“We have just made a self-titled album. It’s true, our sound is not that weird, it is essentially pop-folk. But, hell, this is our submission to your blog anyway”.
Oh, hell, we’ll post it.
If the title “Dreaming The Magic of Your Maya” by Princess Flower and the Moon Rays does not ring any bells you may like to read this:
Recorded in 1968 and issued as a very limited private pressing (less than 100 copies made) this psychedelic raga freak-out is the brainchild of multi disciplinary artist Loren Standlee plus his partner Ziska with the cooperation of Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth in what was the first incarnation of Gong.
Loren and Ziska had been involved with the crowd of avantgardist free thinkers that settled in Formentera in the sixties, and back home in N.Y. they had also been connected to experimentalists such as Angus Maclise, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, Henry Flynt, Pandit Pran Nath, and others.
This bizarre selection of sounds was the brainchild of Loren Standlee and Ziska and is in effect the earliest Gong recording. Loren Standlee and Ziska were among the “Formentera” (small Island near Ibiza, Spain) visionary poets, musicians and psychedelic ‘researchers’ in the early sixties. In Paris, they began hand-painting silk and designing clothes for many of the rock luminaries of the time, among them The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix, as well as haute couture designers in Paris and London. They met Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth at a poetry reading where Loren was playing Alto Flute and Ziska was creating vocal sounds to intermix with the flute. They began playing together as a group utilizing Daevid’s Italian echo chambers and soon they had a two-night-a-week gig playing at the Vielle Grille, an avant-garde club in Paris where you might hear Ornette Coleman playing upstairs or see Yoko Ono performing in a sack on stage.
Gong was formed and took two identities: one, only Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth’s material, and the other, the Gong sound of Daevid on ‘space’ guitar, crystals, feathers and other unpredictable objects, Loren on alto flute and jews harp, and Ziska and Gilli’s ‘space whispering’ chanting sounds which built up to sound climaxes. For the time, it was extremely avant-garde, and culminated in a gig to perform at Diane Von Furstenberg’s wedding where the group took LSD and both shocked and beguiled the party by performing for two hours, dressed in Loren and Ziska’s hand-painted silks and making sounds that no one had ever heard before. It put them into a kind of cult status.
Two of the tracks on the bonus LP, that comes with the vinyl reissue of “Dreaming The Magic of Your Maya”, feature the line-up of Loren, Ziska and Raj Samyana, which is basically The Universal Mutant Repertory Company minus Angus Maclise and his wife Hetty.
“Dreaming The Magic of Your Maya” will be reissued for the first time ever as a limited edition pressing of 500, double LP, with poster and insert. Pre-order your copy here.
Throughout a long career that produced more than 60 albums during his lifetime, Frank Zappa frequently clashed with the music industry’s major labels. As recently as last year, the Zappa’s estate was embroiled in a legal battle with Rykodisc, a unit of Warner Music Group, which had been the label behind a comprehensive reissue campaign that started in 1995.
Today Zappa catalogue is in a bit of shambles, with many titles no longer readily available. The question of who owns the rights to the Zappa catalogue (The Zappa Family Trust? Rykodisc/Warner? Universal?) hasn’t been fully answered yet, but recent news is that on June 26 a batch of 18 classic Zappa titles will be reissued by Universal. These inclusde Freak Out! (1966), Absolutely Free (1967), Lumpy Gravy (1967), We’re Only In It For The Money (1968), Cruising With Ruben & The Jets (1968), and Hot Rats (1969). It is not clear if these reissues will be remastered editions or if they will include any bonus material. Rumour has it that these albums will also be made available as digital downloads for the first time.
Parallel to this news comes word that Gail Zappa is about to make a “big announcement” on May 10. This should hopelly shed some light on the current state of the Zappa catalogue. As Gail would say: keep watching the skies!
Art (Arnold) Jenkins, a member of the Sun Ra Arkestra for 36 years, left the planet on April 13, 2012, a mere five days before his 79th birthday. He was a vocalist, lyricist, composer, poet, percussionist, and a deeply valued and respected member of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Art’s vocals ranged from the classic big band variety to the avant-garde outer space offerings that he did using a space megaphone, which Art referred to as his “secret weapon”.
Art Jenkins first joined the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1960 and his first recording as a member of the Arkestra was “Secrets of the Sun” in 1962. He was on 7 more recordings with the Arkestra through 1971. Art then took a break from the rigors of rehearsing and touring with Sun Ra, but he returned to the Arkestra again in 1988 and never looked away again from the creative and omniversal challenges of being an active Sun Ra Arkestra member. He recorded 7 more times with the Arkestra during his second stint, the last two being “A Song for the Sun” and “Music for the 21st Century” (both on the El Ra Records label).
Beyond the Arkestra, Art Jenkins self-produced the “Under the Sun” CD showcasing the quartet that he led between Arkestra engagements. He also demonstrated his lyrical skills with his moving composition on the “King” chart dedicated to the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, which was recorded by the Brooklyn Repretory Ensemble on the “Pragmatic Optimism” CD (on the 360 Music label).
During a lifetime devoted to jazz, Art Jenkins performed at jazz festivals, concert halls, dance halls, night clubs, and on radio and TV shows. His energy and creativity will not be forgotten, but his presence will surely be missed by the legions of Sun Ra Arkestra fans and by the remaining members of the Sun Ra Arkestra.
Following their recent mind-blowing performance at this year’s Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Kraftwerk are poised to land in New York to perform Kraftwerk–Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, a truly auspicious and unique series of concerts running April 10 – 17 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The elaborate staging of the performances will combine sound and 3D images to present more than 40 years of musical and technological innovation, with new improvisations and 3D projections. The albums will be performed in chronological order: Autobahn (1974), Radio-Activity (1975), Trans Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981), Techno Pop (1986), The Mix (1991), and Tour de France (2003).
To commemorate this illustrious moment in Kraftwerk’s career, Astralwerks will release a special limited edition version of the 2009 Digital Masters Boxset The Catalogue on April 10. Originally released to celebrate the 35th anniversary of their landmark 1974 hit “Autobahn” and the long-awaited digitally remastered versions of their 8 classic albums, the CD Boxset contains 8 x remastered CDs in ‘mini-vinyl’ card wallet packaging, plus individual large format booklets. However, this time, the set will come packaged in a black box and will be made available as an individually numbered, worldwide limited edition of 2,000 copies.
This special commemorative edition will be sold at two NYC locations, The Museum Of Modern Art’s store in Manhattan and at the MoMA PS1 store in Long Island City. It is also available to purchase online at MoMA’s ecommerce store.
Rolling back musical barriers with every forward-thinking phase of their career, Dusseldorf’s Zen masters of electronic minimalism laid the foundations for four decades of computerised pop and dance music. By chain reaction and mutation, they have influenced generations of artists in all genres, mapping musical futures yet to come. From Bowie to Daft Punk, Aphex Twin to Portishead, Dr Dre to LCD Soundsystem and almost everyone in between, the mark of Kraftwerk is seemingly without end.
Performance Schedule
Tuesday, April 10, 8:30 p.m. – Autobahn (1974)
Wednesday, April 11, 8:30 p.m. – Radio-Activity (1975)
Thursday, April 12, 8:30 p.m. – Trans Europe Express (1977)
Friday, April 13, 10:00 p.m. – The Man-Machine (1978)
Saturday April 14, 8:30 p.m. – Computer World (1981)
Sunday, April 15, 8:30 p.m. – Techno Pop (1986)
Monday, April 16, 8:30 p.m. – The Mix (1991)
Tuesday, April 17, 10:00 p.m. – Tour de France (2003)
Shany Kedar and Benjamin Esterlis met at a record store in Jerusalem in early 2005. After exchanging some gifts from each other’s personal music collection, Shany, then a young graphic design student and novice musician, asked Benjamin, an established Israeli indie electronic musician releasing music under the pseudonym Morphlexis, if he would help her produce her first album. He obliged.
Kedar’s debut, Bloodlines came out in 2006 receiving fine reviews within and outside of Israel, marking Kedar as one of the promising new voices of the local indie scene and more importantly – establishing the formation of an extraordinary musical bond.
Over the next few years Kedar and Esterlis went on collaborating on various live shows and small projects. In 2009, Esterlis formed We Are Ghosts, and asked Kedar to join along. We Are Ghosts is a musical experiment intended to document music in the making, without any pre-written materials. As of today, the collective has released 7 sessions recorded in various strange locations and aroused curiosity amongst audiences and critics alike.
In continuum with the spontaneous and free spirited approach to making music that was established while working with the relatively large collective that is We Are Ghosts, “Comfort You – Songs by Other People” marks a more intimate effort. Recorded within 24 hours and mixed after a couple of days, the short album presents a touching interpretation of old forgotten songs by musical legends such as Freddy Mercury, Bill Withers, Elvis Presley and Billie Holiday, while maintaining a fresh and minimalist point of view. The album combines sounds of instruments like glockenspiel and melodica with retro musical toys such as an old Casio keyboard, a toy vocal manipulator/distorter and children’s percussions along side with acoustic guitars and bass.
You can download the album, free of charge at sk-be.bandcamp.com.
Millionenspiel is an edited version of the original track that opens the forthcoming Can album ‘The Lost Tapes’ released on Mute on 18 June (Europe) /June 19 (US)
The Lost Tapes is a 3 CD set of unreleased tracks, they are an opportunity to hear unreleased material, brand new tracks as if you were there, from the halcyon days, not outtakes.
The tracks cover the period from 1968 through to 1977 and were compiled by Irmin Schmidt and Daniel Miller. The album features studio material recorded at Schloss Nörvenich and Can Studio, Weilerswist with the Can line up of Holger Czukay on bass, Michael Karoli on guitars, Jaki Liebezeit on drums and Irmin Schmidt on keyboards, and on most tracks, vocals from Malcolm Mooney or Damo Suzuki.
The album will be released in a numbered limited edition 3CD 10″ old style tape box with a 28 page booklet on June 18th in Europe and June 19th in America.
The Transparency label continues its series of rare Sun Ra recordings with the release of a new 2cd set: Live At the Red Garter. These 2 cd’s include a superb performance from july 1970 by the Arkestra at NYC’s The Red Garter (later known as The Bottom Line). The second disc also includes a slide show of 82 black & white photos of the event by Lee Santa.
Track listing of Sun Ra, Live At The Red Garter:
01. Unidentified
02. Somewhere Else
03. Ra Improv – Sometimes I’m Happy
04. Pleasant Twilight
05. Unidentified
06. Love In Outer Space
07. Unidentified
08. Ladies And Gentlemules
Ordering info: meridianavenue@yahoo.com. The album should be available in april.
More music for your ears, from the mind of Robbie Hansen. Recorded In Oakland, Ca. in 2006 and 2007. All Compositions by Robbie Hansen.
The Beatles’ classic 1968 animated feature film, Yellow Submarine, has been digitally restored for DVD and Blu-ray release on May 28 (May 29 in North America). The film’s songtrack album will be reissued on CD on the same date.
Currently out of print, the film has been restored in 4K digital resolution – all done by hand, frame by frame.
John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios writes “As a fan of animation and as a filmmaker, I tip my hat to the artists of Yellow Submarine, whose revolutionary work helped pave the way for the fantastically diverse world of animation that we all enjoy today.”
