R0DNEY GRAH4M - WHAT 1S HAPPY, BABY? (2002)

Accompanying soundtrack CD to Graham's 2002 exhibition in London. Five short art-folk tracks to round out today's posts. "Soft Drugs and Moonlight," "Dumbed It Down" and the title track all strangely affecting.

"Took a lot of knocks today, eeking out a living in the usual way.
As I lay thinking on the floor, thought I heard that song before..."

"What happened to all the simple pleasant dreams of you?
What is happy, baby?"

THE G0LD1NG INST1TUTE  -  S0UNDS OF AMER1CAN FAST FOOD RESTAURANTS (1996)

Even with the pointed, ironic and funny narration by Golding's G. Turkington, this project provides a firm, sobering slice of sonic verisimilitude. More authentic, it would seem, than its Folkways office companion below. Which is more meditative and dreamy?

Perhaps these are the sounds that go unnoticed in our dreams as well.

M1CHAEL S1EGEL - THE S0UNDS OF THE OFFICE (1964)

A mist of Cagean inversion hangs over this record, a strange foregrounding of the unnoticed, mundane ambient noises that permeate our lives, the background that we manage to render mute most of the time and ignore. An air of musique concrète too. This "field recording" is, or seems, quite composed. Hardly any voices; only spectral office workers. The strange dishonesty of the medium. A soundtrack of disembodiment, a reenactment of the unconscious. Again, the dreamscape of capital...reflectivity, reification, repeat...

What you may be dreaming even when you're not...

SU T1SSUE - SAL0N DE MUS1QUE (1984)

The only solo release by this former Suburban Lawn. A short detour into reverie.

Dream...

ANNA H0MLER - BREADW0MAN (1985)

Otherworldly dream-songs. These ritualistic pieces--sung in melodic glossolalia, a made-up language system (or what Lisa Gerrard calls "vocabular")--are based in Homler's work in performance art. The titular character, complete with a bread mask, performs versions of these striking works in shamanistic, primordial fashion. The music comes from Mr. S. Moshier, who provides a suitably future/rustic backdrop. The works often seem to have emerged from time itself, embodied through the kind of prelinguistic, prehistoric and presymbolic expression that Julie Kristeva called the "chora"--a revolution in poetic language.

Dream...

FUCK Y0UR DREAMS, TH1S IS HEAVEN (1986)

Aptly titled soundtrack project for a "video film" by Wonder Project. Features a number of my favorite Made to Measure label/series artists, many of which I hope to post about soon: Minimal Compact, Peter Principle, Steven Brown, etc. This album features atmospheric (and nostalgic, another facet of our dream-worlds) covers of songs by S. Barrett, L. Reed and P. Smith. Here's a bit of rock-wave-lounge to burn away the remainder of the weekend.

Dream...

M4X R1CHTER - FR0M SLEEP (2015)

A constrained, somewhat obvious approach to sleep music, but lulling nonetheless. This album is an excerpt of the 8-hr "full night rest" version released, one to compliment and improve restfulness. This one is meant to be played while awake. It's viscous, seeping music that makes it seem, at times, as if your head is wrapped in foam or you are listening through water. This makes me dream about dreaming a bit, entices me to want to test the full project.

Dreaming...

L0REN MAZZ4CANE-C0NN0RS & ALAN L1CHT - H0FFMAN ESTATES (1998)

A post-minimalist, guitar-based exploration of distended blues, atonal ensemble symphonics and studio magicianship, courtesy of producer Jim O-Rourke. Often referred to as O'Rourke's Teo Macero project, Connors and Licht indeed get fine support from many of Chicago's finest: Vandermark, K. Drumm, J. Bishop, C. Taylor, J. Abrams, Mazurek, Colligan...a beautiful and unsettling work.

Dream here...

DAV1D TE1E - MUS1C F0R CATS VOLUME ONE (2016)

And on my cat's ipod this morning, the first three tracks of Teie's much anticipated, newly released album...composed, indeed, for the feline in your life. The feline is also you.

Dream, kitty...

H0LGER CZUKAY - CANAX1S (1969)

Russian 2000 reissue of 1969 electronic classic. Track one, "Boat Woman Song," with its Folkways Music of Viet Nam sample, has kept my brain-waves in the delta frequency zone all morning.

Dream it again...

SYNT0NIC RESEARCH INC. - ENVIRONMENTS 3 (THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE ISN'T MUSIC: DAWN & DUSK AT NEW HOPE, PA) (1987)

A cross-continent companion to the previous Vancouver post. Here we have two tracks, Dawn & Dusk, field recordings of everyday life in New Hope, PA. The folks at Syntonic Research, like Henri Lefebvre, Gaston Bachelard and Michel de Certeau before them, seem to realize that quotidian experience, rooted to the materiality of living and set within the rhythms of the day, is the source of all dreamwork: the mundane, the emancipatory, the bleak.

Dream...

SAM SH4LAB1 / ADAM FR4NK - OVERPASS! A MEL0DRAMA (2007)

An aural, experiential documentary about the city of Vancouver. An experiment in psychogeography, with more than a few nods to the Situationist International and the idea of the dérive. Morton Feldman is given voice credit, as are two west-coast writers of note, Matthew Stadler and Meredith Quartermain. Sound is by the leader of the amazing band Shalabi Effect, from Montreal. "Jello Sunday" is a strange track that keeps giving. Canadada.

Dream ...

C0MP0STELA - WADACH1 (1997)

One of few recorded documents of a Japanese trio active in the early 1990s. This disc covers the 1991-92 period, up until the death of Shinoda Masami which effectively ended the band. This group plays public music, in public places. They fuse jazz, rock, European folk music and the Japanese tradition of Chindon (in which bands dressed in traditional garb create a festive aural backdrop for the opening of new shopping malls and businesses as well as assorted advertising events). From oompah to dirge to Ayleresque spiritual, this band offers a range of material for reverie, climaxing with "Sign of 1" which, if you're human, should put you in a mood.

Dream...

LUB0MYR MELNYK - THE LUND-ST. PETR1 SYMPH0NY (1981)

Gorgeous, spell-binding music for solo and double piano. Melnyk is a German-born Ukrainian national who is considered one of the fastest pianists on earth. According to Discogs, he can sustain over 19.5 notes per second on each hand and holds a record for the most notes played in one hour: 93,650 notes.

Dream it...

R0BERTO CACC1AP4GLIA - S0NANZE / S0NANCES & OTHERW0RKS 1972-1975 (2001)

Before the extraordinary Sei Note in Logica dropped in 1979, R. Cacciapaglia had been cutting his teeth on more Kosmische sounding composition. Suitably, the "otherworks" which are collected here (alongside a remastered  Sonanze, his first album from 1975) were recorded in Cologne in 1974.

Sogno qui...

FRANC1S B3BEY - PSYCHEDEL1C SANZA 1982-84 (2014)

The charming follow-up to FB's stellar "African Electronic Music 1975-82." Perhaps less pop-inflected than the previous compilation, this release is by no means any more "traditional" in spite of the focus on the sanza. Atmospheric and hypnotic.

Dream...

THE C0NET PR0JECT - RECORD1NGS OF SHORTWAVE NUMBERS STATIONS (1997)

Two CDs of field-recorded transmissions. Dream espionage, dream
cold war, dream the airwaves.

"For more than 30 years shortwave radio has been used by intelligence agencies to transmit secret messages, by hundreds of 'numbers stations'. They (and by inference, spies) are as busy as ever. Why is it that in over 30 years, the phenomenon has gone almost totally unreported? Why are the eastern European stations still on the air? How is it that they are allowed to interfere with services like air traffic control and shipping?"

Dream it...

BERTR4ND BURG4LAT - THE SSSOUND OF MMMUS1C (2000)

Time, once again, for folks of the cold and wet northern hemisphere to drift away on some summery-sounding French pop. And this: "Si je me rencontrais au coin de la rue, je me dirais Bonjour Bertrand..."

Keep warm, and dream...

PAOLO T0FANI - INDCAZIONE (1977)

Our second DIVerso series offering comes from this Florentine guitarist/composer. With this album, the artist who had been best known as part of the prog unit, Area, moved into something far more personal--and eccentric. Apparently Tofani mounted an EMS prototype synth to his Les Paul guitar to generate the sound-fields here. Not an easy dream, but remember that Tofani, based on this album, was included on the Nurse with Wound List. Songs "Tung Tse Mao" and the spoken work "Indicazione" are favorites. As the story goes, Tofani entered a Hare Krishna community not too long after this release.

Dream dreams....

P4UL B0WLES - BLACK STAR AT THE P01NT 0F DARKNESS (Music, Stories, Recordings, 1991)

More story time.

Dream on...

(We have more Bowles here, his musique concrete project from the late 1950s)

PR0FESSOR LIANG TSAI-P1NG AND HIS GR0UP - CH1NA'S INSTRUMENTAL HER1TAGE (c. mid 1970s)

Lulling and jarring traditional classical pieces for solo and small ensemble, dating from the 8th to the 20th century. Featuring music for sheng, hsiao, hsuan, cheng, and nan hu.

Dream...

JOHN STE1NS & SCOTT SHEER1N - MIDN1GHT L1GHT (1981)

A companion post to Insomnia, below. This extremely rare album is a Folk/New Age offering from near the Arctic Circle in Dawson City, Yukon. As those who have been there know, the town is a dream itself. Steins was the mayor of the town for a few years back around 2008-10, and works as a visual artist. No info on Mr. Sheerin. Notably, this album was engineered by a 30 year old Daniel Lanois.

Dreaming North...

BI0SPHERE - INSOMN1A (1997)

Here is Biosphere's (Geir Jennssen) stark, beautiful score for Skjoldbjaerg's film. The sense of paranoia and claustrophobia that imbues the cinematic tone is suitably reflected and refracted in the "midnight sun" glare of the soundtrack. An example of REM deficiency.

Dream...

NORGINE LTD. PRESENT "TABLEAU OF A LITHOTOMY" BY MARIN MARAIS (c. 1965)

Norgaine Ltd has been in medical supplies and pharmaceuticals for over 100 years. In the 60s they released this 7" 45 rpm promo-record. Side 'A' is an adaptation of Marais' "Tableau de l'opération de la taille" (1725), a desription of a surgery in musical form. Side B is a dramatic dialogue about constipation between a doctor and a Norgine sales rep. Here the tentacles of capital reach deep into our cultural surfeit, not to mention our our ears and rectums. Welcome to the dreamworld of ideology.

Dream it, or don't...

 

MARC R1B0T - PLAYS S0L0 GU1TAR W0RKS BY FRANTZ CASSEUS (1993)

After making some initial recordings of his teacher's compositions in the mid 80s, Ribot perfected his F. Casseus repertoire for this masterpiece. For his part, Casseus was fueled by the dreams of his esteemed Haitian countryman Aimé Césaire to give voice to a contemporary national sense of identity. Ribot plays these charming works with restraint, grace and evident love and admiration. A warm album--soft, lilting and infused with Carribean breeziness.

Dream the dream...

LA M0NTE Y0UNG / MAR1AN Z4ZEELA -
31 VII 69 10:26 - 10:49 PM / 23 VIII 64 2:50:45 - 3:11 AM The Volga Delta (The Black Album, 1969)

Drone Space. 

Dreaming now...

WEIRD NIGHTMARE: MEDITAT10NS 0N MINGUS (1992)

A Willner production, with Frisell, Ribot, G. Cohen, Gary Lucas, Francis Thumm, and vocals by L. Cohen, Robbie Robertson, Costello, Galas, Chuck D, and more. The Harry Partch instruments set the tone...cloud chamber bowls, chromelodeon, cone gongs.

Dream it...,

TOM JOHNSON - NINE BELLS (1982)

As the cover diagram on Nine Bells suggests, this work may be seen as a kind of sonic companion piece to Samuel Beckett's legendary TV piece, Quad I & II (1981). The recording aurally documents a performance/installation work wherein the performer navigates a precise walking pattern around a series of nine suspended bells. The resulting chimes and footsteps create a simultaneous sense of rhythm, motion and temporal progression as well as their opposite--floating timelessness and stasis. Notably, Johnson was a student of Morton Feldman.

Dream...

C0CTEAU TWINS - T1NY DYNAMINE/ECHOES IN A SHALLOW BAY (1985)

Mid 80's dreampop from CT's double-album EP.

Dream here...

MAXIME DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD - COLLECTION SOMNAMBULE/MUSIC FOR SLEEPWALKERS (2003)

A rare, special post. Nine trance-inducing "sleepwalk" pieces from 5 to 9 minutes in length, all performed by "automates ki," mechanized acoustic sculptures animated by inaudible frequencies.This is music composed for robotic, self-playing instruments. Future-primordial dreamscapes that sound, at times, like a gagaku performance or gamelan orchestra that has been infiltrated and reimagined by members of a past or future society. De La Rochefoucauld is from Montreal.

Dream away...

YURI KOROLKOFF & GUY CHALON - MAI 1968

A politics of dreams, in 7" vinyl. Album is subtitled: "Extraits sonores d'un film réalisé par un collectif de travail animé par Guy Chalon."

Rêve...

GAV1N BRY4RS / JUAN MUNOZ - A MAN 1N A R00M, GAMBL1NG (1997)

"Good evening. Welcome once again to A Man in a Room, Gambling...." Thus begins one of the greatest radio shows to have ever been broadcast from BBC Radio. 

Bryars composed the music for radio concept project by the late Spanish artist Juan Muñoz; the results are mesmerizing, beautiful and funny.

Dream on...

HENRY THEADG1LL - T00 MUCH SUG4R FOR A D1ME (1993)

Essentially a Threadgill Very Very Circus project, though not titled as such. Double, dueling tubas courtesy of Marcus Rojas and Edwin Rodriguez underscore the album's rollick and tension. Co-starring Brandon Ross, Jason Hwang, Simon Shaheen and others.

Dream it...

PYGMEÉS BIBAYAK - GABON: MUSIQUE DES PYGMÉES BIBAYAK. CHANTRES DE L'ÉPOPÉE. (1975)

From the venerable Ocora label, a 1989 reissue of the 1975 album. Recorded in 1966 and 1973. The otherworldly sense of "avant-primitif" that permeates this startling recording becomes clear with the radical, if colonialist, lineage of Ocora itself: founded by Pierre Schaeffer and Charles Duvelle. 

Dream...

ROBERT SCHRÖDER - HARMONIC ASCENDANT (1979)

More aural wash from the Innovative Communications label. Produced by Klaus Schulze.


Dream it...

B0LA SETE - 0CEAN MEM0R1ES (1972)

This album collects the full haunting 1972 Ocean sessions of "seven ball" D. de Andrade (released 1975, Takoma) which were recorded and produced by Fahey. Sete's solo guitar glistens like summer sun on the beach, and refracts like moonbeams on the sea.

Dream on...

AST0R P1AZZ0LLA - THE R0UGH DANCER & THE CYCL1CAL N1GHT (1988)

Dreaming the melancholy of bordellos and dance halls. This is a very different sort of party music.

Dreaming...

JE4N-CLAUDE V4NN1ER - L'ENF4NT DES M0UCHES (The Child Assassin of the Flies, 1972)

Melodicism, manic invention, and a contagious sense of wonder: an aural narrative that both reflects and enacts the mysteries of childhood and the headspaces of sound.

Dream...

ART0 L1NDS4Y - O C0RP0 SUT1L/THE SUBTLE B0DY (1995)

"We lay in the bed like astronauts, the time and the place and the window..."

With guests: Amedeo Pace, B. Frisell, M. Ribot, Y. Honda, V. Cantauria, J. Baron, M. Gibbs, N. Vasconcelos, R. Sakamoto, et al.

Dream on...

GE0RGE LEW1S - H0MM4GE TO CHARLES P4RKER (1979)

An invocation of idols. Reverent and languid. A masterpiece.

With Richard Teitelbaum, Anthony Davis, Doug Ewart.

Dream...

BAS1L K1RCH1N & CL1VE LESL1E - INSPECT0R CR0CHET'S LAST CASE (2005)

Narrative for the airways.

Dream it...

DEL1A DERBY5H1RE & ELSA STANSF1ELD - C1RCLE OF L1GHT (0ST, 1972)

Illuminated.

Dream it...

FERNAND0 GR1LL0 - FLUV1NE (1976)

Four sublimesolo bass works played by the man coined "the Buddha of the contrabass" by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Ambient from the calm to the storm.

Dream...

W4YNE H0RV1TZ/THE PRESIDENT - MIRACLE M1LE (1992)

Quiet, textural, ominous... 2016 Election Dreaming with Horvitz, Frisell, Sharp, Previte, Driscoll and others.

Dream it ...

1GGY P0P / TARWATER / ALV4 N0TA - LEAVES OF GRASS (2016)

"I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers"

--Walt Whitman

MYST1C FUGU 0RCHESTRA - Z0HAR (1995)

Kabbalistic scratch, drone and hum. Ecstatic rituals featuring Zorn as Rav Tzizit and Eye as Rav Yechida.


Dream it...

D0UBLE FANTASY - UNIVERSAL AVE. (1986)

Malibu Summer Via Berlin-School. Kraut-Yacht!

Dream...

C4RL ST0NE - M0M's (1992)

Music made from both additive and subtractive strategies. Loops drops and drones to fuel your slumber.

Dream it...

SH4NKAR - S0NG F0R EVERY0NE (1985)

L. Shankar's 10-string electric violin meets drum machines and virtually orgasmic soprano sax. From the orgasmic year of 1985. 

Shankar, Jan Garbarek, Trilok Gurtu, Zakir Hussain.

Dream...

JEFF BR1DGES - SLEEP1NG T4PES (2015)

Music and musings to fall asleep to. Pure charm, delight and warmth. The Dude abides.