Log #169 - The Other Side Of God's Favorite Customer

As I come to the end of the year and thoughts turn towards my year end review there are two or three albums in this list this week that will probably make the short list for Album Of The Year. They are the Tord Gustavsen, the Father John Misty, and the KLF.

KLF Chill Out

Father John Misty God's Favorite Customer

Simon and Garfunkel Bridge Over Troubled Water

Bill Laswell Imaginary Cuba

Tord Gustavsen The Other Side

Ketil Bjornstad and David Darling Epigraphs

Taking each in turn we have The Tord Gustavsen Trio's The Other Side which is a simply beautiful album of wistful chilled jazz piano. Gustavsen takes a minimalist approach yet the melodies are Debussyesque. Themes repeat and return throughout the album's 12 tracks, something I did not notice before I had fully absorbed the album several times.

I don't know where this sort of music sits in the jazz pantheon (jazz experts may consider it easy listening or light weight?) but I know I love it and find it much more satisfying than the often too frantic classical solo piano (see Log #166 ) or even the minimalist chamber piano of Bjornstad and Darling's Epigraphs album. It's effortless flow is closer to Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert and Philip Glass's Solo Piano album.

Father John Misty's God's Favourite Customer (English spelling there) album could also be considered slightly on the light weight side but the sheer brilliance of the melodic songs pulls it through. Father John Misty is a cross between Elton John and John Grant.

I can't decide if KLF's Chillout has nothing going on or a helluva lot. Whatever, it remains a fascinating and atmospheric listen - one where you hear more the more you listen. Save for a jumpy number towards the end, the album is essentially a concept piece played out over one continuous 45 minutes of ambient sound effects and samples.

One timeless classic and a pretty nondescript non event make up the numbers this week and we have our 6.

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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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Log #133 - Sheep Chillin' On A Train Across America

Who are KLF and what does it stand for? I think they are a 2 piece, and I know they are famous for three things:

i) burning £1,000,000

ii) being rude at a BRITs awards ceremony or similar

iii) their Chillout album 

Time to investigate.

Let's find some footage:

So the burning stunt did happen (and it was brave, as they reportedly didn't have that much money to spare!).

Their appearance to collect the Best British Group award at the BRITs in 1992 saw KLF literally going out with a bang - showering the audience with fake gunfire as they announced their retirement from the music business, and that was it barring some recent reformation rumours.

Then finally there is the music. The album is a bit of a mixture, literally. There's lots of samples, special effects, explosions, cicadas, night trains honking and clattering (the theme of the album is a mythical night train journey through the Southern US States), rainforest ambience, farmyard animals (mostly sheep), sheep on trains?, car horns, and spoken word (some in foreign languages). You get the picture. Probably super original at the time although much more common place nowadays of course. Overall the repeated sounds and themes help hold the album together in a consistent whole.

Most obvious musical sample comes from Fleetwood Mac's Albatross through 3AM Somewhere Out of Beaumont. There is some country western Elvis in Elvis On The Radio, Steel Guitar In My Soul. Also interesting is the slide guitar imbued throughout the album which recalls another classic ambient album, Brian Eno's Apollo. 

The samples and soundbites remind me of the Orb's classic Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld which came out a year after this one in April 1991. But the Orb's album is much more beaty.

Not that this album is as ambient as I was led to believe (Chillout is often held up as one of the early classics of the genre).

The brilliant cover is an obvious homage to Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother which coincidentally was in the player a couple of weeks ago. I heard there was a Pink Floyd sample in the album but I haven't spotted it (unless it's the sonic submarine pulses from Echoes? - help me out here folks).

And what does KLF stand for?

Well, it was a bit of running joke, and you'd expect nothing less from a band that apparently had contempt for the music business. The letters have been said to stand for Kopyright Liberation Front, Kings of the Low(er) Frequency, Kool Low Frequency, Keep Looking Forward, and erm... Kevin Likes Fruit.

Jean Michel Jarre Oxygene  

Floating Points Elaenia

Popol Vuh In Den Garten Pharaos

Morton Feldman Rothko Chapel / Why Patterns?

KLF Chillout

Various Neu Decade

Oxygene was one of the classic Jarre albums everyone used to pass around at school (in the 70s if you were at school then, or maybe the 80s). This is the one with the skull on the front. There was another one equally as popular but I can't remember what it was called now. Hang on...

Was it Equinoxe?  Not sure actually. I think the album cover is wrong. But actually looking at his discography it must have been this one too - it was released in 1978, 2 years after Oxygene.

Two classic Jarre's from the 70s

Jarre was never as cool as the other electronic music people were listening to at school like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. It was considered a bit more commercial. But on reflection, hearing this stuff 40 years later, it holds up really well. In fact I was listening to a very modern dance tune which reminded me of Oxygene (and Giles Petersson's storming Elle), which is why I came to put it on.

[Actually Eddy check your facts, Elle is from DJ Gregory, sure it was on a Gilles Peterson compilation but is a DJ Gregory piece. Ed.]

Indeed the Ed. is right. What a track though. Reproduced below:

Really enjoying all the Popol Vuh tracks now, including the two bonus experimental pieces.

The latter half of the Neu Decade compilation is very guitar and rock based - some new "Krautrock" sounds there to enjoy.

Lots of contemplative space in the Feldman, and Elaenia is a classy beaty electronic jazz fusion work. It's been a good week.

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