Back to Neil Chotem with Pianoganini, 2001 [limited time only]

I had to get this in order to complete this remarkable artist, featured here on this blog in connection with the library music he made, most known for his involvement with Harmonium, the ultra-famous (haha) Quebec progressive folk group. This CD appeared later and recycles some of the tracks from the earlier material sometimes under different names, and even a composition stuck into L'Heptade called Sleep without Dreams that I think had orchestral additions there.  This is notable because it's not solo acoustic piano instead comprises at least two piano recordings overlaid and sometimes three.  I was struck by how tenderly gorgeous the composition called Gray Blues was, and here you can here the double-piano effect as the song moves on:

It's such a shame this wasn't developed for jazz and rock musicians like other compositions on the Neil Chotem Live au El Casino album were.

Lasse Wellander in Electrocuted (1976) and with Ronander (1978), plus the earlier Nature albums

Lasse Wellander:

Swedish guitarist, songwriter and music producer.  Born 18-6-1952 in Skrekarhyttan, Vikers socken, Sweden.

He was in the very slightly proggy band Nature which is possibly slightly well known and then made the interesting solo album Electrocuted in 1976.  The all-instrumental guitar fusion is perfectly suited to this blog, and in fact is quite similar to earlier posts like Danny Toan's two albums, or Tom Letizia recently, or the old German favourite of mine Nino's No Identity unfortunately not as proggy as similar albums (in sound) Alpha Omega or one of the many American masterpieces of the genre, Don Mock's Mock One.  But it's definitely enjoyable.

Here's Knutstorp Sparkling:

Subsequently the plus Ronander album declined a little bit.

The earlier albums from Nature were disappointing to me, being mostly ordinary rock or pop, but I threw them in anyways to annoy you.

Arc... At This (UK 1971)... and Eddie Van Halen: RIP....

A brilliant underrated hard rock album out of Britain, which evolved into Bell + Arc.  There are two big hits in here, Great Lager St. and Let Your Love Run Through:

My usual comments about why these songs didn't become number one hits on the radio, why they aren't played round the clock today on (garbage, crapulent) satellite radio, etc.  In particular, there's a great hook, wonderful performances by the musicians, and the hard guitar churning out chords plus the fuzz lead guitar playing ornamental melodies all around, is just killer.  Reminds me of the wonderful Israeli band Jericho's space-children ode, Justin and Nova.

Nonetheless the remainder of the album is not quite to the same lofty heights, but no matter, it's a gem in the making.  Sad that this style of swirling loud electric hard guitar rock is so absent today with all the drivel on the air/radio/GPS waves. For us oldsters it's so refreshing to hear.  The LP is almost fifty years old now!  Two generations, well into the grandpa's.

In fact, subsequently when Graham Bell joined the band, they changed their name to Bell + Arc, and declined to SSW material dominated by keyboard and piano, sadly.  Gone, the wonderful electric guitars.  Again, just one album resulted.  One typical track:

Then the next year, Graham Bell released a solo SSW.  And that was it.

Mike Gibbs in Seven Songs for Quartet and Chamber Orchestra (Gary Burton) 1974

 

I can't believe I missed this one when I went through the Mike Gibbs stuff, way back here. (I think.)

Of course, since it's officially credited to famed vibraphonist Gary Burton, it's not so surprising.  However the music is all from Mike, many of the tracks having been recycled from his other orchestral works or solo albums.  The sound is very much like the Paul Winter Consort material e.g. Icarus, that we all so love fondly, with complex chamber arrangements in the Oregon manner and a delicate and very original and unique employment of the orchestra playing thoughtful, what can only described as intellectual music, since it based to such an extent in a knowledge of modern classical music as well as fusion and jazz.  Also similar is the highly downloaded Herbert Joos album posted years ago.  (Looking back I see it received literally several thousands of page views since Feb. 2018.)  

Another old friend also resurfaces here, the NDR Orchestra, which was ripped a few times before in their releases, one of which also featured Gibbs.

A track called Phases starts quite slowly with a bass melody soloing-- pretty much as ECM as it gets-- and slowly builds in intensity through a seven minute span:

The oddness and dramaturgy of the chords is very much indebted to the modern composers from Stravinsky on.  Incidentally the bassist is Steve Swallow, though I thought it was Eberhard Weber.

It was a shock to see this in the Gary Burton discography actually, I've known him forever due to the connection with Keith Jarrett.

James Newton Howards and Friends

 

Not sure how many people remember the ST gem from James Newton Howard, who went on to such fame in a later career, but started off squarely in the progressive vein.  A very similar story to for example Larry Groupe posted here a year ago.  The bio on the above link goes a little like this:

Born: June 9, 1951, Los Angeles, California.

Composer, conductor, arranger and music producer. Dedicated mostly to film/TV scoring (The Prince of Tides, Wyatt Earp, ER, The Sixth Sense, Dinosaur, The Village, The Dark Knight...), job where he has recurrently collaborated with writers/directors Lawrence Kasdan and M. Night Shyamalan. He has worked also with pop/rock artists at the early years of his career (notably with Elton John, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Toto).

He's been nominated to 8 Academy Awards, having won an Emmy Award and a Grammy Award (with a total of 41 wins and 27 nominations to different awards).

They don't mention he was briefly married to Rosanna Arquette, for a year-- anyone out there remember her and the many stories / songs relating to her?  She was big in the eighties, millenials.  Long before you were born, a lifetime.

On the assumption you're all well aware of the ST work which was made at the tender young age of 23, going a long way to shed light on the creative energy found therein, I'll move on to this fusion exploration, all instrumental, from 1982.  I was curious about it partly because there's all kinds of hi-fi commentary in the youtube posts for the various tracks, for example here.  As old as I am it's all meaningless to me who grew up on the amazingly popular sony walkman, and I imagine even more so to the aforementioned millenial who only listens to music from a tiny handheld phone's microscopic speaker, and has no idea what enormous woofers and tweeters we used to buy back in the day (yes, real words there).  Probably they think we also had to buy that white dog with black spots to sit in front of the record player too.

The track called Borealis is the most progressive keyboard invention on here, it's utterly puzzling to me why it wasn't extended into a full-length song instead of just thrown away like a bit of metallic scrap, given the interesting chordal developments:

With regards to the ST album from 1974, with its beautiful cover art, a simple review from rym:

Pretty neat little album of keyboard prog. Imagine if Keith Emerson made a solo album at the height of ELP, that’s sort of what you’re presented with here: lots of acoustic piano and raunchy Hammond organ, as well as layers of ARP synth. There’s drums on a couple of tracks courtesy of Howard’s then-wife Brie (then playing with Fanny), otherwise it’s just James and his multiple keyboard instruments. Apparently this took the better part of a year to make, on account of the synthesizers and “string organ” (anyone know what that might be?) he was using being monophonic.

I'm surprised there are not more rave reviews, I really think it's an underrated, underheard little gem of composition, just packed with interesting ideas and totally unique melodies and chord changes.