A dozen Different Noises this time firstly a trio celebrating the work of this weeks birthday boy and Manchester music legend Tim Lyons plus a range of things that were too long for an hour long radio show and in some instances would have scared off the casual listener.
PLAYLIST
- The Things – 1,000 Stars
- The Sandells – Cowboys Don’t Have Brollies – Forwards
- Rapid Pig – The Happy Valley – Wildlife
- MV&EE – Free Range – Green Ark
- The Fall – Free Range – Singles 1978-2016
- Flowers of Hell – Keshakhtaran (Part 1) – Foray to Keshakhtaran
- Gayle Young & Sarah Albu – According To The Moon – According To The Moon
- Léon Aphar & Ivann Cruz – Sisters – Aphar’s Cave
- Chris Squire – Safe (Canon Song) – Fish Out Of Water
- Lee ‘Scratch Perry’ & The Upsetters – I Am The Upsetter
- Peter Orins – Le Piccolo Des Grossièretés – Dead Dead Gang
- Neu! – Hallogallo – Neu!
BACKGROUND INFO
The Things/The Sandells/Rapid Pig
Three tracks featuring Mancunian music scene mainstay Tim Lyons. Tim sings on the first one, sings and plays bass on the second one, and plays bass on the third one. I fondly remember being squashed into Studio 2 at Salford City Radio trying to record a version of the second track with Dave Thom’s keyboards hardly audible and trying to make Brian Benson play quieter. The station manager was not happy. Rapid Pig was one of those bands that should have been huge but sadly were mostly missed by the great unwashed.
MV & EE – Green Ark
Vermont cosmic psych duo MV & EE (Matt Valentine and Erika Elder) have been at the forefront of the psych folk /freak folk movement since early 2000. With an enviable DIY approach to recording and bespoke, hand-created artwork, they have released a staggering amount of releases under Medicine Show and The Bummer Road also collaborating with J Mascis, Willie Lane, Mick Flower, Chris Corsano, Samara Lubelski. Green Ark marks their first collaboration with Ramble Records and is chocked full of their trademark cerebral boogie and psych freefolk.
Given the title of the track it was fairly inevitable it had to be paired with a track by The Fall
Flowers of Hell – Foray to Keshakhtaran
Toronto-London based experimental group The Flowers Of Hell have announced that they will release their new album ‘Keshakhtaran’ via UK cult label Space Age Recordings (home to Spacemen 3, as well as Spectrum, Chapterhouse, Acid Mothers Temple and The Telescopes). Ahead of this, they present ‘Foray Through Keshakhtaran’, the first taste of the trans-Atlantic group’s first studio album in six years.
A tripped out instrumental journey in two 20-minute parts, this record involves 20 artists, including special guests Rishi Dhir (Elephant Stone, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Black Angels, Beck) on sitar, Montreal harpist Sarah Pagé, and NYC avant-accordion legend Angel Corpus Christi (Suicide, Spiritualized, Dean Wareham). Produced by the band’s leader and composer Greg Jarvis, this album was mastered by Grammy recipient Peter J. Moore (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Joe Strummer).
‘Keshakhtaran’, which is an urban dictionary term for “seeking nirvana through meditation to sound, especially when you’re stoned,” is suitably named. The album presents a 42-minute instrumental psilocybin meditation piece in two parts, rooted in sax, flugel horn, chimes, harp, sitar and opera soprano vocals, augmented with tremolos, flutters, horns, woodwinds, strings and percussion.
For the past 18 years, The Flowers Of Hell have traversed the experimental edges of indie, classical and jazz, with music often rooted in the audio-visual synesthesia of the group’s mastermind, Greg Jarvis. Despite relatively obscurity, they have been championed by music legends such as Lou Reed, Sonic Boom, Kevin Shields and members of The Legendary Pink Dots, Death In Vegas, The Wedding Present, The Fugs and The Plastic People Of The Universe, not to mention support from NASA’s mission control team and the Tate Gallery with an album installation and concert just a fortnight before London locked down.
“Keshakhtaran began as a 40 minute ‘space guitar’ piece I’d done out of bits and bobs I’d been playing in my home studio for a girlfriend to meditate to in the months before Covid. During the pandemic, I found I couldn’t write anything new (nothing in, nothing out), but I pulled out the guitar track and started sending it to caged up band members and friends to add layers to, and soon I was mixing and editing away, creating a sonic world to escape off into,” says Greg Jarvis.
“With massages being some of the only human contact allowed in Toronto at the time and with one of my bandmates being a masseuse, I’d go in and test the mixes while over-micro dosing on mushrooms for a truly immersive experience that transported me from the bleak times. I’d then play the work-in-progress for bandmates in my ‘semi outdoor contact’ garage that I’d converted into a psychedelic shack with a lightshow and a fog machine, tweaking things until it reached its final form that you’ll hear”.
Gayle Young & Sarah Albu – According To The Moon
Canadian artist Gayle Young’s unusual and imaginative approach as composer and musician situates her within a long lineage of maverick experimentalists. Though Young’s output does not shy away from more conventional modalities as well, since the 1970’s she has variously embraced electronics, graphic/ text scores, installation, sophisticated tuning systems outside of equal temperament, the sounds of found objects and natural environments, and—perhaps most notably—instruments of her own invention.
According To The Moon sees Young collaborating with Montréal-based vocalist Sarah Albu, one of Canada’s most dedicated and curious performers of contemporary and experimental music. The disc follows another release from last year for Farpoint Recordings As Trees Grow, which featured her piano music performed by Xenia Pestova Bennett.
The works that comprise the present disc span over 40 years, including music commissioned by Albu herself. Unsurprisingly, this makes for a very diverse collection of works, however there are distinct unifying features that help to establish a trajectory throughout them. Chief among them is Young’s idiosyncratic approach to text. According to the liner notes, “Albu was intrigued by the use of texts as elements of notation, suggesting an instrumental approach to the voice.” In earlier pieces, such as the titular 1978 work, this is evident in how the composer uses vowels as acoustic filters applied to frequency content of the vocal tone. Yet even with later pieces that employ more involved texts such as The State of Corn(1998) or Sweet Summer Salad (2013) Young emphasizes the texture and musicality of phonemes over building narratives. On the disc’s haunted 14-minute finale, Ancient Ocean Floor, the most recent of the compositions, Albu’s voice intones descriptions of a river valley walk, leading the listener through a broad, rich sound palette. Accompanying her is Young’s microtonal string instrument the Amaranth woven through a recording of a waterfall filtered acoustically through tuned resonators.
Léon Aphar & Ivann Cruz – Aphar’s Cave
Fascinated by stories of ghosts and improbable doubles, the duo Aphar’s Cave emerges from their cave to sprinkle their songs with musical interludes where Berio (Luciano) and Beriot (Charles-Auguste) dialogue, and where flea market guitars replace luxury violins.
Ivann Cruz (guitar, vocals), Léon Aphar (guitar, vocals, composition)
Chris Squire – Fish Out Of Water
Marking the release of a new gatefold vinyl edition of Yes founder Chris Squire’s legendary 1975 solo album ‘Fish Out Of Water’. Recorded in the late Spring and Summer of 1975 while Yes was on hiatus as members recorded their respective solo albums.
A breath-taking work and equal in standard to any Yes album in terms of sheer invention and creativity. The album was essentially a collaboration between Chris Squire and his friend Andrew Pryce Jackman, a gifted arranger who had been a member of The Syn, Squire’s pre-Yes group.
The sessions saw contributions from former Yes drummer Bill Bruford, Yes keyboard player Patrick Moraz and noted musicians Mel Collins and Jimmy Hastings. Released in November 1975, ‘Fish Out Of Water’ was a Top 30 chart hit in the UK and made the US Billboard Top 75 album chart, going on to sell nearly 500,000 copies worldwide.
Lee “Scratch” Perry – Battle of Armagideon
In 1985, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry returned to Trojan Records, the celebrated British company which, during reggae’s the formative years, had been instrumental in establishing him on the international scene as one of Jamaica’s most talented, innovative and influential producers.
By this time, he was exploring new musical avenues, having teamed up with the Dub Factory, a British band led by rhythm guitarist and synth player Mark Downie. The first evidence of this new union came towards the close of the year when Trojan released Perry’s seasonal single, ‘Merry Christmas, Happy New Year’, on which he was accompanied by London-based singer, Sandra Robinson. The disc provided an indication of his bold, new sound, which effectively blended Jamaican rhythms with rock sensibilities.
A few months later came Perry’s long-awaited comeback album, with its strikingly designed sleeve perfectly reflecting the wild and unpredictable music within its grooves. An instant big seller for both Perry and Trojan, the LP both dazzled and bemused listeners, paving the way for a full-scale return to music-making for the Jamaican Jenius.
Over the years since, ‘Battle Of Armagideon (Millionaire Liquidator)’ has become widely acknowledged as Perry’s most significant and daring undertakings since the closure of his famed Black Ark studio in Kingston. And now, some 36 years after its original release, this seminal album is finally given the deluxe treatment, with its original track-listing bolstered by seven bonus tracks from the Trojan sessions – a dozen of which make their CD debut.
Peter Orins – Dead Dead Gang (circum-disc)
Maryline Pruvost: voice, Indian harmonium
Barbara Dang: piano
Gordon Pym: electronics, amplified objects
Peter Orins: drums, composition
Dead Dead Gang is a musical piece composed by drummer Peter Orins, inspired by the 2016 novel Jerusalem by British writer Alan Moore. The music was created during a residency in 2022 with the Muzzix collective at La Malterie in Lille, Barbara Dang (piano), Maryline Pruvost (voice and Indian harmonium) and Gordon Pym (electronics and amplified objects). The name of the project comes from the Dead Dead Gang from the novel, a group of ghost children who cross the layers of time of the town of Northampton
Neu! – Neu!
The debut album by Neu. It was released in 1972 by Brain Records. The first album recorded by the duo of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger after leaving Kraftwerk in 1971. They continued to work with producer Konrad “Conny” Plank, who had also worked on the Kraftwerk recording sessions. The first track to include Dinger’s famous “motorik” beat
Different Noises 