Manafonistas

„For all its seeming randomness, music like this doesn’t just happen. What might seem on the surface like chance events are actually compositional strategies (even when they are also, at least partly, chance events too). We have to credit the broad range of experience in the varied careers of Christian Wallumrød (born 1971) and Fredrik Wallumrød (born 1973) as both composers and instrumentalists (in other lives Christian is a pianist; Fredrik a drummer; both have long and impressive discographies). They take joint credit for all of the contents of ‘Reveal and Rise’, co-composing and playing drum machines, synths and electronics.“

(Hubro Headquarter)

 

Man könnte auch sagen: „Beware of the dog!“ Man ist selber dafür verantwortlich, was passiert, wenn man sich auf diese Platte einlässt. Es ist weder Free Jazz noch Free Techno oder Norwegian Death Metal, es ist schlicht eine unheimliche Vibrationsdichte in diesen Stücken, die wenig Raum zwischen Flucht- und Suchtreflexen lässt. Ganz anders, aber die gleiche Klasse wie das erste Album der Battles. (m.e.)

1. Monocle Scent One Hinoki by Comme des Garçons
2. Soudain L’Hiver by Henry Jacques
3. Terre d’Hermès by Hermès
 
 
 

 
 
 
4. Cuiron by Helmut Lang
5. Endymion by Penhaligon’s
6. Damask Oud by Hugo Boss
 
 
 

 
 
 
Playlist One
Playlist Two
Playlist Five
Playlist Four
Playlist Six
Playlist Three

Um Missverständnissen gleich am Anfang vorzubeugen: hier soll nicht die Rede von Kim Dotcom Schmitz und seinem Megaimperium sein, der immer noch fleißig gegen seine Auslieferung an die USA kämpft und gerade probiert deren leicht überengagierten Präsidenten für sich zu gewinnen. Nein, hier geht es um eine Compilation von Songs, die schon einmal eher nebenbei etwa im Jahre 2000 veröffentlicht wurden und nun offiziell das Licht der Welt erblicken dürfen. Einäugig versteht sich, denn so sind sie nun mal: The Residents.

Ende der 70er Jahre hörte ich zum ersten mal Third Reich & Roll auf einer alten Kassette (auf der anderen Seite war irgendwas von Throbbing Gristle) und leierte die erst mal reichlich durch mein Tapedeck. War deutlich anders als das, was es sonst so zu hören gab. Fanden meine Freunde auch & mich seltsam.

Später kam Eskimo, was ich immer noch für ihr bestes Werk halte: eine einzigartige Kreation fiktiver Ethnomusik, eine bizarre und fremde Atmosphäre, die sich entlang höchst obskurer Geschichten entlang hangelt. Oder später Wormwood, wo die höchst obskuren Geschichten einfach dem perversesten Bodensatz biblischer Erzählungen entnommen wurden, vielleicht um aufzuzeigen dass das religiös begründete Meucheln des Nächsten auch bei uns kulturell solide verankert ist. QED.

Und nun die ersten Worte auf Dot.Com: Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you! Das Versprechen hält aber nicht lange, because There’s Blood (on the Bunny) and I Murdered Mummy mit sehr plastischem Intro! Gefühlsecht. Zwischendurch, während sich die Konkurrenz im Seniorenstift Gedanken darüber macht, wie sie ihre Rente aufbessern können, weil sie zuwenig in die Künstlersozialkasse eingezahlt haben, werden ein paar alte Stücke kurz und bündig für Gamelanorchester neu gesetzt und mit Eskimo Opera eine Reminiszenz an Eskimo abgefackelt. Und wem das nicht reicht, dem sei die wunderbare Eskalation einiger eingestreuter Live-Stücke, insbesondere aber dem musikalischen Malstrom Walter Westinghouse empfohlen.

Vor der Seniorenresidenz an der Fake-Bushaltestelle sitzen inzwischen die übrig Gebliebenen mancher einst bekannten Band (ich will hier keine Namen nennen, um die Ärmsten nicht noch zu ihrem traurigen Schicksal zusätzlich zu diskriminieren) und planen eine weitere überflüssigste Reunion, die man sich so wenig wünscht, wie dass an der Scheinbushaltestelle doch noch einmal ein Bus vorbeikommt. Währenddessen rücken die Residents den Zylinder auf ihren Augapfelköpfen zurecht, straffen den Frack und ab geht’s über den Anstaltszaun raus in die Welt der Schaurigkeiten. Wo derletzt tragische Geschichten von Zugunglücken auf Ghost of Hope herhalten mussten, gibt es vielleicht demnächst die bitterbösen Stories von mysteriös verschwundenen Greisen mit musikalischer Untermalung, während der hausinterne Seniorenresidenzsender gerade dazu übergeht die akustischen Einschlafhilfen der Alteingesessenen ehemals Kreativen in die Appartements zu spielen, nicht zuletzt um Medikamente zu sparen und einige multipel vorgeschädigte Lebern zu schonen … Chapeau!

 
 
 

 

„Meine Musik fühle ich als Widerschein von Empfindungen und Erinnerungen. Ich möchte sie immer wieder neu erwecken und meine Seele mit Tönen erzählen lassen.“ (Konstantia Gourzi)

 

Manchmal beschenkt mich mein Plattenschrank. Ehrlich. Nach eines langen Tages Last wollte ich mir vor ein paar Tagen ein Stündchen feine Musik gönnen. Den Plattenschrank vor Augen, fiel mein Blick auf die Abteilung “Tord Gustavsen“, wohlgeordnet standen die CDs des Pianisten vor mir aufgereiht, aber eine, nämlich Restored, Returned, hatte sich verirrt und war zwischen “Paul Giger“ und “Geoprges Gurdjieff“ zu finden, gleich daneben fiel mir noch eine Platte von “Konstantia Gourzi“ auf, Music for Piano an String Quartet. Ein Leben lang sehne ich mich nach Ordnung, wenigstens im Platten- und Bücherschrank sollte im Ansatz Ordnung herrschen. Ich hasse es, wenn ich eine bestimmte Platte hören möchte, sie aber dann erst noch Stunde um Stunde suchen muss oder ich möchte ein bestimmtes Zitat eines Autors nachlesen und besagtes Buch befindet sich im Nirgendwo.

Anyway, Unordnung im Plattenschrank kann den Hörer auch beschenken. Die Platte von “Konstantina Gourzi“ entdeckte ich ja zufällig, weil sich eine “Tord Gustavsen“-Scheibe verirrt hatte. Diese Gourzi-Platte aus dem Jahre 2014 hatte es in eben diesem Jahr auf meine Jahres-Top-Ten geschafft, aber seitdem habe ich, weiß der Teufel warum, diese Scheibe vergessen, nie wieder auch nur ein Stück daraus gespielt. Also stellte ich das Programm für meine Musikstunde auf diese Komponistin um.

Die Musikwissenschaftlerin Ingrid Allwardt schreibt zu der Platte: „Wie lange dauern Fragmente einer Ewigkeit ? Und wie lang der Nachhall eines Augenblicks? Wie klingt eine kleine Geschichte? Diese kleine Geschichte, sagt die Komponistin, „entstand in einem südfranzösischen Urlaubsschloss.

 
 
 

 
 
 

Ich hatte plötzlich eine intensive Wahrnehmung der Natur, die mir in diesem Augenblick so fein und irgendwie in sich sehr verbunden erschien. Für diese Empfindung gab es für mich nur einen einzigen melodischen Ausdruck. Diese kleine Anfangsmelodie wollte zunächst singulär stehen und dann in ihrer Transparenz weiter existieren, ungestört und atmend. Schritt für Schritt gesellten sich andere Elemente hinzu, welche die kleine Melodie anreicherten, ihren ruhigen Fluss jedoch nicht störten. Diese Art vertonter Atmung ist für mich als Komponistin bei der Entstehung von Musik wichtig…“

Und so beginnt die Schallplatte Mit Eine kleine Geschichte, gefolgt von P-ILION, neun Fragmente einer Ewigkeit (Pilio, weit abgelegener Ort in Griechenland, mitten im Wald), mit den Sätzen einatmen, ausatmen, tettix, jasmin, geheimnis, ode, windig, tanz, und nachtblume. Nach dem griechischem Gott der Winde, Aiolos, nennt die Komponistin ein Stück, das sie den Komponisten und Musikern H.L.; G.K.; P.R.; C.A.; D.B. und D.R. widmet, gemeint sind Helmut Lachenmann, György Kurtàg, Peter Raue, Cluadio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim und Dieter Rexroth.

Eine wunderbare Musik, eine ungewöhnliche Musik!

Es musizieren Lorenda Ramou (piano) und das Ensemble Coriolis, bestehend aus Heather Cottrell (violin), Susanna Pietsch (violin), Klaus-Peter Werani (viola) und Hanno Simons (violoncello).

Official Video

Hi, Michael, I’m sitting at the kitchen table looking out at the garden as I write this. It’s a beautiful day in late spring/early summer and uncharacteristically hot and sunny for this time of year in the North of England so everything looks and feels especially perfect. The grass in warm underfoot and insects are buzzing gently between the flowers outside. Occasionally a goldfinch comes to the feeder to steal a few sunflower hearts.

I’m enjoying the weather despite being very over-tired from being away a lot with the bands (Diagrams and Throws) and am feeling calm and happy to be answering these questions. I just arrived home from teaching (I teach primary school children how to play guitar 4 days a week – I enjoy it) so I’ve also got that nice ‚just finished work‘ feeling which is probably helping create this general feeling of well being.

Inside it’s fairly cool. Basic kitchen, while floor tiles, old brown 1970’s wall tiles with harvest themed stencils and white walls. No pictures on the walls yet as we’ve been so busy since we moved in 4 years ago. Plus my wife Sofia has been unwell with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for the last couple of years so we’ve de-priortised the less important things like decorating and too-much-cleaning. If you walk around to the front of the house you’ll see trees, the road and then in the distance the hills of the Peak District. 

 
 
 

 
 
 

Michael: Lyrics always have a melodic element. But if the verses are not put into simple rhyme structures, you wouldn’t normally try to sing along with them internally. What made it for you, in the very beginning, so attractive to make songs out of these poems by Dorothy Trogdon?

 

Sam: It all began by accident. I was given Dorothy’s book Tall Woman Looking by an artist / architect friend Marion McLaren who pointed out one poem in particular. The poem was called „Mnemosyne“ and dealt with identity and the self in relation to memory and inspiration, both (at least as I saw it) as non-physical entities and as parts of a physical network of neurons inside the brain, nestled inside the human skull. As I read the poem it turned itself into a song in my mind. It wasn’t an intentional attempt to adapt the poem and I did alter some of the lines and structure to fit the song that was forming itself. It was only afterwards when I had a completed song that I rather liked that I realised I’d need to contact Dorothy. I planned to ask if she would allow me to use the adapted words but I quickly became excited about the idea of asking her if she would help me to write some lyrics.

I wrote her a long rambling email explaining why I loved her poems and why I thought we would might work well together. The first part was simple – I loved her words and thought she had a great talent. Some of the poems jumped out at me … MNEMOSYNE „Under the grey thatch, beneath the bone arc of my skull …“ RON „… Seven funerals in the cemetery that day, how many stars blinked out, how many deer sank to tenor knees in the forest.“ DESIRE A HUNGRY LION. “ … Look well at the fur and claw of wildness, your brother …“

Why I thought we might write well together was that we both touched on many of the same subject matter in our words. Nature, science, doubt, the challenges of being human. I think most of all I was excited to write with someone who I felt I could learn from. I’m often invited onto projects as the main lyric writer and I love that but this felt like an opportunity to go back to school.

 

Michael: „The Sheffield-Orcas-Connection“… You travelled a long way to meet the old lady at the end of the world … 

 

Sam: Many of the images on the album come from Orcas Island and Dorothy’s surroundings and there are lots of field recordings on the record that were made on the island … the sounds of the wind in the trees and of the sea and streams. When I wrote the songs and recorded them however I hadn’t visited Orcas so all of that came to me through Dorothy’s poetry. It’s a testament to her skill that when I did finally visit Orcas I felt as if I had been there before.

 

Michael: Being a Britsh songwriter formerly filed under the rather shortminded „freak folk“-label with the first two Tunng records, it seems at least rather eccentric to join forces with a 90+ year old woman who had written her whole life but yet recently published her first collection of poems. Do you see this in a special English tradition of sidewards thinking (the „lateral drift“ once described by Robert Pirsig) and  looking for fresh ideas in areas outside of fashion and zeitgeist? Robert Wyatt has always loved this oblique way of looking at private/political things from a very singular perspective, Ray Davies wrote „The Village Green Preservation Society“ when everybody was thrilled by the summer of love, the „far out“ songs and poems of Ivor Cutler come to mind, too … 

 

Sam: I love the idea that this album could fit in with that tradition and it has inspired me to want to think more like in the future but in truth the book came to me without any intention on my part and naturally led to the first song and then to the idea of contacting Dorothy. I was just lucky. I’ve been reading some of your blogs and interviews with people like Brian Eno, Rick Holland and Karl Hyde and I feel they are good examples of people who create magic through collaboration. I feel I’ve experienced a little of that magic through working with Dorothy.

 

Michael: I heard you have that cover painting hanging in your house. It has this kind of retrofuturistic Jules Verne-like feel about it. And these poems, they have this fine balance between everyday observations and universal themes, always with a low-key tone, never a big message …

 

Sam: There was a little synchronicity here because the image existed long before the album. I found it online a few years ago and it’s by a great collage artist called Jesse Treece. I like all his work but I really loved this. I considered it for the cover of the previous album but for a few reasons it didn’t happen. When I was making the Dorothy album I wrote to Jesse and asked if he might consider letting me use it and he agreed. I was drawn not so much to any particular element but to some kind of overall sense or emotion that I got when looking at it. It was only after visiting Orcas (by which time I’d already decided to use that image) that I realised the colours and light are a great representation of the colours and light on Orcas Island.

 

Michael: „It’s only light“ – can you describe how the melody came into being?

 

Sam: There are three songs on the album that are Dorothy’s poems set to music. „Under The Graphite Sky“, „I Tell Myself“ and „Everything“. Crimson Leaves contains the entirety of Dorothy’s poem „Blue Sheet of Sky“. For the other songs the lyrics were written collaboratively. For „It’s Only Light“ I had written the title, the music, melody and chorus and I had an idea of what I wanted the verses to be about. I sent my ideas and a musical sketch to Dorothy and she responded with a beautiful poem that became the core of the lyrics and brought a real power to the song.

 
 
It’s Only Light (for Sam)
 

Morning and the sun
comes in at the window,
brings us the day
painted yellow and blue.

Shines on your hair
as you sit by the window,
shines on the coffee cups
and pitcher of cream.

everything’s brighter
newer, closer—

It’s only light.

 
 
 

 
 
 

Michael: And Dorothy’s response when she heard the album, apart from, I suppose, a big smile on her face. I imagine she grow up with a different kind of music …

 

Sam: We spoke about our shared love of choral music. Vivalidi’s Gloria. Händel’s Messiah, Arvo Part and others. Later I sent her a copy of Officium by Jan Gabarek which she loved. When I first played her the album I had arrived at her house with a CD clutched nervously in my hand. A wild deer was feeding on her lawn and 9 or so humming birds were swarming by the back door. She made coffee and we sat and listened in her front room. Afterwards she said she loved it and we were both a little emotional. And yes she smiled a lot!

 

Michael: Looking back to my favourite Tunng album Good Arrows I once wrote with deliberte enthusiasm: “ … a peak of contemporary (pop) music full of melodic surprises, laid-back thrills, hypnotic singing. Every corner in these surreal pieces is awesome and filled with weirdness and silence in equal measures. Today it has finally reached the status of one of the best English albums of the last 100 years, and, just think about it and smile, when they recorded in a London cellar room, they constantly dreamed of Californian sundowns.“ The Californian thing was what Mike Lindsay told me about it during a phoner. Fits your memory, Sam? 

 

Sam: To answer this I had to go and find an old copy of the album. It’s been many years since I looked and there are songs on there and lyrics I’d forgotten about. I think there’s an element of my own internal world and what was at the time quite a troubled mind. I wasn’t finding life easy. But it’s the sound of a troubled mind moving towards the light. There’s a sense of possibility and of special things happening when you join together with others – in collaboration, in a band, in any field of life.

There’s a touch of California perhaps – we’d not long previously been on tour in America and I think „Bricks“ might have been written in a hotel room on that tour with the sun shining outside. I’m not sure I’d have remembered that if you hadn’t mentioned it … but the Californian dream certainly fits that sense of things being possible. There are quite a few mentions of death – in „Bullets“ in particular and „Hands“. There is obviously a lot of darkness when dealing with death but I also see it as an integral part of life and part of what gives life most meaning. I think if our culture could embrace death a little more deeply we might all appreciate life and each other more.

Happy birthday, Mr. Budd!

Birthdays go along with memories. Even with memories beyond nostalgia and general consent. Harold Budd’s „Bandits of Stature“ isn’t the most immediate of listens. Not because it’s like not any good, obvz. No, more because it is so advanced that listening to it involves a degree of neuroplasticity. Your brain has to form new neural networks in response to it. It is, literally, a mind-expanding work.

I have a problem with neoclassicism – mainly because the term itself is an oxymoron. So any work that’s comprised largely of compositions for string quartets is going to have to make a formal leap way beyond the strictures of genre, lest it becomes cod-classical or sub-soundtrack fluff. Bandits of Stature makes this formal leap, and – perhaps even more incredibly – uses concrete psychoacoustics to lift it out of the composition box. It’s not simply a compositional exercise – everything from the placing of the microphones to the air pressure in the room and the phase of the moon are central to this work.

Is music pre- or post- or super- or meta- or ultra- or sub-linguistic? Does it project senses onto the listener or do we project senses into the music? Does it tell a story? I don’t know, and I don’t much fucking care. What I get from this is what I get from it. And what I get is a sense of noir placed in blinding light, aridity and blazing heat. Of mystery hiding in plain sight. Of wide streets at the edge of the desert. Of illumination so intense that the inner self diving further ever further downward to escape the glare, only to resurface in the time of gloaming.

One of my favourite novelists is Lawrence Block. It’s probably a disservice to call Block a novelist. The dude is much more than what that slightly stupid word is supposed to mean and/or connote. Block is a magician. One of very few writers of stories who fully knows not so much that fiction is fiction but the how of fiction being fiction, and it’s only when a writer of stories has this in their writing that fiction can be more than the communication of the writer’s values or imagination. It’s uncanny and mediumistic, and if you try and work out how some writers can do this, you can’t. Some writers conjure a universe in miniature that you can hold in the palm of your hand. They give you worlds to play with. And none of this is done via ambition or an attempt at immortality. Neoclassicise your writing and it will be dead before you pick up your fucking typewriter.

And Bandits of Stature reminds me, in a way, of Block, for the reasons stated above. And Rothko too, to an extent. And Hopper. All stand at just the right angle from their subject matter, letting the infinite in.

Oh, and this:

Totul este rupt, totul este reparabilă. Ceașcă rupt. Solidaritate, amiciţie, dragoste, pace -intact.

 

Sam Amidon – Juma Mountain
 
Kronos Quartet & Natalie Merchant – „The Butcher’s Boy“
 
Michael Nau – „I Root“
 
The Tumbleweed Records Story | Light In The Attic Records

 

 

 

 
 
 

Thug mise dhut biothbhuantachd
is dè thug thu dhòmhsa?
Cha tug ach saighdean
geura do bhòidhchid.
Thug thu cruaidh shitheadh
is treaghaid na dòrainn,
domblas an spioraid,
goirt dhrithleann na glòire.

 

 

 
 
 

One of the power spots of childhood days. Nothing has ever been happening here. This bridge saw me breathing hard when I was a long distance runner, only seven years on the planet, later on we climbed down to the rails. The bridge was a place of comfort, even on Sundays. At every age I returned once in a while, I collected different kinds of sky blue skies and clouds with Latin names. I even collected different kinds of emptiness.