Carla Bley & Paul Haines – Escalator Over the Hill

I love edgy stuff, it’s good material, impossible to get bored of and a really good chew. Take a peek at Carla Bley’s “Escalator Over the Hill”: a bag of musical glass pieces with dada fortune cookies inside; some call it free jazz. Just by looking at the “cast” ( I forgot to mention that it’s a musical opera) you start wondering how it is possible to mix so many distinct artists on a three disk LP. Luckily, jazz scientist Carla Bley found the secret formula to fitting many musical talents in one composition.

It feels like being dropped in the heart of the Amazon jungle: a rich coloration of genres: rock, world music, big band requiems, theater music and jazz with animals whispering or shouting dada lyrics. Just listen…

Here’s a proper ( and less metaphorical) review.

Andreas Amme, F.M. Einheit – Radio Inferno

This is a masterpiece: Dante’s Inferno produced by F.M. Einheit and Andreas Amme and voices featuring Blixa Bargeld ( Einheit’s colleague) and John Peel. It’s free on ubuweb !!

It’s way too cool, John Peel’s radio narration feels like War of the Worlds.

Art Zoyd – Le mariage du ciel et de l’enfer

Art Zoyd is a french band that combines free jazz, electronica, prog rock, avant garde and contemporary classical music to create a dark pulsating ambience.

They manage to create a tense atmosphere, engaging the listener in a horror-ish ride trough a gigantic universe. The musical arrangement is like a set of massive cog-wheels ready to trap the wanderer between their teeth. It’s difficult to resist this piece of dark opera: a polymorphic metronome, tense breathing, closing doors, a chanting flock of crows and plenty others.

 

The style has evolved from the Rock in Opposition movement to a more eletronic and avant-garde sound. They have comisioned a few works for film and ballet. This album was used in a ballet performance ( by Roland Petit).

Here‘s an album review.

F.M. Einheit – Prometheus Lear

From a structural point of view ,F.M. Einheit is Einsturzende Neubauten’s backbone. With his custom-made instruments he is a true sound demolisher and architect. “Over a period of five years he created music for Muller’s adaptation of the Prometheus myth, Edward Bond’s Lear, an interactive dance/theatre production Sensation Death, a version of the Faust legend (featuring Blixa as Mephisto!) and several others yet to be released”( see link below). This album is part of the above mentioned work.

 

For more information, here’s a nice article.

If you have even more info, please reply.

Here goes…

Hi, this is my blog and my take on electronic music. I will be dealing mostly with experimental, modern and others ( Nurse With Wound list alike). Feedback is more than welcome.