Log #53 - Tangerine Dream were no Satsuma Nightmare

Firstly I offer a thank you to all my readers as my blog enters it's second year. I hope some of you have stumbled across something of interest and discovered some new music. In listening to my music and writing these pieces I have both discovered new things and rediscovered old too! The list below is an example of that - I had never heard any Kanye West before last week (apart from a car crash live appearance on some awards show a couple of years ago) and I only recently bought Bob Marley's classic Catch a Fire album although I was very familiar with the famous joint touting cover (the music was not what I had assumed it would be). Yet at the opposite end of the scale I've been a fan of Neil Young and Tangerine Dream for over 30 years.

1. Tangerine Dream - The Essential
2. Kanye West - Late Registration
3. James Morrison - Songs for You, Truths for Me
4. Eilen Jewell - Sea of Tears
5. Bob Marley - Catch a Fire
6. Neil Young - On the Beach

I've just got to admit it. I do really like Tangerine Dream. It's probably not that cool nowadays but they are really good at what they do. And they are original. Their music is instantly recognisable even amongst the plethora (that's a Tan Dream song title if I've ever heard one) of electronic experimental instrumental music out there. They don't sound like Kraftwerk, nor Brian Eno, nor Boards of Canada. Possibly their closest contemporary may have been Jean-Michel Jarre or possibly Philip Glass in places or Aphex Twin, but their mostly drumless yet pulsed and rhythmic sequencer music is ultimately unique.

Don't think of it as music, just put this album on, turn it up loud, and let the experience wash over you and take your brain to far off places!

Actually I feel a gnod music map coming on - let's see if my hunches are right?

Other maps are available from the brilliant gnod.com

This album is yet another collection. There are loads out there and I generally avoid non original albums. But I knew enough from the regular albums to spot that this was a particularly good selection from their peak Virgin label days of the mid to late 70s and contains at least 60% of music I have not got on CD elsewhere. Crucially the tracks are full length - to maintain that hypnotic atmosphere so characteristic of Tan Dream's music this is essential.

The original knob twiddlers, Froese, Franke, Baumann

Quoting from the sleeve notes - "With a mere six tracks from six different albums, but more than seventy minutes long, this compilation serves as a perfect portrait of the sheer vastness of Tangerine Dream's music. Enormously epic and otherworldly tracks were the artistic trademark of the most important and internationally most successful German instrumental band ever. If Kraftwerk were the pioneers of electronic beats, Tangerine Dream were most definitely the pioneers of electronic atmosphere, the forerunners of Ambient."

For the aficionados the track listing is -

1. Movements Of A Visionary 7:55 taken from the album Phaedra 1974
2. Rubycon (Part One) 17.18 taken from the album Rubycon 1975
3. Stratosfear 10:35 taken from the album Stratosfear 1976
4. Cloudburst Flight 7:26 taken from the album Force Majeure 1979
5. Tangram (Part One) 19:47 taken from the album Tangram 1980
6. Hyperborea 8:38 taken from the album Hyperborea 1983

This collection is an excellent Tan Dream sampler for the beginner. For those who want to delve deeper into this weird and wonderful world I would recommend the original albums Force Majeure and Phaedra. The former is more conventional prog rock fayre with real guitars and drums as on the brilliant Cloudburst Flight (also present in the above collection). The latter is an ambient classic which forms a bridge between their early ambient soundscape drones like Zeit and their more commercial rhythmic albums. I'm also very fond of Cyclone which splits the fans being the only album with vocals. [Personally recorded cassettes of mine with old school friend and Tangerine Dream authority Electric Ape under the name Satsuma Nightmare are of old curiosity interest only!]

Three great Tangerine Dream albums from the 70s, always great covers too, many painted by Edgar Froese

So once again thank you for listening and reading, and I look forward to another 52 weeks and another 312 albums in 2017/18!

A new day, a new dawn, and new beginnings - where will we go, what will we discover?

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Log #52 - So This Is, or Was, Kanye!

If you had told me I'd have a Kanye West album in my logs this year I wouldn't have believed you. But here I am at week #52 and courtesy of a bargain bucket charity purchase (along with the James Morrison one listed below) I find myself the proud owner of Late Registration. My daughter tells me it's an early one and consequently probably quite good, and she is right, it's quite good in a rappy, hip hoppy, and even an early grimey way (I've heard a bit of grime through Earl Sweatshirt, Wiley and Stormzy).

It's littered with samples and these do seem to be a bit crow-barred in in a less than subtle way, but the underlying beats are addictive. I'm not going to go out and buy any other of West's albums nor listen to this one that often once it leaves the magazine, but it's had a fair few plays and has maintained my interest - not least on an anthropological level if you know what I mean! No? Well I mean even if the music is of little interest I have heard so much about Mr West that I am interested to investigate. It's my duty as a music investigator!

1. Ryan Adams - Gold
2. Kanye West - Late Registration
3. James Morrison - Songs for You, Truths for Me
4. Eilen Jewell - Sea of Tears
5. Bob Marley - Catch a Fire
6. Neil Young - On the Beach

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Log #21 - The Conceptual Art of Thick as a Brick

1. Jethro Tull - Thick As A Brick
2. Barclay James Harvest - The Harvest Years
3. Barclay James Harvest - The Harvest Years
4. Barclay James Harvest - Gone To Earth
5. Eilen Jewell - Sea of Tears
6. Paulo Nutini - Sunny Side Up

Head album this week is the Jethro Tull Thick as a Brick opus. This really was a concept album - deliberately so. Leader Ian Anderson, in response to the critics calling the Tull's previous album, Aqualung, a concept album (wrongly in his view - "it was just a bunch of songs") decided to deliver the mother of all concept albums.

...We were spoofing the idea of the concept album.

Hence we have Thick as a Brick which is essentially one composition spread in two parts of 20 minutes each. The concept as it were wasn't anything grand. It told the story of a schoolboy who was disqualified from a poetry competition. The schoolboy in question, one fictional Gerald Bostock, is pictured on the album cover which doubles as the St. Cleve Chronicle newspaper.

What of the actual Gerald Bostock? He was child model Andre C Le Breton who 45 years on works as a music engineer and record producer whilst dabbling in his own compositions which he describes as weird German underground trance blending light and dark electronic noise. Sounds great!

Apparently the design of the album cover took more time than the actual music. As for the music I can't say I've studied it as a whole much before this weekend. I'm familiar with the opening acoustic riff and Anderson's proclamation:

Really don't mind if you sit this one out. My word's but a whisper - your deafness a shout!

...and other passages are very catchy and like all good concept albums weave in and out at various points. As a whole opus it actually rocks - with loads of excellent Hammond organ and harlequin / renaissance court type one-legged flute.

I would never compare what we did back then to jazz rockers like Weather Report or the Mahavishnu Orchestra - they were really amazing musicians - but we were a little more sophisticated than the usual riff rockers you'd find on the scene.

Ian Anderson

A few years ago I saw Jethro Tull at a festival down in Devon where they were showcasing not only the original Thick as a Brick, but also a new follow up album TAAB 2 - it sounded pretty good although not so holistically well rounded. The live show was excellent too, part drama with a young actor, dressed in overalls holding a broom, taking on most of the singing. Anderson's strum on his miniature guitar of the opening of the original was one of my most exciting gig experiences ever!

The giant Ian Anderson today with tiny guitar

I do love the lengths people can go to on the internet - I'm a bit of a sucker for conspiracy theories for example which are rife. But isn't it great how people find worth and meaning and inspiration in such things. So by way of example someone has gone to town on Thick as a Brick. Check out http://thickasabrick.net for a comprehensive interpretation of the album. The writer of that website Paul Tarvydas makes an interesting point by way of explanation of his (over?) analysis:

"I don't actually think that an artist consciously decides to write with the detail I've expressed. A true artist feels certain emotions and convictions, then writes/paints/composes items which 'go with that flow'. It is up to us, the appreciators of this art, to parse the original intentions of the artist and to express them in more rudimentary terms. To make them more accessible to the masses (including myself). A truly good artist will make his/her expressions interpretable in more than one way." 

Yes and no. I think there is a lot of over interpretation in art. In many cases I think the author is being more random than they are given credit for.  Anderson actually admits this in his Aqualung quote above. Ironically a piece of art that is open ended usually benefits from multiple different interpretations - a hallmark of great art in my opinion.

I have really enjoyed rediscovering Barclay James Harvest this week. That goes for both their old stuff as showcased on the Harvest Years double compilation (covering most of their first three albums) and even the more soft poppy Gone to Earth. As with Afro Celt Sound System earlier in this annual log they were a band I was not expecting to be playing this year. Pleasant surprises.

Eilen Jewell is just great at what she does - which is Americana/Country. I've seen her a few times and the live band - guitar, double bass, and drums, is so tight. The guitarist Jerry Miller is particularly fantastic in that hard to define efficient musicality way - ie. not flashy but with a superb feel for melody. Check them out live if they come to a venue near you.

The Eilen Jewell Band - guitar legend Jerry Miller in customary Stetson

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