Although not often documented here, I continue to regularly fall down various musical rabbit holes. Today's was post-Cold War Czech ambient, a genre I didn't even know existed until I stumbled across an NTS playlist titled Tearoom Ambient, the name music journalist Pavel Klusák gave to the 1990s movement.
Jaroslav Kořán is an artist from Prague who works in the field of music and sounds, video, photography, and graphics. His technique features improvisation, controlled chance, and the use of unusual materials and techniques. Šumavský jam is a spontaneous improvisation recorded in 2012 by Jaroslav and his brother Michal, a longtime collaborator. Lest one think the title is a Czech version of Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, Šumavský refers to Šumava, or "Bohemian Forest," the wooded mountain range that extends from Germany into the Czech Republic.
Part One, above, is an excerpt of the complete performance, and the whole piece (54 minutes) is available without interruptions or edits on Spotify.
Marshall Allen turns 101 years old today. For-real 101, not some Sun Ra-Solar Myth-made-up 101 years. One hundred and one Earth revolutions around the Sun. Born in 1924, he just dropped this live album last week. So okay, he was "only" 100 when it was recorded, and okay, the drummer and bassist are younger than him, but that's Allen tearing it up on sax and that weird electronic wind instrument he sometimes plays, and bassist James McNew of Yo La Tengo may be called a lot of things, but nobody's called him "young" since the 1980s.
Marshall Allen's Ghost Horizons Live in Philadelphia is a terrific album, maybe one of the best of Allen's long career and right up there with the best of the best of his Sun Ra sets. Go out and but it right now.
Horace Silver's 1972 album, Total Response, included a track, Old Mother Nature Calls, that sounds like something RFK, Jr. might agree with today (please don't share this track with him). One reviewer called the album a "sprawling, incoherent, and just plain weird mess of funk, fusion, soul-jazz, African spirituality, and hippie mysticism."
My point is that even 53 years ago, we were aware of the problems with ultra-processed food, additives, and pesticides. It's hippie bullshit but it's true.
When I'm not cleaning out my office cabinets and unearthing 20-year-old CDs of my former collection of MP3s or following whatever rabbit hole NTS radio is leading me down or just plain listening to what I feel like hearing at that moment, I'm keeping up with the newest music releases according to Spotify's weekly Release Radar and NPR's New Music Fridays. I overlook some 90% of what both sources offer each week and selectively add my own picks from the lists to my personal Newest Shit playlist.
This week, I added the latest LPs from Deradoorian (Ready for Heaven), Kara-Lis Coverdale (From Where You Came), and Arcade Fire (Pink Elephant), as well as a single (My Love Will Bring You Home) by beloved indie-pop band Allo Darlin.
I also added the album Electric Fields by David Chalmin and the Labèque sisters, along with soprano Barbara Hannigan. Electric Fields consists of modern arrangements of centuries-old vocal music, including compositions by the German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and medical practitioner Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179), also known as the Sibyl of the Rhine. Hildegard is one of the best-known composers of medieval sacred music and is considered by many to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. Her texts were written both in Latin and her own invented lingua ignota. Neurologist Oliver Sacks expressed the opinion that her mystical visions were the result of migraines while not discounting the polymathic brilliance of her many contributions to the arts and science.
O Virga Mediatrix was meant by Hildegard to accompany the singing of the gospel at mass, and is but one of Hildegard’s meditations on the Virgin Mary’s role in salvation. It is the opening track on Electric Fields and showcases Hannigan's voice and the keyboards of Katia and Marielle.
Yesterday, I pulled a random CD out of my long-unheard collection of archived MP3s. I burned the disc back in 2002 in the post-Napster days of Usenet, BitTorrent, and 100 GB hard drives. The CD was labeled "Volume LXXIV" and, yes, there are at least 100 CDs in the collection. My problem in 2002 (well, one of my problems) was that I was downloading digital music faster than the storage capacity of my PC allowed, and a lot of the music got burned to CD, shelved, and forgotten. I literally have no idea what's in that 100-CD library and Volume LXXIV was a truly random selection from the collection.
It turns out the disc contains three albums (Garlands [1982], Head Over Heels [1983], and Heaven or Las Vegas [1990]) and one EP (Sunburst & Snowblind [1983]) by the Scottish dream-pop/shoegaze band, Cocteau Twins.
The music of Cocteau Twins fits right in with the early-80s post-punk/goth of bands like The Cure, Bauhaus, and Siouxsie & the Banshees. Songs like Sugar Hiccup sound like they could have been the blueprint for 90s bands like The Sundays, and while that sound has gone in and out of fashion over the decades, Cocteau Twins still sound fresh and relevant, at least to this old man's ears. It's nearly unfathomable that 43 years have passed since Garlands first dropped, and it's interesting to note that more time has passed between the burning of Volume LXXIV (2002) and today than the release of Garlands (1982) and the burning of the CD. I've posted a live video up above of Wax & Wane from the Garlands album in appreciation of Elizabeth Fraser's unique vocal style.
Volume LXXIV also contains dance remixes of Bjork's Big Time Sensuality (Dom T. Big Time Club Mix), Massive Attack's Protection (Angel Dust Remix), and the Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime (DJ Tomkat's Spacey-Bassy Mars Mix). None of the remixes add much to the originals, other than additional length and being dancier. The disc also has a live Stereolab bootleg (Muffathalle Munich 18-09-2001), Meredith Monk's 1981 ECM debut, Dolmen Music, two jazz-fusion albums by Soft Machine's Hugh Hopper (Hopper Tunity Box [1976] and Rogue Element, 1978]), and two 1996 new-age/world-music albums, Deep in Didge by Tribal Dance and Trilobite by Uakti.
Yes, my tastes in music were pretty eclectic even back then.
At 85 years of age, New Zealand composer Annea Lockwood is still producing interesting, important, and vital new music. On Fractured Ground was recorded using Belfast'a so-called "peace lines," dozens of immense walls erected since the late 1960s to separate Catholic and Protestant areas of the city. Lockwood and her collaborators play the walls themselves as gigantic resonant instruments, using their hands and objects such as stones and leaves, and then editing and manipulating the recordings in the studio. The ominous sound mirrors the gargantuan nature of the walls and the alienation and isolation they created.
You can purchase the recording - and support Lockwood and her collaborators - at Bandcamp.
