Velvet Underground Series, #6: John Cale- Eat/Kiss: Music for the Films of Andy Warhol (1997) MP3 & FLAC

Hannibal ~ 1997

Tracklist/Info

Eat/Kiss: Music for the Films of Andy Warhol

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Isao Tomita- Snowflakes Are Dancing: Electronic Performances of Debussey's Tone Paintings (1974) / Pictures at an Exhibition (1975) / Firebird (1975) MP3 & FLAC

Isao Tomita: "[I]n painting the artist is free to use whatever color or material he may choose. In other words the medium for his expression on the canvas is free and unlimited. There are plenty and abundant mediums, whereas in music we have had to use very limited means: the musical instruments. In painting one could use unlimited variety in color, but in music only certain numbers of timbres were available to express composers' ideas and feelings [....] My doubt was, should music be always like this? Couldn't it get some new source of sound beyond existing musical instruments? That was my doubt and at the same time my dream." After having spent the formative years of his childhood with his father in China during the 1930s, Tomita returned to the place of his birth, Tokyo, eventually studying Art History at Keio University during the early 1950s while also taking private lessons in Music Composition and Orchestral Theory in order to pursue his overriding passion for music. Having already paid his dues by regularly composing for local orchestras in order to fund his education, by the time Tomita graduated, he had amassed an impressive amount of experience and skill, which allowed him to quickly transition into a career scoring films, television and theatre, something he pursued for the next 15 years until hearing Walter Carlos' groundbreaking Classical work on the Moog synthesizer. Tomita: "In 1969 I happened to listen to a record titled Switched on Bach which opened a new world to me and triggered a revolution in my musical life. At the time I saw on the jacket of the record, behind Bach, a synthesizer, which is to say a palette of sound. For the first time I discovered that the synthesizer is not an instrument to compose music by using the sounds of existing instruments, but is a new instrument or a new machine which creates unlimited sound sources."

Walter Carlos tending to his Moog III

Inspired by Carlos' groundbreaking work, Tomita purchased a Moog III synthesizer (identical to the one pictured on the Switched on Bach album cover) and built a recording studio in his home shortly after forming a music collective called Plasma Music with several other Electronic-minded musicians. After a false start in the form of a largely forgettable album of Moog renditions of contemporary rock songs, Tomita turned his attention to the work of French composer Claude Debussy, and, in contrast to Carlos' emphasis on note-for-note transcription as well as the recreation of traditional acoustic sounds using the new Electronic medium, Tomita's work, perhaps due to his extensive experience as a composer, focused on re-conceptualizing the source material using the infinite array of new musical possibilities inherent in the new Electronic medium. The result was Snowflakes Are Dancing: Electronic Performances of Debussy's Tone Paintings, an album that proved to be both a revolutionary step forward in synth-based programming and a considerable commercial success. Tomita on the approach and response to the album: "I never expected that so many albums would be sold, but to tell the truth I was expecting something different and I had, if I may say, some revolutionary intention or theory when making this music [....] Walter Carlos' emphasis when realizing Debussy was on the level of mere description and depicting [....] My emphasis was more on the timbre or color of the music [....] it was kind of an experiment for me. I experimented with my theory to create first the color of the sound which the conventional instruments never could bring out [....] The intention of my playing was that with a synthesizer I could break the limitations of such instruments and go into the unlimited world, and I started with the color of the sound, and the result was this piece. But we are going beyond even the color; we are going to the form of music composition and finding new aesthetic rules and creating a new world of music."

Isao Tomita relaxing in front of his Moog III

The most obvious difference between the work of Tomita and that of earlier attempts to re-interpret Classical pieces within an Electronic context is Tomita's ability to create a polyphonic sound despite the fact that polyphonic synthesizers were not commercially available when he recorded his most innovative work. He did this by painstakingly recording every part separately and meshing these parts together to lend his Electronic arrangements a symphonic depth missing on albums such as Switched on Bach. In addition, Tomita, especially on later albums such as Pictures at an Exhibition, Firebird, and his interpretations of Holst, avoids any conventional sense of reverence in his approach to the source material, as he treats them more as starting points for his exploration of new musical possibilities than monuments to be draped in synthetic raiment. Tomita: "In this kind of situation, music and, for instance, painting are different. There is one painting, one masterpiece, say. If another painter adds color or a line to this original painting, it is destroyed. But it is quite different with music. In music there may be one original score, but there may be thousands of scores of the same composition, and there will be hundreds and thousands of other composers and arrangers who may rearrange the original music; who may add something to the original, who may extract something from it [....] I don't think it's a problem which endangers or destroys the original score [....] If one plays a score, each player will interpret it differently and each conductor performs it differently, and you cannot limit or tell the conductor exactly how the original composer imagined it. The music score itself is loose." For Tomita, music cannot be mathematically reduced to a finite set of relationships between notes and between tones. As such, every composition potentially points the way to what he calls the "unlimited world," which, as with the act of interpretation, is infinite.

Talk Talk Series, #15: Mark Hollis- S/T (1998) MP3 & FLAC

"Soar the bridges that I burnt before, one song among us all."

"Over the last couple of hours, it was a very loose, flexible affair [....] The whole point with the last albums was that, you know, it isn't this kind of band-thing where it's all like this tight thing that you're forced into. It was much looser; we could come together and play, but the thing with me and Tim [Friese-Greene], we had worked together over a long period and then we got to a point where we thought that there was really nowhere for us to go in terms of how we work and how we write." This is Mark Hollis' explanation for Talk Talk's demise shortly after the completion of their brilliant swan-song, Laughing Stock. Actually, there were plans for a sixth Talk Talk album, Mountains of the Moon, as their contract with Verve / Polydor required them to deliver a second album (the aforementioned Laughing Stock being the first) though there was no time-frame specified for doing so. It's unclear why Mountains of the Moon didn't materialize given the band had gone so far as to name the new project, but what is clear was Hollis' uncompromising refusal to repeat himself, which was the very thing that had driven Talk Talk's dramatic evolution over the course of its existence. Following the dissolution of the band, Hollis spent the better part of seven years expanding his musical knowledge by learning to read and write music notation and using these new skills to compose classical-style minimalist pieces for piano and woodwinds (one of which, "Piano," can be found on A V 1). This allowed him to explore the sonic minimalism that characterized the last two Talk Talk albums in ways even further afield of the pop tradition. So while it's tempting to think of Hollis' eponymous 1998 solo debut as the long delayed appearance of that aborted final Talk Talk album, in actuality, it represents a significant change in approach from the Laughing Stock sessions. As Hollis has revealed, "It was not intended to be different, but then it is totally obvious to me that it would be. Because given the things I wanted to do on this album, I didn't imagine it would have any relationship at all with modern music." For the recording of Mark Hollis, one key element of continuity with the final Talk Talk album was the continued presence of Phill Brown, who, this time out, served as sound engineer. Nevertheless, as Brown recalls, the approach to recording was quite different than what had been done for previous albums: "Unlike Spirit of Eden  or Laughing Stock, there were demos of almost all the songs; it was easy to know where we were heading and what was required. The previous albums had been recorded by chance, accident, and hours of trying every possible overdub idea [....] However on Mark's project, everything was scored and written down." While starting from a much more structured place than earlier recording sessions, Mark Hollis was still built, to a significant degree, on improvisation, but this time, a more Jazz-influenced approach was used for getting these performances on tape. Hollis: "The idea was to have carefully worked out structures, within which the musicians would have a lot of freedom. I'd just say to them, 'okay we're here, we want to get there- now let's play.'" Another departure from previous sessions was Hollis' insistence on exclusively employing both acoustic instrumentation and acoustic recording techniques, which helped lend Mark Hollis it's haunting sense of stillness: "I just love the sound of [acoustic] instruments hid that low down and the physical sounds that surround the instrument, whether it's creaking or whether it's the way air goes through or whatever. That is almost as important as the note. So just purely on a sound aspect, the reality of what an acoustic instrument is, is one reason for why the album is so quiet." In terms of the music itself, though certainly a sonic departure in some ways, it is a worthy follow-up to Talk Talk's inimitable mature work. On the opening track, "The Colour of Spring," with a title suggesting continuity with the past but a sound indicating anything but, Hollis goes it alone on piano and vocals, delivering a stark yet intensely gorgeous performance that uses the silences punctuating his minimalist piano melody to create a sense of space around his yearning vocals, which seem intent on pushing the impressionistic lyrics beyond their articulative limits. Alternatively, "The Gift" reveals a fuller arrangement with a bopping Jazz-influenced rhythm section beautifully running counterpoint to Hollis' wistful, very nearly insensible, though powerfully expressive vocals. Another minimalist gem is "Westward Bound," sounding more like a folk song, though without any sense of formal structure, it features some simple but lovely acoustic guitar parts and Hollis' voice barely needing to rise above a whisper to produce its devastating emotional impact. Mark Hollis is a work that manages to feel simultaneously profound and irretrievably distant, which means that one inevitable aspect of listening to it is to experience ambivalence, something Hollis would see as an opportunity to dig deeper: "It's like in a relationship. The more you focus on the music, the more you will hear from the music. The more that you give in terms of listening to what's happening on the album, the more things will reveal themselves within the album."

Wendy Carlos- Clockwork Orange: Complete Original Score (2000) MP3 & FLAC -For Nick-

Wendy Carlos (formerly known as Walter) was largely responsible for bringing the singular sound of the Moog synthesizer into the music mainstream of the 1970s. Beginning with Switched on Bach, released in 1968, Carlos enjoyed a level of critical success that must have come as something of a surprise, given the general stodginess exhibited by the Classical music community in response to non-traditional approaches to musical interpretation. Among the many admirers of Carlos' work was film director Stanley Kubrick, who had decided to film an adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was to be featured prominently in the storyline as well as the soundtrack, and quite fortuitously, Kubrick commissioned Carlos to create Moog renditions of a number of classical pieces as well as to create some original Moog compositions for the film. The results are nothing less than ground-breaking. In particular, "Title Music from A Clockwork Orange," an adaptation of Henry Purcell's Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, seems to sonically encapsulate the entire film in just over two minutes, a simply stunning display of the Moog synthesizer's expressive capabilities. Also of note is Carlos' innovative use of the vocoder in her interpretation of "The Fourth Movement" of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which gives the piece an eerie mechanistic feel that matches the aesthetic mood of the film perfectly. Easily one of the most essential film scores ever recorded.

Scott Walker Series, #15: Scott Walker- The Drift (2006) MP3 & FLAC

"Has absence ever sounded so eloquent, so sad?"

In the years preceding the release of Tilt  in 1995, the prospect of a new album of original material from Scott Walker seemed remote at best; however, the possibility that he would not only release such an album but that it would also turnout to be an avant-garde masterpiece was unthinkable. He did just this. Eleven years later, Scott Walker somehow managed to top this by releasing a darker, more dissonant, more harrowing, and less structured album equally deserving of being labeled a "masterpiece." Yet, like its predecessor, The Drift is anything but a user-friendly masterpiece, a shiny jewel to gaze upon over and over again; rather, it functions more like a bitter glass of absinthe, tearing down your assumptions and skewing your perceptions as it seduces you into its terrifying arms. As on Tilt, Walker's lyrics are cryptic to say the least, but they always provide a revealing counterpoint to the music, which Walker has described as "blocks of sound."  These "blocks" put each song into a state of constant flux in which moments of melodic stability (and they are just moments) explode into an abyss of dissonance. This makes listening to the album feel a little like riding a huge roller-coaster when you were four years old: horrific and awe-inspiring all at the same time. For example, on "Jolson and Jones," Walker croons over ominous-sounding strings that sound straight out of an old noir film, until oscillating industrial static breaks into the mix, which then gives way to a burst of cacophonous dissonance that even includes a sample of a he-hawing mule; the first time I heard this (wearing headphones), I almost dove for cover (seriously). While The Drift isn't for everyone, what is? Proceed at your own risk, but do proceed. Scott Walker's nightmares will always be worth listening to.

Scott Walker Series, #13: Scott Walker- Tilt (1995) MP3 & FLAC

"The good news you cannot refuse, the bad news is there is no news."

Scott Walker fell silent for 11 years following the release of  Climate of Hunter, and while nothing could have prepared his increasingly cult-sized audience for the singular (and quite challenging) experience of listening to Tilt, in retrospect, it is hard to deny that he had somehow managed to deliver the second masterpiece of his long, circuitous career. Cinematic, nightmarish, lush and caustic all at the same time, the only tether dangled to the listener is Walker's still-peerless baritone, but this is where all recognition ends. Walker recorded the vocal tracks for Tilt in single takes in order to avoid the effects of over-familiarity with the material. Describing his reasoning for this, he has stated, "I'm basically terrified of singing, and I want my own terror to come across on the records." On  Scott 3 and Scott 4, Walker had toyed with actively integrating dissonance into otherwise lush and melodic compositions; however on Tilt, he dives head first into a method of composition that seeks to draw attention to the arbitrary relationship between voice, lyrics, and instrumentation. A perfect example of this is the ironically titled "Patriot (A Single)," which is a mournful, dirge-like song under-girded by monotone strings and stand-up bass until Walker's heart-rending vocals descend from above, delivering the most random, banal lyrics imaginable. To call this disorienting does it no justice. Admittedly, this is not for everyone, but Tilt deserves every bit of its reputation as an avant-garde masterpiece.

Scott Walker Series, #11: Scott Walker- Pola X (1999) MP3 & FLAC

Seemingly a continuation of the tortured pop-meets-classical minimalism of Scott Walker's Tilt, Pola X is actually a more varied introduction to Walker's late-career journey into avant-garde composition. While there are certainly glimpses of the difficult yet masterful dissonance of  Tilt, there are also several beautifully orchestrated passages that build on some of the themes of the previous album, but do so by taking them in a much more immediately accessible direction. Aside from a brief sample from Tilt's "The Cockfighter" buried in "The Time Is Out of Joint," Walker's iconic voice is silent on Pola X; however, this does not detract from the power of his dark soundscapes. Walker's later work is notoriously difficult to penetrate, and there may be no better place to start than his soundtrack compositions for Pola X.

Scott Walker Series, #8: Scott Walker- And Who Shall Go to the Ball? And What Shall Go to the Ball? (2007) MP3 & FLAC

Ever wondered what a Modernist ballet score composed by Scott Walker might sound like? And Who Shall Go to the Ball? And What Shall Go to the Ball?  was commissioned by London's South Bank Center in the hope of receiving a contemporary dance score, but could they have been prepared for the oblique descent into space-obliterating industrial hums and stark, atonal minimalism that Walker serves up here?  For those brave enough to have plumbed the unfathomable depths of Walker's recent (relatively speaking) Avant-garde work, this will sound like a even more "shaved down" (Walker's words) exercise in deconstructing listener expectations. For the rest, it could be rough-going, but then again, this could be said, to some extent, about all of Walker's best work since  Scott 3. Ultimately, there's just something deliciously ironic about a sparse atonal instrumental piece being penned by the owner of the most impossibly beautiful baritone imaginable.