Sep 24, 2022
Lizgizzad - Mantell
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Lizgizzad - Mantell
POST-SCRIPTUM 218
Two of my all-time favorites (194): Ambarchi / Campbell / Flower “Live At Tusk Festival 2013″ & Hive Mind / Connelly & The Machines / Dog Lady / Body Morph / Drainolith “School Is Out!! Crazed Sound At Matinee!!”
( WOLF EYES!! YEAH!! YEAH!! YEAH!! :
http://merzbow-derek.tumblr.com/search/wolf+eyes )
SANDY BULL
FANTASIAS FOR GUITAR & BANJO
Bien qu’il ait été formé à l’école de Pete Seeger (d’abord au banjo puis à la guitare) et qu’on l’ait crut bien parti pour mener une carrière de musicien folk traditionnel, Sandy Bull ne se révéla pas vraiment au contact de l’americana comme on aurait pu s’y attendre, mais en entendant des disques de Ravi Shankar et Ali Akbar Khan, singularité partagée avec ses confrères Robbie Basho et Pat Kilroy.
Et quant au second choc musical d’importance dans sa vie, c’est l’écoute du Free Jazz d’Ornette Coleman (vanté par son ami Buell Neidlinger, bassiste de Cecil Taylor) qui le lui procurera . C’est même ce qui explique la présence d’un des deux batteurs figurant dans Free Jazz sur la face A de Fantasias For Guitar & Banjo, un seul long morceau de vingt-cinq minutes titré « Blend ».
Premier opus pour la vénérable institution qu’était alors le label Vanguard, premier coup de maître : nous ne sommes qu’en 1963 et Sandy Bull s’impose comme l’un des grands guitaristes acoustiques, aux côtés de John Fahey, Robbie Basho et Davy Graham. Sauf que Sandy Bull, à l’instar du dernier, ne bénéficiera jamais vraiment d’une reconnaissance publique (en dehors de ses pairs) et ne produira, lui aussi, qu’un œuvre assez mince, voire chaotique, en raison d’une sévère addiction aux drogues, autre point commun avec son confrère britannique.
Après un quatrième album pour la même maison disques au milieu des seventies, une longue traversée du désert commencera, seulement interrompue par de rarissimes autoproductions, ou encore par la Rolling Thunder Review de Dylan dont il sera l’un des invités (à ce sujet, lire Sam Shepard), voire par de sporadiques apparitions en première partie des concerts de Patti Smith.
En 1963, en plus de « Blend », un morceau de William Byrd, un traditionnel des montagnes du Sud des Etats-Unis, et une réappropriation des accords de « I Got A Woman » de Ray Charles suffiront pourtant à révéler son immense talent. Une variation sur le thème de « Carmina Burana » de Carl Orff annonce ce que fera joliment Matthew Young dans les années 1980 sur Traveler’s Advisory.
Mais c’est « Blend » qui intrigue véritablement, avec son bourdon paraissant tiré d’un oud, instrument que Sandy Bull n’utilisera que plus tard, après l’avoir découvert dans les cafés algériens de Paris. En vingt-cinq minutes, cette face A ouvre certaines des voies du renouveau du folk des années 2000, et de ce que feront, en duo, Mick Flower (hammered dulcimer) et Chris Corsano, batteur de jazz, tout comme Billy Higgins, présent sur « Blend »…
Jamming with Mick Flower of Vibracathedral Orchestra.
PSYCHEDELIA TOP 10.000 (34)
166 - Vomir / Rose Sobchak / The End Of Empire, Split, Church of Freedom, 2012
167 - Flower-Corsano Duo, You'll Never Work In This Town Again, Self released CD-R, 2010
168 - Chris Corsano Band, High And Dry, Hot Cars Warp Records, 2010
169 - Flower-Corsano Duo, The Chocolate Cities, Self released CD-R, 2009
170 - Rose Sobchak, Rose Sobchak, Heart Shaped Box Prod., 2010
NEIL CAMPBELL & MICHAEL FLOWER
The joyful, celebratory, improvisations of Leeds' Neil Campbell & Michael Flower are some of the most thrilling live performances you're ever likely to behold. The two operated at the core of one of the UK's most celebrated improv groups, Vibracathedral Orchestra, until 2006 when Campbell left to begin his fractured electronic project, the lauded and highly prolific Astral Social Club. Since then, Flower has most famously performed as part of a duo with drummer extraordinaire Chris Corsano, as well as sitting-in with the likes of Sunburned Hand of the Man and MV&EE, and continuing to build the Vibracathedral legacy.
In 2010, Flower and Campbell performed their first show together in four years - as a duo. Since then, they have gone on to stun their audiences, blending the pulsating face-melt of the Velvet Underground at their most ferocious with a Hindustani classical sensibility and free-form Metal Machine Music soup. This runaway train of rock at its most deconstructed will be performing at Night & Day, opening for Ensemble Economique on Thursday August 2nd. Nick Mitchell asked Neil Campbell a few questions in anticipation of the show.
CREPUSCULE: When you left Vibracathedral Orchestra in the middle of the last decade, most people must have thought that was the end of your collaboration with Mick Flower. What was the impetus behind this reunion? N.C.: You can't keep a good dog down... Well, a few years ago Mick had a solo gig in London and he asked if I'd like to do it as a duo. I thought it was a great idea, but I couldn't make the date. So, when I was offered a similar gig in Leeds a few months later I put the same propsotion to Mick and, happily, he accepted. There were a few points, towards the end of my Vibracathedral days, when Mick and I would be the only two who'd turn up for a rehearsal, so we already knew we could kick it out as a duo, but the shape the music took this time round was very pleasantly surprising for me. CREPUSCULE: For a lot of people, I think. In a way, it feels more cohesive, I guess in the sense that it's more immediately referential. Even amidst the most blazing, soaring moments of chaos, there's a pulse and a chug that brings it back almost to 'garage rock' level. Was that a conscious, planned decision? N.C.: No, no planning to sound like this. That said, I think it was Mick's initial insistence that he was only interested in playing guitar, so I thought back to what used to work best in those rare Vibracathedral duos we did, and it was when I just played my battered old Casio. None of the massed intrumentation of some Vibracathedral sessions to move between. So, by limiting ourselves instrumentally it forced us to focus a lot more on what we were each playing, so we're a lot more intense I think than most of the things we played in Vibracathedral. Simple, really, but a small revelation for me. CREPUSCULE: Does spontaneity play as big a part in this project as it did when you played together in Vibracathedral Orchestra? N.C.: Sure, but only now we have a reduced pallette, so it encourages a little more aggression/excitement to our playing. Also, we do have a handful of "tunes" we can pull out, even if they're wildly different each time we play them. CREPUSCULE: The two of you seem to have quite divergent tastes from conversations I've had with you individually. Where do those tastes merge and is that the point at which your duo finds its centre? N.C.: Well, nothing worse than bands where they all have the same tastes, musical and otherwise. We both have our own things goin' on, but there's plenty of common ground that maybe comes out when we play together - a deep shared love of the Velvets would be perhaps the most obvious one. Sometimes I think we're running through a load of rock'n'roll archetypes we've internalised over the years, mashing 'em up in a completely unplanned, non-reverential, slapdash kinda way. Mick undoubtedly hears it differently, but for me it seems we're sometimes playing a wild amalgam of, say, "Mystic Eyes", "European Son" and "Swastika Girls" all at the same time. Basic old-guy routines. Things that live in our bones. But we put them together in a way that I don't think anyone has done much before. We're not a heritage act, y'know? CREPUSCULE: At previous shows I've seen, you seem to egg each other on to continue playing. Even when the set has come to what appears to be a conclusion, you'll pick it up again and take it back to stratospheric levels. Do you fear the 'comedown' of a particularly sky-scraping set? N.C.: Nah, I always said when we were playing in Vibracathedral that it followed a really natural structure, like a breath, or a day, or a year, or a lifetime. Each of those things has a very basic movement from beginning to end, with few variations and deviations between. Maybe with there being only two of us now the variations and deviations are more apparent. CREPUSCULE: The pair of you have always straddled the boundary between devotional music and pure, hedonistic revery. How do you feel about what you play? Is it a spiritual experience? N.C.: As spiritual as any music is, sure. We're not monks or nothing, but we both roughly concur on the idea of music as a means of rapid transportation out of the quotidian. It's the quickest way to get you THERE that we know of. And once you're in there with it all happening, ideas like "sacred" and "profane" just fall away. CREPUSCULE: Do you have a record in the pipeline? No we don't. We've talked about making a concerted effort to record something "properly", and will undoubtedly do something about it soon, but for now we just like turning up, plugging in and kicking out the jams.
Neil Campbell & Michael Flower play Night & Day, opening for Ensemble Economique, on Thursday 2nd August 2012. Tickets are on sale now from www.ticketline.co.uk and www.seetickets.com
Here's another highlight video from Death By Audio, 4/8/2011