Midge Ure & Mick Karn - "After A Fashion" b/w "Textures" 12" Vinyl, 45 rpm, 1983 (Chrysalis)

One of the things I love about the New Romantics period in pop is artists embracing the foreign and at the time, very exotic landscapes on this planet.  In a sense, they take the idea from Paul Bowles, not only as a writer, but his iconic personality as the Westerner in the exotic Middle East, or North Africa.   Bands like Duran Duran, Japan, and Ultravox liked to present themselves as an international artist(s) in a very adventurous world.   Very much of an exploitation in theory, because when you get down to it, we're all tourists.  Which I think is the most honest aspect of The New Romantics era.  Once in awhile great music comes from the juxtaposition of British pop (once part of the grand occupation) and the world that is out there.  We can almost taste it, but at the time we could only admire the tourist postcards, or in this case, album covers or publicity photographs.  Mick Karn is very much the exotic musician who started from one place and ended up embracing the world.  "After A Fashion"a one-off recording by two musicians who were prominent in British pop during the early 1980s.  Midge Ure I suspect was the more successful pop star due to his musical history with other bands, but especially with Ultravox.  

Karn was the brilliant fretless bassist, and who added exotic color to David Sylvian's Japan.  The sounds he made from his bass was like liquid being poured into a glass, or on the sand.   His textural playing and compositions (especially on his early solo albums) reflect on a world that was exciting, and sexual.  Midge Ure in his fashion (no pun intended) also explored the same landscape but through a more pop format than Karn and Japan.  What makes this 12" single fascinating is the combination of Ure's pop awareness with Karn's outer world sounds.  

The 7" single is very different than the 12", in that the song is expanded in a textural manner that flirts with the main chorus.   Almost a dub version, but not quite.  I have to imagine that it's only Karn and Ure on this recording, doing all the instruments.  It has that 'studio' feel and truly the image on the cover of this long single, is quite accurate.  The picture of Ure and Karn in Egypt is both a postcard as well as a visual interpretation of the sounds with on the record.  Paul Bowles had taken numerous photos of himself among the desert of North Africa, and for the literate or aware, this is clearly the influence of Ure and Karn's "After A Fashion."  The b-side is an instrumental that is a sound piece that reflects the aesthetic of travel and being aware of one's limits.  

Paul Bowles/Darius Milhaud/Gold & Fizdale - "Concerto for Two Pianos, Winds and Percussion" 10" Vinyl Album, 1950 (Columbia Masterworks)

Slowly (very slowly) I'm starting up a collection of Paul Bowles music on vinyl.  He is one of my favorite prose writers, who could write about alienation better than anyone on this planet.  In a sense, he's the ultimate "Existentialist" writer in his work as well as in life.  I have numerous books by and on Bowles, and still, one doesn't get a clear portrait of this odd figure.   He wasn't exactly the king of chit-chat or giving gossip, but he is one of those people who can be in a room, and you don't know who he is, but there is something powerful in his presence in that chamber.   There is a ghost-like skill he had, in that he was in the right place and time. 

What is not that well-known about him is his work as a composer.   Bowles first got attention for writing incidental music for the original Broadway production of various Tennesse Williams plays, such as "The Glass Menagerie."  He studied music under Aaron Copland, but what made him famous was his novel "The Sheltering Sky" published in 1949.    Although he wrote a lot of music, there are not that many recordings of his work.  It's interesting that "Concerto For Two Pianos, Winds and Percussion came out around the time of his first (and most famous) novel.  

Bowles fiction (both novels and short stories, which I feel he is the master) is dark.  The music, on the other hand, is light.  Still, "Concerto For Two Pianos" convey the Bowles spirit with respect to travel or an appreciation of other (foreign) cultures.  There's a restless quality to Bowles, and it shows up in his literature as well as in music.  I hear Asian, Pacific, and perhaps North African touches in this piece, as well as Manhattan New York.  It's modern in the sense that it's cosmopolitan and open to possibilities that were in the world at the time.   In essence, it's very Paul Bowles. 

The b-side is devoted to Darius Milhaud's "Carnaval à la Nouvelle-Orléans" (Carnival in New Orleans) and "Les Songs (Dreams)"   "Carnival.." is based on French Creole songs from New Orleans, and it's a musical portrait of a festival that took place in that city.  The only instrumentation on both pieces by Milhaud are the duo pianos played by Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale.  The work is in an impressionistic and upbeat mood.  Like Bowles, Milhaud was interested in music from other cultures, and this piece has a slightly exotic touch as well.  Jazz made a huge impression on him, and there are traces of that type of music in his work.  It's interesting that Dave Brubeck was a student under Milhaud.  He also taught Burt Bacharach and Philip Glass. And Milhaud was a member of Les Six, a group of composers who worked with Jean Cocteau.  

Gold and Fizdale it seems collaborated together as pianists who worked on compositions that were written for two pianists.  The only other album I have by them is "A Picnic Cantata" written by Bowles with lyrics by the great American poet James Schuyler.  And that is superb as well.  Buying "A Picnic Cantata" as well as this album, I feel that I'm entering a fantastic rabbit hole, where if you reach the bottom, you're in this incredible sophisticated world of Manhattan citizens and their art.  The Bowles / Milhaud album is great because each composer compliments the other.  Gold and Fizdale had great taste. 

Paul Bowles/Francis Poulenc/Gold and Fizdale - "A Picnic Cantata" Vinyl LP, 1954 (Columbia Masterworks)

Besides this brilliant album cover, it's an excellent recording of a surprised match-up.  The great poet James Schuyler and legendary writer and composer Paul Bowles.  At this time, I can't find any information about this recording or how these two giants met.  Schuyler is very much part of the New York School of Poets and one of my favorite poets.  I love his work which is playful, witty, and significantly profound.   

Schuyler wrote the text to his and Paul Bowles' "A Picnic Cantata" which is pure delight.  The narrative is about women going out for a picnic, and that is basically it.  Nothing happens.  It's interesting that the work is dedicated to "Mrs. William Esty.  Mr. Esty is very much the ultimate Mad Man of Manhattan advertising culture, and Mrs. Esty is Alice Theresa Hildagard Swanson Esty.  She was an opera singer as well as an art patron who I suspected gave financial support to Bowles and Schuyler for this piece of music and text. 

The duo pianos of Gold and Fizdale is superb.  They were active in the 1950s and made a lot of contemporary music of their time.  For instance, Poulenc, whose work takes up side two.   Poulenc, a friend of Jean Cocteau, also knew Erik Satie, and I hear traces of Satie's aesthetic in Poulenc's piano compositions.   The album as a total is a very charming and sophisticated work.  I immediately think of Manhattan and all of its promises of that time.   For those who only know Bowles through his novels and short stories, he had a career as a composer and made the incidental music for Tennessee Williams' original Broadway productions.   For whatever reasons, Bowles gave up music composition and focused on literature.  A fascinating figure in his own right.  As far as I know this album was never released as a CD, or even on the streaming devices.  Still, if you're a vinyl digger in used record stores, it is not that difficult to find.