Tag: progressive rock

Killing Time – Irene, 1988

Hi friends, I hope that whatever your personal circumstances are at the moment, you’re hanging in there. Once the pandemic is over, I think we’re going to have to figure out how to channel our political rage into meaningful change–I know I will, otherwise I think I might poison myself with being so angry–and I hope to talk with some of you about what this could entail and work with you to make it happen when the time comes. I’m realizing as I type this that even using soft platitudes like “stay safe” feels inappropriate, given that safety and isolation are luxuries that many don’t have. Anyway, that aside, I’m grateful that you’re here and reading and listening.

I’ve been sitting on this one for awhile, largely because for me me, this blog has always had a pretty strict ethos of listenability. While a lot of what I share is admittedly leftfield, I like to post records that aren’t super challenging, are a pleasure to listen to from start to finish, and that can appeal to a wide range of people. While this record is definitely pleasurable, it has some pretty wild avant garde moments in a way that might turn some listeners off. But something that I’ve had to regularly remind myself of in the almost six (!!) years that I’ve been doing this is that most of the people who end up here are preternaturally open to musical oddness, and also that my tastes aren’t as singular or rarefied as I sometimes think they are–which means that when I like something, there are usually others who like it too. Musically, that’s exactly what’s made this blog so fun to write–realizing that I’m not alone, that there are throughlines through my taste that line up with other people’s throughlines, that we love what we love. So I’m going to assume that because I love this record, others will too, even if it’s a little more eccentric than a lot of what gets posted here.

I first came to this record through this excellent compilation of Japanese favorites. I recognized the luminous “Kokorowa” from the track “Kokoro Da” by Love, Peace and Trance, but hadn’t realized that the Love, Peace and Trance version was actually a cover of this one–written, according to Discogs, by Killing Time’s drummer, Jun Aoyama, who was a longterm member of Tatsuro Yamashita‘s touring band. I have since put the original on about 29 different mixes because I love it so much, but excitingly there is much more to be found here.

“既知との遭遇 (A Close Encounter With You Know What)” hints that it’s a deceptively breezy bossa nova-esque puff, but ultimately devolves into fully free-form summertime jazz, with multiple time signatures happening at once, tabla and talking drum, and more mallets than you could shake a mallet at. “沈黙する湖 (Psychotropicnic)” turns an abrupt 180 into a cinematic soundtrack for a steamy 80’s movie, with reverbed out hazy saxophone, murky and gorgeous synth pads, and a sleepy, wandering piano. But it’s with the title track that things get properly weird: it’s a 20 minute long five part odyssey, featuring some very sinister vocal processing, bonkers percussion, a wildly cathartic take on the Japanese favorite Indonesian folk classic “Bengawan Solo,” a full free jazz meltdown, and a very stoned lūʻau interlude featuring Sandii (!) serving the most impressively slow vibrato I’ve ever heard (fittingly, she’s trained extensively as a hula dancer and now runs two hula schools in Yokahama and Harajuku).

I think what makes this record so exciting for me is hearing a group of extremely technically skilled musicians making a record that is diverse and ambitious but still ultimately sounds like them all goofing off together: if Irene makes one thing clear, it’s that everyone involved had a sharp sense of humor. The end of the title track really lays into it with a short interlude featuring a childish, singsongy boy-girl duet over an end-of-the-carnival instrumental and a very cute errant giggle. After the exhausting tour-de-force we’ve just been on for 20 minutes, it feels particularly funny. The people who made this were truly sick session musicians with a massive discography between them, and their ability to play together–in the musical sense but more importantly in the game sense–is a joy to be brought along for.

Sorry this got so long–not usually my thing–but anyway, I hope you love it, and at the very least I hope it takes you somewhere else for a few minutes. Thanks again for being here.

download

Annie Haslam – Annie In Wonderland, 1977

Guest post by grandiose melodrama connoisseur René Kladzyk (Ziemba)

“The stars are not so silent
As they seem
They sparkle for you
You’re gazing at me
Knowing that up till now
I never believed in love”

Songs in the air 
Everywhere
Telling me up ‘til now 
I never believed in love”

Annie Haslam’s voice is a ringing bell at the center of Annie in Wonderland, a 1977 maximalist pop adventure created in partnership with Haslam’s then-fiancé Roy Wood (better known as a founding member of Electric Light Orchestra, The Move, and the terrifying frontman of Wizzard). Haslam’s first solo album Annie in Wonderland was a major sonic departure from Renaissance, the avant-baroque progressive rock band fronted by Haslam. While the songs of Renaissance also orbited around the soaring purity of Haslam’s voice, it’s with Annie in Wonderland that Haslam’s expression became overtly romantic, igniting this sweeping and grandiose pop melodrama of an album.

At times choral, at times outright bizarre and sweetly silly, Annie in Wonderland oozes with a sense of wonder and a playful mysticism. The nostalgic excitement of love is also omnipresent, and the fun had while making it eminently apparent. In a 1999 interview, Haslam comments that this is her favorite of her solo albums, and that recording sessions would frequently get held up by riotous laughter, with everyone on the floor crying laughing.

A loungey cover of “Nature Boy” reapproaches the standard with a cinematic mystery; I’m eagerly awaiting the femme James Bond reboot featuring this song as our heroine drives along the ragged cliffs of the Italian Riviera. Meanwhile the excellent “I Never Believed in Love” draws clear throughlines to more disco-inflected and glammy songs in Electric Light Orchestra’s catalogue, like the Xanadu soundtrack that would come out a couple years later. Of course Roy Wood’s influence can be heard abundantly throughout the record, as he produced, arranged, played the majority of the instruments. He also did the album art, which includes several hints at specific references to the recording process.

The romance and divine sensibility of Annie in Wonderland carries through in Annie Haslam’s later solo work, especially in standouts like “The Angels Cry” from her 1989 self titled album, and can be spotted in Haslam’s visual art as well. Her current website features intuitive paintings of songs, custom painted musical instruments, garments, and pet portraits, all cast in vibrant and multicolored hues evoking sensuous dream worlds.

buy / download

Baffo Banfi – Ma, Dolce Vita, 1979

Guest post by Peter Harkawik

I recently found myself in line at an airport Starbucks, earbuds pumping the second and standout track on Giuseppe “Baffo” Banfi’s excellent 1979 album, Ma, Dolce Vita. The scene was transformed. I watched as headset-clad baristas twirled in a choreographed dance of whipped cream and chocolate sauce, gleeful panache emerging in their faces. Glowing QR codes passed under holstered laserbeam scanners. Boxes of soy milk changed hands in time with symphonic Moog crescendos, and petulant children spun on Samsonite between rounds of stereophonic cabasas. Such is the power of great music: to transform the ordinary into the sublime. I’m no expert in prog, Berlin School, Italian Library, or anything that qualifies me to write about this record. I just like it.

Banfi was a member of the hallowed Biglietto per l’Inferno (“Ticket to Hell”). As the story goes, Klaus Schulze took an interest, but when Trident folded in 1975, leaving their second album in limbo, the group disbanded. Banfi went on to release several solo albums on Schulze’s Innovative Communication label. Ma, Dolce Vita, the entirety of which is reprised on the compilation Sound of Southern Sunsets, is his second, and I’ve been able to find out very little about it. The cover suggests an Archizoom kiosk, half a Joe Colombo or perhaps something made by the German artist Rebecca Horn. (Apparently it’s a photo by Ezio Geneletti.) It is an album that very quickly outstrips its hazy psychedelic trappings.

Dolce Vita opens slowly with “Oye Cosmos Va,” which, like much electronic music of its era, would not feel out of place in a Carl Sagan special. Its plodding, trippy synthesizer loops quickly give way to the more expansive and exuberant sound of “Sweet Summer on Planet Venus.” A driving beat propels this airy, probing melody through multiple sonic landscapes. It’s a jubilant effusion of interleaved percussive elements that resolves quickly as the gas runs out on each layer. It will always leave me wanting more. “Vino, Donne E Una Tastiera” picks up with a syrupy, rattlesnake swagger, suggesting the dim saloon of a spaghetti western. “Astralunato” employs a contrapuntal bassoon-like sound that I’ve only heard used to such great effect by the British armchair duo Woo. It gives the song a sort of self-satisfied, delirious schmaltz that ambles along at its own pace. The album’s final track, loosely, “Fantasy of an Unknown Planet,” is a dark, arpeggiated voyage, accompanied by tentative high-hat and ersatz flute. 18 minutes in length, it builds steadily to a climactic bass line dropout and melodic redoubling.

If last year’s Blade Runner sequel is a testament to the enduring sound of the synthesizer, then Ma, Dolce Vita, like the original film, reminds us that the 1970s still sound like the future.


Colored Music – Colored Music, 1981

Anomalous! A collaboration between Atsuo Fujimoto and personal hero jazz pianist and vocalist Ichiko Hashimoto, this was Colored Music’s only official release, though apparently they scored a 1984 movie called Kougen ni ressha ga hashitta (高原に列車が走った)–if anyone has a copy of this, I’d really love to hear it!

Sinister and strange throughout, Colored Music defies genre, ranging from the scronky, free-jazzy “Anticipation” to the spaced-out, reverb soaked “Sanctuary” to the more explicitly new wave “Too Much Money,” flirting briefly with progressive rock along the way. Vocals include a haunted, warbling mermaid choir, sputtering Broadway theatrics, and faraway pirate chants buried deep in the mix. The standout is the shimmying, agitated “Heartbeat,” held together by a warped and weird house beat that gets shredded in half by an almost unlistenable piano meltdown. A little challenging, but totally worth it.