Canadian composer Neil Chotem and his library albums Themes and Melodies (1974, 1975)

Neil Chotem, databased here, ought to be well-known to everyone thanks to his arrangements for Canadian folk-prog band Harmonium with whom he worked most remarkably for their magnum opus L'Heptade.  He composed a great deal of the music in that 2-LP work and played the piano for them.   It was quite a stunning collaboration and progressive in the most beautifully memorable way, though it was totally unfashionable by the late seventies to the point where the band touring the US were thrown off by the poor reception for their great, stunning production.  I have an old video that documents that unpleasant experience.  Imagine the band so elated from their accomplishment, having just composed their '9th symphony', going from city to city to bad press and negative reviews from those born-asshole Rolling Stone critics who were now all caught up with the more fashionable trends of reggae, punk, and the early new wave sounds... just tragic, especially when you think of how meaningless those critics were (from the perspective of today), how they would destroy whole careers with their stupid biases, and they were far too ignorant to understand 'prog rock,' a term they quickly translated into an insult.

Slightly later, Neil worked with Marie-Claire Seguin for two also remarkable solo albums with very creative arrangements and compositions, which went far beyond anything she did earlier when she was with brother Richard Seguin in the folk band called Seguin (not pluralized).  Those 2 albums are perhaps the single most under-rated incredibly strong progressive songwriting albums that I know of.  The music that they wrote goes so far ordinary seventies pop that it takes my breath away.  So if you didn't know anything about Canadian prog, already you have tons of interesting material to look into: four LPs from the Seguin franchise, 3 from Harmonium, plus the follow-up by Fiori-Seguin makes 4, plus the 2 by the sister solo, plus the 2 Neil Chotem made 'on his own.'  Actually, on his 1979 Live at El Casino, Neil worked with Serge Fiori from Harmonium and Marie-Claire both so this one really complements all the rest, and it's really really beautiful too.  It features an unforgettable arrangement of Rachmaninoff's classic Vocalise composition, pretty much THE interpretation of that piece of late classical music-- you can watch a lovely TV clip of the live performance here on youtube which I think includes all the aforementioned artists.

But the tune Neil wrote regarding his city of birth, Saskatoon, really blows me away each time with the mix of progressive fusion and bluesy harmonies:





Just prior to this Live album Neil made a purely solo grand piano work called Vers L' infini whose title track, really beautiful, is played again on the later album with full fusion band backing and therefore is more interesting over there.  As well, he oddly put a bunch of Chopin compositions on side b, and I'll never understand why.  Normally I just delete all those from my mp3 player.

Earlier still Neil made library albums as arranger and/or composer and that's why I'm posting today, I bought two of them out of curiosity, given the history of his progressive work from the later seventies.  Unfortunately the music for these was composed by another person, namely Marc Huard and it's really just orchestral easy listening with wordless female vocals.  It's really odd that the producer, Angele Renaud, is featured as the model on the cover of some of these records (she appears at the top here on this post).  The discogs information, accurately enough states:

Canadian (Quebec) composer Marc Huard conceived and composed the music (with Angèle Renaud) for an obscure four-volume collection of original material.....easy-listening ("Library" music)....released between 1974 & 1978, with arrangements/orchestras by two of Quebec's giants...Roger Simard and Neil Chotem.

The track called Go Away, from the first album:





The oddest thing here is the 'long' track (actually it's only 6 minutes long!), ostensibly a suite, called Of People, Times and Places, reappears with different melodies on both the first and second in this series, the second time split into individual compositions with different names.  The first part:





Anyways, there you go.

Karen Jones (ST, year unknown), by request

This was requested by a folk fan some time ago, and looked interesting to me.  The ST album is listed here, presumably it's the first and thus hails from 1970, the other album from 1971, which looks worth acquiring too, but quite rare online.

The following heart-breaking blurb on the back:

Karen cares about each person around her.  A friend's happiness is as important to her as her own.  Personal relationships are the framework of her life.  Karen's music flows directly from her life with people.  Here are the songs she has chosen to sing for you.
--David McCallen

The overall feel is similar to the Paula Moore from earlier, but nowhere near as good.  It's for the most part straightforward folk with some added instrumentation in an easy listening vein.
She wrote half the songs here.  One she didn't pen is the Gray-Peterson track bearing her name:





Note that the LP is less than thirty minutes and thus way too short.

Francois Jeanneau, Terrains Vagues (1983)

Recall this was the next album from him and was missing heretofore, mentioned in the earlier post of his super-formidable (spoken with a French accent and a baguette in the beret) seventies material.  Trickily, it appears under the artist title of Francois Jeanneau Pandemonium.  The compositions are strong, but the overall sound is the typical contemporary jazz we have heard so much of.   I don't think it's as good as the Orchestre Nationale stuff either.  Perhaps the best song is the Hotel one:





Anyways, for completion's sake, here it is.
Speaking of completion, does anyone have the ST title, which oddly came later:
https://www.discogs.com/Fran%C3%A7ois-Jeanneau-Pandemonium/release/6976282
I notice there's an interpretation of Stravinsky's famous Tango in there too.

Edwin Sadowski's Saitentriebe from 1987 with Toto Blanke

Of course as I've mentioned before, the Toto Blanke oeuvre never ceases to be of interest, even in the late year of 1987, 'barely' 32 years ago, 'long before' the internet destroyed the music industry, before the smartphone destroyed our attention spans.  On this GDR release it's the guitarist Edwin Sadowski though who is the mastermind composer, arranger, and all-round brilliant flame (see the credits here).  Although the set only comprises the three musicians (percussionist Schneider rounds them out and straightens them out too I might add), it sounds like a whole lot of other people are in there thanks to the brilliant guitar-synthesizer add-ons of the side-long, ST b side, which, to me, totally pushes it over the edge from excellent to unforgettable.  Here we have what amounts to an entire movie's worth of drama and atmosphere, cinema noir of course, full of original scenes and interplays between electric guitars of constantly varying timbres and effects.  In terms of points of comparison perhaps the most similar albums are from Eastern Europe, like the Pavlicek/Kocab Black Light album, or the better known 1991 Russian Sepsis Liturgy of Madness.

Because it's so long though I have to content you with a shorter track, a Tango to Sylvia which also plays up some really untango-esque harmonies:





Note how although it clearly ends as a two-guitar tango thankfully without percussion, it 'playfully' starts off with an atonal fugue-like introduction.

I have to wonder if maybe there are other brilliant albums by Sadowski hidden from the database still waiting to be discovered out there.

Back to Carita Holmstrom in the ultra rare CD Duo! (1994)

I think you can safely ignore the cover photograph, totally unrepresentative of the musical contents.  I can't possibly explain it away, not should anyone for that matter. so let's drop the matter altogether and move on with the music review.

This is an artist who has never really disappointed us (me?), you can see all the albums I posted from her by using the search function, and for this reason I waited literally years for this album to turn up finally for sale.  It's pretty rare, I don't think you'll see another one come up for many years, unless you live in Finland, which doesn't happen to many people at all--perhaps a few million? sometimes? And it's really amazing that in the specific year of release, 1994, when alternative, heavy metal, so-called electronica, the new punk rock were all hitting the music scene like a tornado or rather four simultaneous tornados wiping all the older genres away, she made this incredibly progressive chamber music song collection with her long time collaborator Teppo Hauta-aho.  Just consider this one she wrote, giving it the English title of Just for the record, with cello accompanying her piano:





Information is here.  One track was recycled, oddly, from Aquamarin where it was called Nattvakten, here renamed Yövartija and cut off in a very odd manner.  In case you want to verify the discography, you will find We Are the debut here, the second album Toinen Levy here, Two Faces, Aquamarin and Growing , and now finally this one at the bottom.