Arvo Pärt - Cantus in Memoriam of Benjamin Britten (1984) Because sometimes the best music is the most obvious music cf. The Rolling Sones. Bells bells bells. Listening to this just makes me want more bells. I kinda wish some mental improv group would do like an hour long interpretation of this with way more bells. Also why didn't Arvo write way more suff for bells?
There's a shitload of versions of this on youtube but it's a case of the original is best. This was the recording most of us first heard Cantus In Memorium... as it featured on Pärt's breakthrough album Tabula Rasa on ECM in 1984. I can't find an earlier version but one must exist because, if I recall correctly, the head honcho of ECM heard it on his car radio years before he ever tracked Arvo down and organised the Tabula Rasa recording project. Perhaps it was a live radio only concert version... who knows?
Five of the best minutes in recorded music history.
Geez this Shizuka tune is fucking devastating. If you don't know but you love yer Velvets, Paisley Underground, Galaxie 500, Mazzy Star etc. this is for you but it's way more emotionally cathartic.
The core of Shizuka were singer-songwriter guitarist Shizuka Miura and her husband ex-Les Rallizes Dénudés/Fushitsusha guitarist Maki Miura.
In the 90s they appeared on volumes two and three of PSF's Tokyo Flashback compilation series and Virgin's Cosmic Kurushi Monsters double cd. This nine minute epic comes from Shizuka's one and only studio LP Heavenly Persona released on the legendary PSF label in 1994.
Similar to Les Rallizes Dénudés, Shizuka were mainly a live concern. They also had a bunch of live records and several live vhs video tapes issued during their 18 year existence. Shizuka have become near mythical since the rumoured suicide death of Shizuka Miura in 2010.
This was Vajra's opening salvo and it was infernal to its psychedelic core.
We've got both Keiji Haino and Kan Makami sharing insane vocal and guitar duties while Toshiaki Ishizuka takes care of percussion in this trio.
I think it was Keiji Haino who said in the pre-Napster/pre-Spotify 90s that he'd listened to something like thirty three thousand LPs so it's no surprise that this instrumental odyssey could be claimed by at least ten different genres: Psychedelic, avantgarde, cosmic, no-wave-y post-punk, improv, goth, shoegaze, folk, noise rock, black metal, post rock, drone etc. In a way I feel like it's closest to Swans in spirit and sound than anything else though.
I guess I'm talking about the song up until the 5:16 point where it then proceeds to become another song entirely. I still don't know what this second stage is exactly...some kind of absurd avant folk blues.
Haino and Makami are very rarely about comforting the listener with musical compositions similar to what you've heard before so whilst the first five minutes here seem to have a past within their present and future the remaining 27 minutes of Vajra's debut LP doesn't have such easily navigable coordinates. You need to be a fearless psychonaut to venture beyond this track which has the English translation Before The Snow Falls, Falling Leaves Have No Meaning as it was included on that Virgin comp Cosmic Kurushi Monsters sans the second part if I recall correctly.
Vajra - Tsugaru (1995)
In the 90s I used to wonder; why isn't Keiji Haino (and his myriad of projects) a massive indie star on the same sort of level as Sonic Youth or at least as popular as Boredoms. After listening back to Vajra's brilliant 1995 cd Tsugaru today I can understand why. Maybe his other outfits Fushitsusha or Nijiuma could have been big though as they had more accessible potential whilst still being immensely dark in tone.
I finally caught Haino live sometime in the early 00s in Melbourne and I have to say it was the least fun show I think I've ever been to. I honestly don't know how he did it. I can listen to the most unlistenable rackets at the best of times but on this bleak winter's evening on a week night he improvised the most discomforting dysphoric music possibly ever created. Haino assembled the most aesthetically displeasing sequence of sounds these ears have heard. He made Neubauten and Masonna sound like Herb Alpert but hang on perhaps that's a misnomer as noise artists actually often create music that's incredibly pleasing as it might have psychedelic or cathartic properties. No the music on this night while not sounding like a cross between Polka and Celine Dion style pop had a similar revolting aesthetic affect on me and my mate. Then again maybe we'd just smoked too much pot, drank the wrong amount of beer and were a bit grumpy.
Another latin pop delight from Elia & Elisabeth taken from their self-titled 1973 LP. My mind has gone blank, was there a name for this genre of music?
This one has a vibing sweet pop sound that is along the lines of what you would expect to come out of South America in the late 60s/early 70s except it has a wide eyed innocence all of its own.
Soy Una Nube is a tropical funky-psych-pop confection of the most enchanting variety. It's still garage rock though innit. I mean it feels like the backing band are gonna fully break loose any minute with G-L-O-R-I-A!
This is the sweetest, breeziest tropical garage pop sound ever.
In 2014 Vampi-Soul issued a compilation of Elia y Elisabeth's work from the early 70s, introducing this wonderful duo to the western world forty years after their heyday. These tunes were little revelations of the latin tropical pop variety. Elia and Elisabeth Fleta were sisters who were somewhat famous in Spain and Columbia where they appeared often on television. They were grandchildren of famous Spanish musician Miguel Fleta.
Ponte Bajo el Sol is an infectious tropical pop gem infused with a garage psych vibe. Check out the subtle fuzz, farfisa and wah-wah here. This tune even popped up on an episode of the tv show Narcos. Elia y Elisabeth's two LPs have recently been reissued in terrific remastered form which I recommend.
Heard this for the first time today. This is wild, great fun flute damaged driving heavy psych with bonus cowbell. I Know nothing about Mexican music whatsoever so this has opened my eyes. I've got psych comps from everywhere on earth but I don't own one from Mexico. I guess nobody ever recommended any and I never heard any Mexican music on the radio. I thought I had all of those great Love, Peace & Poetry psych comps but somehow no I missed the Mexican one. Anyway how good is flute in rock music? Don't trust the anti-flute taste police. The world needs more funky heavy psychedelic flute led rock!
So the last post was 2023's The Beggar Lover (Three) from Swans and it is apparently the last piece in the trilogy which started here twenty five years ago with the first Body Lovers album. The Body Lovers were Michael Gira's first post Swans project. This was recorded not long after their 90s break up and it was an auspicious debut cd. When we first got to hear this, it made the demise of Swans seem not so bad. If we were going to get incredible recordings like this who needed the Swans moniker anymore.
This is the the first part of the trilogy. A beautiful yet brutal expansive epic instrumental jam encompassing an infinite plethora of cosmic thrum. Check out some of the underground travellers contributing to this eternal monolithic mother of "psycho-ambient"* James Plotkin, Norman Westberg, Christoph Hahn, Larry Mullins, Mika Vaino, Martin Bisi, Helge Sten etc. Now lots of all star recordings end up with too many cooks spoiling the musical broth but not here. I think my favourite contribution here is by Ultra Vivid Scene's Kurt Ralske who plays a mesmerising flugelhorn for a glorious ten minutes from the 17:10 mark. He creates an entirely eerie stillness of the most wintry variety.
Number One Of Three is a whirring rumble of infinite proportions and is indeed one of the great recording of the 90s. I can't remember if it was held in high esteem like say Techno Animal's Re-Entry or Talk Talk's Laughing Stock or Deathprod's 90s trilogy or early Pan Sonic but it deserves to be. It was disappointing that The Body Lovers/Body Haters project only went on to record one more cd before Gira started the less inspired Angels Of Light (I gotta say I stopped buying their cds after the first couple, maybe I need to go back...)
*Psycho-ambient is a nifty term Michael Gira created to describe Number One Of Three.
**Swans sleuths have pointed me in the direction of the bonus cd accompanying the deluxe edition of 2010's My Father Will Guide Me... cd for the location of part two of the trilogy. It's a 46 minute track called Look At Me Go.
It was extraordinary that Swans released the best LP of 2012 because you know they'd been around forever and even broken up. Recalibrated bands never really work cf Pixies: Nobody cares about their new music. Thee Seer (2012) however was glorious and quite possibly their best work. This never happens.
So it is excellent to hear this new 44 minute epic because it is actually comparable to the title track to The Seer as well as The Body Lovers/Body Haters project. There are no classic era Swans members left like Mosimann, Jarboe or Westberg. I love my 80s & 90s Swans but somehow I can just accept this 2023 band without many qualms. I guess in my head it is the 21st century Swans: A separate entity where the boundaries of Soundtracks For The Blind era, The Body Lovers, Angels Of Light and solo Gira dissipate then intermingle...anyway blah blah...I was not expecting anything from the second resurrection of Swans to be this monumental, so The Beggar Lover (Three) is like Christmas.
A Michael Gira megamix of cosmic proportions. Expansive to infinity...
This went to number one in Italy and Switzerland. I do find it interesting when songs are way more successful in certain territories. I mean this didn't even crack the Australian top 100 and only reached number 49 at home in the UK, yet it went to number two in Germany and Austria. What about this tune made it appeal to Europeans so much? Or was it just marketed better in those regions?
Anyway what a great sense of dynamics they had along with classic tunefulness. The sound sometimes gets wild like it could get totally out of control but it is tightly conducted to an exquisite degree.
Some say they couldn't see their later career aesthetics coming but come on you can hear they are absolutely on a different sonic plain to any mid 80s pop band right here.
