MUSIC
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A long-time best-seller of the MEG-AIMP collection and long out of print, this album of sanza music recorded among the Gbaya people of the Central African Republic by ethnomusicologist Vincent Dehoux was originally released on CD in 1993. It is now being reissued on vinyl and CD to coincide with the exhibition Afrosonica - Soundscapes. It features a selection of 'songs for thought': an intimate repertoire conducive to introspection, accompanied by the repetitive, meditative sound of lamellaphones.
It's here!
Hiroshi Suzuki's CAT.
Recorded at Nippon-Columbia Daiichi Studio, on Oct 8-10, 1975.
Trombone: Hiroshi Suzuki.
Keyboards: Hiromasa Suzuki.
Bass: Kunimitsu Inaba.
Drums: Akira Ishikawa.
Saxophone: Takeru Muraoka.
The legendary jazz-funk masterpiece fully reissued on We Release Jazz.
Digipack CD.
With liner notes.
Super smooth, extra funky, indeniable grooves, this is the real deal!
2025 restock. Space Elements Vol. II is the fourth release in Rafael Toral's ongoing project, the Space Program. Following the first Elements release, this volume features a new set of collaborators: Evan Parker (soprano sax), Manuel Mota (guitar), Afonso Simões (drums), Stefano Tedesco (vibraphone), João Paulo Feliciano (Rhodes piano), and Ruben Costa (digital synthesizer), as well as returning guests Sei Miguel (trumpet), César Burago (percussion), Fala Mariam (trombone), and Rute Praça (cello). Space Elements Vol. II displays a melodic quality that, along with a refined management of silence, marks a new area and consolidates the Space Program's complex network. Its spaciousness is explained in Toral's liner notes: "While finding ways to make decisions on sound emission, it became evident to me that such sounds should have a reason to exist, they should be essential and necessary." Dan Warburton's writing in The Wire about Space fits Space Elements Vol. II perfectly: "The melodic logic that drives certain instruments within Space also recalls birdsong, with dense, convoluted runs of twittering melody ending in single piping notes, as spontaneous as Messiaen's birdsong transcriptions were painstaking and meticulous." Toral's music is a jazz-inspired re-evaluation of live electronics: "Despite working in a sound world that is cosmetically closer to R2D2's vocabulary than Louis Armstrong's or John Coltrane's, Toral has claimed a kinship to jazz because it models instant music making within a disciplined framework." (Bill Meyer, Dusted); "Toral is looking for nothing less than a totally fresh language to work in" (The Wire). Space Elements Vol. II was mastered direct to metal from 24-bit files and pressed on clear 200 gram virgin-vinyl. With design by Helder Luis at NOTYPE, the LP features a collage by João Paulo Feliciano. Presented in a limited edition of 500. CD version available on Staubgold.
Space Elements Vol. II is the fourth release in Rafael Toral's ongoing project, the Space Program. Following the first Elements release, this volume features a new set of collaborators: Evan Parker (soprano sax), Manuel Mota (guitar), Afonso Simões (drums), Stefano Tedesco (vibraphone), João Paulo Feliciano (Rhodes piano), and Ruben Costa (digital synthesizer), as well as returning guests Sei Miguel (trumpet), César Burago (percussion), Fala Mariam (trombone), and Rute Praça (cello). Space Elements Vol. II displays a melodic quality that, along with a refined management of silence, marks a new area and consolidates the Space Program's complex network. Its spaciousness is explained in Toral's liner notes: "While finding ways to make decisions on sound emission, it became evident to me that such sounds should have a reason to exist, they should be essential and necessary." Dan Warburton's writing in The Wire about Space fits Space Elements Vol. II perfectly: "The melodic logic that drives certain instruments within Space also recalls birdsong, with dense, convoluted runs of twittering melody ending in single piping notes, as spontaneous as Messiaen's birdsong transcriptions were painstaking and meticulous." Toral's music is a jazz-inspired re-evaluation of live electronics: "Despite working in a sound world that is cosmetically closer to R2D2's vocabulary than Louis Armstrong's or John Coltrane's, Toral has claimed a kinship to jazz because it models instant music making within a disciplined framework." (Bill Meyer, Dusted); "Toral is looking for nothing less than a totally fresh language to work in" (The Wire). Space Elements Vol. II was mastered direct to metal from 24-bit files and pressed on clear 200 gram virgin-vinyl. With design by Helder Luis at NOTYPE, the LP features a collage by João Paulo Feliciano. Presented in a limited edition of 500. CD version available on Staubgold.
All these instruments are different but have a few things in common. The first is that they don't have a conventional interface, which means that for all of them i have to find out what they do and develop technique to play them. The second is that none of them respond accurately to performing action. So there's always a live tension between an accurate decision and its somewhat unpredictable outcome. I meant to play music technically free from any school and teachings, but beyond that i also wanted the music somehow to escape my own self, playing instruments with a sort of life of their own, never allowing complete control and making any repetition virtually impossible. Space Elements Vol. III by Rafael Toral
Artwork by Nicola Tirabasso and Alison Fielding
Thanks to Jack Colleran, Henry Earnest, Finn Carraher Mc Donald, Margie Jean Lewis, Róisin Berkley, Luka Seifert, Diego Herrera, and Olan Monk
Recorded in Conamara and Dublin between 2021 and 2023.
破壊と創造的対話。孤独と絶望を経た魂の歌声。1967年から69年にかけて、アヴァンギャルド・ジャズの革新者Albert Aylerは名門〈Impulse! Records〉に一連のアルバムを録音。1967年にリリースされたこのアルバム『In Greenwich Village』は、アイラーにとって同レーベルからの最初のLPとなった作品であり、間違いなくこのレーベルでのベストと言える内容に仕上げられています。
(Clear vinyl with Japanese obi) While the previous album was a huge success as a work representing the year 2021, this album, "NO THANK YOU," shows that Little Sims, aka Simbiatu Azikawo, now 28 years old, does not care about such success and sticks to his own convictions. This is a demonstration of his attitude. The songs are glossy, straightforward, and powerful, and are truly punk, giving the middle finger to the fame and expectations that come with success, the conformity required, and all the limitations that come with it. Working with Inflow again, this is Little Sims' most free, bold, and spontaneous work to date.
Also available is "On Stage Off Stage," a 40-minute documentary on the band's latest tour! The film is a spectacular film that includes not only the live performance, but also off-shot footage of Little Sims enjoying tennis on their days off, interviews with the staff who support Little Sims' activities, and the moment "NO THANK YOU" was released without notice.
Originally released in 1993, Quique (pronounced “keek”) was the first album by UK band Seefeel. A landmark album, it’s unique blend of shoegaze fuzz, abstract electronic sounds and sparse minimalism made it a must have for any collector of ambient techno. Released by too pure, the album was reissued in expanded form as Quique Redux on cd in 2007. About it, Pitchfork wrote that “Quique showed how the oceanic end of shoegaze could be found in a purely electronic world” and called the album “timeless”.
"Quique was very much a product of its time in terms of who we were as people, the social world we inhabited and the technology available to us. I think the album was very much restricted by the relatively primitive technology we were using by today's standards, but that very restriction is I think partly what gives it its flavour."– MARK CLIFFORD
We are excited to make Quique and Quique Redux available again, newly remastered by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road.
QUIQUE REDUX will be available on vinyl for the first time via a limited edition 4XLP set through the Beggars Arkive webstore and bandcamp only. The release is housed in a slipcase with new artwork. The cd version is not limited and will be available everywhere. Quique Redux is comprised of Quique plus 9 bonus tracks of alternate versions and material that wasn’t included on the original album.
QUIQUE will be available everywhere on double LP, remastered.
Bag People were Chicagoans who outgrew their home in the maelstrom of the early 80s NYC post-punk/ no-wave scene. They weren’t around long, but their compulsive noise-rock sound, unearthed from tapes lost for 40 years, looms large and stands tall next to the efforts of better-known contemporaries like Sonic Youth and Swans. A righteous puke of art-punk from a time of incredible brokenness in the world – in other words, savage sounds for today!
Reinvigorated by months of shutdown woodshedding, David developed new works for guitar, as well as a piano piece and an exceptionally eerie bit of musique concrète. Inspired by the deep dive into Gastr del Sol’s duo magic that facilitated last year’s compilation box, David opened his deeply personal solo pieces for engaging conversational gambits with modern masters Rhodri Davies, Andrea Belfi, Nikos Veliotis, Nate Wooley, and Cleek Schrey.<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 406px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1317089149/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://davidgrubbs.bandcamp.com/album/whistle-from-above">Whistle from Above by David Grubbs</a></iframe>
Originally released on 10“ in 1982 by the British dub and reggae band Creation Rebel, ”Independent Man / Creation Rebel" is one of the most important early releases on the On-U Sound label, created by producer Adrian Sherwood. Creation Rebel“ is being remastered and reissued for the first time on 12” in time for Record Store Day 2025. Produced by Adrian Sherwood, this album epitomizes the sound of early On-U Sound, featuring heavy bass lines, spacey effects, and an experimental and innovative sound that blends elements of roots reggae and dub.
Enduring prog rock favourites Pink Floyd played this typically mesmeric live performance at the Rainbow Theatre in London on February 20, 1972. It showcases a significant portion of the material that would later appear on their iconic album The Dark Side of the Moon, released a year later and still all these decades the high water mark for certain prog fans. The concert is a superb glimpse into the band's evolving sound, with intense, atmospheric performances and raw energy all present and correct as they work through classics like 'Money', with its snaking bassline, and 'US & Them', in their early versions. A historical snapshot of one of rock's most influential bands in their prime.
Klimt Records is pleased to announce the release of a double LP featuring the legendary live video work “Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii, October 1971,” recorded at the ancient Roman Amphitheatre in Pompeii, Italy in October 1971! The video features the band performing in a theater with no audience, and offers the audience a chance to enjoy the experimental and psychedelic performance of the band at that time.
Dig deeper into the realm of italian jazz/funk libraries with this sought after holy grail ! Originally released in 1977 this collaboration has all the elements of the cinematic golden era, plus some amazing orchestral moments with walking basslines and lushy horn arrangements
On composing Tom Phillips' Irma
In February and March of 1977, for Brian Eno’s Obscure Records, I made a version of Irma. The following notes on the piece arise out of that involvement and try to show how the piece can be made into a performance state.
Irma is a curious score – it is printed on a single sheet 50cms x 50cms. The notation consists of fragments from Tom’s continuing treatment of the victorian novel by W. H. Mallock, which he calls A Humument, and utilises those short verbal fragments that refer to either ‘‘libretto’’, ‘‘decor and mise-en-scène’’ or ‘‘sounds’’. These 3 categories are arranged in separate sections on the square sheet with, at the bottom, a line of stave notation. At first sight it looks like a piece of indeterminate music – clearly there has to be some preparatory work done before it is performable and no-one would venture to perform directly from the score - but if it is approached in this spirit, like realising a piece by John Cage or Morton Feldman written during the 1950’s, the sounding results are either largely of a documentary
interest, or rely entirely on the gifted performer to make into a coherent sounding whole. True, one could say the same thing for a piece by Cage, such as Variations I, but there the
performer is given a number of precise parameters of sound within which he should work, whereas Irma needs to be re-composed rather than realised.
If the distinction between ‘‘composing’’ and ‘‘realising’’ is overlooked, and if only the materials present in the notation are used, then the result is likely to be impoverished and it is clear that, looked at in isolation as a self-contained work, the score is notationally very thin. So one either produces an impoverished piece of sounding music, or one takes the responsibility to look further. Tom does not say explicitly that one must go beyond Irma into the rest of his work, but he does say that one has to go outside the piece. On the score he writes: ‘‘Perhaps to treat the indications here given as if they were the only surviving fragments of an ancient opera, or fragments of eye and ear witnesses’ accounts of such, and given no knowledge of performance tradition of the time, to reconstruct a hypothetical whole which would accommodate them economically, would be an appropriate basis of approach to a production.’’ So, try to put it back together and try to fill in all the gaps between these fragments. This approach, which, incidentally coincides with an interest in such procedures within my own work, seems to be the most suitable. If the ‘‘composer’’ uses the sorts of methods that Tom evidently uses in producing pictures, in making A Humument (of which Irma is a part), and if he uses the notations of Irma as clues to lead him into whatever area seems likely to yield rich results, then a much more satisfactory outcome is likely – satisfactory both in terms of the quality of the sounding material and in terms of consistency with the rest of Tom’s oeuvre.
There are clearly many ways in which the various fragments of verbal notation can be used. One fruitful way was to take each of the fragments as the notes of, say, a critic at the only performance of the work (in a hypothetical past), perhaps jotted down on the back of an envelope (then torn into fragments in a rage, or through frustration at some element in the piece? Make the piece inadequate in some way?!). These elements, then, would have been memorable for some reason or other, or used as an aide-memoire to recall something else (even something outside the work). The elements could have occurred at evenly-spaced intervals throughout the performance, they may have all been featured in some way (loudly, as solos), they may have been the worst parts (being retained to damn the piece in a subsequent review, since lost or never written – the composer got wind of the review and murdered the critic, retaining the fragments as the only link with the crime. . .). On the other hand they could be used as discrete musical units quite separate from the main body of the work, which has to be looked for elsewhere. Whatever solution, or combination of solutions, is found it is evident that the composer and librettist are more or less obliged to move outside the work itself i.e. outside the printed score. (One of the original ideas I had, which was not very practical, was to see if I could use another opera called Irma. A possibility was one written by H. J. Banawitz first performed in 1885, which would have had the right period in terms of the connection with the W. H. Mallock original. This seems to have had few performances, perhaps only one, and seems to have disappeared. I thought of looking for the manuscript, treating it in the same way as Tom had treated the Mallock novel, and making a sort of ‘‘musical Humument’’ out of it. While that seemed to have some intellectual sympathy with Tom's work, it might not have sounded anything like an opera, and it did seem to me that one of the notions of Irma is that it is conventional to some degree. Indeed, while much of Tom’s musical work lies within the field of experimental music and graphic notation, his musical taste is conservative, and the greater part of the musical references in the main body of his work are to past, and historically respectable, composers like Brahms, Mozart, Fux, Scarlatti and so on.)
The sources that were used, then, in making the piece apart from the score itself involved the following. I obtained the volumes of A Humument and noted all connection with music, with the role of Irma, and with the possible narrative; I looked at all the prints of Ein Deutsches Requiem after Brahms, which use elements from the Humument and refer directly to a musical work; I went through the catalogue of Tom’s work (Works. Texts to 1974); I went through Trailer, which uses the Humument, in fact a spin off from the main work; I went through all the other pieces of music that he has written to see if they could be used in any way; and I checked as many paintings/prints that I could which had a direct or indirect connection with either A Humument, Irma or with music. The painting The Quest for Irma (1973) which shows her in back view looking out to sea gave much information. It is the only portrait of her and she appears even here as anonymous, or rather, faceless. It gives a marine setting for the work (though since at least two pieces of music that I have written deal, to some degree, with marine incidents it might be argued that I might have been better off avoiding such a reference, but it is very blatant). She is looking out to sea from the Dorset coast and this attitude seems to be characteristic of her behaviour: ‘‘I tell you. . . that’s Irma herself. . . watching the waves fall. . . repeating certain sorts of verse. . .’’ So here we have an elusive heroine, obsessively watching the sea off the Dorset coast, given to repetition. Further checks within the Humument revealed a spate of marine references: ‘‘boat of dreams. . . lost on rocks’’; ‘‘the sad horizon of sea, hours she spent with her sadness on the beach’’; ‘‘see, see, the things. . . the things from the changed sea’’; ‘‘a cruise in an opium clipper’’; ‘‘marine engines and boilers’’; ‘‘ten years’ travel and sport in foreign lands’’; ‘‘a certain light flashed. . . among the eastern clouds’’; ‘‘sinking lights. . .’’ and so on. On the other hand, she is not in mourning since she wears a bright red dress.
One page of A Humument is almost a summary of the feeling of Irma and is certainly one that I tried to emulate. ‘‘. . . The whole history of it is so vague. . . eagerly, gradually the words that I heard I put aside as an opera, an insufficient one; still organ for what – me, me. . . I can’t quite tell. hardly books. . . it was the libretto of the music, of the music – I can’t tell. . . I can’t tell - but all was for the same thing to capture in drawing, and to express in music, thought and study. . . the loss. . . the least important. . . moon I myself am myself in search of an object for love? way? Yes and no – enter myself. . . associating me and me. It made me within me some mystery. . .’’
Other pages give more precise information about particular sounds, rhythms, timbres and so on. The instrumentation was, to a large extent, governed by the references to musical instruments that I found in all these sources. ‘‘Tube’’ suggested tuba. The piano is mentioned
many times, especially in connection with John Tilbury. The gong is specified – ‘‘suddenly a gong in series’’ – which also gave me the whole of a short percussion interlude between the second and third sections of the work. Strings were suggested by a phrase ‘‘the history viola’’ occurring in A Humument and this gave me a reason to feature the viola in some way, in fact using it in unison with the female voice, identifying the viola with the title of the opera. The fact of having strings is such a convention of normal orchestral scoring that it would really have needed a positive clue to the contrary to have excluded them, bearing in mind the relationship of the piece to musical convention.
I used the tuned percussion, and especially metallic instruments, from certain onomatopaeic syllables, like ‘‘ting’’, ‘‘ping’’, ‘‘ding’’ which I had originally considered using as a chorus of instrumental imitations, but decided ultimately to use the instruments themselves.
Two of the prints from Ein Deutsches Requiem after Brahms gave me a great deal of material for the second section of the opera, a slow duet between the two main characters. Print number 5 shows a number of parasols, both closed and open, and has the legend ‘‘. . . a sound was given up’’ taken from A Humument. That particular picture suggested itself since there is, within both the score of Irma and within the published Humument a fragment which reads ‘‘the first parasol sound’’, with the addition, in Irma, of ‘‘f, f’’ indicating loud. From the text of the Requiem printed on the picture, I could find the precise section of music in the
Brahms original which consists of a solo for trombone (in the score I use baritone horn for its greater flexibility and ease of pitching, but it uses the same range, and has the added advantage of resembling the French Horn, an instrument more closely associated with noble operatic melodies.). The ‘‘parasol sound’’, then, indicated that I should use that particular instrument. What it plays came from another source, from the score of Irma. which gives ‘‘quiet, high, intonation divine. . .’’ and ‘‘. . . drops the tone . . . various phrases. . .’’ all of which enabled me to have that particular instrument playing, with "divine intonation’’, a long melodic line consisting of a descending stepwise chromatic scale from top E down an octave, but very elongated. The other use of the Requiem was for the other half of the slow section, and used the following print, number 6, which refers to a sequence of rather chromatic chords in the original which I used as fragments, like the Irma score, inserting chords of my own between groups of those by Brahms to make a new sequence. So the whole of the second section uses references to the Brahms Requiem – in the first half to the harmonic content (vertical), in the second half to the melodic line (horizontal).
The last section of the piece, a chorus ‘‘Love is help, mate’’ uses a page of A Humument that is dedicated to Morton Feldman, though the actual results bear no relation to Feldman's music as such. What I did with that page was to look through some of Feldman's music to see if there was anything in it that was consistent with the way that I was approaching the score of Irma. It occurred to me to use a vocal piece for something that would be vocal within Irma and since Tom had dedicated another page to Christian Wolff – in fact a page of Trailer – and since Wolff and Feldman were close associates with Cage in the 1950’s, I used a piece called Christian Wolff in Cambridge (in spite of the fact that Tom had attended Oxford, and the Cambridge here refers to Harvard). This is a wordless choral piece which is hummed – and I used a lot of humming in the score, often as a means of separating discrete images – and consists of mildly dissonant chords. There were, however, one or two more consonant ones and I omitted those which sounded like ‘‘modern music’’, and so was left with one or two chords that I used, along with others interjected to produce a smooth flow, as the accompaniment to the melody of ‘‘Love is help mate’’. The addition of other chords was necessary because of the static quality of Feldman’s piece in which each chord is an isolated entity, and this mirrored what I was doing, on a larger scale, with the whole of Irma; taking isolated fragments and finding ways of reassembling them into a continuous whole. It could be said that I was doing to Feldman what Tom had done to Mallock since each of us extracted from a body of material what was needed for a particular circumstance, though my extraction was a good deal more cursory.
The melody that this accompanies comes from a number of sources. One of these is the stave notation and references to specific notes on Irma itself – about 60% of the notes in the melody – the rest being added by myself. One of the ideas for this came from Eric Sams’ researches into the ciphers in Schumann's music, and in particular from the fact that he originally found a clue to the cipher by finding 5-note melodic phrases in which the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes were C-A-A (Schumann’s wife was called CLARA) and this gave the possibility of finding what L and R became in the musical code, and thence other possible letters. Using this notion, using the notes given by Irma, and inserting between them other notes, the melodic lines are composed by myself but taking as a starting point the notation of Irma. The stave notation at the bottom of the score I found more usable in this way, and also as bass-lines, in transposition, rather than as originally given.
There are, obviously, some very direct references in the score, and it is the presence of these that ensure a very eclectic result: references like ‘‘the Ring’’, ‘‘the Emperor’’, ‘‘the International’’. The first of these, allied to a notation that refers to many ‘‘s’s’’ (German for E flat) suggested the opening of the Rheingold. The second, ‘‘Emperor’’, could have been a number of references – the ‘‘Emperor’’ Waltz (Strauss), the ‘‘Emperor’’ Concerto (Beethoven), the ‘‘Emperor’’ Quartet (Haydn) and so on. In the event I used the last two, and toyed with the idea of using the source for Haydn’s ‘‘Emperor’’ Quartet viz. his ‘‘Emperor Hymn’’ which became the Austrian national anthem, and which was, in its turn taken from a Croatian folk tune. I considered omitting all the musical references and only using the words of this latter ‘‘Vjutro rano se ja stanem Mal pred zorom’’ – and relished the fact that I would have been injecting something with precise semantic value, though one which I did not understand, but in the end omitted it for reasons of pronunciation difficulty. With ‘‘the International’’, I was delighted that it was misspelt (Internationale) and this made of it a lipogram (like the Ellery Queen story that omits the letter ‘‘t’’) and so I quoted the music leaving out the note ‘‘e’’. I had also considered the idea of the lipogram in another context. The original of A Humument is the Victorian novel A Human Document which leaves behind the letters AN DOC, and this gives a lipogrammatic anagram of NO ADC, that is, to avoid the notes A D and C in the piece as a whole. This seemed to be excessive, however, since it would have effectively ruled out one of the two vowels available in musical cryptography, and they are not easy to come by.
THE COMPOSERS NOTES ON THE WORKS
The Machines, which date from the period 1967-1972 represent a departure from the more traditionally “narrative” nature of the rest of my pieces. I use the word Machine to define a consistent process governing a series of musical actions within a particular sound world and, by extension, the listener’s perception thereof. One might thus regard the Welsh Rarebit as a Machine in which a process is applied to the conditioning and perception of the world of bread and cheese.
Autumn Countdown Machine presents the guaranteed dis-simultaneity of six pairs of bass melody instruments, each conducted by a percussionist playing in time with, and making minor adjustments to the setting of a bell-metronome.
Son of Gothic Chord presents four keyboard players’ mobilisation of a sequential chord progression rising through the span of an octave.
Jews Harp Machine presents various permutations of the articulations “Ging, Gang, Gong,Gung, Ho!”
Drinking and Hooting Machine presents some observations on the world of bottles and their non-percussive musical potential. The effect of this piece has been compared to that of a large aviary full of owls all practising very slow descending scales.
John White, March 1976
THE SQUIRREL AND THE RICKETTY RACKETTY BRIDGE
The piece, for one player of two guitars, was written at the request of Derek Bailey, the jazz guitarist, in 1971. I had worked closely with Bailey from 1963-6 in and around Sheffield as a member of a group which included Tony Oxley on drums and myself on double-bass. Since that time, I have lost all interest in jazz, and in improvisation, and since Bailey was involved in both I wrote a piece which uses a technique which Bailey would be unlikely to have evolved in his playing. The two guitars are played simultaneously, each one lying flat on its back, and they are arranged side by side so that the two fingerboards can be played with the fingers hammering down on them, like two keyboards. In addition, the score contains a number of ironic references to jazz and to its critical literature - short texts added to the ‘musical’ notations, somewhat in the spirit of Erik Satie, involving the performer in a hypothetical dialogue with the composer using fragments culled from particularly banal pieces of jazz criticism e.g. “ ‘there is an area up here’, holding his hand above his head, palm down,’ where musical categories do not exist.’ ”. The left hand of the player moves at an even pulse, like the walking jazz bass, at a tempo “between Lady is a Tramp” as a medium bounce, and Cherokee as an embarrassment to lesser, and more intrepid, musicians”, while the right hand punctuates this with short notes, like a highly selective, or extremely lazy, trumpet soloist. The title involves an oblique pun to do with the nut of the guitar, the guitar’s bridge, the faint noise of the music in between – that each attack gives two pitches rather than one – and an English children’s song about Billy Goat Gruff.
Derek Bailey recorded the piece on Incus Records in 1971, and this new version is a multiple one, four players on eight guitars, in which each player uses a pair of guitars which are characteristically different from those used by the others.
Gavin Bryars (1971)
Aran
‘‘Aran’’ and ‘‘McCrimmon Will Never Return’’ date from the period 1970-72, and were written for the Promenade Theatre Orchestra, a group started by White, consisting of 4 performers; White, Hobbs, Hugh Shrapnel and Alec Hill.
‘‘Aran’’was written at a time when the PTO was beginning to combine the sounds of reed organs and toy pianos, the original instruments of the group, with some newly-acquired percussion instruments. The note-to-note procedure of the piece was determined by random means, in the hope of producing a gentle unpredictability in the final result. It was hoped that the whole would be grittily resonant. This recorded version, for 12 performers, is generally more soft-centred than the original.
American Standard
Although the instrumentation of the piece is not specified, an ideal group would be similar to that which performed this version, recorded at the first performance of the piece in March 1973. It is played by the New Music Ensemble of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, directed by John Adams, the composer, and the instruments used here are:
Flute, clarinet, clarinet (doubling bass-clarinet), clarinet (doubling bass-drum), tuba, percussion (trap set), violin, 2 violas, cello, double-bass, and harp. A conductor is not necessary for performance, since the arrangement and distribution of parts depends on what instruments are available, and ensemble problems that arise are ‘‘to be worked out in standard American fashion: proposal, debate and vote’’. Extra materials, that anyone making a version considers appropriate, may be used in performance in various forms whether film, tape, video, speech, mime, dance etc. Each section of this performance has at least one example of the use of ‘‘extra materials’’.
The piece is in 3 parts, each separately performable, and separately titled:
1. John Philip Sousa
The use of a steady, insistent pulse makes the title’s derivation quite clear; the pulse is given by a bass drum and other instruments have constant pitches which are departed from and returned to. As with all 3 pieces, the dynamics are restrained and undramatic, with the exception of the ‘‘extra material’’ – a crisp snare-drum roll that both sets the tone and gives a dramatic touch that is not present anywhere else. This is not in the score.
2. Christian Zeal and Activity
The main body of the music consists of a series of long held notes, very consonant, in 4 parts which are occasionally synchronised to give unified chords. The instruments are divided into 4 groups according to their pitch ranges, with at least one sustaining instrument in a group, each group having a leader who cues movement from one note to the next. During this piece, the ‘‘extra material’’ consists of a tape-recording of a radio talk-show.
3. Sentimentals
This is the most melodic piece of the 3 and the one which involves the greatest range of variation, quoting extensively from Duke Ellington’s ‘‘Sophisticated Lady’’.The gentle swing of the trap set, that is added during the piece, is again not included in the score, and its presence gives the sound a distinctively Californian feel, close to that of the Beach Boys, or Hollywood studio bands.The curious ending is an ironic affirmation of the maudlin chromaticism of the Ellington piece which generates the music.
McCrimmon Will Never Return
‘‘McCrimmon Will Never Return’’ stems from a temporary interest in Piobaireachd (Pibroch), the most highly developed form of Scottish bagpipe music. The melody of the title has several variants, which are played simultaneously on 4 reed organs. The tempo is sufficiently slow that the characteristic skirls or flourishes in the music become audible as individual notes.
1, 2, 1-2-3-4
The piece is for instrumentalists/vocalists, each wearing headphones connected to a portable cassette machine. Each performer hears only the music in his headphones, music which contains ‘‘parts’’for his instrument or voice, and he plays, along with the cassette, his own instrumental part. His ability to reproduce this part depends on how familiar he is with what he hears, and this can range from careful practice over a period of weeks with his cassette to an immediate response from a first or second hearing. The present recording, to some extent, contains elements of these two extremes: a few players had played the piece on other occasions (at least one of which used the same material as is used on this recording), while others became acquainted with it for the first time in the recording studio.
Each performer plays the‘‘part’’that corresponds to his instrument.Thus, if the music be jazz, a bassist is likely to play more than, say, a violinist. In the case of a bassist hearing jazz (and, hence, usually a bass) on his headphones, he would attempt to play, as best he can, the bass-line in the headphones such that there is an intended one-to-one relationship between what he plays and what he hears in the headphones. He may try his part several times beforehand, or he may choose to busk ‘‘on the night’’, like the accompanist in cabaret who is told, in the middle of the act on stage, that there are no parts for the next number but that it is ‘‘Happy Streets and Paper Rainbows in D flat, 1, 2, 1-2-3-4’’ (and his entry must be prompt, even to the extent of ‘‘inventing’’ an eight-bar introduction).
In this performance, all the players have identical material on their cassettes, though each was recorded individually and not copied simultaneously, and their performance reflects a number of variables that occur: the starting point of the music on the cassettes is not precise (but the click of the machines switching on, however, is); the cassettes may not be all running at the same speed due to the uneven quality of the different machines, the state of their batteries and so on, and this, in turn, affects both the duration and key of the piece; players vary in their ability to ‘‘shadow’’ material (i.e. to simultaneously hear and reproduce); players, in this recording, vary in their familiarity with the material. The material itself, however, is perfectly homogeneous and the dislocations that occur do not destroy this. The piece was originally written for a series of concerts organised by John White and is, amiably, dedicated to him.
