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when you don't have a lot of money you better waste em well. A summary of the vinyls i welcome under my safe roof

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There are moments in history when humans discover new sounds and new ways to produce them, and this discovering brings reflections and questions to the most curious minds. What i have in front of me is the early days of electrical signals made sound! And this italian dudes wanted to give it a sense and make it complex. Gruppo Nuove Proposte Sonore (Gruppo NPS) was a mix of professional musicians, visual artists and academic figures working in the context of the city university of Padova (Padua)in the north east of Italy. Like other groups of the 60's there's a strong avant sight and conceptualism behind every movement and sound produced. Absence of feelings and pure study of the "sonic matter" as in a laboratory. Actually it was a laboratory with several people working on oscillators and filters from a corner to another of the room, someone pressing rec on the reel to reel tape recorder, someone shaping the sound. And this is the first time this music gets published. We should all thank Die Schachtal for their fantastic work of "collective memory preservation". Fluxes of waves fill the air following low pass filters lines never been so real.

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Look at the cover. Look at the releasing year. IT's DISCO !!! When i've put it on the turntable it sounded like remixed by some contemporary dj for some electro house version suitable for a club who knows where in the States. But it's just disco music, straight, pulsing, with a contagious bass line and 3 minutes of uninterrupted dancing. On the cover it says it used to be the theme song for an italian tv program called Gulliver,  about art, music and culture in general . Even if it's a bit hard to find informations about this program it seems like they had pretty interesting debates and themes going on. Looking at the front / back cover "concept" i can figure out the spirit of the program.

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I've found this one together with another similar document that is part of a collection called Folk and Ethnic Music of the People of Europe. Seeing the cover i thought it was gonna be a funny collection of old folk music full of weird and uncomprensible italian dialects, but the insert made it a completely different story. It's full of descriptions about the project and a long explanation about the history of ballads in the history of europe and the meaning of the folk play. I like the introduction for the "city citizen" who's supposed to understand that these documents can't give a full idea of  what is a "real spectacle" as he's used to in this era of separation between "real life as an individual, in the family, with friends, and on the other hand the moments of spectacle as an observer in front of the tv almost always as a spectator" (the recording is from 1966 and i guess they couldn't figure out that 40 years after the difference between public and private has drastically exploded). I think it's recorded live during this mystery play that takes place every year in the central Pennines Between Lazio and Abruzzo. I've taken only the parts sung by this young girl because it sounds so blindly into the tragedy they're enacting. I don't think any teenager here in Italy would ever take part to these plays in the same way they used to 50 years ago. There's no mystery anymore, but I can imagine that people living isolated in their own small comunities for centuries, only depending on the passage of the seasons they thought was necessary to trust.

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I'm stuck to the Wire's article Militant Tuning since a few days. I'm trying to "free up" my ears from equal temperament and let them float into just intonation prospectives. For the moment my attempts haven't arrived so far. Thats why this morning i was decided to seek for a Bach album that could explain my ears what exactly makes this difference. Flea market, box of old vinyls of classical music with the best covers I've ever seen. Together with a Bach and a Satie album i've found this "spacey" album of contemporary music for harpsichord. My conception of harpsichord is limited to "pre"pianoforte music and english 60's easy listening that is so attractive to the spirit. This one fits exactly in the middle of this 3-4 centurys gap. "Rounds with voice" by Luciano Berio and "Nine rare bits" by Earl Brown are the pieces that give a good exemple of "modern clavecin" or harpsichord where modern means ups and down on the musical scale. When you think it should go up it goes down and this kind of unpredictable things. Beautiful combination with the voice for Berio and in the case of Brown played at the speed of light. This hasn't made any sense to my initial research but i've found something to blame for my stomac pain. A wide musical experience, body and mind involved.  

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This one makes me wonder why disco music immaginary was so connected with butts and boobs.

No big curves here and disco-samba instead of disco-funk. Not a proper 70's disco track than, but the starting drums and bongos give that feeling that you're gonna get into some crazy spiral of lights, long hair and mustaches all over the place. And the funny thing is that 30 years ago it was natural to show naked breasts on the cover of an album.

There's no sign of The Sugarland Express on the web but this could be easily connected with those b-movies that signed the end of an era for the italian cinema. Think about Teo Teocoli with a big pair of mustaches driving a blue F.I.A.T. Ritmo in the streets of Milan in 1976 and you can figure out what it is all about.

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Hey hey.

I've seen this defenceless 7" twice in the last two weeks and yesterday i decided to bring it home because the cangaroo on the cover was so sad i couldnt resist. I'm always convinced that tv used to be better back in the days and when it comes to children music here in italy you can find impressive songs from the late 70's early 80's. The b-side of this "Woobinda" is the instrumental version of the original soundtrack from some australian tv series about a man in the middle of the jungle tryin to save animals helped by a cangaroo (?). Flute and wah and wah and flute. The soundtrack of this country utill 30 years ago.