Archie Shepp & Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen
Looking at Bird
Bird, Gershwin, Berlin and Bird (again & again). From 1980 on SteepleChase, this is melodic spittle, skwonk, blert, bass and bebop. Listen in to Shepp’s breath and Pedersen’s scampering fingers close-miked, all relish. I think they’re having a blast.
Feldman / Guston’s Feldman
Was Morton Feldman an Abstract Expressionist? And Philip Guston a minimalist? Labels. Stinkin labels. Sheeesh. Feldman was friends with Philip Guston and John Cage. “That is the basic difference between Cage and Guston,” Feldman continued. “Cage sees the effect, he ignores its cause. Guston, obsessed solely by his own causality, destroys its effect. They are both right, of course, and so am I. We complement each other beautifully. Cage is deaf, I am dumb and Guston is blind.”
Labels aside, I always had a soft spot for Morton’s sparse, slow and quiet compositions. “My desire was not to compose, but to project sounds into time, free from a compositional rhetoric that had no purpose here.”
Morton Feldman
The Early Years
Popol Vuh
Tantric Songs
If you keep in mind the Popol Vuh was a Mayan sacred text and the Mayan’s pulled human hearts from living sacrificial victims, the opener “Mantra of the Touching of the Heart” takes on a slightly less granolaesque flavor. Popol Vuh also provided the soundtracks to a number of Werner Herzog’s films including Fizcarraldo and their mixture of the spiritual and the dark make for a surprisingly hearty cosmic stew. I’m on the hunt for all their Herzog collaborations and their earlier Hosianna Mantra.
Tantric Songs from 1981 features all Florian Fricke compositions and Florian on piano and vocals accompanied by guitar, percussion, oboe, english horn and tambura.
Here’s two takes of the same scene – first with Jason Robards and “guest” then with Klaus Kinski. Klaus makes Jason and Mick look like crappyactors. Parallels? One of Werner Herzog’s wunderkinds.
Jockum Nordstrom
Quirky artist from Sweden. Lots of musicians, sex and architecture. His drawings can be beautifully crude. More images at David Zwirner Gallery.
Cecil Taylor
New York City R&B
Originally released on Candid, this session was recorded over 2 days in January 1961. Re-released on the Barnaby Candid Series and Jazzman. Featuring Cecil on piano, Buelle Neidlinger (who is really the leader on this LP), Dennis Charles, Billy Higgins and Archie Shepp. But things really cut loose when Clark Terry, Roswell Rudd and Steve Lacy join in on Duke Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be”. Taylor plays this number as straight as you can imagine while keeping the Taylor touch. This session may also contain the only recording of Taylor playing 12-bar blues on the track “O.P.” which is dedicated to Oscar Pettiford.
Archie Shepp
Blase
According to John DeVore, the black cover is the one to covet – so I bought it and compared and…yes. Blase is one of my current favs (by a long shot) featuring Jeanne Lee on some brilliant vocals, Chicago Beau and Julio Finn on harmonica, Dave Burrell piano, Lester Bowie on trumpet and fleugelhorn, Malachi Favors bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. If I heard this when it came out in 1970, it would have saved me a lot of time.
Heiner Stadler
Brains on Fire Vol. 2
These compositions date from 1971 and 1973. Side 1 features Dee Dee Bridgewater and Reggie Workman on a 16+ minute jag to a short poem by Lenore Kandel “Love in the Middle of the Air”. Side 2 picks up where Volume 1 left off with Jimmy Owens, Tyrone Washington, Workman, Stadler on piano, Brian Blake and Lenny White. A bit edgier than the first outing, the Volume 2 stand-out has to be the Dee Dee and Reggie duet. Haight-Ashbury Beat-inspired poetry (Kandel was a bit of a scandal with her poem “To Fuck with Love” which was prosecuted for obscenity in 67) meet Reggie’s plucked, strummed and bowed bass. Tasty.
Conlon Nancarrow
Studies for Player Piano
Recorded on Nancarrow’s two “prepared” Ampico player pianos at this home/studio in Mexico driven by piano rolls that were punched by Nancarrow’s own custom built punching machine. Controlled frenzy. A crazy cocktail of ragtime, blues and baroque beyond the scope of human fingers.
A great thinker, Krishnamurti, and his record collection.
Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music
double cassette 1985
Industrial ambiance par excellence. I’d recommend buying all the early ones you can find – hand-made cover art out of foil, roofing tiles, burlap and press board tied together with red string. Members included Paolo di Paolo, Andy Eardley, Lisa Hale, Peter Jensen, Ben Ponton, Mark Spybey, Robin Storey.
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