The years spent modelling and vamping around Europe in the rubble of WWII, tail-gating auteurs, lead nowhere.
The cameo in Fellini's Dolce Vita fails to parlay into an acting career.
Strip Tease, an early recording with arch diddler ettrésor national Serge Gainsbourg, is passed over for Juliette Greco. (Nico's voice is not to the old rogue's breathy and infantile taste.)
A spell in London with manipulator a la mod Andrew Loog Oldham fails to generate pop magic.
And so....
Nico washes up in New York to be taken up by Andy Warhol (as in "Hols") as his latest superstar and touted as such to the VU crew. She and Andy are briefly inseparable.
Chelsea Girl is the perfect album created for a model. Nine of the ten tracks are written by ex-lovers, including co-writes by Reed and Cale. Subsequent albums, Marble Index and Desertshore are superior because they reflect her vision, her songs presented on the instrument she makes her own, the baby harmonium.
For now, enjoy the debut Nico hated. It works close up magic. Conjures washed out regret, degradation and loss. Worlds of beauty and decay in miniature.
Meditations on memory and decay. Retrospection, amnesia, repetition, regression. Alzheimer’s unmasked. The last stand of the prefrontal cortex. Atrophy.
Stripping away phonographic fidelity by gradations, James Leyland Kirby mirrors the peeling back of memory, re-construing time-locked thought in a haunted present.
Kirby's genius is to make decay tangible. He is a craftsman who makes audible the ticking of memory's clock as it winds down to a vanishing point.
hermits mountain men smiling eccentrics men who build their own homes
children
parents who learn from their children
loafers
amateur musicians
serene psychotics
animals
men who look at sunsets
men who walk in the woods
beautiful women
cooks
men who sit by the fire
wanderers
men who make bread
couples who have been in love for years
unemployed men
smiling men with bad reputations
- Timothy Leary, Psychedelic Prayers
Heron takes flight (yes) with spirited assistance from Townshend, Moon, Lane, Cale, Winwood, Page, Thompson and Dr Strangely Strange. Mike rocks out, blowing away the whimsy, sitars and patchouli clouds without trampling the legacy underfoot. Intriguingly, his wayward voice is more at ease with folk rock belters than the slower acoustic ISB fare.
A good bunch of songs to hang out with for a while, and one to cherish.
They went on to enjoy commercial elevation and much bigger hair, but let’s remember The Psychedelic Furs as lean, hungry and thrilling. European sisters and brothers swooned to Richard Butler’s rakish rasp and the collective pulsing, throbbing post-punk drone. By the time US college radio got to it, the game was sadly up.
Thinking of Woody Guthrie, Tonight I'm Singing Just For You, Hold On It's Coming, Paris Sessions. Early70s Country Joe is good Country Joe, and partial to a concept.
From this period comes War War War based on poems of RobertW. Service, "bard of the Yukon" (1874 - 1958). Service served with an ambulance crew in World War I and his poetry deals with duty and sacrifice as much as waste and futility.
Yet may it not be, crime and war
But efforts misdirected are.
And if there's good in war and crime
There may be in my bits of rhyme,
My songs from out the slaughter mill:
So take or leave them as you will.
Room for ambiguity gives egress to Country Joe whose commitment to supporting Vietnam veterans is unwavering. Blaming soldiers for war is like blaming firefighters for fire.
Akhenaten. 18th dynasty Pharaoh. Rules seventeen years, causing religious kerfuffle by introducing monotheistic worship of Aten, the sun god. The priesthood gets mardy and it doesn't take.
Akhnaten is the last installment of Glass's portrait trilogy, bringing warmth and depth to the cold precision of Einstein on the Beach and a grittier texture than Satyagraha.
Open are the double doors of the horizon, Unlocked are its bolts. The constellations stagger, Clouds darken the sky, The stars rain down, The bones of the hell hounds tremble, The porters are silent when they see this king dawning as a soul. Open are the double doors of the horizon, Unlocked are its bolts
- Libretto, Act 1 Prelude, Refrain, Verse 1, Verse 2 Oddi wrth y brawd
Sami Sänpäkkilä's Kesämaan Lapset (2009), recorded under his Es moniker, follows four years on from Sateenkaarisuudelma's kaleidoscopic drone n chant. Kesämaan Lapset dials down the sprawl and explores more accessible electronic sound worlds, in part tribute to 70s Finnish acid-folk waif Pekka Streng. Sami's own Fonal label harkens to days when album label stamp signified common sound and communal mystique. Fonal particular stock in trade: experimental psych-folk, witchy SSW and blissed out electronica.
Opening Ennen Oli Huonommin fanfares a flamboyance of iridescent analog chirrups, skittering and dazzling across four major-key minutes. Clearly, we're located somewhere in the pristine Nordic electrono-Fonal lab, next valley over from the lo-fi forest folk dwellers. Next up, cheery homespun ditty Kesa Ja Hymyilevat introduces spacy vocals and free-ranging electronics. Vaguely Magical Power Mako. Then things start to get really interesting. Sateet Sun Sielusta plays with some piano phrases only to build into a celebratory cascade of drone, combining disciplined minimalism with mind-manifesting kosmische synthesiser worship.
Still reeling from the meteor shower of trickling lines and deep-space drones, stagger aboard title track Kesämaan Lapset fora twenty minute ride through personal space, childhood summers and euphorically expansive vistas of the latent. First comes a repeated piano phrase - possibly a Dvořák steal - as pastoral grounding. This morphs into into idyllic trills, washes and field recordings, or perhaps simulated, summoning woods, streams and sea-shore adventure. Final enveloping section builds skywards to a celestial crescendo worthy of Popol Vuh in its pomp. Heady.
Closing, comparatively brief Haamut Sun Sydamesta is a necessary psychedelic come down which serves to remind us that, however abstracted the journey, this is a SSW album at heart. Which brings us back to Pekka.
Post-orchestral-space rock windfall for "kitchen sink" production aficionados. Trademark dynamics front and centre: begin sparse n slow, build, build, build...... crescendo.....come down...shuffle...repeat. Textbook.
Two lengthy art pieces packing emotional punch. Cast-iron testament that the experimental and constructivist may cleave to the power to move.
Gavin Bryars is not light on methodological muscle, working across jazz, free improv, minimalism, avant-garde and neoclassicism. A founding member of the Portsmouth Sinfonia - an orchestra whose membership consisted of performers who “embrace the full range of musical competence” (there’s a euphemism in there somewhere). Sinfonia members included erstwhile pal Brian Eno whose Obscure Records label put out several Bryars works in the mid-70s including the Titanic piece herein.
Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971) loops around a field-recording of homeless man vocalising-improvising a hymn. Over the loop, are built rich harmonies, played by live ensemble; slowly increasing in density, and impact before gradual fade. The piece was first recorded for use in a documentary chronicle of street life in and around London’s Elephant and Castle:
When I played it at home, I found that his singing was in tune with my piano, and I improvised a simple accompaniment. I noticed, too, that the first section of the song - 13 bars in length - formed an effective loop which repeated in a slightly unpredictable way. I took the tape loop to Leicester, where I was working in the Fine Art Department, and copied the loop onto a continuous reel of tape, thinking about perhaps adding an orchestrated accompaniment to this. The door of the recording room opened on to one of the large painting studios and I left the tape copying, with the door open, while I went to have a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping.
I was puzzled until I realised that the tape was still playing and that they had been overcome by the old man's singing. This convinced me of the emotional power of the music and of the possibilities offered by adding a simple, though gradually evolving, orchestral accompaniment that respected the tramp's nobility and simple faith. Although he died before he could hear what I had done with his singing, the piece remains as an eloquent, but understated testimony to his spirit and optimism.
- Bryars
The Sinking of the Titanic (1969), indeterministically allows performers to render various sound sources related to the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Cue heart-tugging, uplifting and perfectly poised melodic motifof Nearer My God To Thee / Amazing Grace against ambient backdrop of chilly ocean noise.
Oddi wrth y brawd
[Sundry bonus sunderings and landings in Comments]
Y caneuon hyn oedd fy ail record hir, a gai ei recordio maes o law yn stiwdios Sain yn Llanrug. Roedd y record yma'n gam mawr ymlaen i mi fel cyfansoddwr caneuon; cafodd groeso brwd, gwerthodd yn dda a ges i lawer o waith ar ei chorn.
Recordiwyd Gog o fewn pum niwrnod.
- Y Crwydryn a Mi
Practical, self-effacing Meic Mortimer Stevens, wizard and true Welsh star. Melodic nous and unquestionable chops grounded in earthy authenticity. He doesn't put a foot wrong on this astonishingly good amble among Breton idylls, wandering blind boys, and country loving. Contender for best folk-rock album of 70s, in any language.
He made visible what would have remained mysterious and forever hidden in the images. What is more, he had a talent for composing music that created whole new spaces, in concrete terms: landscapes that gain an unknown dimension which would not be accessible otherwise.
- Herzog on Florian
...the essence of Popol Vuh is a mass for the heart. It is music for love. That is all.
Y brawd's desert island luxury; your abject pleasure.
23 secs, opening titles, crashing surf, sun blessed mid-70s summer morning adrift…cue Robinson’s monochrome adventures. À la recherche du temps perdu be damned.
Decades before de facto relaxation of cross border genre regulations, Serge strolled with protean disregard and somewhat arch insouciance through chanson, lounge jazz, world music (sic), ye-ye, pop psych, rock, dub, disco, funk et caetera.... Wanton profligacy did him no favours outside France: artistic fearlessness and a shrug of Gallic shoulders to misconceived Anglo-US notions of authenticity interpreted abroad as dilettantism and promiscuous cheese.
Actor, writer, director, producer, pop svengali, performer, musician, smoker, drinker and, at the end, dilapidated national treasure. Above all else, 20th century composer and lyricist nonpareil who considered writing songs a trifling art form compared to figurative art. Ever the accomplished painter and draftsman who gave up painting because he knew he would never equal Picasso or scatological comrade in arms, Dali.
Franchement, Gainsbourg / Gainsbarre was a genius; not to be taken lightly.
High watermark must-have is Histoire de Melody Nelson. Go buy it. Cannabis soundtrack - also with Jean-Claude Vannier - is something of a dry run for Melody Nelson (grooves, break beats, larger guitar riffs, orchestral drama, funked out bass...) and an essential gem in its own right.
Conceptual pop magnum opus. Maximally hook loaded n orchestrated. Double album with not an ounce of fat (read, cheese), and nothing short of a revelation. Remember Bros. Gibb like this.
Door-stepped by normal horror, Machen too not rudely treated by presumption. Mundane terror. Not Egypt but stinking boats of the Thames. Not the spineless usual sub-intellectual; not "tough" recycled cabaret glam three-chord big boots. White crap let loose in studio. Supernatural theme. "I used to be psychic but I drank my way out of it". Used to be folk devil lyric poet. Cue shouty sloganeering whisky descend. Shadow walks behind paranoia man trapped in Flat of Angles after killing wife. Bent sinister from start.
Cog-nisant:
part the first. Spectre vs rector
part the second. Inspector visits rector
part the third. Spectre possesses rector
part the fourth. Inspector versus rector possessed by spectre
part the fifth. Hero appears; his soul possessed a thousand times
part the sixth. Spectre enters hero; possession is ineffectual
Fulsome doffing of caps to revered old masters Tony, Bill, Ozzy & Geezer. Culled from 70 - 73 run of anvil smitten classics - Black Sabbath, Paranoid,Master of Reality, Vol 4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath - historical heaviosity imprimatur par excellence. Monolithic, primally unsubtle indebtedness to sheet metal factory accident. Yea, the evergreen thrill of Sweat Leaf's opening salvo; Sabbath Bloody Sabbath's noisy-quiet template which we fule know eventually births Pixies and Nirvana and beyond; the magnificent, dunderheadedly audible manual turning of volume to number 11 at 0:40secs into N.I.B..
In retrospect, a surprisingly pervasive air of less than sunny trips and drowsy narcotics. Presumably, before Messrs. Brandy and Snow commandeered the driving-seats.
In his early 70s psycho-pomp, Julius Arnest Caesar (J.A. Seazer / J.A. Ceaser) conjured some unique concoctions on behalf of Shuji Terayama’s Tenjo Sajiki Theatre Company. An experimental blend of kosmische rock, dappled with Noh stylings and witchy women choruses for added weirdness. Not too preposterously seen as distant cousin to ISB’s “U” – a surreal parable in song and dance, as performed by Black Sabbath.
[Bonus in Comments: "Music that evokes the Khanate Golden Horde invading eastern Turkey, anyone? Yes, please."]
Abandon the quotidian all ye who enter the wang: a gallimaufry of chant, caterwaul, instruments plucked, objects struck and assorted bukkacophony. There is method in ribald moniker madness, for herein prowls a winning amalgam of magickal Riff Mountain Jajouka riffing and esoteric Far Eastern ritual malarkey. Screeching, outlandish percussion, keening females acting up in a series of mostly short impenetrable psychodramas. Tenjo Sajiki / J. A. Caesar troupe on collective bad trip.
Two longer black psych standouts: Access of Evil - massed drums n call n response summoning the spirit of who knows what – and Circular and Made of Earth – bringing eastern drone closure, Karakoram blues guitar and Mongolian throat-signing against a soothing backwash of waves.
Suffusing dread, ritual, drama and tenderness to coalesce themed meditations on nature of being and Will.
Not, then, hit parade material, steeped as it be in Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis reorganised around the Law of Thelema: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law / Love is the law, love under will. Often misinterpreted as carte blanche for all kinds of psycho-sexual carry-on and to indulge emotional impulses, however transgressive. A subtler reading is about seeking out and following one's own True Will rather than the ego's desires - thereby, if you will, forcing the hand of chance.
Music ideologically freighted at the expense of the thrills? Not so. Assisted by the more than able Fergusson and Christopherson, Genesis P-Orridge conjures a collection of powerful soundscapes and some oddly captivating "pop". Agit-prop ontological soundtrack....and arguably PTV's most fully realised work.
GP-O confounds expectations from the get go. A pastoral, string-driven melody to baby daughter, Just Drifting (for Caresse) flows pleasantly like the country streams and rural breezes it eulogizes. Tender and sincere yet of a thematic piece: the child's pre-verbal state of being, drifting, following it's own will and under a "simple love".
It can't last of course. Things quickly get as dark as the devil's nutting bag. Terminus X-tul, a deeply unsettling account of a young man journeying toward initiation (?), derailed by a - fantasy or actual - suicide jump from a railway bridge into a passing train. Morricone twang and strang ups the drama and cheekily references the time-stetching opening scene of Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. The first lines of spoken lyric:
Quiet and hooded, his eyes stared out, small hands make patterns on the window.
Body shifting on wood, dog outside the door, flickering memories as trains manoeuvre in the old men's eyes.
Forever part of a sleeping world, waiting for him to come.
Lost dreams of childhood forgotten like hope.
These lives are stones made for cemeteries.
This time the victim is desired, like misery.
He stepped down from the train, dust on road and clothes.
Across the way a boy was grinning, hard-on obvious in torn grey trousers inherited from an earlier victim of the white horse.
The shade of Old Bill Lee hovers in Western Lands. A crisis is upon the lad - cue demonic howl of heavily distorted guitar. Time slows, a mystery is arrived at, a secret coda fulfilled.
Leavening the gloom, in swoons Marc Almond like the winsome nephew of Macbeth's Porter, offering Stolen Kisses and Doug Yule VU bubble-gum pop. Though, as "dark suns of sunlight flower", we seem to be talking about the oblivion of smack by way of light relief.
And so the album unfolds. Central themes unfurling like a sickly rose; moments of light made pungent by pervasive dark. Marc crops up again on Guiltless, exhorting us - with, it must be said, more than a soupçon of lascivity - to "see it and go for it". Do what thou wilt.
Sex magick and Genet (Querelle / Queer Hell) combine in New Order-ish dance number Ov Power. In the parlance of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, Ov = comingled male-female sexual fluids. Shouty chanting validates the bestial in us all.
Message from Thee Temple dogmatically lays out the Law of Thelema, delivered by a vaguely creepy if authoritatively warm voice (think Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers). A re-statement of Crowley's road map for discovering one’s True Will:
The temple strives to end personal laziness and engender discipline. To focus the Will on one's true desires in the belief, gathered from experience, that this maximises and makes happen all those things one wants in every area of life.
Explore daily your deepest desires, fantasies - Gradually focusing on what you would really like to happen in a perfect world, Picking away all restrictions and practical considerations.
An unsettling doubling effect is discernable by the closely listening ear; uneasy.
Counterpoint to Terminus X-tul is jackal-snarling Thee Full Pack (for Bachir Attar). Equally cinematic in feel, this time evoking the disorientation and lurking fear that stalks Max Von Sydow through the souk at the beginning of The Exorcist. O.T.O., ceremony and fraternal bonding through ritual is captured in the name check for Bachir Attar, leader of The Master Musicians of Jajouka. The song invokes a great threatening force, surrounding us, and from which there is no escape.
