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Showing posts with label Cramps Records. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cramps Records. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Walter Marchetti - "La Caccia (Da Aprocrate Seduto Sui Loto) LP, Vinyl, Album, 1974 (Cramps Records)


The late (he passed away in 2015) Walter Marchetti was a composer who wrote and played in the collective ZAJ, a Fluxus minded group of sound artists from the year 1964 until they officially disbanded in the 1990s.  I went to Rockaway to check out the Ronald Kane collection of LPs he sold to the record store before his untimely death.  This one stood out to me due to the cover as well as being on the label Cramps records - not to be confused with the great band called The Cramps.  Then again, there is no such thing as coincidence. 

"La Caccia" (the Hunt) is a landscape record.   Two sides of what sounds like being in nature and listening to either birds or instruments that sound like creatures in the wilderness.  Duck calls, and other devices to attract the attention to these creatures of nature are used, and on one level this is very much an environmental soundtrack album. For me, it has the touch of disgust, due that I hate the idea of one going hunting and killing an animal.   Still, since the liner notes are all in Italian (a language I don't understand) these are the tools of perhaps a hunter but used for aesthetic purposes.  This is very much a music score being played out, and although it is placed (in the aural sense) in the middle of a hunt, and more likely in a godlike freezing condition, it's a funny work of art.  Using something that is sound related for the sake of luring birds to be shot, or other animals, is instead used in a music composition.  There is something very Goon (Spike Milligan/Peter Sellers) like that crosses my mind as I listen to this album.   I now have the urge to collect all recordings from the Italian label Cramps Records.  

Friday, September 16, 2016

John Cage - "Cheap Imitation" (Cramps Records/nova musicha n. 17) Vinyl LP, Reissue


"Cheap Imitation" is a very beautiful listening experience, but it also has a witty or amusing side story attached to the work.  It's a solo piano piece composed, and here on this recording, played by John Cage.  It's based on Erik Satie's "Socrate."  Cage arranged a piano version of Satie's symphonic drama, for Merce Cunningham's dance company.   Satie's publisher refused permission for Cage and Cunningham to use the music, so Cage composed music that draws on Satie's "Socrate," and in a sense it's a knock-off.   Nevertheless, hearing the Cage music, one is immediately reminded of Satie's piano music.  Cage made use of I Ching to compose "Cheap Imitation" yet like Satie's work there is both something haunting and ambient at the same time.  Compared to Cage's other works, this one is very much a composed piece of music for piano.    It's rare to hear Cage on the piano, due to how his music changed in the coming years, but also he suffered from arthritis, and that made it more difficult for him to play the piano. 

The album, according to the liner notes, was recorded on a rainy day on March 7, 1976, in Oakland.  It does have that contemplative effect while listening.  On the other hand, it also shows Cage's obsession and interest in Erik Satie's music.  "Cheap Imitation" is a work of originality but very much a loving tribute to the source: Erik Satie.