The Unthanks live

Oh no, I´m still not ready to stop writing about The Unthanks, and their versions of the songs of Antony & The Johnsons and Robert Wyatt!
Here are two videos from Saint James´s Church in London. First Antony´s "Paddy´s Gone" and next Robert Wyatt´s "Sea Song", from the tour happening right now.

Robert and Alfie attended one of the concerts of the tour, leading to the following message on The Unthanks´ Twitter account: "Don't think I'll ever do anything so heightening or stressful as playing Alifib/Alifie in front of Robert Wyatt & Alfie Benge last night."
My guess: No reason to be nervous!

Use It Or Lose It

Hurry up now, only two days left to listen!
BBC Radio 3's "Between the Ears" still offer "Use It Or Lose It", a radiophonic play by (and with) Peter Blegvad. Producer: Iain Chambers.
The topic is loss of memory.

The Unthanks, Antony Hegarty, Robert Wyatt

The Unthanks’ new album, ”The Songs of Robert Wyatt and Antony & The Johnsons” (Rabble Rouser 2011), is out now. The music was recorded live at The Union Chapel in London, and is probably the first one in a series a bit on the side of their ordinary releases, since it’s subtitle is ”Diversions Vol. 1”.

Previous to this one, The Unthanks, with sisters Rachel and Becky in the lead, have released four albums (the two first ones as Rachel Unthank and The Winterset), ”Cruel Sister” (2005), ”The Bairns” (2007), ”Here’s the Tender Coming” (2009) and ”Last” (2011).
On the albums they play traditional folk, self penned folk and a nice selection of cover songs by artists like Robert Wyatt, Nick Drake, Bonnie Prince Billy, King Crimson and Tom Waits. They have also done ”Sexy Sadie” by The Beatles on a CD included with Mojo magazine.

I guess it will not come as a shock, but on the new album they only sing Antony & The Johnsons and Robert Wyatt’s songs, all done perfectly (well “Dondestan” perhaps too lively!) with a touch of folk and presented in a charming way. Antony’s songs are mostly taken from the album "I am a Bird Now", while Wyatt’s are harvested from "Comicopera", "Dondestan (revisited)", "Cuckooland", "Shleep" and "Rock Bottom" ("Sea Song" of course!).
One of ”Wyatt’s songs” is Norwegian Anja Garbarek’s fantastic ”Stay Tuned”. Nice!

Oh yes, this is indeed a live recording. We hear several coughs, slips of the tounge and wrong starts, but that doesn’t matter really, it’s like being there in person. I play it loud (as suggested in the liner notes too), and like it a lot!

Vossajazz 2012

I´m not much of a Christmas man, but must admit I like the way the Norwegian Jazz Festival Vossajazz release their 2012 program as a Christmas calendar. The festival is happening 30 Mars - 1 April.

Marc Ribot is coming with Brad Jones and JT Lewis, but in this blog post video he is playing with Henry Grimes and Chad Taylor.

Robert Wyatt vocal improvisations

Robert Wyatt - vocal improvisation and more (1991-95) by melodyn

Prepare yourselves for some of Robert Wyatt´s vocal improvisations, recorded by a French radio station in 1991.
You also get some music from the Millenium album "A Civilised Word" (1995).

2 x Brötzmann trios

Check out Peter Brötzmann in two different trios, both of them recorded live in Japan, not long ago.
The first one is with Paal Nilssen-Love (dr) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (sello) (18 October), the second with Tamaya Honda (dr) and Michiyo Yagi (koto) (20 October).

Kjetil Møster: "Blow Job"

This may be of interest for some of you sax fanatics out there. Kjetil Møster is a regular visitor in this blog (and visiting even more often over at my Norwegian blog Wyatting), and he´s first solo album "Blow Job" (+3dB 2011) is being released today (can´t find it on Amazon or iTunes yet). I missed his release party in Bergen Wednesday (poster), but have heard the album, and recommend this mix of just breathing, tender melodies and powerful blowouts.

Still no info to be found on +3dB´s own site, but I seem to remember hearing that other solo releases were planned too. Time will show.