There won’t be any more posts on this blog. Time to move to other projects.
Thanks to all the people who have supported the blog during these 5 years.
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Various – Walrus compilation
Including Walloon- and Flemish-based composers from the Brussels area (Bierges, Archennes, Leuven), this double LP set, the sole compilation to appear on Lawalrée’s Walrus Records, is also the most experimental release on the label. Dominique Lawalrée‘s own contribution, a static, elongated electric organ drone punctuated with pointillistic electronic ornaments, is more radical than other works I posted previously. The only work on this disc to make use of musique concrète sounds, extensive sound processing and studio treatment, Baudouin Oosterlynck‘s disturbing, S&M soundtrack Suite for a Bondage Room was included in the 4-CD box-set retrospective on Metaphon in 2008. The minimalist piano music of With Hidden Noise (after Marcel Duchamp) was recorded by Eric de Visscher when he was only 23-years old and is his first record release. A composer, music theorist and John Cage specialist, de Visscher became director of IRCAM in 1997 until 2003 when he became director of Musée de la Musique in Paris. Born in 1938, Robert Fesler may be the oldest composer on this compilation, yet his music sounds like contemporary electronica. Fesler was an electronic engineer who built his own synthesizer, in this case the “RPF 756”.
01 Dominique Lawalrée Still Life (18:55)
02 Baudouin Oosterlynck Suite for a Bondage Room (21:42)
03 Eric De Visscher With Hidden Noise (19:00)
04 Robert Fesler Tristesse (12:20)
05 Robert Fesler Le Temps des Poissons Touche à sa Fin (9:50)
Total time 1h 21mns
2xLP released by Walrus, ref. WLS 12 & 13, Brussels, Belgium, 1984
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Jacki Apple – The Mexican Tapes
Californian performer and audio artist Jackie Apple produced the Soundings radio show on KPFK-FM Los Angeles Public Radio from 1981-1995, where she aired experimental music and sound art and commissioned numerous new radio plays from US sound artists. Between 1983 and 1995, she was a contributing editor to the quarterly journal High Performance founded by Linda Frye Burnham in Los Angeles (1978-1997). One of Jacki Apple’s first release was the artist book Trunk Pieces, published in 1978 by Visual Studies Workshop Press, Rochester, a collection of found photographs used to create a semi-autobiographical narrative – a process similar to her use of archive recordings and found sounds in her audio works. Apple’s soundwork Black Holes/Blue Sky Dreams was included in the Airwaves compilation LP on One Ten Records in 1977 along Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson and Terry Fox, a.o. Jacki Apple is professor at Pasadena College of Design since 1983.
♫ The Mexican Tapes was Jacki Apple’s first full-length disc release. It was published in 1980 by One Ten Records – who put out Laurie Anderson’s O Superman single in 1981. The soundtrack to a Super 8 color film, The Mexican Tapes is a complex combination of archive recordings, fictionnal investigation and spoken word interwoven into a multi-layered narrative. It is actually a polyphony of male and female voices reading simultaneously from a variety of sources including Mayan and Aztec sacred texts, diplomatic and CIA papers, US presidents speeches, Cold War propaganda, excerpts from Octavio Paz or Roland Barthes books, Trotsky’s stay in Mexico, the 1968 Mexico Olympics, etc. At times, there’s an exquisite underlying ambient music soundtrack made of small percussion, whistling, flute and sound effects, an allusion to Ancient Mayan music in the way Jorge Reyes did, just much more minimal. But I must confess I struggle to grasp the meaning of this collage or to reconstitute a coherent narrative in The Mexican Tapes.
01 The Mexican Tapes (24:54)
02 The Mexican Tapes – continued (26:20)
Total time 51:14
LP released by One Ten Records, ref. 003, New York, N.Y., USA, 1980
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Various – The Inaugural Perth Festival of Improvised Music
Inspired by Jon Rose’s first Relative Band Festival held in Sydney in 1984 – where Ross Bolleter, Tos Mahoney, Mark Cain and Richard Ratajczak all performed–, the first Perth Festival of Improvised Music took place in April 1985 at Praxis Gallery in Fremantle, Western Australia, and was directed by flautist Tos Mahoney, half of the Fremantle-based Alone Together duo with Ross Bolletter, whose first cassette also appeared in 1985. The musicians performing during the 1st Perth Festival formed the nucleus of free music improvisation in Western Australia during the 1980s and, to a large extend, still do today. The festival also included performances by saxophonist Steve Moore and singer Gillian McGregor, both visiting musicians from Great Britain. There was a 2nd edition of the Perth festival in 1986.
♫ Instead of documenting the festival’s proceedings in chronological, successive solos, duets, trio, etc, producer Robbie Muir chose to create a continuous mix from the individual tracks he recorded. He completely succeeded in recreating a collective performance incorporating music theatre, invented instruments and contemporary music elements. The musicians themselves favor abstract sound textures, long held notes and extended techniques, which all melt effortlessly in Muir’s mix. Ross Bolleter is well-known today for his ruined piano outdoor performances, but at the times he was merely using inside-the-piano techniques in his music.
01 Perth Festival of Improvised Music (24:14)
- Gillian McGregor
- Ross Bolleter & Tos Mahoney
- Mark Cain & Steve Moore
- Richard Ratajczak, Gillian McGregor & Tos Mahoney
- Ross Bolleter, Richard Ratajczak & Mark Cain
- Tos Mahoney & Mark Cain
02 Perth Festival of Improvised Music – continued (23:58)
- Richard Ratajczak
- Ross Bolleter & Steve Moore
- P.F.I.M. Ensemble
Ross Bolleter, piano, piano accordion
Mark Cain, woodwind, didgeridoo
Gillian McGregor, vocals
Tos Mahoney, flute
Steve Moore, soprano saxophone
Richard Ratajczak, double bass
The P.F.I.M. Ensemble = all the above
Total time 48:12
LP released by Impro Records, Perth(?), Australia, 1985
Download or download (alternate link)
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Dominique Lawalrée – Vis à Vis
Apparently his 5th LP, Dominique Lawalrée‘s “Vis à Vis”, or Face to Face, published in 1979, is entirely played on a Bösendorfer grand piano, but instead of the brick and mortar barrage of fortissimos this kind of instrument is prone to (think Cecil Taylor, for instance), here it is used to enunciate semi-detached, tentative piano chords and to explore different shades of silence, so to speak. In this respect, Vis à Vis is very close to Spanish composer Federico Mompou‘s piano cycle Musica Callada, or Silent Music (1959-67), itself a cornerstone of European minimalist music. Vis à Vis is a kind of update of Musica Callada, incorporating Lawalrée’s typical Belgian saudade and sublimely nostalgic mood. This music suits rainy days well, I find.
01 Bonjour Chez Vous ! (2:00)
02 Listen To The Quiet Voice (3:58)
03 Lost In Useless Territory (1:18)
04 Remember Those Quiet Evenings (7:04)
05 Personnages (2:55)
06 Morton A Fait Peur A Karlheinz (8:32)
07 Poissons Rouges, La Nuit… (12:51)
Total time 38:40
LP released by Walrus, ref. WLS 006, Brussels, Belgium, 1979
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