4 little gems (73) |
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hellogoodbye
Forum Senior Member VIP member Joined: August 29 2011 Location: Troy Status: Offline Points: 7251 |
Topic: 4 little gems (73) Posted: April 24 2014 at 17:12 |
April Orchestra : Vol 28
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPA6N2w_gsY Love live life plus one : Love will make a better you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahxuumD0lDI Pekka Pohjola : Harakka Bialoipokku http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM9VYfP5ORg Tonton Macoute : St http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rn8W6-1P8w
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hellogoodbye
Forum Senior Member VIP member Joined: August 29 2011 Location: Troy Status: Offline Points: 7251 |
Posted: April 24 2014 at 17:15 |
Love Live Life + One Psychedelic/Space Rock Review by DamoXt7942 (From PA blog "Japanese Progressive Rock presented by DamoX")
Honestly! I cannot help keeping my eyes and mouth open, touching this album by my ears. LOVE LIVE LIFE, a Japanese psychedelic rock project, was a hotchpotch ensemble of talented rock musicians. Indeed you can imagine where this project should go as soon as you find the members, but, as I'm sure it's much important, this terribly terrific album could be produced not by LOVE LIVE LIFE, but by LOVE LIVE LIFE + ONE. Namely, Akira FUSE the vocalist could activate this project more and more I wanna say. Basically Akira is one of famous pop singers in Japan - he can remind almost all of Japanese a beautiful & plaintive ballad "Cyclamen No Kaori (Flavour of a cyclamen)" in 1975 - and currently for us Japanese it's beyond all imagination he could shout in such a psychedelic project. As if Percy Faith play rock (sorry). Joking aside, without any suspicion he was the lead-off man of this project, not only plus one. Listen from the beginning, and feel the first track The Question Mark by your skin. Akira's whisper "I'm a human being, I'm a human." can take us over our surrealistic pillow to another psychedelia. And here come aggressive battles between a dry & metallic guitar, a keen and crazy flute, and incoherent but strict drums. What can let them play not only ramblingly but steadily? I do suggest they should feel the air - by their eyes and their ears, and especially their mind, feeling. Call the air "the spiritual force". Understand enough. Of all instruments, I consider, particularly Kosuke ICHIHARA and Toshiaki YOKOTA's flute duo can boil their psychedelic spirit, with the crazily eccentric wave and stream. And Kimio MIZUTANI's shocking-breaking guitar sounds must knock us out completely. We can be enough pleased by only this song aka jack-in-the-sounds. After this song (that is, on B side of LP), Akira's voices are very cool but active. In the second track Running Free his voices are running like a cool wind on the turntable. The plaintive violin solo and the strong brass section can make his voices stronger and sharper. The next eponymous track Love Will Make A Better You can be called as a "psychedelic funk" with as funky shouts as James Brown, as honestly I feel - his voices are so strong and aggressive that can force us to think so, in my humble opinion. His ability for a singer, not a pop artist, we can realize enough on listening to a mid-to-fast psychedelic rock ballad Shadow Of The Mind, as well as the previous track. Akira's bright and brilliant voices can be approved even with some special effects or altered tempo - he grasps the musical ground by his fantastic vocal cord. The last slow bluesFacts About It All can make our sensuous stomach completely full - full stomach by a ballad singer with another way of singin'...wonderful! Once again I say; PLUS ONE is so important. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ody2U9X483M |
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hellogoodbye
Forum Senior Member VIP member Joined: August 29 2011 Location: Troy Status: Offline Points: 7251 |
Posted: April 24 2014 at 17:19 |
April Orchestra Volume 28[from wikipedia] Jirí Stivín (born 23 November 1942 in Prague) is a Czech flute player and composer. He graduated from the Film Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). He also studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music as well as at the Prague Academy of Music (AMU). Some of his compositions are featured in this album by April Orchestra. This seems to have been an easy-listening type orch. that published all kinds of dross over the years. Surprisingly there is no wikipedia entry for it, and only a brief one for Mr. Stivin. Note that the April O. Volume featured on Stivin's website, oddly enough, is not the same as this one. However, as pure music, this record has provided me personally with no end of enjoyment, listening to it again today I can go without hitting the fast forward button excessively, which is saying a lot after spending the last 10 years (with 4 year break) listening to an average of 5 albums per day, cumulatively, about 10,000. (Could it really be that few??) The fact that this otherwise ordinary orchestra could produce something so advanced in 1978 is a testament again to the progressive nature of the times. We start with the Stivin Sanguine humour composition (which is taken from his zodiac album, a progressive masterpiece). It has a string quartet opening that shows his academic training, leading to an odd piano-comped flute ditty. The second track starts with a blues intro but swiftly leads into some insane horn chords and then an ingenious chromatic riff, basically big band meets king crimson perhaps. Next track uses wah wah trumpet on top of C minor, relatively throwaway, as is the next song. Many would love these 'funk breaks' I think but for non-prog reasons. On track 5 we get some twilight zone dissonances and then some early seventies style riffs. Track 7, Festival, has some Charlie Mingus touches. The next one "More Klidu" again feels like it belongs to an earlier epoch, with the breathless Nouvelle Vague female vocals singing on top of a very soft electric piano obbligato, the melody seconded by a bassoon (?) of all things. Very interesting arrangement. What a shame this track was not developed further into a pop song. Cholerici is again a Stivin composition from Zodiac, some really interesting violin sweeps in the string quartet appear with some clarinet (?) melodies and dissonant chords off the harpsichord. This is the kind of track that kills me because it's not performed in lieu of Brahms (or more appropriately Bartok) at the local symphony or chamber orchestra. Mr. Stivin obviously spent quite some time writing this piece and what credit does he get for it in the annals of music? Just some silly paragraphs on a blog in the virtual blogosphere. More funky tracks ensue, another wordless female track in "sen o zemi" this time with some really interesting orchestral strings accompaniment-- reminds me a lot of Joachim Kuhn in the cinemascope period, or Abraxis (Belgian) with the really colourful mixture of orchestra, piano, and vocals in an accessible (easy-listening-style) format. The last track sounds like a jazz q song, probably someone annoying can correct me here. They again use the minor second for that devilish sound that prog (and fusion, Urbaniak and Mahavishnu) loves so much, how many songs do you hear start with an electric guitar doing the minor second arpeggio on a minor chord? Always we sit back and pray that it doesn't turn into a song with E minor then F major over and over again, that gets so boring when there's only 2 chords in the entire song. At least 2 chords is better than german trance stuff where typically we never get past the E. At least try a different key, guys, maybe B minor, for a change. I wish there was more information to be found on this whole album other than my own solipsistic interpretation of it through little earbuds but of course to me that doesn't matter at all, the only thing that matters to me is that this music be heard by more people, the maximum in fact. Prognotfrog. |
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Mellotron Storm
Prog Reviewer Joined: August 27 2006 Location: The Beach Status: Offline Points: 12938 |
Posted: April 24 2014 at 21:09 |
That Pekka album is incredible, a trip into the forest.
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"The wind is slowly tearing her apart"
"Sad Rain" ANEKDOTEN |
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hellogoodbye
Forum Senior Member VIP member Joined: August 29 2011 Location: Troy Status: Offline Points: 7251 |
Posted: April 25 2014 at 01:22 |
True, but 5 votes already ! Never had 5 votes in all my life
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octopus-4
Special Collaborator RIO/Avant/Zeuhl,Neo & Post/Math Teams Joined: October 31 2006 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 13355 |
Posted: April 25 2014 at 02:31 |
The thieving magpie is not a "little" gem.
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Curiosity killed a cat, Schroedinger only half.
My poor home recorded stuff at https://yellingxoanon.bandcamp.com |
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hellogoodbye
Forum Senior Member VIP member Joined: August 29 2011 Location: Troy Status: Offline Points: 7251 |
Posted: April 25 2014 at 02:36 |
I agree,but the magpie is not a big bird.
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zravkapt
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 12 2010 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 6446 |
Posted: April 25 2014 at 02:42 |
Not surprised to see all the PP votes; I doubt most voters listened to the other samples.
Realistically, I probably like the Pekka album the most (the only one I was familiar with), but I gave my vote to Love Live Life + One. Interesting stuff.
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Magma America Great Make Again
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hellogoodbye
Forum Senior Member VIP member Joined: August 29 2011 Location: Troy Status: Offline Points: 7251 |
Posted: April 25 2014 at 03:12 |
I agree with your comments, Z.
for LLL. The Damo reiview was so full of passion that I couldn't resist to this weird japanese band. As you say, very interseting... and different
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hellogoodbye
Forum Senior Member VIP member Joined: August 29 2011 Location: Troy Status: Offline Points: 7251 |
Posted: April 25 2014 at 15:33 |
The music here includes vocals, sax, flute, electric piano, Hammond organ, bass and drums. "Just Like Stone" is a ballad, it didn't impress me on first listen but isn't bad. I really like how it improves with the next pieces "Don't Make Me Cry" and "Winter" with this nice jazzy psychedelic vibe going on. "Dream" is more of a psychedelic piece sounding strangely more 1968 than 1971. "You Make My Jelly Roll" pretty much straight on jazz, while the last one, "Natural High" is a great proggy two part piece, with some classical influences, as well as jazz. This type of British jazz rock is different from the Colosseum school of jazz rock or the Canterbury school, such as Soft Machine, and I have a difficult time comparing these guys with anyone else, which is fine with me. Too bad this was their only album, but a nice one to own, especially for those looking for off-the-beaten-track stuff. |
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hellogoodbye
Forum Senior Member VIP member Joined: August 29 2011 Location: Troy Status: Offline Points: 7251 |
Posted: April 27 2014 at 03:52 |
This album was released in the UK under the title B The Magpie. B, I assume, stands for Bialoipokku. This instrumental album probably does recall another vocal-less Prog album that follows the trials and tribulations of a bird. It actually beat Camel's Snow Goose to market by a year and, in my mind, while similar in certain regards is actually far superior to its better known counterpart. You would be surprised to know that this was only Pohjola's second album as a solo artist. The jazzy brass arrangements and jaw dropping bass playing sound like the work of a seasoned pro. The story, as far as I can tell, follows Bialoipokku the magpie from his birth, through some sort of great battle, to a kind of upbeat post-war conclusion. I really don't know. It's an instrumental album after all. It really doesn't matter. The music is the real charm here. The album opens on an almost melancholy note with some sad piano chords. Pohjola, while later on proving to be an excellent and varied multi-instrumentalist, handles the piano and bass playing on this album. The second track introduces the brass section. The tempo increases as the main theme of the album plays, and my goodness, what a theme it is. Catchy and uplifting. Anyone who is even remotely interested in the fusion of rock and jazz must check this out. The real instrument-star of the album is Pohjola'a bass guitar. The guy has some real skill in laying down some thick and lush rhythm throughout, driving the album forward. Just listen to the bass under the sax solo on the album's centrepiece track: Bialoipokku's war. It's jazzy. It rocks. The bass steps into the spotlight on The Madness Subsides. Any doubt that this guy is a master bassist just need to check out the places he is able to take the instrument during the solo. Very very impressive stuff. If there is any flaw in this album, in my mind, it would have to be that it all ends much too soon. Clocking in at just under 37 minutes, I always feel the need to start the album again once it comes to a conclusion. If you're a fan of the aforementioned Snow Goose and you don't have this album, you have a void in your collection that needs to be filled immediately. Harakka Bialoipokku is a charming, catchy and impressive album that really needs to be heard by just about any fan of instrumental Prog Rock. |
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hellogoodbye
Forum Senior Member VIP member Joined: August 29 2011 Location: Troy Status: Offline Points: 7251 |
Posted: April 27 2014 at 05:23 |
I gave my vote (the one and anly) to Tonton Macoute. A real interesting album with great sax and flute improvisations. Need to be listenned from start to finnish.
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Guldbamsen
Special Collaborator Retired Admin Joined: January 22 2009 Location: Magic Theatre Status: Offline Points: 23098 |
Posted: April 27 2014 at 05:41 |
The last two cuts on that Tonton Macoute album are superb. The ending piano and brass section gets me every time:)
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“The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
- Douglas Adams |
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hellogoodbye
Forum Senior Member VIP member Joined: August 29 2011 Location: Troy Status: Offline Points: 7251 |
Posted: April 27 2014 at 07:28 |
Thanks David for those precious words. That's why I prefer to post a song rather than a whole album. But this time I had no choice.
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