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.

Read More

Log #129 - Elaenia Meets A Country Gent In Rothko Chapel

Josh T Pearson The Last Of The Country Gentlemen

Larkin Poe Fall

Edgar Froese Epsilon In Malaysian Pale

Morton Feldman Rothko Chapel

Floating Points Elaenia

Tim Hecker Virgins

Morton Feldman was an American 20th Century composer famous for his very long (some lasting multiple hours) minimalist pieces. Rothko Chapel was written in 1971 for the Rothko Chapel in Houston which houses paintings by Mark Rothko. The composition is a 5 piece suite lasting a relatively modest 25 minutes in total. On this CD it is twinned with Why Patterns? which is a 29 minute single part piece composed in 1978. 

Both pieces are very quiet and very still. In fact some of the most minimal minimalist music I've ever heard. Rothko Chapel is characterised by ghostly choral singing and Why Patterns is a piece scored for flute, glockenspiel, and piano. Closest comparisons that spring to my mind are Ligeti (famous for his 2001: A Space Odyssey film soundtrack - but not the well known riff, that's Richard Strauss) and Takemitsu (although his music is much busier). The stillness separates it from the more frantic and insistent music of fellow New York composers Glass and Reich, and its underlying melodious nature from the avant-garde of Cage. As such Feldman's work is much closer to modern ambient music.

The most interesting aspect for me, composing exclusively with patterns, is that there is not one organizational procedure more advantageous than another, perhaps because no one pattern ever takes precedence over the others. The compositional concentration is solely on which pattern should be reiterated and for how long.

Feldman made an analogy with Middle Eastern rug makers who, to his eye, laid out a set of patterns to be woven concurrently, with no pattern holding precedence over another. They coexist in the final product, running their course on the rug with separate rates of recurrence. 

Like many pieces of minimalist music his compositions make use of phasing where a series of motifs are repeated slightly out of sync. coming together occasionally and particularly at the end. For such experimental and atmospheric music to work it needs the time and space to breath and fulfil. 

I really like the Floating Points album Elaenia. It's instrumental jazz tinged electronica most reminiscent of Cinematic Orchestra, Hidden Orchestra or GoGo Penguin. Believe it or not  the album also takes me back to John Martyn's most electric piano infused album Solid Air. 

Some of the tracks sound like a full on band, they are so well produced, but I understand Floating Points is the stage name of Manchester producer Sam Shepherd. Case in point is the centrepiece of the album Silhouettes which is an impressive electric piano led piece with horns, strings, chant, and deep bass - all underpinned by wonderful funky cymbal laden jazz drumming which flutters incessantly over a ticking metronome and comes to life particularly for the second half. This sounds so good (so live, real and organic) I find it hard to believe it's electronically created by one person.

It's my track of the week (and of course it's not one person!):

The 7 tracks are all different though. Ranging from the jazz fusion of the Silhouettes through ambience to pulsed electronics (Jean Michel Jarre, Luke Vibert or Tangerine Dream). There are lovely dynamics in tone, tempo and volume. Talk Talk's landmark post rock albums Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock have been cited as influences. 

Quick words on the other new (re) entries this week. I've had visitors this weekend so the slots of the magazine have been on a bit of a rotation (in particular slots 1 and 2 which take most the temporary traffic). Some albums came and went (including Rory Gallagher, Morte Macabre, KLF, Band Of Horses, and Father John Misty) but my Sunday snapshot happened upon Josh T Pearson and Larkin Poe.

The songs reach an apparent end and then he goes off on another round as if he's just thought of something else.

The Josh T Pearson album is another marmite record. On the surface you could say Pearson sings interminable introspective personal songs with a slurry spoken Southern drawl and a cheap out of tune acoustic guitar (the album is supplemented with some fiddle backing from Nick Cave collaborator in chief Warren Ellis). You could also say it sounds like he's making them up as he goes along. The sloppy guitar picking and strumming sounds random and void of rhythm. The songs reach an apparent end and then he goes off on another round as if he's just thought of something else. But on a deeper level there is definitely something more. I think it's the authenticity. The rawness and passion trumps the musical limitations. He really feels his music and makes you do too. 

Does this authenticity extend to him believing he's the Second Coming? I'm sure not but nevertheless I expect he did play on this with his image.

Sweetheart I Ain't Your Christ he sings ironically while looking just like Christ:

I ain't your Savior or your Christ
Or your goddamn sacrifice
And when I said I'd give my life
I weren't talking suicide

I saw him live once and his stage personae was also very Christ like with his long hair and beard (now all shorn incidentally), standing stationary, centre stage, in a skinny black suit, lit by a single spot light. He was charismatic and mesmerising, and as I found out at the signing afterwards a really nice bloke too. 

I think the best track on the album is Woman, When I've Raised Hell where his low voice and downward cascading guitar chords come together in a powerful and foreboding song:
 
Woman when I've raised hell, you're gonna know it

There won't be a shadow of doubt in your bright little mind

No pictures left hangin' only lonely unpainted nails

Ah honey you'll connect those dots read the writin' on the wall

In 2010 Americana country rock band Larkin Poe, formed around Atlanta sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell, released four EPs: Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter:

They are beautifully packaged in cardboard digi sleeves. The music is pretty good too. It's melodic and relatively heavy with the Lovells excelling on electric and slide guitar. Each record has around half a dozen songs or more and at about 30 mins is pretty much a complete album in its own right.

Read More