Gramigna's Gran Disordine Sotto Il Cielo from 1977

 A masterpiece of classic dissonant and creative prog rock no matter how you slice or dice it from this one off band that I've always loved deeply.  This one and Hero are the two best from that country in my opinion despite the sheer number of 'classic Italian prog' bands, like PFM, Banco, Le Orme, Alphataurus, Latte e Miele, Corte dei Miracoli, Maxophone, Museo Rosenbach, Celeste, Triade, etc. etc.

Info discogged here. 

Really it doesn't let up once in the course of the vinyl, everything thrown at you is crazy creative, unusually written, unique, dissonant. On top of that there is a variety of styles with folky acoustic, chamber instrumentation, and harder material.  Note the English translation from google if you use chrome like billions of other humans do, here on discogs.  Evidently some Alice in Wonderland references on the first side at least. 

Thus on Alice nel pozzo the lovely acoustic guitar beginning evolves to modern classical chamber then on to hammond sustained chords, before the bell like chords of the theme return near the end and the track closes out with some crazy dissonance:

What an amazing musical time this must have been where you could start a song 'normally' and then pass on into this type of modern dissonance without skipping a beat. Totally amazes me. I wonder if (the great) Taylor Swift would consider adopting this style.

Then the track called Piccole Voci has always astounded me in its elaborate and intricate complexity, esp. since the opening is played on the acoustic guitar, again:

No need to continue posting samples, the remainder just carries on as above, ever new and ever interesting.  I'm not so happy with the cover art though, my one criticism.

Mort Shuman's OST Sex o'clock USA

 

He was a soundtrack composer and songwriter, apparently working in France a lot, but this album from 1976 is surprisingly interesting with its mix of funky stuff and libraryish compositions. The movie belonged to the 'mondo' genre which essentially was crazy documentaries about supposedly real, probably only half real, aspects of the world. I particularly recall the Italian film Mondo Cane (1962) with its anthropological oddities including US pet cemeteries which at the time I guess were a shocking idea, nowadays trite. Obviously today in the era of youtube, when you can see actual accidents and crashes where people die, or bodycam police videos beating up black guys, these films are incredibly dated and quaint. This particular movie I think had stuff like naked or bikini car washes and swinger's clubs. Yawn, right? How far we've come in society, as I said before, when porn mags used to be hidden in the back of magazine shelves in corner stores, to when anyone no matter what age with an internet connection can now watch free extreme porn in their bedrooms.

Musically, it might be there's more interesting stuff to explore in his oeuvre but I didn't have the heart or energy to do it. Perhaps a commenter know more about the issue and can enlighten us?

Love Taxi (despite the name) is quite well written and interesting with its odd sound changes:

Back to Sadao Watanabe with his 1987 Birds of Passage

 

Obviously I came across this when researching the Pepe Maina discography. 

This is late 80s smooth fusion, but thanks to the brilliance of Sadao Watanabe, who evidently was and is hugely prolific, earlier featured here before, the compositions are quite likeable all round. 

Consider Round Trip:

And the Title track, not quite as inventive as Pepe of course, but still nice:

UK's Uncle Dog's Old Hat 1972

 

From discogs:

UK short-lived rock band formed in London in the autumn of 1971. It born out as a collaboration between cult singer Carol Grimes (former Delivery) and songwriter David Skinner (formerly half of pop duo Twice As Much). Their only album was recorded at various times over the 1972, and featured as guest musicians Paul Kossoff and John 'Rabbit' Bundrick.

The music is that typical SSW material from the early 70s of the UK so influenced by for example the Beatles solo albums, early Elton John, etc. We've featured many similar British songwriters here too in the past, such as Michael Blount, Arrival with the double male and female vocals was partic. impressive for me, Matthew Ellis, Murray Head, Brian Protheroe was also incredible, etc. 

Having grown up with those McCartney albums of the 1970s I feel a soft spot for this style. The track called Old Hat is quite representative; note the simplicity of the arrangement with the vocals over piano plus backing rhythm section:

Smoke:

US White Duck from 1972 (ST, In Season)

 

Artist discogs page here.  This is some nice bluesy SSW material adequately described below as 'an unspectacular country rock band' though I would at least preface that by saying if it wasn't worth hearing I really wouldn't have bothered to plant it here.

Hiatt made his first recording as a member of White Duck, a likable if unspectacular country rock band. Hiatt was on board for the band's second and final album In Season in 1972. (Hiatt did not play on White Duck's paper-thin self-titled 1971 debut record). The four band members (Hiatt, Don Kloetzke, Mario Friedel, and Paul Tabet) each contribute songs as singers and songwriters. Hiatt's two songs are the record's high points. "You Caught Me Laughin' " sounds like the type of song that would turn up on one of Hiatt's first two solo albums; the other one, "Sail Away", sounds almost like vintage Hiatt. "Sail Away" would be deserving of inclusion on a Hiatt anthology.

The songs contributed by Mario Friedel are almost as good as Hiatt's. Nearly half of the songs are written and sung by Don Kloetzke (who has a white duck sitting on his lap in the back cover photo); the quality of his contributions is inconsistent. Kloetzke shines on "Thank You" and "A Girl Who", but he overindulges on "Bull Island Boogie" and "Looney Tune", two oddball novelty songs in which Hiatt is not a credited player.

Overall, In Season makes for very pleasant listening, and should be regarded as more than just a curiosity piece for Hiatt's fans. The music on this record alternately resembles that of the Band and the Flying Burrito Brothers, but is more upbeat than either.

For the presumably first album ST (though you'd never know if it really was the 1st), discogs has a long review from badcatrecord. I'm not going to quote it as I doubt anyone would read it through. Nonetheless the description is again good.

The track called World Keep on Turning, gives you an idea of the countryish sound, could've been like my favourites Batdorf and Rodney but it's not as good, much simpler, less of the catchy hooks they were so excellent as creating:

A track called Lonely sounds so much like early 70s McCartney, which is not a bad thing (I think the singer is trying to imitate him):

For the other one called In Season which came out the same year, discogs has an astonishingly long review, again, which I doubt anyone could read through, here, also from badcat records.

From that Black album, Thank You

Sail Away is also pretty:

Canadian John Palmer's Shorelines, 1971

 

Isn't that inside photo of him on the beach with the dog amazing??

Here's a really lovely find, out of left field, unexpected, but wonderful for me.

Artist info here, release info here:

John Lonsdale Montgomery Palmer

Profile: Canadian musician (guitar, bass, keyboards), singer, and songwriter born in 1950.

Sites: lonpalmer.wordpress.com , citizenfreak.com 

This reminds me a lot of my old favourite folky acoustic master of 12-string guitar, Gene Hood, if you remember his beautiful masterpiece of earnest and heartbreaking guitarwork from way back when. It won't be as good as that one, obviously, you wouldn't expect the unforgettable stuff to keep popping up at this late stage in the game: perhaps terminal or palliative.  

Nonetheless this is quite good and is much better than the average offering here. His haunting voice, in particular, really gets to me.

The track called Cloud opens it up with some nice graceful modulation and chord changes, youtubed here albeit misspelled. You can see the youtuber posted the entire album there, here's Such a long time.

Get it, it's good, if you like earnest folky ssw stuff blessed with fresh and welcome originality.

T.R.A.M.'s Lingua Franca from 2012

 

A wonderful more recent release that really knocks it out of the ballpark for me with the intensity of the guitar-based fusion. Unfort. there is only one release, but the related band Animal as Leaders is similar. Obviously band name is based on initials of the quartet. Guitarist is the Nigerian American Tosin Abasi.

Consider Yourself Judged appears on youtube here. It's just brilliant! Top of my daily playlist, unfortunately it knocked Earthrise's Beowulf  (from last week if you recall) off the top spot for this year's personal blockbusters chart or billboard top 10.

Another nice composition called Haas Kicker can be well appreciated here.

VA Expo '70 - Multiplex sounds for Global Vision, Japan

 

Surprisingly this is listed in discogs.  Another beautiful, unusual, and well worth hearing find from my friends, god bless them. It's a little all over the place but here and there has wonderful moments. By that I mean there is a mix of folk, ssw, orchestral arrangements, synths stuff, etc. The whole was composed by the well known Tomita, who I think I could say is best known for his synthesizer versions of classical stuff, like a Japanese version of Wendy / Walter Carlos. A lot of acoustic guitar work too.

The first track starts off beautifully but then deteriorates:

Hopefully the internet archive works for that piece so you can sample it out. As one might expect it doesn't appear on youtube, at least not yet.

Have a listen and see what you think though.

Grupo De Experimentacion Sonora Del ICAIC (Cuba 1974)

 

This album is discogged here. A nice surprise from my friend to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for continuing to dig up gems from an earth already exhausted from the ceaseless mining of these lost things from the past, time perhaps to turn to new technologies like fracking.  

In fact, this agglomeration did release a bunch of albums back in the day. 

First the bio of the band, from Cuba:

Cuban experimental band founded in 1969 by Alfredo Guevara, president of the "Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos" (ICAIC) to experiment with new sounds different from the typical folklore sounds of previous Cuban music. It was directed by Leo Brouwer.

Members :

Daniel Aldama , Eduardo Ramos , Emiliano Salvador , Leo Brouwer , Leoginaldo Pimentel , Manuel Valera , Noel Nicola , Norberto Carrillo , Pablo Menendez , Pablo Milanes , Sara Gonzalez , Sergio Vitier , Silvio Rodriguez , Vicente Feliu.

The whole album posted on youtube here. The best track is b4's Grifo which unfort. you can't listen to on its own on that site, but it's a great little fusion instrumental that really hits all the marks for me.

Well, lo and behold the internet archive is back up, so let's try this:

They made more albums, a lot more actually, so I'll try to track those down and see if they're any good and report back about the issue.

Earthrise the legendary US Band from 1978 plus more from 2017

 

Discogged here. I think everyone knows their 1978 masterpiece of symphonic prog with the beautiful cover painting, very similar to traditional US prog bands Ethos, my favourite Cathedral Stained Glass Stories, etc. A wonderful one. 

I just by chance was looking at the discography though, and observed they had a more recent release. Happily, it's one of those instances where a classic prog sound led to some nice further material well worth hearing, similar to the case with Happy the Man.  So in 2017 came Day 2. 

I never imagined the olde English epic of Beowulf would be represented as a hard-driving dissonant electric guitar riff as herein, youtubed here.

It's Frippesque, classic...  Top of my playlist all week-- all month?

For a gentler track, Reverie is youtubed here. A few tracks are similarly worth hearing, over and over again, with enough creative intensity and originality to interest us greatly.

Note that Bill Drobile their keyboardist, confusingly, put out a solo album in the same year called For Earthrise. Sorry to say that one is not quite as good as the group effort. Unfortunately that one is not listed on youtube and doesn't appear there at all. Overall with the keyboards heavy sound it is a lot like my old rip of Don Muro, which was posted way back here. My issue, sorry to say, is with the level of composition which although proggy is not quite inventive enough (for our jaded ears) though the overall sound is definitely symphonic progressive rock.

Sadly, Bill passed away 2 years after this release.

Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra, from Germany Pt.2 [Bum, Live on Planet Earth, Vula]

 

Here are the three later albums, check the discography here.

Le Pretre Vire from Bum is here.  You can appreciate how well composed the music is for the intro, a sound very similar to great soundtrack music, but suddenly, after a minute, it transforms into that jumpy dance style that for ex. Julverne and other RIO artists from Europe used to do back in the day, somewhat destroying the cohesion. The song progresses further into a kind of orchestral or symphonic passage that sounds quite Stravinskyesque before returning to the jumpy part, finally a gentler chamber music sound that appears to close it out before abruptly in the last minute the initial intro passage returns.  Personally I think there are too many parts to this thing and they don't necessarily work together well. So unlike the first album's material, I would say that you see almost the 'seams' between the parts where the song got stitched together from different ideas that are a bit disparate.

Sozialbao from the Live album, here.

The track Lakta Mata Ha (from the album with the puzzling name Vula) is like the first album, youtubed here. It's pleasant, cohesive, and sounds very much like soundtrack music from an exotic movie.

Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra, from Germany Pt.1, Take Off

 

This is one of those sad but common musical cases where a grand initial promise leads to some disappointment in later works. The info from discogs is here.

You can see it's a large orchestra that was founded in Berlin in 2007 and they made 4 albums so far.

But the first one is by far the best for some reason, full of wonderful ideas, an unholy amalgam of orchestral composed parts plus big band, fusion, jazz, and dissonant chamber stuff too. Oddly enough they meld it all together, in each song, into a wholesome union of appreciably good music.

Take Off 

Gamma Pluto Delta can be found on youtube here, for ex.

Lava Lovers is another wonderful composition, youtubed here.

Yeti Part 3, Live at the Wreck Room, Live at the Sockmonkey

 

The first live at Wreck Room (2001) has 3/4 of the songs from the Things to Come album plus Raga Gaj as the other song, while the second one, from the same year, has again Raga Gaj plus 3 other compositions: Two Fingers, Recapitation, and Fragonard's Homunculus.

I notice on youtube this track (not on the CDs) from apparently the same location.

Tracklisting for Live at the Sockmonkey is the following, based on the announcements by a band member:

Track 1 - Two Fingers [1st track from Things to Come]

2 - Raga Gaj [again! obviously they loved that one]

3 - Est Mort  [last track from TtC]

4 - Indication (?) [with Chris Forest on clarinet]

This track unfortunately (to me) sounds like it's completely improvised.

However, I've never heard a Raga like that before and I doubt I ever will with those thundering chords that open it up. I am not sure how much the Brahmin will be happy with the peaceful meditation quality of that raga.

I'm never too crazy about live recordings because I find the noise distracting and the recordings, inevitably, subpar, but I know many love it for its authenticity. Plus I had to post these so we can complete the output of this marvelous and brilliant band.

Yeti part 2, unreleased: Demonstration, Man with the Lamp

The first EP Demo from 1999 includes Interstellar Biplane and Est Mort which of course appeared on their first album from 2000. Obviously the recording is not perfect, the sound is rough, and some might enjoy the less polished and harder feeling to these compositions.  For me it's lacking the complexity of texture featured in Things to Come.

The 2nd one also an EP from later though, specifically 2002, is actually dedicated to Doug Ferguson therefore doesn't include him. The 2 tracks are called Strangled by the Light and Black Pills, presumably a Matrix reference since that movie, a touchstone for all the 'slacker generation' like me, or the once-called generation x people, came out a few years before. Of course nowadays in common discourse there are only 2 generations left: the notorious big baby boomers and gen z. The rest might as well not even exist, pity esp. the poor millennials who lost the limelight completely because they're 'too old' now. It seems like ages ago when even I made fun of them for being juvenile, self-absorbed, and incompetent at workplaces.  (As for the baby boomers, we can for sure accurately describe them as at once collectively the richest generation to have ever lived on this planet and probably the richest generation who will ever live, and never die. Little chance whatever generation comes after 'z' is able to pry away the wealth and real estate from their ancient arthritic fingers, ever...)

Moving on (thankfully) to Man with the Lamp (2006) we have more of the same, drony, hammering, dissonant and spacey electric-based music which meanders like a spaceship adrift in a cosmic dust storm, smashing into meteors and comets with abandon sometimes losing speed but accelerating anew to pass into the distant distorted darkness of another supermassive black hole filling up the galactic centre. 

I want to emphasize what I love about this band is they really do evoke a wonderful space-travel feeling, the sound of the synths, the percussion, everything works. It deserves to be the soundtrack to a science fiction movie set in distant space. The only negative you could put forward is at time it gets a bit boring when the music isn't developed enough and appears to me at least overly improvised.  Much like the earlier posted Bozon, it does change a lot in each track, sometimes in really abrupt and surprising or unexpected ways, and I love the hard guitars that always appear inevitably.