Glenn Gould / Handel - "Suites for Harpsichord Nos. 1-4 (Columbia Masterworks, 1972) Vinyl LP

If I'm not mistaken, this is the only music recording of Glenn Gould playing he harpsichord.  Which oddly enough, sounds like his piano playing, including him singing softly with the music he's playing.  The recording is from 1972, and I found this album unopened with a plastic shrinkwrap around it. In other words, it has been untouched by human hands since '72.  

The composer is George Frideric Handel, who like Gould, was a keyboard virtuoso.  The music was written in 1720, and in the hands (and mind) of Gould, it sounds like a modern piece of music.  Well, I guess how one defines 'modern,' but Gould is not a historian in my opinion.  When we hear the word 'harpsichord' we have a sound in mind.  Gould plays the keyboard in a different manner.  At times very minimal and slow.  Then, he sounds like he has twenty fingers going at once.   I can hear an orchestration that is not in place, but only in my mind.  Truly elegant, and it's music that needs one's full attention.  By no means dinner music in a restaurant or at one's home.  Also, I don't think this recording ever made it onto CD.  Only vinyl. Unless there is a Japanese edition of this performance on CD.    Nevertheless, a great album. 

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. 

Columbia–Princeton Electronic Music Center (Recorded in 1961, released in 1964) Columbia

Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City sometime in the early 1950s.   It is the oldest center to focus on composing and making electronic music in the United States.  For me, there is something wonderful and fresh hearing early electronic music in the combined eras 1950s and 1960s.  It was a time of wonderment and exploration of new sounds, done in new ways.  This particular album is a classic, which consisted of pieces and performances by Babbit, Luening, Ussachevsky, Bülent Arel, Halim El-Dabh, and Mario Davidovsky. 

The main discovery for me is El-Dabh's "Leiyla and the Poet." My reference to this piece is David Bowie's "Lodger" album, which was one of the first works I heard that mixes ethnic melodies in an electronic-pop mode.   I don't know if Bowie was aware of El-Dabh's work, but what's marvelous is the mixture of musique concrète with what I think is Egyptian folk or ethnic music.  Based on the Arabic 11th century poem "Layla and Majnun, " the music is a combination of vocals, percussion and high-pitched electronic noise.  Tape manipulation of speed transposition filters the vocals into a unique and highly effective sound. It's a short intense piece of work, that also brings to mind the music that Paul Bowles recorded in Morocco.  To me, it's the perfect hybrid of styles, that is familiar, but in actuality, it's quite new - especially at the time of this recording in 1961.  

Ussachevsky's full chorus piece "Creation - Prologue" is a mixture of heavenly voices but then is joined by jolting electronic effects, including a short section using an early version of a synthesizer.  It's not surprising to know that Arel worked with Edgard Varèse - because the piece here, "Stereo Electronic Music No. 1" is very similar to the great French musique concrète composer's music.   Completely electronic, and controlled feedback, it's a remarkable piece of textures exploring mood and tension.   Rabbit's performance as the title says "Composition for Synthesizer" is an exploration of linear/total rhythms, volume, and pitches.  For me, the weakest piece on this album, but still interesting.  Davidovsky's "Electronic Study No. 1" is from three sources: sinusoidal and square wave generators, and white noise.   Chaos is contained in a box by the composer.  

The last piece on the album is by Luening, and it's a combination of synthesizer, then manipulated by taping techniques, with a live violin, played by Max Pollikoff.  "Gargoyles" is an intense piece of noise/music.   Besides the chorus used in Ussachevsky, and El-Dabh's mixture of vocals/electronics, this is very much more of a real stringed instrument bouncing off the electronics/tape manipulations.  The beauty of all six composers is that they have studied classical composition as well as worked with regular orchestrations, but here they take a huge step forward to a new world.  Yet, if one listens carefully, it is still has traces of the old classical world.  A remarkable anthology of sounds that one can hear later in 20th century pop music. 

Miles Davis - “Get Up With It” (2 x Vinyl LP, CBS)

For the longest time, I avoided Miles Davis electric albums for reasons I truly don’t understand.   I think my mind-set was perhaps that his work was the best from the 1950s and the rest …was, not that important.  I’m clearly an idiot.  For example, just by chance, I purchased “Get Up With It, ” which seems by the packaging as an album of loose-ends and recordings.  Stuff that didn’t make it to the final album.  Therefore, probably not that interesting.  As I mentioned a few sentences ago, I’m an idiot.

“Get Up With It,” is in many ways, a wrong title for this collection of moody reflective and kind of down orientated music.  What it is, and clearly so, even after the first listening experience - a masterpiece.  “He Loved Him Madly” a song dedicated to Duke Ellington, is just like floating on a dark moist cloud.   Miles plays organ (pretty much through the album) with block minimal notes, that adds a certain intensity to the whole sound landscape.   As an homage, it’s a dark piece of music.   It’s an odd track to launch off an album.  The next track on the other side, “Maiysha” is more upbeat.  At this point and time, I don’t think Miles was thinking jazz, but just ‘music.' Or to be straight forward ‘funk.’  

I have read that Brian Eno’s favorite Miles album is this one - and I can clearly hear the Miles influence on some of Eno’s work as a solo artist as well as a producer - for instance Talking Heads.  For me, the track that makes me go ga-ga is “Calypso Frelimo.” Miles’ playing the organ on this one is such a sweet melody that comes in and out of the mix.  “Billy Preston” is another standout track for me.  The mixture of Miles’ version of funk, with the addition of sitar and Tabla is just the right combination.  Superb album. 

HARUOMI HOSONO - "Omni Sight Seeing" (Epic, CD, Japan)

In my first long stay in Japan, somewhere in 1989-1990, I purchased this CD, I think, at the music store THE WAVE.   The store was located in Roppongi part of Tokyo, and it was a six-story building filled with music and film DVD's.  It also had an art movie house in its basement.  The perfect home away from home for me.  A few laters I come back to the area and I was shocked to see the store gone - and not just the store, but the entire building as well.  It was just an empty hole in the place of the structure.  It's like a dentist pulling a tooth and just leaving the open wound for the world to view.   I'm just now, getting over the depression of losing such a store and building.  Nevertheless, Haruomi Hosono's album "Omni Sight Seeing" was one of the purchases I have made at THE WAVE.  Twenty-six years later, I'm still paying attention to this album, and when I do hear it, the horrid humid summer comes to mind, that was taking place that summer in Tokyo. 

But to focus on the album, it is very much a travel-log of sorts for Hosono.  It's going around the world with Hosono, or to be even more precise, Asia.   At the time, I never heard an album like this - it is various sorts of music and its history, but through the eyes and sounds of Hosono.  In the West, he's a famed member of the Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), a band that I admire, but not love.  On the other hand, Hosono solo albums are always interesting. He's sort of the Ry Cooder of Japan - in that he's very much a historian of music and its various cultures.  But that is everything from techno-pop to Americana roots music. He works on a big canvas.  If I was to recommend one album for the new listener it would be "Omni Sight Seeing." 

There are traces of John Cage to Middle-Eastern melodies to Parisian tourism to techno to Duke Ellington on this album.  Hosono's version of Duke's "Caravan" is a solid delight.   Accordion, sax, and electronic keyboards is a very good mixture for this tune.   The whole album is very much a variety pack of goodies.  It's traveling without a passport or the fear of security.  The other highlight of the album is "Laugh-Gas," which has to be the ultimate 11 minute minimal techno cut.   Superb entertainment for all!

GEORGE HARRISON - "Wonderwall Music" (Apple Records) 1968

To be perfectly honest, I like George Harrison's music in The Beatles a lot - but his solo albums (including his much loved "All Things Must Past") leaves me wanting something more.  There are individual songs here and there throughout the solo years that I enjoyed, and I think his role as a record producer is very underrated.  Still, the one album of his that I love, is his soundtrack album to the über-hippie film "Wonderwall."  For one, this is the first album released on the Beatle label Apple, and therefore the first solo album from the Fab Four.  

For the first time, I think Harrison moved away from London/Liverpool to embrace Indian music.  The beauty of this record is that he's not doing Indian music, but putting his personality and style into that form of music.  So it's a hybrid version of George Beatle and Indian classic music.   Recorded in Bombay and London, this album is probably one of the first 'world' music projects - at least by a pop star.  One of the great charms about this album is that it really doesn't remind me of Harrison as much as Serge Gainsbourg when he did soundtrack music.  There's a Jean-Claude Vannier (Gainsbourg's co-writer/arranger during the early 70s) that clearly this album must have been an influence on those two French geniuses.  In fact, this album is very French sounding to me.  Why?  I don't know.  All I know is if you put me in a room and played this album without me knowing its history, I would think it was Gainsbourg, or at the very least, a French soundtrack album from the early 70s.  

So, the album is very much ahead of its time.  Even though Indian sounds were clearly entering the Beatles world and other artists as well - this is the first album where Harrison embraces that world fully, but still added his pop sensibility into the soup.  There are traces of Musique Concrete as well.  This is such a great album, and it's disappointing that Harrison didn't continue the great adventure.   Then again, without his presence, we wouldn't have those great British comedies from the 70s.  Harrison was equally serious and hysterical at the same time. 

DIANA DORS - "Swinging Dors" (Columbia) Vinyl, 1960

It took me forever to locate a copy of this album.   To be precise, Diana Dors herself is more important to me than, say, her music.  She was a magnificent figure in London culture circa pre-swinging 1960s.  If one just has to compare her to someone, I guess it would be Jayne Mansfield.  Busty, hour-glass figure, with a sexuality that is both enticing and alarming at the same time.  My type of gal.  A pal of the Kray twins, and other dark figures that made an appearance in London showbiz and gangster life, she strikes me as someone who liked to live life at its most bizarre and fullest.

With respect to this album, it's pretty good.  She can sing, and the beauty of her voice, is actually the character behind the vocals.  The Dors magic or personality comes through in these set of swing/pop classics.  The opening track "The Gentleman is a Dope" is very much the iconic Dors touch.   If nothing else, the title alone is a work of genius.  "Swinging Dors" is a time capsule, but not always filled with goodies.  Like all of life, there is the darkness - and it is there, if you give yourself time to swim into her 'darkness. '  For instance, Wally Stott did the arrangements and orchestration.  He worked with Scott Walker on his first three solo albums.  Doors can swing in both directions.