The Unknown Zone Phil Manzanera, Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno

Info rom Phil Manzanera´s YouTube:

"A few years ago when Robert Wyatt was recording ' Cukooland 'at my studio Eno popped round for dinner ,a chat,and an overdub or two and after a few bevies we had a jam.This track ,The Unknown Zone' grew out of that night's improvisations, as did my track '50 minutes later
Phil Manzanera

THE UNKNOWN ZONE
(Wyatt/Eno/Manzanera)

Phil manzanera: Guitars
Brian Eno: Chaos drums and synth bass
Robert Wyatt: Keyboards
Yaron Stavi: Double Bass

Engineered and mixed by Jamie Johnson at Gallery Studio London October 2006".

Download available.

Slapp Happy will perform with Faust

Now how about this?! Slapp Happy to perform with Faust at Cologne's Week-End Festival in November!

Slapp Happy is Dagmar Krause, Anthony Moore and Peter Blegvad.

Blurbs by Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno and John Peel.

Psychic Temple "Plays The Music For Airports"

This one might interest you! A new take on Brian Eno´s "Ambient 1: Music for Airports" (1978), based on the track "1/1", on which Robert Wyatt played piano.

Head on over to Bandcamp to check out (and buy) Psychic Temple´s "Plays Music For Airports" (Joyful Noise 2016).

It´s not exactly ambient, but sounding really good in my ears.

Musicians:

Tabor Allen - drums
Philip Glenn - Hammond organ
Danny T. Levin - trombonium, euphonium, marching baritone, valve trombone
Paul Masvidal - electric guitar
Curt Oren - baritone saxophone
Cathlene Pineda - Wurlitzer electric piano
Sheridan Riley - drums & percussion
Chris Schlarb - electric guitar
Kris Tiner - trumpet
David Tranchina - double bass

Brian Eno: The John Peel Lecture 2015

From now you have 23 days left to listen to Brian Eno´s John Peel Lecture over on BBC Radio 6 Music, introduced by Mark Radcliffe!

You may also read a transcript (PDF) of it all, and perhaps the transcript might stay longer on the site?

"The annual John Peel Lecture invites a notable figure from the music industry to shape a debate and create insight around music and music-related media. Taking its inspiration from one of the greatest radio broadcasters of all time, and a figure who perpetually challenged the status quo, the John Peel Lecture has been a part of the Radio Festival since 2011.

This year's John Peel Lecture will examine the ecology of culture. Brian Eno will seek to demonstrate how the whole complex of individuals and institutions engaged in culture - artists, broadcasters, gallerists, promoters, DJs, managers, lawyers, fans - are symbiotically connected parts of a single huge organism which we call Culture. He will outline some of his thinking on this very unpredictable ecology and explore the interconnective relationships between the elements and components that combine to create our culture, and show how cultural processes confer essential and important benefits on society."

Birds, Bugs and Decapodes

Let´s hear it for the animals!!

- Native Instrument "Wipper Snipper".
Stine Janvin Motland and Felicity Mangan. Austrailan bug and animal adaptations.

- “The Noisiest Guys on the Planet” were recorded by Jana Winderen and is an ongoing investigation into the use and production of sound by decapods (shrimps and such creatures).

- Soundscape Røst Vol. 1.
"Soundscape Røst is an ongoing sound art project, that investigates and documents the changing soundscapes of the Røst archipelago in Nordland, northern Norway, and it´s struggling and endangered pelagic seabird populations, as well as the living coastal culture. Soundscape Røst traces the sound history of a truly unique environment".

More on the project here.

The album: Soundscape Røst ‎– Spaces And Species Vol. 1 (Leynar Rec. 2012).


So you think it´s pretty strange to have a post on a lot of animal sounds in a blog dedicated to Robert Wyatt? Check out Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt in "Flies".

40 years since "June 1, 1974"

Time flies! Today it is 40 years since the concert at The Rainbow Theatre headlined by Kevin Ayers, John Cale, Brian Eno and Nico, and also with artists like Robert Wyatt and Mike Oldfield.

The live album "June 1, 1974" was released by Island 28 June the same year. I can´t remember when I bought it, but my guess is a couple of years later, and it became one of my favorites, since I had been listening a lot to the involved artists from the early seventies. And it still sounds great!

I have been celebrating by playing the album this weekend of course, and i also read Dave Thompson´s self published book "June 1st 1974: Kevin Ayers, John Cale, Nico, Eno, Mike Oldfield and Robert Wyatt: The Greatest Supergroup of the Seventies" (2013).

The book is more than 300 pages long, and I was hoping for a detailed story about the event, but only 12 of the pages cover the concert and the album! The rest of the book is filled with discographies and description of concerts concerning the main people involved.

According to the book, these are the songs that was played at the concert but didn´t make it to the record: "Buffalo ballet" (Cale), "Gun" (Cale), "Das Lied Der Deutschen" (Nico), "Baby´s on fire #2" (Eno) and the Kevin Ayers songs "Didn´t feel lonely..", "Whatevershebringswesing", "Interview", "See You later", "It begins with a blessing...", "Confession of Dr. Dream..." and "I´ve got a hard-on for you baby" (G. Dobb).

Brodsky Quartet: Robert Wyatt Project

The Sounds New festival is happening in Canterbury 2nd - 9th May 2014.

On the programme they have Evan Parker´s 70th birthday concert, Icebreaker doing Brian Eno´s "Apollo" and (stay cool now!) Brodsky Quartet doing a Robert Wyatt Project (May 8th)!

Metal Machine Music For Airports

Thanks to Dangerous Minds I became aware of this fantastic mashup of Brian Eno´s "Music for Airports" (1978) and Lou Reed´s "Metal Machine Music" (1975).

That´s ambient noise for you!

We embed track number one, where Robert Wyatt is playing the piano. On Eno´s album that is!

Marcus O´Dair: Different Every Time

And we are still waiting for the release of Marcus O´Dair´s Robert Wyatt biography "Different Every Time" (Serpent´s Tail 2014).

New publication date: 6 November 2014.

While you are waiting, listen to both Robert Wyatt and Marcus O´Dair on Grasscut´s "Richardson Road", from the album "Unearth" (2012).

Checking Amazon for the biography, I noticed a book I have missed this year, and just have to order too: Dave Thompson - "June 1st 1974: Kevin Ayers, John Cale, Nico, Eno, Mike Oldfield and Robert Wyatt: The Greatest Supergroup of the Seventies" (Create Space Independent Publishing Platform 2013).

Any views on that one out there?

Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto - By This River

We had a pretty peaceful blog post yesterday, and we are still taking it slow!

Here you may enjoy Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto do Brian Eno´s "By This River", from "Before and After Science" (1977), and we are still at Yoko Ono´s Meltdown in London.

Brian Eno and J. Peter Schwalm remix Reggie Watts

In September 2012 Brian Eno was the PUNKT festival curator. He also joined J. Peter Schwalm on stage, to do a live remix of the fantastic Reggie Watts.

Schwalm uploaded 6 minutes of the remix on SoundCloud, for your pleasure, so check it out and see what you think about it.

Reggie Watts is coming to Bergen for the Nattjazz festival this spring, but we still know nothing about this autumn´s PUNKT festival.

Eno - Lux

"To coincide with the release of LUX, the album was broadcast at four times during Saturday 17th November 2012 via Brian-Eno.net

Listeners were invited to upload photos as part of an evolving public audio-visual project named 'DAY OF LIGHT'" (WarpRecords on YouTube).

I´m not surprised that my photo from a rainy Bergen was not chosen!

Punkt Festival 2012 - Day 1

The Punkt festival 2012 started on Thursday, with concerts and live remixes at the new venue Kilden in Kristiansand (Norway). Curator: Brian Eno.

The first band on stage was S.C.U.M. (UK), invited by Eno after he heard a catchy song on the radio while he was cooking breakfast (my version of Eno´s story!)
I had trouble getting to the music because of the loud volume (and sound mix?) during S.C.U.M.´concert, but everything was fine when Three Trapped Tigers (UK) played. A fine concert from a powerful trio!

But Reggie Watts was king of the evening, no doubt about that. I have never heard him before (yes, shame on me), but this was one of the best concerts I have attended in a long time! He did opera, reggae, soul, r&b, rap and even more I guess, singing both with a young girl´s voice and the deepest bass, and with great humor too! Ace!

As is the way of the Punkt festival, all concerts were remixed live, and my favorite remix of the evening (even if both Eno and Arve Henriksen were on stage later) was the cool, nodding rhythms of Marconi Union (UK), working on S.C.U.M.´s concert.

And let´s not forget the lights on Punkt! All concerts are treated to the most fabulous lights, making the concerts a joy to both listen to and watch.

The Punkt organizers strongly advice us amateurs to keep still, and let the credited photographers do the job. I will behave, but still I just might sneak my camera out a couple of times, and share here as usual. Hope they don´t throw me out.

Picture of Reggie Watts being interviewed before the concerts started.

Some Of Them Are Old

Annie Clark, aka St Vincent, cover Brian Eno´s "Some of them are old", during a private concert at Steve Nieve´s house in Paris.
Info on the video from YouTube: Filmed by Amaury « Amo » Voslion with his own desert footage@obviousfilms.com.

I guess you all have the original on Eno´s album "Here come the warm jets" (1973)?

Brian Eno lecture

Brian Eno (Russia 2011) on music and art in the 20th century. No less.

I´m looking forward to see Eno at the Punkt festival in Kristiansand (Norway) in September.

And this one I found over at Dangerous Minds, where they never seem to be sleeping.

The Stool Pigeon

Brian Eno, Robert Wyatt and 38 other artists, have been writing stories for the free music paper "The Stool Pigeon" (no 35, 2011).

It seems like The Stool Pigeon publish some articles online after a while, and they also sell old issues. The desperate ones should check their site regularly.

16 December: And here is the history.

Brian Eno to PUNKT 2012

I have hardly returned from Kristiansand, and PUNKT 2011, and the local newspaper Fædrelandsvennen write that Brian Eno is going to be the head curator of PUNKT 2012.
I might go next year too!

Documentary on Brian Eno

"Brian Eno 1971 - 1977. The man who fell to earth" (2011) is said to be the first ever documentary on Eno!? Well, here it is, more than two hours long, and focusing on the years 1971 - 1977.
A fascinating picture is drawn of the "non musician", who entered the rock scene with Roxy Music, stealing too much of the attention from lead singer and song writer Brian Ferry, was later connected to the minimalist and ambient scene, work with among others Robert Fripp, Cluster and David Bowie, and started the label Obscure, presenting ten albums with artists like Gavin Bryars, Harold Budd and David Toop.

Much time is spent on Eno´s fantastic "pop" albums from this period, "Here come the warm jets" (1973), "Taking Tiger Mountain" (1974), "Another green world" (1975) and "Before and after science" (1977). "Another green world" is being hailed as the master piece by lots of people, but I think it´s really hard to choose! I want them all on my best of lists.

Music journalists, biographers and some musicians are talking heads in the film (and they talk a lot!), but I´m sad to say that a well spoken man like Eno is only heard talking for about eight second.
No, he did not cooperate on this project!

I would have liked to hear more music and less talking, but still this is well worth a watch!

A forced (?) collection of Wyatt links

- Pitchfork March 16th: Moondog reminds Daniel Smith from Danielson of Robert Wyatt (and Smith is a huge Wyatt fan!).

- CMU March 25th: Robert Wyatt is one of Mira from Ladytron´s favourite musicians.

- Financial Times April 1: "Jazz from another planet". Wyatt describes Afrobeat to Eno. Cited in a piece on Seun Kuti.

- Liverpool Echo April 1: Adrian McNally from The Unthanks admires Robert Wyatt.

- The Guardian April 5th : Ric Phethean, the singer of Tall Ships, has Canterbury qualities, even if he doesn´t sing as high as Robert Wyatt or as deep as Kevin Ayers! So they claim!

Phil Manzanera reissues

Phil Manzanera  is interviewed in Daily Express, and two albums are mentioned, that are reissued today. We are talking about Manzanera´s firs solo album "Diamond Head", with Robert Wyatt singing on "Frontera", and Quiet Sun´s (Manzanera, Dave Jarrett, Charles Hayward and Bill McCormick, plus Eno and Ian McCormick) "Mainstream", both recorded during the same period, and released in 1975.

These albums are recommended for most Wyatt and Canterbury fans , and if you have access to Spotify, you may check them out there. The reissue of  "Diamond Head" seems to have two extra tracks,  "Charumba" and "Corazon Y Alma", while the   Quiet Sun album has five extra tracks and a pretty thick booklet.


Read about  "Diamond head" and "Mainstream" over at Phil Manzanera´s site, and order signed copies if you like.