Log #193 - Rainbows Rising

After hearing a respected punter select In Rainbows as one of his Top 10 favourite records of the last decade (or was it ever?) I thought I better give it a spin.

It could be a dog's dinner but the whole sits together beautifully as a unit.

Indeed it's an excellent listen. The band hit it big early with The Bends and OK Computer but to be fair they developed a lot after those early records. OK Computer I've always thought a bit overrated; the following Kid A and Amnesiac developed their sound much further, and In Rainbows continues that trend into more electronically produced sounds (brilliantly produced by the way), interesting rhythms and glitchy effects, string drenching, distorted bass, and jazzy flavours (especially Greenwood's guitar). The instrumentation is excellent - the band presenting their gentler side most, but also riffing out occasionally (Bodysnatchers, Jigsaw Falling Into Place). It could be a dog's dinner but the whole sits together beautifully as a unit. If only I could stomach Thom Yorke's miserabalist moanings a bit better I'd love it.

Boris Salchow - Stars

Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972

Kodomo - Tape Pieces Vol. 1

Keith Jarrett - Koln Concert

Radiohead - In Rainbows

John Martyn - One World 

The Radiohead leads nicely into Tape Pieces Vol. 1 from the fervent imaginations of sound engineers Micah Frank and Chris Child (the latter I believe aka Kodomo). Engineers of Sound? Sound artists? Musicians? Music producers? It doesn't really matter. Many "creatives" (Brian Eno amongst them) are now merging art and music in  their "installations" for example. Just a mini elpee this one, it presents as four experimental soundscapes. The thing is, these are not developed into songs as such like the Radiohead (obviously) although they are all of significant length and do hold one's interest over those lengths. They are essentially sounds and atmospherics drawing on lots of (as the title suggests) analogue tape flutters and distortions. This sort of music has more dynamics than conventional ambience having more in common with musique concrete or "found sounds". The results are endlessly fascinating - but like I say don't expect conventional song structures. It's all about the subtle changes of texture.

From the same stable we have LA based German Boris Salchow with his album Stars. This is a lovely work drawing on samples of treated pianos which are often rendered in beautiful melodies over sharp beats. I've played this one a lot.

A strange hybrid that lives somewhere between the digital and material realms.

I'd previously passed over Tim Hecker somewhat but Ravedeath, 1972, will change my mind. A much celebrated sound engineer/artist, I knew I must have been missing something and this dark forbodeing album of disintegrating hums is the best of his I've heard. Recorded in an old church in Reykjavik, Iceland "the result is a strange hybrid that lives somewhere between the digital and material realms, and it's remarkable how seamlessly the two are combined." (Pitchfork).

I don't know what the 1972 refers to. At first I thought it the year of the record but that was actually 2011. Hecker was only born in 1974.

A friend nominated me to do one of those facebook 10 (or 20 in this case) album cover postings of favourite records, or albums that have meant something to me. I'll probably list them all here at some point but for now for Day 4 I alighted upon Keith Jarrett's legendary Koln Concert from 1975. I posted that it was the most beautiful piano playing I'd ever heard and the opening riff sends tingles down my neck. Hopefully this will encourage a few more people to hear it. 

I fully expect John Martyn's One World to appear in that 20 album list at some point, and for now it retains its place in the player (this time the original album of the 2 CD Deluxe set): again, like Radiohead 30 years later, amazing sounds ahead of their time.

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Log #83 - An Accidental Masterpiece

After last week's classical excursion Eddy has dug deeper into the piano niche. We have possibly the most famous piano album in the world and one of the most popular - Keith Jarrett's random and accidental improvised The Koln Concert recorded live late one January evening in 1975. Apparently presented with an out of tune and faulty piano at the concert hall Jarrett threatened to pull out but at the last minute was persuaded on stage - the unforeseen restrictions contributing to the creation of a masterpiece of understated jazz minimalism.

What happened with this piano was that I was forced to play in what was — at the time — a new way. 

Of a similar vein is my favourite Philip Glass album. Free of the sometimes grating and frenetic organ or strings this album of 7 minimalist Solo Piano pieces is gorgeous. With simple melodies over sustained chords and peaceful arpeggios and lots of space, the music reminds me of the Michael Nyman soundtrack to the film The Piano. (But it's Philip Glass so cooler really).

I've heard pianist friends of mine saying this sort of music is easy to play but that misses the point. It's like saying The Jam or Depeche Mode have less validity than Genesis or Aphex Twin as their music is simpler.

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1. Keith Jarrett - The Koln Concert

2. Jean Sibelius - Symphony No. 1 and 3

3. Carlos Barbosa-Lima - Chants for the Chief

4. Steve Hillage - Rainbow Dome Musick

5. Philip Glass - Solo Piano

6. Erik Satie -  Piano Music

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To read a comprehensive analysis of the story behind Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert please see this article>>

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Log #70 - Consummate Duophonic Pop with Overlooked Triophonic Prog

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1. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand

2. Charles and Eddie - Duophonic

3. Beck - Colors

4. Can - Sacrilege 2

5. Foals - What Went Down

6. Keith Jarrett - The Koln Concert

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Two more charity purchases this week. One was Charles and Eddie and the other was a book actually which I'll include here as it is on music.

The Charles and Eddie album is from 1992 and I remember having it when it first came out, on cassette I think as I either remember it from my car or from my "gap year" when I was travelling in Asia and bought a bunch of cassettes down the Khao San Road. I also remember they co-hosted some M-TV program. 

Duophonic is a nice album which still sounds good today. Would I Lie To You is the famous track but there are lots of other familiar ones on here and the general standard of all the songs is high. Their keenly produced disco and soul music sounded something like Michael Jackson or the Bee Gees. Not bad for 49p. Sadly Charles is no longer with us having died as long ago as 2001. Eddie is still going as part of LA-based duo The Polyamorous Affair.

The Koln Concert from Keith Jarrett is a classic jazz piano album. It fascinates me how he has produced such beautiful music from what appears to be variations on just a couple of chords. I assume it is improvised. It certainly sounds like it. As such it sounds like music straight from the soul like it is being channeled from some higher source. Is that how all great musicians feel? You can hear him breathing and moaning over the music in places as if he is possessed.

Keith Jarrett tinkling the ivories of "The Unplayable Piano" in a most unusual way

I do wonder how much this is myth but according to this TEDtalk the genesis of this best selling jazz and solo piano album (of all time) was accidental. Apparently the piano presented to Jarrett at the concert hall was faulty - out of tune, poor of tone, and with sticky black keys! After some persuasion Jarrett decided to go ahead with the concert and by being forced to work around the limitations produced an unintended masterpiece. A clear case of less being more.

To learn more about this landmark album have a read of this excellent review here>> http://somethingelsereviews.com/2010/05/19/keith-jarrett-the-koln-concert-1975/

The book I picked up is The Train In The Night by Nick Coleman. This is right up my street as it is basically the musical recollections of a 50 something man (an idea I have had before for a book) who unfortunately is going deaf. Being 50 something I think means having lived through a certain development of music over the decades that I imagine will never be repeated again. You could say the same about life generally I guess although maybe every generation feels the same about that? Coleman's taste seems fairly similar to mine too. He writes that his first 7 records he bought were a rather impressive list as below:

Nazareth - Razamanaz

Lou Reed - Transformer

Genesis - Nursery Cryme

Yes - The Yes Album

Derek and the Dominoes - Layla

Gong - Camembert Electrique

The Rolling Stones - Goat's Head Soup

That certainly beats my first seven, admittedly from a few years later, which would have been mostly ELO followed by a bit of Rainbow and Black Sabbath.

Man walking across a field with an Andy's Records carrier bag

On the Genesis album he writes: "Nursery Cryme was a fallback position. Deploying my new stevedore's swagger, I'd bravely gone to buy Genesis's latest album, Foxtrot, at the stall on the market in town only to find that they'd sold out. Miller's were out of it, too. Not one of the three other, lesser, record shops had it either. Consternation. [Friend] Andy had been quoting passages of Foxtrot's side-long epic Supper's Ready at me for days and I had a hunch that its surreal yet baroque outlandishness would fit me like a glove. Given that Andy's [good-looking] sister Linda was also known to be a Genesis fan - [her boyfriend's local prog rock group] Hamilton Gray owed quite a lot to the fine-boned Charterhouse boys - it might have given Linda and me something to talk about at the bus stop, should such a frightening yet wholly desired event ever transpire. In the circumstances, therefore, it just had to be Genesis. And so, in the absence of Foxtrot, the group's previous record would have to do. It was cheap too: £1.69.

"I still have the thing and still love it, even though I can now only hear it properly in my head, and even then not very clearly. I hope that my own children will love it in due course, too. History says that Peter Gabriel-era Genesis were a slightly unnecessary folie amusante arising from rock's need in the late Sixties to expand its formal horizons in a way that matched its artistic ambitions and enlarged social scope. History also sneers at Genesis for being posh; for not being even slightly Mod. Well history can do what it likes. The middle-class boy writing these words was wholly transfixed at the age of thirteen by the defiant remnants of the shut-down old man who voices The Musical Box and, now that he is partially shut down himself, the boy sees no reason to pretend that pastoral English prog rock didn't have its moments of outlandish emotional clarity."

Reading this section was timely. I've been revisiting quite a lot of Genesis myself recently - in fact not so much revisiting as visiting for the first time. I do love discovering new bands! I've consequently softened my views on post Gabriel Genesis. Sampling the "in-between albums" (in between Gabriel's last 1974 album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and the fully realised 1980 pop album Duke) I've been impressed, even with Phil Collins' singing which I'd previously described as "constipated". Impressed to such an extent that I currently have ebay bids running on what I call the Genesis Mark One and a Half albums as below:

.. And Then There Were Three (the in-betweeny albums)

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