Log #137 - At The Dawning of a Neu! Age for Invention and Imagination

The Alan Parsons Project Tales of Mystery and Imagination

The Cinematic Orchestra Ma Fleur

Fennesz Endless Summer

Neu! Neu!

Manuel Göttsching Inventions for Electric Guitar

Ashra New Age Of Earth

The Alan Parsons Project album was another one of those albums that was knocking around my latter school and early uni years, but wasn't one I ever possessed or recall fully hearing. I knew Alan Parsons became well known after engineering The Dark Side Of The Moon and also, less so, The Year Of The Cat. He then, evidently by accident, went on to record a number of his own albums (11 up to 1990 and a comeback one in 2014) beginning with Tales Of Mystery And Imagination in 1976:

"We never expected the Alan Parsons Project to become the name of an act. The phrase was designed to describe the identity of the album you are now holding in its orginal form. We would never in our wildest dreams have thought that at least ten albums would follow, performed by this anonymous outfit that never played gigs!"

Alan Parsons writing in the sleeve notes to the remastered release of Tales... in 1987.

Ah, the sleeve notes...at first glance on this CD release they are impressive and comprehensive (so few artists even bother at all these days) - Parsons (I assume they are his words) says himself sleeve notes have fallen out of fashion but then the annoyances creep in. There are obvious typos and a particular reproduction clanger which unfortunately renders the notes disjointed, inconsistent and repetitive. I have no idea how this is allowed to happen. Even when I produce a crappy throwaway  spreadsheet for work, which will be read by hardly no one and confined to the recycle bin within a few weeks, I proof read it 100 times. But this stuff is there forever. I don't get it. Such an easy thing to get right.

The music is so-so. Yet to really form an opinion on it. There is a range of music from rock to prog to classical. It reminds me a little of Meatloaf in the more bombastic moments, and Supertramp in the softer rock numbers. Apparently there was some kudos to having no synthesizers in the original recording of Tales... (I remember this was stated on Queen albums up until the 80s after which time they certainly made up for it!). For this reissue synthesizers have been allowed.

Much more immediately appealing are the Manuel Gottsching albums. Gottsching was the main man behind Krautrock band Ash Ra Tempel and the follow up group Ashra. In fact this album, his first official solo release in 1975, is subtitled Ash Ra Tempel VI thus doubling up as the sixth and final album under the Ash Ra Tempel name. After Inventions For Electric Guitar Gottsching formed Ashra and recorded the landmark New Age Of Earth album in 1976.

Inventions is a fascinating record with 3 long tracks, each of significantly differing atmospheres. For its time the heavily flanger and echo treated electric guitar loops must have been very groundbreaking, and it still sounds fresh and original today. The style is reminiscent of Steve Reich (particularly his Electric Counterpoint for guitars) and Steve Hillage (particularly Rainbow Dome Musick) and even Alex Lifeson (La Villa Strangiato) and John Martyn (Small Hours) with the long sustained notes that build and fade.

New Age Of Earth is essentially another solo album. This one veers off into more Tangerine Dream-like sequencer territory. It's different but equally beautiful and melodic and has been frequently nominated as one of the most influential ambient albums of all time:

Göttsching’s style of looping notes into sequential echoes has inspired a generation of musicians to mimic this process, but in this recording you hear the master at play.

Matt Howarth

These two albums together make a very pleasing pairing. In fact they would have made a masterful double album, and are prime candidates for a 2 on 1 CD release.

I orginally had the Alan Parsons cover as my head shot for this blogpost but to be honest it was a bit dull and the Ashra cover above is awesome! Before looking closely I thought this was a sunrise over a mayan temple or pyramid. A homage to the sun god if you like. It's actually something even cooler. A sunrise over a derelict block of flats set in wasteland and against barbed wired fencing. Like the urban monoliths in High Rise or the shocking tragedy that was Grenfell. The ultimate juxtaposition of nature and man (Led Zeppelin did something slightly similar (but less striking) on the cover of their IV album). I have found no information on the actual location for the Ashra cover shot.

The album title too, potentially overblown in some contexts, is entirely fitting with the cover and the music.

The 4 tracks are entitled:

Sunrain
Ocean Of Tenderness
Deep Distance
Nightdust

Neu! were another German krautrock band from the 70s. As revered as the likes of Can but much less prolific although founding members Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother (both ex-Kraftwerk) were involved in other bands including Harmonia and La Düsseldorf. They only produced 3 proper studio albums Neu!, Neu! 2, and Neu '75, although an unoffical Neu! 4 was later released as Neu! '86. Their debut album is probably the one to start with for beginners and contains the celebrated Hallogallo and Negativland tracks - spacey melodic explorations over driving motorik beats so influential to Hawkwind.

As regular readers will know I chanced upon a whole raft of excellent experimental ambient music towards the back end of last year. I discovered a wide range of new artists and immersed myself in a number of albums. 6 months on it is interesting to see what has resurfaced from the deluge. The favourite to date seems to be the fascinating Fennesz album, Endless Summer, which I keep returning to. A correspondent likened the sound of this album to that of the dying of a distant star. A brilliant and entirely apt description. It is out of this world.

Well I may aswell. Nearly covered all 6 albums in the player this week so here goes with The Cinematic Orchestra. This album is simultaneously beautiful and slightly, dare I say, boring? It's so down tempo it is rendered almost imperceptible. Yes, that's the word...

Maybe this is far too harsh and within the lilting jazz piano and dreamy singing there are hidden depths but I've had this album for years so it's time for it to reveal itself. I'm seeing the group at a festival this summer so it will be interesting how they reproduce their music live.

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Books! Books! Books! There so much to read! I've got 3 on the go at the moment, with a bunch stacked in the queue. I'm cruising slowly through Why Bob Dylan Matters by Richard Thomas. This is all about the lyrics and is a take on why Dylan is as important as the ancient classical writers. I think the author is making a case for his degree course on the subject.

More fun is Julian Cope's twin autobiographies Head On (the trip from zero to hero and back to zero again with The Teardrop Explodes in the matter of only 2 or 3 years) and the follow up Repossessed which promises "shamanic depressions" in the 80s wilderness years.

And finally I've just started the impressive Electric Eden by Rob Young - a lengthy tome on the history of English (folk) music from Vaughan Williams through to Fairport Convention, The Incredible String Band, and all that Joe Boyd stuff. 100 pages in and it seems to be a cut above the usual surface music writing.

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Log #19 - Have a flutter with purveyors of out of tune electronica Boards of Canada

1. Neu! - Neu!
2. Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right to Children
3. Boards of Canada - Twoism
4. Bob Dylan - Desire
5. Kruder and Dorfmeister - Sessions CD 2
6. Mo Wax - Headz Volume 1


Boards of Canada are two Scottish brothers who make electronic music. Their music is weird and strangely appealing. I think this is just as it is so unusual - it therefore does different things inside your brain than most music and hence stands out and becomes memorable. The effect is rather like hearing the minimalism composers Part, Glass or Reich for the first time, or music from a different culture (eg. Indian, or Chinese, or South East Asian) that sounds alien to our western ears.

We believe that there are powers in music that are almost supernatural.

Unlike most electronic contemporaries the Boards of Canada make wide use of vintage and analogue equipment including tapes. This gives their music an authenticity and warmth rarely present in the more mathematically perfect music of other electronic pioneers like Kraftwerk. On casual listening a lot of their music sounds "out of tune" but stick with it and literally "tune-in" and it becomes beguiling and hypnotic.

The reclusive Boards of Canada, unmasked

Debut album Twoism (1995) was a home recorded affair and was a real mind bender like a Chris Nolan film - but one of his earlier low budget ones. Like my favourite film of all time Memento Twoism sounds like it was recorded backwards. Follow up Music Has The Right To Children (1998) was a studio album recorded for Warp Records but is barely more "commercial".

Both records make liberal use of samples over a characteristic mix of loops, flutters, drone, squeaks, pips and wobbles, pinned by primitive drum machine beats. Aquarius from the latter album is a very accessible start point for new listeners. Things get a lot weirder than this lovely "counting" song (but checkout how the sequential count in the "lyrics" goes awry after 36 - I wonder if there is any pattern or coded meaning to this? - I expect a BoC geek, of whom there are many apparently, has investigated).

Someone even plotted the lyrics to Aquarius!

The boys' apparent love of codes, hidden meanings, fractals, subliminal messages, numerology and cults, allied with the paucity of their releases and live appearances, has added suitably to their mythical status over their 20 year career. Hashtag cool!

Similar but not really at all is the compilation release from the Mo Wax label Headz. This sort of bland sampled jazzy looped trip hop may have been cutting edge at the time (1994!) but now sounds frankly a bit lazy and soulless despite containing cuts by Autechre and DJ Shadow. It always fascinates me how music of very similar styles can either leave you inspired or cold. To describe the difference between say Bonnie Prince Billy, Iron and Wine, The National, Fleet Foxes, Mumford and Sons, Bears Den and The Felice Brothers, may be quite difficult in words but you'll rarely find someone who likes all those bands, and one is fairly universally disliked for whatever reason (any guesses?)! I also have this debate with my teenage son who loves "his" music and "hates" my music although on the face of it there is barely any difference.

Fancy a flutter on Boards of Canada? No better place to start than here >>

 

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Log #18 - Dylan and German

Desire is my favourite Dylan album. The experience of listening attentively to the nine songs on this album is like reading nine short stories, actually not even short stories, there is such depth and character in these atmospheric songs it feels more like reading nine novels.

One of Dylan's most celebrated songs on Desire, or from his whole canon actually, is Hurricane which tells the story of Ruben "Hurricane" Carter, the heavyweight boxer who was framed for a murder "he never done... the one time he could have been the champion of the world."

It is argued that some liberties have been taken with the historical accuracy of some of Dylan's accounts particularly on Hurricane and the 11 minute epic Joey chronicling the life story of gangster Joe Gallo. Some of his subjects were no doubt romanticised in song but it remains a fact that Carter wrongfully served 19 years in jail from 1966 until his pardon in 1985.

Dylan's writing was in a rich vein of form in the mid 70s and prior to Desire he had released another fan favourite, Blood on the Tracks. It is easy to forget that Dylan had been around a long time and by 1975, when equivalent singer song writers of the era were maybe on to the their sixth album or so, he had already recorded fourteen. Blood on the Tracks was his cathartic "break-up" album featuring heartbreaking odes to his ex-wife Sara, and some anger too such as Idiot Wind.

Of course Dylan's song writing genius is much celebrated, and he has recently been honoured by the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first time the award has gone to a song writer. This is not the place to offer any lyrical analysis or interpretation from such a vast body of work as I could choose practically any verse from practically any song so where could one possibly start? Suffice to say he often surprises with wit and humour as with this simple stream of consciousness dialogue between a husband and wife in Isis:

She said "Where you been ?" I said "No place special?"
She said "You look different" I said "Well I guess"
She said "You been gone"
I said "That's only natural"
She said "You gonna stay?"
I said "If you want me to, Yeah."

Then there's always this sort of wit and devastating commentary, this time from Joey:

The police department hounded him, they called him Mr. Smith
They got him on conspiracy, they were never sure who with
"What time is it?" said the judge to Joey when they met
"Five to ten," said Joey, the judge says, "that's exactly what you get!"

Dylan is an artist I return to again and again. Always offering something new or something reassuringly familiar.

This week's magazine then:

1. Can - Tago Mago
2. Can - Anthology
3. Neu! - Neu!
4. Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
5. Bob Dylan - Desire
6. Kruder and Dorfmeister - Sessions CD 1

The Tago Mago speaking alien brain man - usually in orange    

Another group who have stood the test of time is Can. Indeed their 70s music really was ahead of its time. Of all the "Krautrock" bands Can are probably the most revered and influential. In a genre that had a relatively short heyday Can had the greatest longevity. Tago Mago is an amazing piece of work - probably in my Top Ten albums of all time (now, what would they be I ask myself?). Originally a double LP the album consists of only 7 tracks. Two of the more lengthy numbers are Aumgn and Peking O which are both mind-blowing sonic soundscapes of random avant garde experimentation. Good for them putting these tracks to record. It took me a while to fully appreciate these tracks when I first had the album - in fact I bought the vinyl album second hand from an old record shop in the bus terminal at Chichester (a great shop that introduced me to many unusual bands - oh the excitement of thumbing through racks of old records!) and one of these side long tracks was marred by a nasty scratch that was possibly a blessing in disguise. Thankfully the absolutely amazing Hallelujah was unaffected and remains arguably the greatest Can track of all time. At 18 minutes long it gives full reign to drummer Jaki Liebezeit's hypnotic patterns and Holger Czukay's funky bass, over which eccentric singer Damo Suzuki repetively shouts what sounds like "I'm searching for my brother, yes I am!" It was for many years my go to track when I wanted to impress and astound a new friend.

Irmin Schmidt's sythesizer has been likened to the sound of a UFO taking off.

There is a brief respite during Hallelujah around the five or six minute point which is where the edit is made for the Anthology compilation. I'm normally not a fan of anthologies or greatest hits packages but despite one or two such edits (Can are rather like Pink Floyd in that it is quite difficult to create a greatest hits summary without trimming the length of the tracks) it's a very good career retrospective - unnecessary for completists like me but a good primer for less religious Can fans.

Kruder and Dorfmeister are also German (or Austrian rather I think?) but of a much more recent vintage. The Sessions album is lovely. It is remixes of various pop and jazz tunes mostly in the dub vein but these talented DJs really make the music their own. Who would have thought Depeche Mode could ever sound this good. Highly recommended and also one of my favourite records certainly a decade or so ago.

Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister - master DJ mixers

Actually it is so odd how your mind plays tricks on you. I was convinced someone introduced me to this music in 1992 (I remember as it was a certain time and place that was particularly memorable as I was travelling on a year out in Asia). I even remember the name of the person, who was called Dave Person and came from San Francisco! I then shared notes with an old muso friend of mine that I hooked up with when I moved to Brighton in 1997. But blow me down, both these memories are fundamentally flawed - I've checked and the album was released in 1998. I just can't understand how that is possible!

Last up this week in this German flavoured listing is Neu!

Please note that Neu! are the only band permitted to use punctuation in their name without being mercilessly ridiculed.

Tim Sommer 

Neu! - Sound like more than a 2-piece

Their music is quintessential Krautrock - mostly instrumental with the basic 4/4 rock "motorik" beat and very effective. Certainly not as groundbreaking or prolific as Can but very similar and this, their debut, is many people's favourite album of the whole genre, and the opening track Hallagallo is frequently proffered as the krautrock track.

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