In the spring of 2010, we had the honor of hosting musician Grouper for a residency at Ballroom Marfa. During her stay, she made field recordings and then recorded a few tracks at Marfa Recording Company, which appear on this limited-edition 7″ (only 500 pressed). White vinyl. Cover design by Liz Harris.
Side A: Water People
Side B: Moving Machine
Pre-order today, August 30th release date.
Lucian Freud
(8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011)
Reflection (Self Portrait), 1981
Reflection with Two Children (Self-Portrait), 1965
Self-Portrait, 1939-40
Self Portrait: Reflection, 1996
Self-Portrait, 2002
I picked up this floating frame on sale at a local ‘craft’ store for $15. It’s just the look I was after for my limited edition Audiophile Tree of Life Print. There’s still time (and prints) to get your very own and dress it up however you see fit.
Boris
Attention Please
On Attention Please, the kinder, gentler Boris drips with sweet longing.
This is one of three new releases and that’s not counting their collaboration with Merzbow (I really should get the others even if that means ordering New Album from Japan) and its one that stands apart mainly because Boris gives Wata lead vocal duties (of the spoken/sung/whispered variety) for the first time on top of her guitar and keyboards. Takeshi provides backing vocals, bass and guitar and Atsuo nails things down on drums and percussion.
I prefer the harder-edged songs that end Side 1 but I’ll take the whole package. And what a lovely package it is.
Comes with a lyric insert and poster (that’s it, folded).
From “Attention Please”
Woo, so heavy
Woo, woo, about to fall apart
Woo, woo, about to fall apart
Woo, so heavy
Want to board
Want to board (onto you)
Want to board (onto me)
Want to board
Ah…Gate Heaven
Ah…Gate Heaven
Ah…Gate Heaven
Attention Please
And if you order direct from the label, you can opt for the clear vinyl-version. I did.
Boris Skivvies!
Artwork is from their newly released New Album which was only released in Japan. We have to make due with the other two.
Les Rallizes Denudes
Heavier Than A Death In The Family
An Audiophile Club Selection Of The Month !*
Les Rallizes Denudes, the band (they were a theater troupe prior), were formed at Kyoto University in late 1967. This record filled with 4-sides of live dates mostly from 1977 (“People Can Choose” was recorded in ’73) is heavier than a lead suit and just as comfortable. Blistering hot feedback sludge (read Mike Kelley’s thoughts on feedback) on top of heavily fuzzed echoed and overdriven everything, Les Rallizes Denudes is a monster sensory assault (I’m guessing Antonin Artaud was a big influence) headed by singer/guitarist Takashi Mizutani with various and sundry other members coming and going during their near-30-year run (original bassist Moriaki Wakabayashi was involved in a highjacking of Japanese plane to North Korea in 1970).
Brutal, relentless, warped and howlingly committed, Heavier Than A Death In The Family is heavier than a death in the family. People like Kawabata Makoto must have a shrine dedicated to their influence.
* this record is a must-have masterpiece for all those audiophiles looking for sound quality first and foremost
Destroy All Monsters Magazine 1976 – 1979
The original Destroy All Monsters band, named after the Japanese kaiju-mashup sci-fi film, was Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara, and Jim Shaw. Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw quit the band and headed to Art School in 1976 and Mike Kelley came out with a degree is attitude and success. I remember seeing his show (1982) containing stuffed animals up to dastardly deeds at Metro Pictures (where Jim Shaw shows as well) and feeling woozy.
Destroy All Monsters Magazine 1976 – 1979 from the very worth-seeking-out-their-other-stuff Primary Information is what it says and it looks deletable.
Destroy All Monsters Magazine was edited by Cary Loren and contained artwork, photographs, and flyers from band mates Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara, and Jim Shaw. Printed using any papers and techniques available to the band, the issues combine the cut and paste tactics of punk zines with a psychedelic affinity for color. Destroy All Monsters Magazine functions as a kind of manifesto, providing insight into the band through densely layered pages with movie imagery, kitsch, cartoons, delicate drawings, and counter-culture collages. While Destroy All Monsters has been the subject of recent exhibitions and partial reprints, this is the first time that all issues have been reprinted.
The Mal Waldron Trio
Impressions
Recorded and released in 1959 just after Mal arrived back in the US from a tour of Europe accompanying Lady Day, Impressions includes his three-part Overseas Suite. “Champs Elysses” is the opener – “It was the widest avenue I had ever seen. I tried to get the feeling that I had while walking down it. Among other things I was reminded of Gershwin’s American in Paris.” While I’m sure Mal had a spring in his step, he doesn’t ever strike me as being capable Gershwin’s flamboyant bounce.
As a colorist, Waldron seems more akin to Rembrandt than Matisse, at least to me. I guess that’s what people mean when they describe his music as “brooding”. The remaining “Suite” songs, “Ciao!” and “C’est Formidable” are spread out on the record (my only complaint/question), interspersed with a track penned by Mal’s wife Elaine “All About Us” (“The Us in ‘All ABout Us’ is Mal, Elaine and their children. The song expresses the feeling they have together” at least that’s what Ira Gitler tells us in his liner notes), and three cover tunes, “You Stepped Out of a Dream” (Nacio Herb Brown, Gus Kahn), “All the Way” (Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen), and “With a Song in My Heart” (Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers).
More from Ira Gilter’s liner notes:
Mal remembers “With A Song In My Heart”, played at a slow tempo, from his childhood. As a result, it sounds ‘old’ to him. Another version, recorded by Sonny Rollins for Prestige in 1951, helped sustain him when he was playing in a sad r&b group [so sad, they didn't even capitalize 'r&b'] on the road in the early Fifties. “Whenever I’d get back to the hotel I’d put Sonny’s record on and it would give me a lift and renew my hope that I wold be playing good music some day.”
Thankfully, some day came sooner than later for Mal and for us and let’s not forget to emphasize – listening to records can also give us hope. The rest of the trio consists of Addison Farmer on bass and Albert “Tootie” Heath on drums and they play as one. Another highly polished soulful gem from the Mal Waldron songbook.
Why is vinyl so hot? With your help, Ben Meadors and writer Owen McCafferty intend to find out (I spotted this on Stephen Mejias’ blog and thought it worth spreading the word):
Photographer Ben Meadors and writer Owen McCafferty are going to set out on a journey to discover what exactly is inspiring people all over the United States to buy vinyl, and share that journey with all of you.
By raising $6,500 Ben and Owen will travel to Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York City, to photograph and interview young record collectors, record store owners, and the occasional vinyl buyer to ask them why they love records, and what keeps them buying.
After collecting the pictures, Owen will write a narrative to document their journey in a 180+ page, full color photo book to share with the world.
Go to their Kickstarter page and help kick start their journey into the heart of vinylness.
Bjork
Biophilia
It’s an album. It’s an app. It’s multimedia. It’s interactive. Bjork’s bit the Apple. September 27, 2011 marks the official release date for Biophilia, Bjork’s ode to music, nature and technology. There’s an LP ($23.23), a digipack CD ($18.58), a regular old CD ($13.93), 12″ remixes (The Crystalline Series, $12.38/ea), mp3 ($1.22), flac ($1.94), wav ($2.33) downloads of each track, a free and a paid iPhone/iPad app ($9.99).
And The Ultimate Edition ($775.00):
presented in a lacquered and silkscreened oak hinged-lid case, consists of the Biophilia Manual along with 10 chrome-plated tuning forks, silkscreened on one face in 10 different colors, stamped at the back, and presented in a flocked tray. Each fork is adjusted to the tone of a Biophilia track, covering a complete octave in a non-conventional scale:
A 220 Hz
B 246.9 Hz
C 261.6 Hz
Db 277.2 Hz
D 293.7 Hz
Eb 311.1 Hz
E 329.6 Hz
Gb 370 Hz
G 392 Hz
A 440 Hz
You can download the free Biophilia app (I did) and listen while you swipe finger to orbit, two-finger swipe, tap and pinch your way around Bjork’s musical universe. As you do, what you see and hear (the free app includes the track “Crystalline”) changes. The paid app gets you more:
björk biophilia app intro narrated by david attenborough from Björk on Vimeo.
I really hope we are “on the brink of a revolution that will reunite humans with nature through new technological innovation” and the idea that we can tap out the beginnings of that soundtrack on a pitchfork or an iPad with Bjork as our guide makes perfect sense to me.
Circuit des Yeux
Portrait
Haley Fohr reveals more of herself and sheds a few layers of sonic mystery in Portrait and we can all breath sigh of thanks and loss. “All songs written, tracked, and mixed by H. Fohr” read the sparse liner notes that go on to say, “Recorded in late 2010 in the bedroom underground. Words on ‘I’m On Fire’ by B. Springsteen, recorded live 9/11/10 by Russian Recording.” You read that right, Circuit des Yeux does Bruce but you might not pick that up even if you know the original as Holy howls over the microphone’s abilities and crushes sound quality with pain.
I can’t help but think about other bedroom underground music makers like Zola Jesus who appears to have graduated from hers in her upcoming release and Julianna Barwick and Weyes Blood and even snatches of Noveller but here Holy is channeling farther-back classics like Niko especially on “3311″ which is one of more than one fairly straight-forward songs to be found on Portrait and I find the whole damn thing beautifully sad and haunting and wonderful. There’s so much here and elsewhere and so much more to come I can only imagine a world full of smiling music-listeners.
Help turn Cecil Taylor’s home into a living museum. Check out the Museum’s Facebook page and Cecil Taylor’s website for more information. The benefit concert will be held on September 14, 2011, 6:00 – 10:00 PM at Brooklyn Borough Hall, 210 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, NY. According the Facebook page, tickets are $200.
The Performers :
Speakers: Brent Edwards, Hugo De Craen, Denis Woychuck
Spoken Words: Amiri Baraka, Anne Waldman, Tracie Morris, Steve Dalachinsky, Miguel Algarin, Mark Jacobson, Jane Grenier B.
Piano: Geri Allen, Antonio Ciacca, Amina Figarova, Billy White,
Drums: Marc Edwards, Nasheet Wait, Andrew Cyrille, Weasel Walter, Chris Strik
Bass: Henry Grimes, Joe Morris, Albey Balgochian
Violin: Yasmine Azaiez, Tanya Kalmanovitch
Guitar: Elliott Sharp, Edward Ricart, Thurston Moore, Dom Minasi, Zach Layton, Bill Laswell
Reeds: John Zorn, Elliott Levin, Ras Moshe, Marco Eneidi, Tineke Posma, Don Byron, Marc Mommaas
Flute: Bart Platteau
Trumpet: Stephen Haynes, Nate Wooley, Lew Soloff, Ernie Hammes, Amir Elsaffar, Ralph Alessi
Trombone: Denis Beuret
Theremin: Mike Edison
Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides
Poisson
Originally released in 2009 on cassette in an edition of 50 on Rayon Records, MIE Music has stepped up to the plate with 10 times as many copies of this 180g 12″ reissue. Kelly Jones (flute) and Pascal Nichols (percussion and electronics) are Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides and together they make profanely sacred improvised music for the here and now and after (Genre: Japanese Classic Music / Progressive / Screamo – from their MySpace page). Available for pre-order, early August release date. Feed your head.
Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides
Sixth Samovar
Due to a power outage, Kelly Jones and Pascal Nichols turn a candle-lit Bristol cinema into an all-acoustic wonderland. Recorded June 12, 2010 recently released on CD by Rayon Records.
Venetian Snares
Cubist Reggae
Aaron Funk/Venetian Snares puts Reggae through the Picasso sound machine spitting out heavy, chunky doom-laden beats. 12″ EP available from Planet Mu Records.
Stephan Mathieu
To Describe George Washington Bridge
10″ single from Stephan Mathieu who uses 78rpm Handel records (“Twelve Concerti Grossi” performed by the Busch Chamber Players in 1946, and a Columbia 10″ record from 1912 with Händel’s “Messiah”) played over gramophone and transformed via computer:
“Between 1928 and 1932 the earliest recordings of historically informed performances of music from the late Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque era were etched into 78 RPM records. I used some of these records from my collection, playing them back with two mechanical acoustic HMV Model 102 gramophones. The initial soundwaves produced back then by period instruments like the clavichord, viols, lute, hurdy-gurdy are read from the grooves by a cactus needle to be amplified by the gramophones diaphragm housed in a soundbox. Those vibrations travel through the tonearm which is connected straight to the gramophones horn, which releases the music to my space. Here the sound is again picked up by a pair of customized microphones and send to my computer, to be transformed by spectral analysis and convolution processes. An imaginary room, inhabited by all the spatial information collected on the journey is created and will be projected in a final instance into the listeners space.”
Sounds positively ethereal. Limited to 400 copies + 100 Artist Copies from Dekorder.
