Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Music From The Penguin Cafe
Bonnie Prince Billy - The Letting Go
Soft Hair - Soft Hair
Jerry Paper - Like A Baby
Bonnie Prince Billy - Summer In The Southeast
Bonnie Prince Billy's The Letting Go album fondly reminds me of his Lie Down In The Light album (which followed). Fairly down tempo and relaxed, as with most of his albums, The Letting Go contains one of my favourite Bonnie songs, the haunting Cursed Sleep, with its amazing video...
The beauty and eccentricity of The Letting Go doesn't provoke deep absorption or self-reflection so much as a kind of fond familiarity.
Pitchfork
Indeed, perhaps not Bonnie Prince Billy's most daring album but he is effortlessly great in almost anything he does. I haven't yet come across an album that has disappointed...
Which takes me on to the live album Summer In The Southeast. This is stunning. Not least as it was so unexpected. Whereas The Letting Go's easy vibe is typical Bonnie Prince Billy this noisy heavy warts and all rock gig from 2005 is a new Bonnie Prince Billy to me (in fact I'd never heard of the album until it popped up on a youtube feed I was listening to one evening).
Boosted by electric guitar from collaborator Matt Sweeney BPB reinvents his back catalogue with "a delightfully drunken racket of tangled guitars and thunderous percussion" (Pitchfork). The sound verges on grunge or even punk and reminds me of The Velvet Underground. So hardly representative of any of his albums I've heard, or I imagine most of his gigs, nevertheless an exciting addition to the Bonnie catalogue. A great find.
The other new entry this week comes from LA producer Jerry Paper. This came on to my radar via the unusual Soft Hair album. I was in a Brighton cafe one afternoon and this music came on and the weird distorted electronica sounded to me just like Soft Hair. I asked the patron and he told me it was Jerry Paper. Name lodged in notebook and album investigated forthwith.
Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Music From The Penguin Cafe
Tangerine Dream - Zeit
Soft Hair - Soft Hair
Brian Eno - Ambient 4 On Land
Lift To Experience - The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads (CD 1)
Two excellent albums spanning the career of instrumental chamber group The Penguin Cafe Orchestra this week. Music From The Penguin Cafe was their debut album released in 1976 on Brian Eno's fledgling Obscure Records label. It's fully reviewed here>>.
Union Cafe was the original band's fifth and final album released in 1993 before band leader Simon Jeffes' premature death in 1997. The double album takes the listener through a variety of styles - classical, minimalism, jazz, swing and experimental - yet does hold together as an enjoyable whole.
Various versions and offshoots of the original ensemble under the names The Anteaters, The Orchestra That Fell to Earth, and Penguin Cafe (with Simon Jeffes' son Arthur), continue to record and tour today.
It's a sharing week in the 6 CD changer this week with an equal showing from Krautrock and Soul Funk (plus a considerable helping of the brilliant Father John Misty which has trumped both camps to be almost certainly the most played CD in the slots).
In the blue Krautrock corner we have more from the very interesting Cluster, a Mojo magazine cover disc and a classic early album from German experimental group Popol Vuh. In the red Soul Funk corner we have a quick return for the sleazy disco of Soft Hair and an overdue one from Sly And The Family Stone (I've also been enjoying another classic album new to me - this one from Isaac Hayes - but that's not here today and will be saved for another time).
As I said in last week's post I thought I was pretty well acquainted with Krautrock but the Neu Decade compilation disc (touted as "modern European music from 1970-79) from Mojo would, again, indicate otherwise: There's only one track I'm familiar with on here and about ten of the actual bands I've not heard before at all;
Lots to absorb here but I was immediately intrigued by the Tangerine Dream track Ultima Thule Part 1 which sounds nothing like the Tangerine Dream I know. The track was recorded in 1971 around the time of their second album Alpha Centauri and released as a single. It's a heavy rock instrumental with drums and guitar and soaring keyboards. Rather like early Pink Floyd:
I don't have a copy of the band's first two albums but would be very surprised if they sounded anything like this.
There's a nice quote from David Bowie's producer Tony Visconti on the CD cover:
The atmosphere really stimulated David. He loved it there. I think he spent less than two years in Berlin but it really gave him a new perspective and a new outlook on what to do.
"A Mammoth Perfection" - In Den Garten Pharaos so described by Julian Cope.
Popol Vuh were a German electronic avant-garde band founded by pianist and keyboardist Florian Fricke in 1969. In Den Gärten Pharaos (In The Garden Of Pharao) is Popol Vuh’s second album.
The first album Affenstunde (1970) is regarded as one of the earliest "space music" works, featuring the then brand new sounds of the Moog synthesizer together with ethnic percussion. German music guru Peter Cat tells me that Fricke was actually the very first musician to own a Moog in Germany. This continued to be used on In Den Gärten Pharaos, before Fricke largely abandoned electronic instruments, selling his Moog (to Klaus Schulze!), in favour of piano-led compositions from 1972's Hosianna Mantra forward. Check out this beautiful minimalist piano solo from Fricke for instance:
Eat your heart out Philip Glass.
Popol Vuh influenced many other European bands with their uniquely soft but elaborate instrumentation, which took inspiration from the music of Tibet, Africa, and South America (the original "Popol Vuh" was a sacred Mayan text - I love learning new stuff (and not just music) through this blog). With spiritual and introspective music sometimes described as "ethereal", they created dense immersive soundscapes through psychedelic walls of sound, and are regarded as precursors of contemporary world music, as well as of new age and ambient.
Popol Vuh went on to contribute soundtracks to the films of Werner Herzog, including Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Nosferatu, Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde, Heart of Glass and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, in which Fricke appeared.
In Den Gärten Pharaos consists of two side long compositions with the later reissue also adding two bonus tracks.The opening title track begins with water sounds and a gentle drone which are joined by tabla drumming and jazzy electric piano which even reminds me a little of the sound on John Martyn's Solid Air album. This beautiful restful track fades away as it begins, on washes of water.
The church organ and choir drenched second track Vuh is described as "a near religious experience" by Peter Cat. Beginning on a swell of gongs and crashing cymbals a triumphant cathedral of sound is built on three monumental organ chords.
It's truly fascinating to hear these revolutionary sounds at the dawn of the synthesizer.
Eddy Bamyasi
The bonus tracks are two 10 minute pieces entitled Kha-White Structures (parts 1 and 2). These are a little more experimental. Part 1 has a very revolutionary off key synth loop which sounds just like some tracks from Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II. Part 2 is a wavering drone with ghostly background most like a Stockhausen piece.
In Den Garten Pharaos is definitely in my top 3 Krautrock albums along with Tago Mago and Zeit.
Raphael Loubert
All in all a fascinating record of ambience much closer to Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno than the "traditional" rock-based Krautrock of contemporaries Faust, Can and Neu!.
Eddy continues his bid to name-check every band under the sun this week with 4 brand new artists and 2 making only a second appearance.
Nucleus Plastic Rock
Nils FrahmAll Melody
Edgar FroeseEpsilon In Malaysian Pale
BurialUntrue
Soft HairSoft Hair
Hats Off Gentlemen It's AdequateOut Of Mind
Firstly the 2: Edgar Froese's sumptuous Epsilon In Malaysian Pale easily slots into the Tangerine Dream early to mid 70s canon of classic Berlin school albums somewhere in between Phaedra and Rubycon. Eddy went all green and moist over Epsilon in a recent review.
There was also a degree of moistness with the Nucleus album which Eddy discovered in log #125, Plastic Rock easily claiming the "record of the week" spot in his Roger Dean retrospective.
For those that like their jazz fusion just a little bit more easy listening than Bitches Brew.
On to green pastures anew: Hats Off Gentlemen It's Adequate appear a curious proposition. For a start what's that name all about? It's not even the album title name. It's actually the band name. Are they actually a band even? It seems like Hats Off / HOGIA are perhaps just two people, in which case their complex prog rock sound is remarkable. They are either a couple of amazing multi-instrumentalists or computer geniuses or both.
HOGIA throw the full prog gambit at Out Of Mind which takes us on a whirlwind tour through Marillion and Genesis infused music containing a myriad of instruments, time signatures, involved lyrics, dynamics and tempos, not only across songs but within them too. It's a lot to take in but fans of those two bands (particularly the Marillion on the vocal tracks, and the Genesis on the instrumental passages) will lap it up.
With it's gurgling keyboard Defiance is like one of the instrumentals littered throughout The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. But it's the guitar sound I love most. The latter half of the album in particular exhibits some gorgeous slow drawn out guitar glissando with pleasing chord changes that strike you right in the gut; reminiscent of Neil Young on Zuma or Alex Lifeson at his beston La Villa Strangiato or By-Tor And The Snow Dog, but with the Steve Hackett (a fan apparently) sound (and a hint of Mark Knopfler too).Take Maze for example with its gentle guitar arpeggio, the spacey If I Miss The Stars, or If You Think This World Is Bad, an impressively efficient bass pulse driven 3 minute instrumental break amongst a sea of 6 and 7 minute epics. Favourite track and most gorgeous of all is Losing Myself (and indeed I do in that guitar figure).
No entry at the music map as yet but I've made a nomination.
The disturbing cover at the head of this log belongs to the Soft Hair album. It actually fits the album of sleazy funk disco really well. I like the band's unusual sound which is a dark mash-up of Michael Jackson, Prince, and Sly and the Family Stone (you can't get more sleazy than a Jackson-Prince-Stone menage-a-trois), and as if produced by Boards of Canada too. It came out as recently as 2016 although was many years in its conception by co-collaborators Connan Mockasin (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Sam Dust (LA Priest and Late Of The Pier). The Gainsbourg connection perhaps being significant as despite never hearing her father's classic sleaze disco album Histoire de Melody Nelson all the way through, I am confident this record is from that lineage.
I like to watch you run But I'll never touch your bum
Check out this track which pretty much summarises this peculiar album (be warned the parental advisory sticker should apply to their videos as well as the music):
Who are Burial? Well, in fact, Burial is electronic music producer William Bevan from South London. The reclusive Bevan remained anonymous for a while leading to speculation that Burial was in fact another pseudonym for Richard James (Aphex Twin) or Keiran Hebden (Four Tet). His cover was blown in 2008 when his second album Untrue was nominated for the Mercury Prize.
This acclaimed album draws upon breakbeat, dubstep, rave, and drum and bass, but also there is a lot of ambient glitch, vinyl crackle, distortion and decay. Think of the aural innovation of Portishead when they first came out, and factor it up by ten.
It could be a dog's breakfast with all those influences but is actually a coherent whole and oddly the distorted vocal fragments in particular make Untrue quite an interesting companion (or counterpoint?) piece to the Soft Hair (maybe that Boards Of Canada aesthetic being the common touchpoint?).
Who is Nils Frahm? I've heard the name and had my expectations. This album by the Berlin composer surpasses them. Why? Unsure. I think, again (and how often do I say this?), it wasn't what I was expecting. There is beautiful treated solo piano which is minimalist with space to breath. But there is pulse and beats too. The title track has a gorgeously hypnotic gated synth which is right up my Tangerine Dream / Jean Michel Jarre strabe / rue (and get the Daft Punk influences too). Here is Frahm performing title track All Melody live:
