The Dedication Orchestra

Bergi57 recently posted three videos of The Dedication Orchestra playing at Verona Jazz 2001.

The videos are not exactly high quality, but what a gang playing material by The Blue Notes!
In this blog post you may watch "Andromeda" (Chris McGregor), and you may also see "Sondela" (Mongezi Feza) and "Traumatic Experience" (Harry Miller) on YouTube.

Read more on The Blue Notes over here, and according to this page, the version of The Dedication Orchestra playing in Verona was:

TEATRO ROMANO, VERONA, ITALY
22nd June, 2001
‘JAZZ 2001’
THE DEDICATION ORCHESTRA
Maggie Nichols, Julie Tippetts, Phil Minton, Francine Luce – voices; Harry Beckett, Henry Lowther, Kenny Wheeler, Jim Dvorak – trumpets; Mark Charig - cornet; Malcolm Griffiths, Paul Rutherford, Alan Tomlinson, Dave Amis – trombones, Dave Powell – tuba; Trevor Watts – alto; Elton Dean – alto; Lol Coxhill – soprano sax; Neil Metcalfe –flute; Sean Bergin – alto & tenor; Larry Stabbins – tenor sax; Julian Arguelles – baritone sax; Keith Tippett – piano; Roy Babbington – double bass; Louis Moholo – drums; Steve Beresford – director.

One Lick Less

One Lick Less is Julien Bancilhon (guitars, vocals) and Basile Ferriot (drums, backing vocals, piano), and in May 2013 they released a cover of Robert Wyatt´s "Alifib" on their second album "Spirits of Marine Terrace".

Jump to track number 5 to hear "Alifib" in this blog post, and buy the album for next to nothing over at BandCamp.

Concert Le Monde de Robert Wyatt à Lyon

How about this!? If I understand the info correctly, the whole of Robert Wyatt´s "Rock Bottom" (and other Wyatt tunes) will be performed at Théâtres Gallo romains de Fourvière (Lyon) 12 July 2014!

The concert is led by Craig Fortnam, leader of the North Sea Radio Orchestra, with John Greaves, Elisa Caron, Pascal Comelade and Silvain Vanot.

I got a tip all the way from Italy about this! Thanks!

« Merci d'apporter un souffle d'air frais à ma musique. L'entendre interprétée par d'autres musiciens, c'est comme être grand-père. Elle mène maintenant sa propre vie – mais nous, grands-parents, nous y retrouvons aussi, quelque part. C'est un sentiment formidable. » Robert Wyatt, février 2014.

Illustration: Some other Robert Wyatt projects.

Lumen Drones

A new Norwegian instrumental psychedelic drone trio for you today. Members are the great Nils Økland (fiddles) and Per Steinar Lie and Ørjan Haaland from the band Low Frequency in Stereo.
They played before Lee Ranaldo and The Dust at the club Blå in Oslo yesterday (Norwegian link), and they have an album ready for release on ECM!

Previously they called themselves Kaudervelsk.

Listen to a demo of the track "Juggernaut" from SoundCloud. Let´s see if the playing is as raw on the final ECM release.

Let me also say that Low Frequency in Stereo´s latest album "Pop Obskura" (SPY 2013) has been on regular play on my turntable these last months.

Have You Heard of Eugene Chadbourne?

The title of the blog post is the title of Adam Harper´s piece on Eugene Chadbourne in Dummy (6 April 2014). Read all of it over here.

I have had the pleasure of hearing Chadbourne with Shockabilly in the mid eighties (doing "Purple Rain" on electric rake), as a member of Aki Takase´s band (the Fats Waller project) and one of his solo shows.

He can be pretty wild and outgoing, but the video is an example of how cool he can be playing quite straightforward too. Watch "One more road to cross" with Jimmy Carl Black (dr) and Brian Jackson (piano), and I have to admit I posted it already in 2008 too.

"Chadbourne was described as America’s “only anarcho-paramilitary-electro-folkie-troubadelic-matador”, his music as “gonzo audio journalism” that “pushes traditional music to its edge and makes it jump”".

Building Instrument

How about giving the Bergen trio Building Instrument a chance?

Their record company Hubro describes their development like this: "The trio began to play together in Bergen in 2008, and their original idea was to explore electronic music. This project was quickly abandoned in favour of a more acoustic and home-grown focus. The members of the trio have now found their own self-defined niche within a genre that could be described as a no-man’s-land"

Musicians: Mari Kvien Brunvoll (vocals, sampler, zither, percussion, kazoo), Øyvind Hegg-Lunde (drums and percussion) and Åsmund Weltzien (synthesizer, electronics, melodica).

Mari Kvien Brunvoll has been a regular in my blogs as a solo artist, in Tim Tygg and working with guitar player Stein Urheim. And on this record she is singing, using her own glorious Molde dialect of Norwegian, on some of the tracks.
*Cough* I might be a bit biased here, when it comes to how glorious that dialect is.

Øyvind Hegg-Lunde is a member of Crab Is Crap with drummer Øyvind Skarbø, Electric Eye (great psychedelia!) and The Sweetest Thrill with Stephan Meidell.

Have a listen to the opening track "Historia" ("The History"), a wordless song there.

For one reason or the other the Norwegian release date is 07.03.2014, while international release happens 16.05.2014. Why?

Raise Four (T. Monk)

There are cover versions and there are cover versions!

Now how about this version of Thelonious Monk´s "Raise Four"?

Min Xiao-Fen plays the Chinese string intrument pipa.

Listen to the original here, for comparision.