Twittering Machines

May your records continue to grow

Along with your friendships

And obsessions.

Cheers!

Ilyas Ahmed
Between Two Skies / Towards The Night

Originally self-released as a pair of CDrs in 2005 (each limited to 50 copies), this double LPs-worth of guitar, vocal (no words but still sung), piano, percussion and bells all by Ilyas Ahmed is a stunning debut and a blessing of a re- release on vinyl. Born in Pakistan, raised in North Jersey and Minnesota now residing in Portland, Oregon (helping to explain the Honey Owens connection) musician and artist Ilyas Ahmen is a trance-driven dream come true.

Immune Recordings released this lovingly packaged gatefold in 2010 making this, as Simon says, another favorite record of the year. Sadly beautiful, swirling, meditative music that unfolds at a heart beat’s pace, this is soul music that moves you to another place. Limited to 987 copies, you want one.

From an interview with Ilyas on foxy digitalis:

I could pinpoint buying Trout Mask Replica and A Love Supreme when I was 16 or so as heading me in whatever direction I’m in now. I’d also have to mention Sun Ra’s Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy, Ravi Shankar’s In New York, Sandy Bull’s E Pluribus Unum, and Fred McDowell’s Amazing Grace. Ghost’s Second Time Around for sure. Also, tons of the jazz/folk/what-not on the E.S.P./Vanguard labels, and Siltbreeze (esp. un) a bit later on. There’s tons of shit. Still spend time trying to find those moments, and they’re still there, thank god.

For a proper review, check out what Rust Phimister has to say on Julian Cope Presents Head Heritage (he says a lot).

Ilyas Ahmed Discography (in case you, like me, want more):

Between Two Skies (CDr 2005)
Towards The Night (CDr 2005)
Century Of Moonlight (Time-Lag CDr 2006)
Yahan Aur Wahan (CDr 2006)
Speaking Of Shadows (CDr 2006)
Naqi (CDr 2006)
Between Two Skies/Towards The Night Reissue (Digitalis 2CD 2008)
The Vertigo Of Dawn (Time-Lag LP/CD 2008)
Arroyo (Digitalis CDr 2008)
Goner (Root Strata CD 2009)
Between Two Skies/Towards The Night Dbl LP Reissue (Immune Recordings 2010)
Century Of Moonlight LP/CD Reissue (Time-Lag Records future)
Goner Dbl LP (Root Strata future)

Ilyas Ahmed
Live On Land 2009

I don’t own this slice of super-sweet guitar-driven eastern-tinged ecstasy but a lucky 25 people with $100 to spare will. Limited release on Root Strata featuring hand-made collage’d artwork by Ilyas Ahmed on the cover and featuring Ahmed on guitar and vocals, Honey Owens (Valet, We Like Cats…) on guitar and Jed Bindeman (Heavy Winged / Eternal Tapestry) on drums. You can listen to a piece of a track here.

1980
IBM 3380
Cost: $81,000
Storage: 2.5 GB

2010
Yoda USB Flash Drive
Cost: $34.95
Storage: 4 GB

Full Blast + Friends
Crumbling Brain

As in yours. Peter Brötzmann, Marino Pliakas and Michael Wertmüller are Full Blast and Keiji Haino, Peter Evans and Mars Williams are the Friends. Recorded live November 6, 2008 at the Quasimodo Jazzfest in Berlin, this is a vinyl-only release recently released by Okka Disk.

If you had any doubts that this record would be a blazingly hot and fierce noise-fest, that somehow Brötzmann and Haino have mellowed to a softer shade of rage, you haven’t been paying attention. Side 1 is sparser with Full Blast and Brötzmann taking center stage. There’s something about Brötzmann’s playing, everything I guess, that I find engrossing. He’s a story-teller to my ears and I’m nearly always transfixed waiting for the next blast of narrative. The Friends show up in full force on Side 2 with Haino’s guitar driving things even farther into mayhem but it seems as the level rises, so goes Brötzmann even higher.

Improvised live free form sounded and pounded out physicality by masters of this universe. If you like Last Exit, you’ll be as happy as I am with this record and the fact that these guys are still able to simultaneously kick your ass while getting it up to crumbling brain heights.

Alive Coltrane
Turiya Sings

A cassette-only release from 1982 now out-of-print, Turiya Sings is other-worldly spirit-made-musical-flesh and you can download it for free from a link on the Roots Strata blog.

Wilson Alexandria “Deluxe”

Provo, Utah (FOX) – With their hands perpetually on the pulse of the audio consumer, Wilson Audio announced two new models of their award-winning loudspeakers for the upcoming CES 2011 the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow; the Wilson Alexandria “Deluxe” and the Wilson “Standard”.

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I saw this alluring and curvaceous beast on eBay and was intrigued by its mechanical beauty. It turns out it’s a Melophone invented and built by Pierre Charles Leclèrc, a Parisian music box maker, in the 1800s. A combination harmonium and guitar, you make a Melophone sing by pulling and pushing the piston coming out of the bottom of the body which is attached to a bellows inside while rolling those 104 ivory roller buttons on the neck allowing air to pass through to the corresponding chromatic reeds.

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me

2010

Marcel Duchamp
In Advance of the Broken Arm (1915)
Wood and galvanized-iron snow shovel, 52″ (132 cm) high

Jean Dubuffet
Musical Experiences

Jean Dubuffet was a champion of Art Brut (that was his term, he made it up in the 1940s) which translates roughly as “Raw Art” or “Outsider Art”:

“Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses – where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere – are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professionals.” Dubuffet

Whether or not we agree or sympathize with Dubuett’s point of view on Art Brut (it seems to me as soon as he coined the term it became obsolete), the Art he collected and loved not to mention made was positively stunning (you can visit his collection of Art Brut at the Château de Beaulieu in Lausanne, Switzerland). Dubuffet also published a magazine in 1964 titled L’Art Brut and I had the extreme good fortune of finding volumes 1 & 2 many years ago at a long gone bookstore on 18th Street. The text is in French but fortunately the Art isn’t.

I saw a show of Adolf Wölfli’s art at the American Folk Art Museum and it was among the most amazing and exhausting experiences of my life. But I don’t want to talk about Art Brut and Adolph Wölfli right now, I want to talk about the records Jean Dubuffet made with Asger Jorn in 1961.

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A Christmas Card From Don Van Vliet

The Ocean
Gave me Oysters
The People Watching it
Gave Me Ulcers

When the Ocean
is Wounded
it Takes the
Whole World to Heal.

Philip Guston, Christmas Card

from the Smithsonian

Cat sings Cat for Christmas

Oneohtrix Point Never
Returnal

With the Returnal 7″ release, I feel as if we’re given a sneak peak inside one of Daniel Lopatkin’s beautiful and mysterious musical structures closer to their beating human heart.

The LP remains at machine-distance where the appearance of Lopatikin’s voice is all but consumed, enveloped by a teeming city of sound both violent and strangely soothing.

Stephen reminded me while at Other Music, “do you have this yet?” holding out Returnal in one hand while his other was busy holding his stack of records. “No” I answered while adding it to mine. This is another record I’d include as a favorite for the year. Every thing is coated with melancholy reminding me of so many things as I listen, places familiar and foreign and the time in between. Lovely.

from Paul Barbera’s Love Lost

…wouldn’t be nearly as lovely if those were CDs.

originally spotted on Selectism