Sh'mae?

0. Nos du, nos da ffrindie [2012]

Banana i bob un o bobl y byd...

And a special thank you to the commentariat.

**edo**, agitationfree, aldo, Blaidd, Carl Morris, chocoa, David Elliott, David (not anonymous), devotionalhooligan, earl, Grave Riddle, Greg Williamson, hex conduction, hour, holly, Holst, jbull49, Jerry Orbach, lizard johnny jewel, Llinos, Margot F., Melchisedek, melted, rubber soul, Moonhare, Moonrisk7, Mr. Primate, Nic, Pagan Dad, Pastaman Vibration (Yeah!), PM summer, roy rocket, sage, saya, scott, Singersinging, sunday, tim abdellah, tsinkaro, unitstructure, vishangro, wackystuff, Welsh Connexion, wireless darkness, Woo Dops, ximeremix

'n all friends, followers 'n ye great unwashed Anonymous. Now musk winds blow...

Mas o 'ma,

Y brawd

1. Chelsea Girl - Nico [1967]

Consider.

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 et trésor 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. 

Oddi wrth y brawd

2. Have One On Me - Joanna Newsom [2010]

Ladies and gentlemen, 2010's songwriter nonpareil. An embarrassment of riches over three CDs. Nary a smidgeon of padding in this plush divan.

The Kate Bush comparisons seem increasingly bang on...in a good way. Though the smart-arse citation is disreputable uncle, Roy Harper.

C'mon, you need this in your life.

Oddi wrth y brawd

3. An Empty Bliss Beyond This World - The Caretaker [2011]

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.

Oddi wrth y brawd

4. Smiling Men With Bad Reputations - Mike Heron [1971]

Good people to hang out with...

gardeners

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.

Oddi wrth y brawd

5. Rejuvenation - The Meters [1974]

Earthy down-home New Orleans syncopated breaks 'n gritty guitar 'n bass grooves. Funked to max avec un soupçon de la soul.

On the one and quite simply one of the best funk outs you are likely to hear. 

What'cha say?

Oddi wrth y brawd
[Bonus excitement in Comments]

6. The Psychedelic Furs - The Psychedelic Furs [1980]

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.

  Oddi wrth y brawd

7. A New World Record - Electric Light Orchestra [1976]

The perennial bone of contention being, of course, is Jeff's patented production technique.

To many, a one trick load of old pony:

Close microphone to snare,

Far microphone  to snare,

Compress far  microphone  2:1 and fold into close snare track,

Insert 1/10 second tape delay in-between,

REPEAT ON EVERY F**KING SONG FROM 1974 ONWARDS.

Yes, there is something approaching a global on taking Lynne out to the street and shooting him like a mangy English sheep dog...and yet, and yet...

A New World Record.

Tightrope. A Spector-Lennon glitter stomp dust up.

Telephone Line. Thumbs aloft melody trumps 70s Macca.

So Fine. Whoo Whoo.

Living Thing. A little bit George. A little bit bloody brilliant,

Do Ya. The sound of 80s rock being invented. A good thing. Believe.

Rockaria. Profoundly, irredeemably shit 

Higher and higher baby.

Oddi wrth y brawd

8. The Devil's Music - Keith Richards' Personal Compilation of Blues, Soul, and R&B Classics

Top drawer compilation from man of wealth and not inconsiderable taste.

Yr hen diawl.


Oddi wrth y brawd

9. Early Recordings of the Copper Family of Rottingdean

 

All writ down rough 'n raw by the Copper old guard venerables. 

Oddi wrth y brawd

10. Can The Circle Be Unbroken - The Carter Family

Antediluvian weird.

Voice-Guitar-Autoharp alchymical. 

Facile, immediate and ancient. 

Mind how you go, and keep on the sunny side.

Oddi wrth y brawd

11. The Spring of Sixty-Five - Joseph Spence & The Pinder Family

Ghosts of Carter devotional and Nassau docks inspirational. No hokum ramshackle.

Geneva and Edith Pinder keening to creaky, percussive guitar.

Growling Joseph. Grinning Lord of Misrule and the devil-may-care picaresque strings. Serenading, serenaded, testifying 'n righteous. 

Y brawd bids you goodnight.

                    

Oddi wrth y brawd

12. War War War - Country Joe McDonald [1971]

Thinking of Woody Guthrie, Tonight I'm Singing Just For You, Hold On It's Coming, Paris Sessions. Early 70s Country Joe is good Country Joe, and partial to a concept.

From this period comes War War War based on poems of Robert W. 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.

So you'll live, you'll live, Young Fellow My Lad,

In the gleam of the evening star,

In the wood-note wild and the laugh of the child,

In all sweet things that are.

And you'll never die, my wonderful boy

While life is noble and true:

For all our beauty and hope and joy

We will owe to our lads like you.

All lyric poetry and more at Country Joe's Place.

Oddi wrth y brawd

13. Akhnaten - Philip Glass [1983]

Synopsis.

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

14. Kesämaan Lapset [Children of the Summerland] - Es [2009]

This recording may well enrich your life.


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 for a 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.


Oddi wrth y brawd


[Pekka up bonus: Comments]

15. Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven - Godspeed You Black Emperor [2000]

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.

Oddi wrth y brawd

16. Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet & The Sinking of the Titanic - Gavin Bryars

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 motif of 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]

17. Gôg - Meic Stevens [1977]

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. 

 Essential.

Oddi wrth y brawd

[Dros ben llestri in Comments]

18. Cœur De Verre / Herz aus Glas [Heart of Glass] – Popol Vuh [1977]

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.

  - Florian on PV

Clang kosmische to drive away the wolves.


Oddi wrth y brawd


[Deluxe harmonious bonus in Comments]