Log #154 - Eno's Forst Years

A big fan of both Cluster and Harmonia (the latter a short lived "supergroup" being the Cluster duo of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius plus Neu! guitarist Michael Rother) Brian Eno collaborated with both groups in the mid 70s, co-recording 3 albums. Tracks and Traces was actually the first recorded in 1976 (just before Eno began work on Bowie's Berlin albums) but oddly not released until 1997. Cluster & Eno followed in 1977 and a third After The Heat (not reviewed here) came in 1978.

When Brian Eno first alighted upon the Harmonia grouping he proclaimed that they were the “the most important band in the world”. By then they had released their debut Musik Von Harmonia in 1974, and the follow up Deluxe in 1975 - both amazing original records combining the drive and motorik beats of Neu! with Kraftwerk electronics. Krautrock would never reach such peaks again and in fact Harmonia didn't try to either: these two outstanding records becoming the only studio albums to bear the Harmonia name alone.

Eno sought the musicians out at their studio hideaway in the rural town of Forst (on the German/Polish border 70 miles east of Berlin) and together they recorded sessions that would eventually make up Tracks and Traces which was first credited to Harmonia '76 and then as Harmonia and Eno '76. 

It remains odd that the compilation of these recordings would not see the light of day for 20 years as the eventual record makes a very strong collection with a lot more depth than the more celebrated Cluster & Eno that followed. It has what you could call a commercial side and an experimental ambient side which has as a centrepiece a 15 minute Sometimes In Autumn, a wonderful evocative track similar to the extended drones on Eno's later Ambient 1 album or Aphex Twin's SAWII.

The beautiful album opener Welcome showcases the added guitar present in the Harmonia version of the group from Michael Rother. The track would have been at home on Eno's classic pedal steel infused Apollo album. 

Atmosphere has those lovely electronically treated hi-hats that inform so many Harmonia albums. It's almost Kraftwerkian but much gentler. 

Vamos Companeros is where I really first hear the Eno influence - it's not one of his most inspired contributions reminiscent of some of his throwaway trifles of more recent years. 

Lurnberg Heath has vocals (or more or less spoken word, from Eno):

Don't get lost on Luneberg Heath

'Tis a real place, south of Hamburg.

An excellent record that now stands belatedly alone and proud in the Harmonia discography.

The following year the group, minus Rother, reconvened to produce Cluster & Eno (the one with the famous microphone above a bush at dusk cover). Can bassist Holger Czukay also guested on the album. 

Cluster & Eno is a lovely albeit slight record. I'd say it sounds to me like one part Cluster, two parts Eno. The tracks are mostly simple, usually composed of a theme of just three or four repeated notes, although most have hints of added strangeness which enhance the interest. 

So for instance opening track Ho Remono is largely a gentle pulsing keyboard piece typical of Cluster and Harmonia but becomes increasingly more distorted as it progresses. Wermut introduces soft chord pads and Selange is lightweight fayre. One is the longest and most experimental track including odd sitar sounds. 

My favourite track is Die Bunge which approaches the best of Cluster with fantastic otherworldly sounds, a heartbeat pulse, and a piano round that reminds me of Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

Eno went on his way after After The Heat but his endorsement and association with Berlin and its music, and particularly Cluster and Harmonia brought heightened attention and recognition to the groups and the whole Krautrock movement.

Cluster I / 71

Cluster  II

Cluster Grosses Wasser

Cluster Cluster & Eno
Harmonia Musik Von Harmonia

Harmonia Tracks and Traces

Cluster's Eno free Grosses Wasser came in 1979. Produced by ex-Tangerine Dream member Peter Baumann this album also ended a long association with engineer Conny Plank who had pretty much achieved group membership status since working with the duo since their Kluster debut in 1969.

The record featured a wider variety of styles including some wildly avant-garde material particularly on the extended side long title track which veers off on "Tago Mago Side 3 and 4 like" tangents. The rest of the album features shorter more beatey tracks quite distant from the ambient rural beauty of 1976's classic Sowiesoso album.

It's intriguing how Harmonia and Cluster are practically the same in personnel but do have tangibly different sounds. Personally I think the Harmonia albums are slightly ahead but then they only had two proper albums over which to maintain the standard whereas Cluster had a long and varied career (even being Kluster and Qluster during some of it!) not to mention all the Moebius and Roedelius solo albums and collaborations.

Where to start with this lot? Zuckerzeit, Deluxe, Sowiesoso, and Musik Von Harmonia are must-haves. To that I'd now add Tracks and Traces. Furthermore I'm sure I will discover more delights (albeit different ones) in the Cluster I and II albums but am yet to fully digest them.

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Log #153 - Large Clusters

Cluster I / 71

Cluster  II

Cluster Grosses Wasser

Cluster Cluster and Eno
Beatles Magical Mystery Tour

Beatles Revolver

Grosses Wasser (translated as "large water") was Cluster's 7th (not counting the two albums recorded as Kluster) album released in 1979. Produced by Tangerine Dream's Peter Baumann the music takes a significant turn towards a Tangerine Dream sound with some sequencer loops and percussive pulses.

A long time before that duo Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius debuted with Cluster I (later rebranded as Cluster 71) and a year later Cluster II, two classic albums of early experimental electronics. Then came the more famous and accessible Zuckerzeit and Sowiesoso albums before two collaborations with Brian Eno that foretold his "Ambient" series, the first Cluster and Eno featured here with it's marvellous cover (mind you, the Grossses Wasser cover is pretty cool too - is it a diving board or an aeroplane?).

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Log #152 - Experiments In Surround Sound

I'm reading a 33 1/3 book on The Flaming Lips. It's about their album Zaireeka. Now this is interesting for several reasons. For one I did not know the Flaming Lips had been around for so long (since the early 80s); I first heard of them around the time of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and the accompanying hit single Do You Realise?? but that was 2002, their 10th album, and leader Wayne Coyne was already over 40 by then.

The other reason is Zaireeka itself sounds like a very left field art rock statement which I would not have given the Flaming Lips credit for believing they were a fairly average middle of the road sort of indie band (notwithstanding their amazing live shows). I had heard they had done something a bit experimental more recently, after their commercial breakthrough with Yoshimi, and had assumed this must be the Zaireeka album on picking up the book, but no, that was 1997 (before commercial success had really reached the band so not an album you could really say was a career suicide). A quick scan through post 2002 albums does not readily reveal which one I was thinking about but it could have been Embryonic or The Terror? [It's Embryonic, Ed.]

Full Lips Discography:

Hear It Is (1986)

Oh My Gawd!!! (1987)

Telepathic Surgery (1989)

In a Priest Driven Ambulance (1990)

Hit to Death in the Future Head (1992)

Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (1993)

Clouds Taste Metallic (1995)

Zaireeka (1997)

The Soft Bulletin (1999)

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)

At War with the Mystics (2006)

Embryonic (2009)

The Terror (2013)

Oczy Mlody (2017)

King's Mouth (2019)

So what about Zaireeka? Well I haven't heard it and as you will read shortly I'm not likely to either. Infamously given a rating of 0.0 by Pitchfork (the follow up Soft Bulletin scored 10.0 from the same reviewer!) the album comes on 4 CDs each containing a quarter of the whole! Wtf? The concept was that four friends would have listening parties where they would each bring their CD player and play one of their CDs in synchronicity with the other 3 thus hearing the whole as it was intended. As it was rare for different players to run at exactly the same speed or even for the operators to start the process at exactly the right moment interesting phasing and echo effects would ensue, and no two "performances" would be exactly the same. It sounds similar to some avant garde experiments going on in the minimalist classical world by composers like Cage, Reich and Riley.

The zero Pitchfork review (since deleted although there is an archive link below) was based on the impracticality of the concept rather than the music. In fact the reviewer had not actually heard the 4 parts in unison admitting he'd "never know because I don't have the proper amount of stereo equipment" concluding that the product was "completely useless".

   
Later Pitchfork published a more favourable response from the 33 1/3 author Mark Richardson that praised the album for being...transient, variable and social.

The 33 1/3 book is honest. It says The Flaming Lips weren't very good and Wayne Coyne has a weak voice that could not even hold a tune for the first few albums.  

Coyne's voice can be good when he finds the right setting, but can also seem frail and thin, and on early records he almost never sang in tune.

Mark Richardson

This isn't news to me as they've always struck me as a high profile band without much substance, relying hugely on their original stage performances which involve amazing props, animal costumes, confetti guns, lazers, blow up balls and balloons (the arena carnage the morning after a headlining gig at Green Man Festival back in 2010 was something to see). 

The Flaming Lips @Green Man Festival, Wales, 2010

Fair enough, they started out like many high school bands without any pretensions and band members picked from friends and family dependent on whether they possessed any equipment (let alone if they could play it at all). Coyne kept his regular job in a restaurant for many years after the The Flaming Lips' formation. 

We will need you and your car, and your tape deck, and your co-operation for about 2 hours.

But in 1996 the ever creative Coyne decided to try something different. The band convened a series of interactive concerts or events dubbed parking-lot and boom-box experiments. Concert goers or "volunteers" would convene at a space and "lend" the band their car or boom-box cassette decks and would orchestrate the simultaneous mass playing of pre-recorded tapes to provide an immersive surround sound experience.

It sounds like a recipe for chaos and understandably concert flyers would warn: "we are sceptical about the entertainment value," but herein was the genesis of the Zaireeka idea. 

At roughly the same time as Zaireeka the band recorded the more conventional The Soft Bulletin album which (as the only Flaming Lips album I own) does gain a place in the magazine this week.

Although it was already their 9th album it represented a leap forward in quality to what had come before and for many fans was their masterpiece. 

There are some epic string drenched songs with multiple parts / some pleasant acoustic guitar fronted sing-a-longs / interesting electronic effects / thumping drums perhaps veering off into out of context funky drummer territory in places / and some fluttery synths which match Coyne's fluttery voice. 

It's an ambitious project and does sound a bit like everyone is playing different tunes sometimes and... that voice: High, weak and reedy but without the emotion of Neil Young. It's hard to hear past it actually and I do wonder what sort of band they may have been with a better singer. It's a wonder they've survived so long and Wayne Coyne is such a confident front man. Granted the instrumentation is excellent, the lyrics are good, and the melodies lovely (especially on regular set opener Race For The Prize, Waitin' For a Superman, What Is The Light? and Suddenly Everything Has Changed), but can Coyne carry them..?

... sometimes, but his singing sounds so much on the edge of breaking down most the time especially on the high notes it makes for an uneasy listen. A difficult song like A Spoonful Weighs A Ton is an example - such a vocal performance on X-factor would ensue an early red buzzer. I wonder whether he has ever considered just singing in a lower register like Lou Reed, Nick Cave, or the Geddy Lee of latter years?

No surprise then that some of the instrumentals are the most pleasing tracks with The Observer for example worthy of Kid A era Radiohead.

Having said that he's the maverick leader, the songwriter, the creative genius, so notwithstanding these shortcomings, The Flaming Lips would not exist without him.

John Martyn Glorious Fool

Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin

The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Jayhawks Smile
Tord Gustavsen Trio The Other Side

Emeralds Does It Look Like I'm Here

The 0.0 review in Pitchfork
Mark Richardson's Response
The 10.0 review in Pitchfork

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Log #151 - Glorious Pepper

John Martyn Glorious Fool

Truckstop Honeymoon Big Things And Little Things

The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Harmonia Deluxe
Tord Gustavsen Trio The Other Side

The Black Keys El Camino

Still enjoying the John Martyn album - it's one of his best actually. Possibly his last great album but considering it's his 11th studio album that represents a remarkable longevity of critical success.

Some of the slower drawn out tracks like Hearts and Keys and Please Fall In Love With Me recall the epic Small Hours from One World.

Ever revered by contemporaries that enjoyed greater commercial success, guests include fans Eric Clapton and Phil Collins.

I continue a Beatles retrospective with Sgt. Pepper. You can't really argue against this being their best album, and possibly the best album by anyone ever. The songs are magnificent and furthermore the sum is even greater than the considerable parts (the album being almost a concept with tracks running into each other, bookended by versions of the title track, plus the grand finale A Day In The Life which I think is The Beatles' greatest song)...

... when I was young my favourite album for ages was ELO's Out Of The Blue and when my father used to overhear me playing that album he'd always tell me that there was something on there that was exactly the same as on Sgt. Pepper - it took me a while to realise what he meant - at first I thought it was Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! - but eventually I realised he meant the coda to Mr Blue Sky being very similar to the "woke up, dragged a comb across my head" section of A Day In The Life - of course ELO were huge Beatles copyists and many of their songs were similar.

Everything they did in their previous 7 albums led to this. The follow ups Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album, Abbey Road and Let It Be, each represented incremental retreats from this peak.

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Log #150 - From Barroom To Stadium - The Black Keys Go Large

I've come late to the Black Keys. Shame actually as this album sounds tremendous - heavy, exciting and melodic. Even my house mates love it. Of course they compare with other 2 bit bands, The White Stripes and Royal Blood for instance, but I think I prefer this; I love the grungy dirty bluesy emphasis and Dan Auerbach's distorted vocals. They seem to have translated well from barroom to stadium without selling out (can the same be said for Kings Of Leon for instance?).

John Martyn Glorious Fool

Truckstop Honeymoon Big Things And Little Things

The Beatles Rubber Soul

The Beatles Abbey Road
Tord Gustavsen Trio The Other Side

The Black Keys El Camino

The Tord Gustavsen album is gorgeous. Previously featured here it will remain one that I return to often. His playing is spare and spacey verging upon classical at many points through The Other Side. I will check out some of his earlier recordings and hope he turns up at Love Supreme one year.

I'm going through a John Martyn retrospective. Log #142 examined Martyn's first 6 albums. I've decided to extend this examination and revisit all of them. Glorious Fool is a "mid-period" Martyn album. I say mid period but, as is the case with all artists who started in the late 60s or early 70s, 1981 (when this came out) is actually chronologically still relatively early period of course, but thematically artists seem to go through a series of eras musically and these eras were stacked up closer to each other in the "olden days". So for young John he went through relatively short eras of folk, folk/acid, trip hop, jazz, and then a long period in the wilderness from the 80s onwards which you'd have to describe as easy listening. I'd say this was his last great album from his heyday before the decline set in. Anyway as I say a retrospective is on its way and there are some latter period surprises.

Finally a word on The Truckstop Honeymoon who are Americana/bluegrass duo Mike and Katie West. They've been knocking around for years and occasionally rock up at my local to play a set here in Brighton. If you ever get a chance to see them live go for it as they put on a blinding show and are hilarious entertainers to boot (think The Handsome Family on speed). Such a live experience rarely translates to a recording of course but their musicianship and songwriting skills are such that the albums don't suffer in comparison. Always on the money with politics and the current climate check out Got No Use (for a Gun) from their latest album:

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Log #149 - Where The Rubber Soul Meets The Abbey Road

When you've been playing weird music for weeks you just want to hear some songs after a while. Hence dipping back in time to the ultimate song-writing of The Beatles this week with a spin of Rubber Soul and Abbey Road.

William Basinski Disintegration Tapes III

Nils Frahm All Melody

The Beatles Rubber Soul

The Beatles Abbey Road
Metallica St. Anger

The Black Keys El Camino

For me, particularly where The Beatles' single hits and compilations have become ubiquitous (and now on Spotify too), an actual review of their proper original chronological album discography and each album's contents is enlightening:

Please Please Me (1963)

With the Beatles (1963)

A Hard Day's Night (1964)

Beatles for Sale (1964)

Help! (1965)

Rubber Soul (1965)

Revolver (1966)

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

The White Album (1968)

Yellow Submarine (1969)

Abbey Road (1969)

Let It Be (1970) 

And as for these two records, their track listings were:

RUBBER SOUL 

Drive My Car

Norwegian Wood

You Won't See Me

Nowhere Man

Think for Yourself (Harrison)

The Word

Michelle

What Goes On (Lennon–McCartney–Richard Starkey)

Girl

I'm Looking Through You

In My Life

Wait

If I Needed Someone (Harrison)

Run for Your Life

ABBEY ROAD 

Come Together

Something (Harrison)

Maxwell's Silver Hammer

Oh! Darling

Octopus's Garden (Starr)

I Want You (She's So Heavy)

Here Comes the Sun (Harrison)

Because

You Never Give Me Your Money

Sun King

Mean Mr. Mustard

Polythene Pam

She Came In Through the Bathroom Window

Golden Slumbers

Carry That Weight

The End

Her Majesty

All songs Lennon-McCartney except as marked.

Rubber Soul is the more straight forward album packed full of hits. There is already a maturity to the songs despite this album (albeit already their 6th studio production) coming only 2 years after their debut. In My Life sometimes tops polls of the greatest Beatles song of all but to be honest there are 100s that could claim that accolade - their consistency was astonishing.

Abbey Road is more experimental and heavier moving on from the previous year's The White Album and side two even branches off into concept with mixed results. Perhaps the best songs are actually George Harrison's Something and Here Comes The Sun.

Oddly Abbey Road was actually the true Beatles swansong being recorded after Let It Be which had a delayed release.

Interesting to note that both album covers did not display the name of the group such was the fame of the fab four - a concept of self sabotage that was unheard of in those days and  rarely adopted even later (with the notable exception of Led Zeppelin). There are also some fascinating conspiracy theories all over The Beatles myth but many originating from outlandish interpretations of the covers especially Abbey Road. Most of these centre around the rumour that Paul McCartney had actually been killed in a road accident and replaced by a look-a-like. Note the following from an over analysis of the Abbey Road cover:

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A funeral procession
Lennon wears white, Ringo black and Harrison denim. All colours associated with mourning in some countries. Other interpretations say that Lennon represents the preacher, Ringo Starr is the mourner and George Harrison is the grave-digger. 

McCartney holds a cigarette in his "wrong hand"
Paul held his cigarette in his right hand, even though he is left handed. A cigarette was also known as a coffin nail in slang. [This is ridiculous Ed.]

McCartney is bare footed.
In some cultures the dead are buried without their shoes but:
 

I was walking barefoot because it was a hot day

McCartney is out of step with the others
Oh yes.

The car license plate
In the background we see a Volkswagen Beetle with the plate "LMW 28IF" Conspiracists claim this to mean that McCartney would be 28 if he were still alive, oh and LMW stands for "Linda McCartney Weeps".

The police van
Parked on the side of the road is a black police van, which is said to symbolize authorities who kept silent about McCartney's fatal crash. This shot was a thank you from the Beatle's manager Brian Epstein who bought their silence [he died 2 years earlier so not sure this one adds up. Ed] 

The girl in the blue dress
On the night of McCartney’s supposed car accident, he was believed to have been driving with a fan named Rita. Theorists say the girl in the dress featured on the back cover was meant to be her, fleeing from the car crash.

Connect the dots
Also on the back cover are a series of dots. Join some of them together and you can make the number three — the number of surviving Beatles [please stop, Ed.]

Broken Beatles sign
On the back cover the band’s name is written in tiles on a wall and there’s a crack running through it. This was to symbolise the imminent break up of the band.

The onlookers
In the background, a small group of people dressed in white stand on one side of the road, while a lone person (Paul) stands in black on the other. 

The line of cars
A line can be traced from the VW Beetle to the three cars in front of it. If it is drawn connecting their right wheels it runs straight through Paul's head, with theorists suggesting that means Paul sustained a head injury in the car crash.

The bloodstain
On the Australian version (only?) of the album, the cover showed what could be a bloodstain splattered on the road just behind Ringo and John, supposedly backing claims of a road accident. 

Grim Reaper
If the back cover is turned 45 degrees anticlockwise a crude image of the Grim Reaper appears, from his skull to his black gown. 

Paul's final resting place
If the writing on the wall is split into sections, it conveys the cryptic message, 'Be at Les Abbey'. In numerology the following two letters, R and O, are the 18th and 15th letters in the alphabet. By adding these together (33) and multiplying by the number of letters (2), we get 66, the year Paul is supposed to have died.
On the other hand 3 also represents the letter C so 33 could also stand for CC. Cece is short for Cecilia, with theorists claiming Paul final resting place was St Cecilia's Abbey in Ryde, Isle of Wight. [Didn't the Beatles also pen a song Ticket to Ryde and sing about being on the Isle of Wight when they were 66, or was it 64? Ed.]

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Paul McCartney parodied the cover for his 1993 Paul Is Live album

The location continues to draw fans. You can even view a live webcam which shows traffic waiting as tourists try to snap a shot while crossing the zebra. This was much the case for the real shoot back in 1969. Six hasty shots were snapped in between the traffic. The Beatles chose the one where all their legs were astride and that was it. Imagine arranging all the above too!

Abbey Road right this second

Incidentally I did enjoy the new Danny Boyle rom-com film Yesterday although I'd been playing these albums before seeing it to be fair. There are many amusing scenes including the record companies disdain at the lead artist suggesting his debut album of "unknown" Beatles songs be called a very politically incorrect The White Album, or perhaps even Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for some reason, and a hapless Ed Sheeran suggesting Hey Jude should be retitled Hey Dude.

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Log #148 - The Cosmic Joke That Went Too Far

The Cosmic Jokers were a sort of unofficial Krautrock supergroup including Klaus Schulze and Manuel Gottsching.  Apparently unbeknown to the musicians their jams were recorded and later released. Gottsching first heard "his" record in a store in Berlin and had to ask who it was! Schulze was so angry he actually sued the record label responsible.

It is scarcely believable that The Cosmic Jokers actually went on to be credited with 3 studio albums and several compilations and remixes (all released in 1974).

This album is their first. It's a shame it was released under such unsatisfactory circumstances as I think it is actually one of the best albums I've heard from the so-called second string of Krautrock artists. It consists of two extended instrumentals - side one being more rock based, side two more ambient. The Gottsching influence dominates and side two particularly could be an Ashra or solo piece.

Cosmic Jokers Cosmic Jokers

Guru Guru UFO

Manuel Gottsching E2-E4

Beuno Vista Social Club Beuno Vista Social Club
Nils Frahm All Melody

Coldplay X&Y

The Guru Guru album (their 1970 debut) is of much more basic rock. With it's screeching guitar, driving bass and crashing cymbals, it sounds much like Jimi Hendrix (not quite so good of course) and Interstellar Overdrive psychedelic era Floyd. The tracks are all instrumental and of not much particular interest apart from the experimental title track.

I'm not a huge Coldplay fan but X&Y is a grower and much heavier than I had previously given them credit for. Where does it rank in the echelons of Coldplay? Well, firstly I'm surprised to learn they've only made 7 albums. This is a good thing, or should be, in the quality over quantity stakes. X&Y was their third released in 2005. A cursory google browse suggests this album ranks somewhere in the top/middle range. 

Is the view (one I've previously held) of the band being middle of the road, intellectual, nice guys, and a less interesting copy of Radiohead, justified? I think there may be more to them and I'll play this album, and the other one I have (Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends) some more to find out.

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Log #147 - Ambient Excursions Across Suffolk, Sowiesoso and America

Brian Eno Ambient 1 

Brian Eno Ambient 4

Magma MDK

Magma Köhntarkösz
KLF Chillout

Cluster Sowiesoso

After the excesses of the monumental Magma last week we wind it back a bit this outing at Bamyasi studios with some gentle ambience in the form of two from the four original Eno ambient series: 

Ambient 1 / Music For Airports (1978)
Ambient 2 / The Plateaux of Mirror (1980) with Harold Budd
Ambient 3 / Day of Radiance (1981) with Laraaji
Ambient 4 / On Land (1982)

Music for Airports although strictly not the first ambient record, or even Eno's first ambient record, is often viewed as such having been the first album specifically labelled as "ambient". It's the record Eno created literally after sitting at an airport and meditating on a background sound that could be...

As ignorable as it is interesting.

The four tracks merge imperceptibly using short piano loops (some piano provided by Robert Wyatt) and ethereal vocals. The album as a whole was designed to be continually looped and it works well that way. It's the sort of background music you can have on all day and just catch snippets of as you pass by, occasionally recognising repeating themes particularly in the piano. Alternatively it's a record you can totally immerse yourself in through concentrated headphone listening.

A friend hearing the piano melodies told me it reminded her of Star Wars. (?)

3 outings and 4 years later and Eno drops Ambient 4 On Land.  Considered by many to be the best in the series the album is a classic of the ambient genre spawning many imitators. There is much more movement and depth to this album than Ambient 1. The atmosphere is dark and brooding with sound effect embellishments based on Eno's experiences exploring the countryside, marshes and coast of Suffolk. 

From the Suffolk marshes to the Deep South with one of the albums that On Land spawned. KLF's Chillout takes us on a cross state train and for me the album is really the younger and slightly more unruly brother of Ambient 4. The albums seem to sit well together (a third to make up a nice trilogy of atmospheric ambience would be the Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld).

Finally we visit Sowiesoso with Cluster. I don't know what Sowiesoso is but it sounds like a country or state in Southern Africa. 

Actually what it means is "anyway" or "one way or another". I guess the equivalent to the modern term "whatever". The music fits this description: it's very easy going containing thick melodic synth lines with gentle pulses and atmospheric background effects. It simply bubbles along like a mountain stream engendering a very chilled out reverie. 

These muted descriptions do make it seem like the music may be lightweight and not particularly original but on the contrary the Cluster of Sowiesoso is instantly recognisable and I can't immediately think of another album in my collection that sounds like this one.

Synthetic birds chirrup, bells chime and life is easy and good.

Euan Andrews in Quietus

#Lovely

A new term I heard while researching this entry: Musique Concrete. According to Wiki:

A type of music composition that utilizes recorded sounds as raw material. Sounds are often modified through the application of audio effects and tape manipulation techniques, and may be assembled into a form of montage. It can feature sounds derived from recordings of musical instruments, the human voice, and the natural environment as well as those created using synthesizers and computer-based digital signal processing. Compositions in this idiom are not restricted to the normal musical rules of melody, harmony, rhythm, metre, and so on. It exploits acousmatic listening, meaning sound identities can often be intentionally obscured or appear unconnected to their source cause.

So very similar to ambient but with more "found" sounds not necessarily arranged in conventional musical forms, so why not avant garde? I'm assuming enveloping artists like James Joyce and Keith Berry, and pretty much a description of On Land too. The Frenchness of the term, literally translated as "real music", was first adopted in the 40s via French composer Pierre Schaeffer (1910 - 95).

The question turns around; "what am I hearing?... What exactly are you hearing" - in the sense that one asks the subject to describe not the external references of the sound it perceives but the perception itself.

 

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