seventh sons (rare earth XX)

seventh sons - seventh sons (1964)

Seventh Sons is a folk rock trio (with the add of Frank Evatoff for the flute parts) who released only one album back in the mid 60's. The leader, guitarist & multi-instrumentalist Buzz Linhart provided a lot of materials. He was recognized as the main protagonist of the Seventh Sons typical sound. After the band's scission he launched a career in solo as a guitarist. Historically this is a must despite that great followers will blow away this effort. Simply called "raga" this album is maybe the first experimental rock item which successes to conciliate "eastern" influences, harmonies & elements with basic, standard rock structures. The only track is built around a single theme developed in several sequences, according a large part to acoustic guitar & flute "floating" lines. Rather discreet pop voices are added to the mix. Back to the 60's musical context “raga” figures as an undisputed masterwork in "indo" pre-progressive rock universe.

Más rare earth, el espíritu de esta aldea. Poco, muy poco se ha hablado de Seventh Sons y su único disco. Su nombre, supongo, está insipirado por la tradición y el folclore que acompaña al número 7. Catalogado como el primer raga tocado con instrumentos eléctricos, lo cierto, es que resulta sorprendente escuchar un disco como éste en 1964, adelantado a la psicodelia y a las influencias que las bandas de occidente recogerían de la India. Tanto es así, que no se publicó hasta 1968. Difícil delimitar por donde se mueve la única pista, el evocador y místico 'Raga', conducido por las cuerdas de Buzz Linhart y las infecciosas percusiones de Serge Katzen, una voz que actúa como un instrumento más y la adicción al trío de la flauta de Frank Evatoff ornamenta el viaje y rompe las eternas líneas de bajo de James Rock. Eastern free-folk-psych en clave raga o mejor, libertad en su estado puro.

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talugung

talugung - flooded fields (foxglove, 2008)

Someone should start a clan of the instrument builders. and if such a thing existed, talugung (aka ontario resident, ryan waldron) would be one of the leaders of the movement. even though no such organization exists (damnit), there's still this debut album of waldron's fractured exploits. "flooded fields" isn't played on all instruments he's built, though. he accents this with all sorts of random, ethnic instruments - circular xylophones from god knows where, for example - creating a wonderful cacaphony of sound. the proceedings here are choppy and melodic, but underpinned with an organic sense. at times, it sounds like something you might find on a sublime frequencies release, and is also reminiscent of the work of henry kuntz. 100 copies

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juju

juju - a message from mozambique (black fire, 1973)

The first album by the group that later went on to become Oneness Of Juju! The album was recorded with a group that featured Plunky Nakabinde and Lon Moshe on reeds and percussion -- plus Babatunde on congas and drums -- and the overall sound is very much in kind of an Art Ensemble Of Chicago mode - with more "out" soloing overall, mixed with some of the spiritual jazz leanings that would show up more on the group's later work. The album's a fitting record for the Strata East label -- as it shows the imprint's equal ability to carve up heavy avant work and more strident spiritual soul jazz. And if we say so ourselves, Plunky's really a wailer on tenor and soprano -- sounding a lot like Kalaparusha or some of the other AACM players from the time! Titles include "(Struggle) Home", "Soledad Brothers", "Freedom Fighter", and "Nairobi/Chants.

La infección rítmica de James Plunky, afro free-jazz que tendría continuación bajo el nombre de Oneness of Juju y un sonido más cercano al funk y a la world-music. Este primer album va en la estela de la AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) y de anteriores viajeros de f. como Maulawi Nururdin y sobre todo, Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre.

Audio: nairobi chants

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the family elan

the family elan - stare of dawn (locust, 2007)

The Family Elan was christened by Chris Hladowski in 2006, being the natural culmination of many hours spent in solitude, both writing songs and attempting to develop an intuitive approach to music making based on the myriad traditions of the long-necked lute. The debut album, Stare of Dawn, consists of spiraling free form yet rooted originals with Hladowski playing bouzouki, baglamas, violin, clarinet, and guitar, alongside various percussion instruments, and Hanna Tuulikki on recorder and flute. The songs range from instrumental modal wanderings with themes such as cascading waterfalls, to folk-inflected tales of friendship and seduction. It was recorded by John Cavanagh (Phosphene) at his home in Muirend, on the outskirts of Glasgow. Since the recording of the album several forays have been made into the murky world of live performance.

Elan derives much inspiration from devotional and folk music traditions. The tanbur playing of the Kurdish Sufi mystic Ostad Elahi and Âshyq songs of the Azerbaijani sâz master Edalat Nasibov spring immediately to mind, alongside the rawer, more percussive sounds of the Yayla musicians of the Eastern Black Sea region – who fashion reed instruments from young pine saplings - like Hasan Yïldïrïm (who plays the violin like a drum) and Hayri Dev. The music of the Rebetes of early twentieth century Greece is an obvious benchmark, alongside more recent European folk revivalists like the Hungarian band Muzsikás. Other signposts might include the bouzouki inventions of Anne Briggs and the musical tapestries of the Incredible String Band. There is also a ‘pop’ sensibility lurking in there somewhere, though it is nigh on impossible to pin down in the conventional sense.

Audio:
monumental

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le diable probablement...

Robert Bresson, El diablo probablemente (1977)

Charles, un joven burgés parisino de 20 años aparece muerto en el cementario de Père-Lachais ¿qué sucedió? ¿qué le ha llevado a tal final?... Reflexión sobre la existencia, el vacío que la rodea, la mirada de Charles es una mirada misteriosa, pesimista y fuera de toda esperanza.

Estamos ante el retrato coral de un estado de ánimo generacional. Pero Bresson no pretende tanto el retrato de unos jóvenes post-sesentayochistas ni siquiera un filme sociológico sobre un sector de la juventud -aunque algo de esto queda como telón de fondo- como una particular tesis sobre el fin del mundo a través del camino hacia la autodestrucción de un joven diferente y a la vez del montón. Un filme fatalista y al mismo tiempo inclasificable ¿Es el autor de “Pickcpocket” un pesimista? Si, pero no al modo bergmaniano sino más bien al modo en que lo son otros autores franceses fascinantes, personalísimos e infravalorados como Franju, Becker o Melville. Prefieren plantear interrogantes, penetrar en las heridas, pero sin dar soluciones (como hoy tampoco lo hace el austriaco Michael Haneke). Bresson es en algunos momentos moralista, pero siempre nos quita la certidumbre de cualquier lección ética definitiva. Y de ahí la importancia de su estilo, desnudo, hecho de fueras de campo, desmintiendo a través de la planificación cinemática cualquier posible teatralidad mediante el uso de primeros planos de objetos o de cuerpos humanos, sonidos en off y diálogos melancólicos que, en este caso, pueden sonar hasta ridículamente sentenciosos.

"El diablo probablemente" es argumentalmente una tragedia nihilista, pero no está filmada como tal sino como una odisea personal triste pero a la vez dotada de una extraordinaria vida, la misma vitalidad que desprendían los meticulosos esfuerzos por escapar del protagonista de “Un condenado a muerte se ha escapado”. El realizador no teme irritarnos, pero sus intenciones son siempre precisas como ocurre en esa discursiva sesión de Charles frente a un pedante psicoanalista que, lejos de ayudarle, le proporciona la idea con la que poner fin a su existencia. Bresson, que comenzó siendo un pintor y nunca dejo de serlo admitió temer el uso del color. Aquí lo emplea de modo harto creativo, con una mezcla de belleza y oscuridad. En esta ocasión se vale de un operador de excepción, exportado del mejor cine italiano de los setenta: Pasquale de Santis que se adapta plenamente a la algo funeraria pero a la vez humanísima gama cromática bressoniana, renunciando al preciosismo pero sin caer tampoco en la suciedad, a pesar de lo sórdido de algunos de los personajes que pueblan la trama y de lo incomprensible de muchas de sus acciones, que incluyen el robo de los cepillos de una Iglesia donde van a dormir o continuas separaciones y reencuentros del cuarteto protagonista, Charles, Alberte, Edwige y Michel, el mejor amigo del protagonista y el que con un extraño estoicismo trata de ayudarlo pero no cesa de juzgarlo por su relación con las dos jóvenes.

almaden

almaden - the dream continues in 1,000,000 Roads as the journeyman slumbers to be awoken by the berries of air and forest, a dawn pre-imagined and so owned in footstep and deed as our lovely soujourner of unabysmal light soujourns 4th into willowy and totally purple dawning, day is upon r hero and the golden Rd. of infinitudinous blessedhood! (lattajjaa, 2007)

What a (long) title for the album...giving me over 10 minutes of naturally changing pulsating drones and guitar feedbacks (on “buffalo and daughter”) to think this over, before coming to the semi-drugged-mind pyschedelic folk core expression. On some point this seems like how brains and brainwaves thoroughly become like roots of trees. They grow with the acoustic guitar pickings, with humming droning waves in the vocals, taking time to stretch with its mood creations…(and this especially on “black swan”). The harmony vocals on “Buffalo Forever” will possibly bring Devendra Banhart to mind for some listeners, bringing this kind of loner hippie to a tepee, which thoroughly will be smashing to pieces its wow-wow drumming…on his guitar, very distorted in mind, flesh, and wood. “Prayers for singers” makes it up with flowers, whistles, and witches-brew hummings as flipped romantic religious worships and bubbled colourful consciousnesses. Some songs are listed as dedications to life, while the first one which breaths a pause is the meditational moment; a few others are moments of waiting in vain, and are the songs of death, drooping sadly towards a certain wickedness. “Kill me again” is again a bit more communal, with a whipping and hopping ritualistic feeling in the rhythms, as a controlled wackiness, romantic-religious and keeping finger-crossed control in song while mind-losing and opening its consciousness. “Paean: Kitteridge Sam” is calm and sweet, like celebrated candy butterflies swimming in butter. The whole crowd of musicians sings along, in harmony with harmony and a bit of disharmony. “North Country Girl” is a heretic outburst heart full of romance, love, desire and wining, with troubadour guitarpickings and child playroom glockenspiel remembrances slightly dementing, and some harmonium. “Song of sorrow” is again a song of death and sadness, blowing in the winds of lost times. The same backing musicians (himself) howl along like priests, or play glockenspiel like victims of circumstances. “The golden road” sings to the full lightness of daylights again, of thoughts that first were hidden away in prison pits, while having collected so many emotions with it, its final expression becomes transcendent by its seeing light for the first time.

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silmaril (rare earth XIX)

silmaril - voyage of icarus (1973)

Awash in fuzz boxes and acid trips, the dozens of other overlooked groups from the psychedelic era bear little resemblance to Silmaril. While others buzzed within the hippie epicenters of Haight Street and the Lower East Side, Silmaril formed in haunted, industrial Milwaukee. Other bands might have met at a love-in; Silmaril were friends from a Catholic youth retreat bound together by a doomed figure in the eccentric madman tradition of Syd Barrett, Roy Harper and Mel Lyman by the name of Matthew Peregrine. The Voyage of Icarus captures the dark, mysterious, and achingly beautiful acid folk & Christian themed psychedelic sounds that emanated from 1973’s privately pressed album, Given Time... Or the Several Roads, and their dormant, unreleased follow up No Mirrored Temple.
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Few have pondered harder than Matthew Peregrine, creative director of the churchy early ‘70s folk ensemble Silmaril. The group met at a Catholic youth retreat, and Peregrine was a practicing Catholic Pentacostal. (The Pentacostals are the ones who believe that, to be saved, they must go beyond gossiping and mumbling hymns, have a “personal relationship” with God, and let the Big Fella breathe down their necks at all times.) The Silmaril kids were also, as some of you may have discerned by now, fascinated with the thick arcania of Tolkein. But it wasn’t just a filtered fascination with the black art of imagination that gave Silmaril’s music a self-destructive edge. No, Matthew Peregrine was very, very gay, and no amount of evangelical fervor could change the tingle in his loins. Years after Silmaril dissolved, he became a hardcore leatherman. But, right here, we’re stuck in his conflicted, ascetic, gay-for-Jesus hell. And, man, is it compelling. Silmaril cut one LP in its time on this earth, the weirdly forlorn (but disturbingly optimistic!) Given Time or the Several Roads. It consisted mostly of acoustic ballads, usually detached (in a wannabe-mystic sort of way) but sometimes remarkably tender and wise (“Given Time”). The voices, both male and female, bleed a poisoned irony that can only come from extreme self-consciousness, and thus drink deep of the mortal pain that gives music soul. This is no hippie freakout. This is a deep, resonant conflict. It’s art defined by elements in its creators that they could not release through any other avenue.

Y comienza 'Poustinia'... y lo hace uno de los discos más sugerentes que recuerdo. Ha sido recuperado y redescubierto por Locust para nuestra fortuna. Todo un rare earth que tengo de camino a casa. En 'The Voyage of Icarus' se descubre un acid-folk cristiano que más allá de ornamentaciones y ambientes oníricos, está maniatado por un halo de misterio y de cierto vacío en su ambiente, así, van liberando en bellísimas canciones sus confesiones. 19 canciones son y ninguna abandona lo acústico, en ellas, las evocadores y sugerentes voces conducen a unas melodías del amanecer y entre tanto, alguna vez, el fervor cristiano se cuela por la ventana. Cuando se acaba, a uno se la hace difícil escoger con cual de todas ella le gustaría despertarse al día siguiente, con 'Vespers' quizá. Para colocarlo al lado de Fuchsia, Mellow Candle, Forest o sino, con otros cristianos como Harvest Flight.

Audio:
poustinia
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the voyage of icarus

robert wyatt

robert wyatt - comicopera (domino, 2007)

Since a listening copy of 'Comicopera' turned up a few weeks back, it's hardly left the office stereo. At 62 years of age the ex-Soft Machine drummer could have easily called it a day by now, he's made his mark on the music scene both as a member of one of progressive rock's most important acts and also as a hugely creative solo artist in his own right. But at an age where most artists shrivel up only to emerge for cash-in live shows or charity appearances, Wyatt just seems to get better and better and with "Comicopera" he has pieced together his most beguiling album to date and quite easily one of the years most incredible releases. 'Comicopera' is divided into three acts, the first 'Lost in Noise' being the most straightforward sonically, highlighting Wyatt's talent for writing leftfield pop music of the most sublime kind. The second act 'The Here and the Now' is jazzy and playful, while the third 'Away with the Fairies' is the most unusual, with tracks sung in Italian and Spanish and sparsely accompanied by discordant, dark instrumentals. Wyatt has long been championed by critics but largely ignored by the record-buying public so it seems right that Domino, drunk with their successes with the Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand have put their funds into something truly remarkable and culturally important and given one of the millennium's most fascinating albums adequate support. With songs such as the loungey 'Just as You Are' the comical 'Be Serious' and the melancholy 'You You' straddling such oddities as 'Cancion de Julieta' and the Gamelan-inspired 'Pastafari' there seems no doubt that a new generation of Wyatt listeners will emerge from the mists and will discover a world of genuinely forward-thinking music. The rest of us will simply be dying to hear what the great man does next, one gets the feeling that 'Comicopera' is just the beginning of a very rewarding relationship.

Ahora que publicaciones de referencia, para algunos, se acuerdan de él, las reverencias de muchos acompañan y van detrás, hasta Domino edita el disco. Al final, lo importante es la música y que Robert aún guarda energías para hacernos disfrutar y soñar, y a mí, no se me ocurre mejor manera de iniciar un nuevo año, que con uno de los músicos que más significado tiene en esta pequeña aldea. Siento ser así de cuesto con él, pero no hay más tiempo.

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Comicopera (parte 1)
Comicopera (parte 2)