesterday George Galloway tweeted this: "music legends Robert Wyatt and Steve Finnerty are collaborating on the sound track for The Killing of Tony Blair @TheBlairDoc coming soon".

"The killing of Tony Blair" is a Kickstarter crowd funded documentary.

Cassettes

It seems like we have a new back to basics trend with cassettes going.

I saw a Norwegian comic strip the other day, where some hipsters told a straighter guy that it was OK to stream music, that is if you recorded it on a tape recorder first, and then played it!

Anyway I think I have to get myself a new cassette deck soon.

The cassettes of the day in this blog are the first ever musical meeting of the trio B/B/S, being Aidan Baker (Nadja, Canada), Andrea Belfi (Italy) and Erik Skodvin (Svarte Greiner / Deaf Center, Miasmah label, Norway) and Susanna Wallumrød´s Best Of-series of three cassettes, celebrating her ten years as a recording artist (2014).

The Best of Susanna cover design is by Lasse Marhaug.

The B/B/S cassette may also be downloaded from Bandcamp.

Robert Wyatt: Far From the Birds and Cattle

Robert Wyatt sings 'Far From the Birds and Cattle' by Elizabeth Purnell (YouTube) from
'A Season In Hell' BBC Radio 3.

Words: Arthur Rimbaud.

Via Une Discographie De Robert Wyatt. Newsletter #40.

From Jazz Cats To Hot Rats

I found these hot rats on the backdoor of the music club Blå ("Blue") in Oslo this week (another photo from some distance here).

Artist: Hama Woods.

Clare Louise: Sea Song

Belgian Claire Louise´s cover of Robert Wyatt´s "Sea Song" today.

A bit late, I know, but here she is! The song was released as one side of a split 7" on Humpty Dumpty Records in 2013, with Le Yéti: "La Moisson" on the other side.

Gorg Buljo and Nils Økland: Neve

How about a duo with sami yoik and fiddles for your cold winter ears?

I believe you will like Georg Buljo (yoik) and Nils Økland´s (Hardanger fiddle, violin, and viola d’amore) album "Neve" (Duippidit 2014).

The music is composed by Buljo and released on his Duippidit company (no company web site?). About the music his site states he "builds on his Saami traditions with the yoik as the main base but brings along Scandinavian moods and phrases..".

The album title is the Italian word for "Snow", but the music is warm and beautiful and Økland´s fiddles are sounding fantastic as always.

Available from Amazon (UK) and iTunes.

Dworniak Bone Lapsa

Robert Wyatt plays trumpet on the track "Mortalman" on Dworniak Bone Lapsa´s "Fingers pointing at the moon" (2014)

On Dworniak Bone Lapsa´s Facebook:
"We were so incredibly excited when Robert Wyatt offered to play a trumpet part he had conceived on our track Mortalman. When one of the UK's most treasured musical souls makes this kind of gift it creates great energy in the band and production team. It was a while ago but we are still buzzing and even more so on the run up to the album release. Now we will get to share it with everyone who is listening. Thank you Robert".

Maverick Robert Wyatt

Robert Wyatt is portrayed in Q magazine, issue 343 (pages 52 - 56), in what looks like a series of Mavericks where they are "Celebrating the wildcards who´ve inspired cult worship".

Words: Dorian Lunskey.
Photos: Michael Clement.

Wyatt: "I did get carried away on drums. Every time I had an idea I would play it. I´ve regretted that since. The drummers I listen to now are the drummers that leave space".

Added 10 November 2015:

The full text posted on More Dark Than Shark.

Maja Ratkje at The Stone

There are no less than 27 videos from Maja Ratkje´s residency at The Stone (NY) in November 2014 on Kjreilly´s YouTube channel (counted 9 January 2015).

Here you might watch Maja Ratkje and Ches Smith, but check out more videos too for some fine free improv, contemporary and revolutionary tangos.

Different Every Time - Abridged!

Marcus O'Dair's Robert Wyatt biography "Different every time" is book of the week on BBC Radio 4!

An abridged version by Katrin Williams is read by Julian Rhind-Tutt.

A total of five parts.

Joy to the hotel

An old guy like me would not dream of asking young people to become vandals and crooks of course, but I must admit that I prefer street art to be outdoors (and on walls that have not been painted for a while).

Still a lot of the best ones now seem to enjoy doing commissioned works like huge murals and decorations in office buildings, training centers and hotels. Everybody needs some money to get by, so that´s not too hard to understand, is it?

I checked out Bergen street art artist Joy´s fine work at the Edvard Grieg Hotel in Bergen, not far from the airport.

The models are our local historical big shot Edvard Grieg, Bergen mayor Trude Drevland and Norway´s first female bishop, Rosemarie Køhn, Marilyn Monroe style and all!

Christian Wallumrød: Pianokammer

Christian Wallumrød´s first solo album, "Pianokammer", will be released by Hubro 23 January (International release 9 February).

Listen to the catchy teaser "Hoksang".

Peter Blegvad - Kew. Rhone. (Book)

Most of you have heard the album "Kew. Rhone." from 1977 I guess, with music by John Greaves and lyrics by Peter Blegvad?

"Kew. Rhone." is a strange, witty and beautiful album that will leave no listener untouched and everybody bewildered, with song lyrics about a painting of an excavation of a mastodon and one song being 22 proverbs.

In the song "Catalogue of fifteen objects" the words of the first half are descriptions of the objects, like "Coin stacks, several columns - voltaic piles of gold plated bamboo" and later the title "Ladder of kings". No "Baby, baby I´m gonna leave you"- lyrics here!

Have no fear! Uniformbooks have just published Peter Blegvad´s book "Kew. Rhone.", where Blegvad uncover themes and sources of every song, and you get contributions from other people involved or taken by the album, like Lisa Herman, John Greaves, Jonathan Coe and Robert Wyatt and lots of others - all entertaining and interesting, and some way over my head. I will certainly go back and read parts of this book several times, while listening to the record.

Some of the musicians on the album: Peter Blegvad, John Greaves, Lisa Herman, Andrew Cyrille, Michael Mantler and Carla Bley.

Robert Wyatt was not on the album, but has sung two tracks (the title track and "Gegenstand") on John Greaves "Songs" (1994) and Orchestre National De Jazz: "Around Robert Wyatt" (2009).

"Kew Rhone seems to me to be an extremely and unusually successful shot at Not Being Boring for Well Over Half an Hour". - Robert Wyatt, 1997.

Snakes & Ladders - Of night

We have already had a post on Snakes and Ladders performing "Lucky day" in June 2014, and here is "Of night" (Le Triton on YouTube) from the same concert.

Snakes and ladders
Sophia Domancich : keyb
John Greaves : voc
Himiko paganotti : voc
Eric Daniel : g

Please excuse me while I sleep on it

Hello people and hello 2015!

Let me just start the year with an excuse to all of you that have been sending me links to music I should listen to and write about, and haven´t heard a word from me.

Believe me or not, but I might have listened to the music and liked it too, but things have been a bit slow in 2014. It has just been too much for me to digest and blog about.

Regular visitors will know that I am a fan and not a reviewer, just trying to get more people hooked on good music. So I won´t promise to change, even if I know it´s rude not to answer people, and most of the stuff in wyattandstuff will still be music I seek out and buy myself.

If you still want to contact me, please do (I really appreciate it!), and find me on Twitter, Flickr or Instagram too for even shorter messages than the ones you will find here.

(I have a feeling I have been writing this blog post before! Please don´t check!)