Manafonistas

„DRIFTING ON MARGINS“

Lankum FALSE LANKUM (folk / drone / experimental)
     THUNDER Stephan Micus (meditation / global)
SUSS SUSS (country ambient)
PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY Jon Hassell THE LIVING CITY (coffee coloured classical)
Brian Eno FOREVER VOICELESS (ambient /  contemp.)
RARITIES Roger Eno (neo classical / ambient)
The Necks TRAVEL (where-am-i-music)
UNE AVENTURE DE VV Aksak Maboul (songspiel/ bricolage)
Benjamin Lew / Steven Brown: LA DOUXIÈME JOURNÉE (1982, avant exotica)
THEORY OF BECOMING Evgueni Alperine (find a label, good luck)
Paul St. Hilaire  TIKIMAN VOL. 1 (dub)

including interview excerpts with Lankum,
Marc Hollander (Aksak Maboul), and
a passage from my 1990 Jon Hassell talk on
City: Works of Fiction
(the photo is from an area called, no kidding, „Little Africa“, on the
island of Sylt)

* 

This piece, „Bamakou ou Ailleurs“, is from a surreal trip  by Benjamin Lew and Steven Brown, from 1982. The album, „La Douxième Journée (la verbe, la parure, l’amour)“, a  classic for  the MADE TO MEASURE series will have a discreet appearance in  „Klanghorizonte“. It has been recently reissued on CD and vinyl, and it is (and has always been) a stunner!

* 

Working on this radio hour, I find myself  more and more like a collagist Aksak-
Maboul-style. You can be sure to enter quite different soundscapes (seasides included) all different from one
another, but internally connected by story, mood, birdsong (some), and drifting on margins. Nearly at the end
I got that fine LP RARITIES from Deutsche Grammofon Gesellschaft, and Roger Eno wrote me some lines about the growing of this dreamlike composition, „Still Day“, full of yearning, drifting, and distant echoes of Classical European Neo-Romantic.

 ‘Still Day’ was born of a chordal sequence I wrote, a loose framework to be improvised over. At that time I was working with Violinist Rosie Toll whose improvisation we hear on this recording – though not played here by her…… I sent a rough recording-recorded on a ‚hand held’ device to Max Knoth who, on the prompting of Christian Badzura, transcribed and arranged this for unison strings. So what you now hear is the work of  myself, Rosie, Max and Christian plus the musicians that played the transcription. Parts are added, uncertainty is encouraged and the end…well where does that happen? I like this how this very much how this process as through this the piece became exactly what I wished it to be – a thing not ‘designed’ by myself but one to be allowed to grow ‘organically’. There you go Michael. Roger and Out“

How does such a „free-form“ radio show like „Klanghorizonte“ create its impacts? In the end it should be strangely coherent (with all its very different sources) – the „narration“, the „red threads“, the surprising „breaks“, and the sequence chosen tracks. Some will open up the fields of „being on the road“, „in the wilderness“, „archaic“ and „exotic“. Think of the brilliant, at times heart wrenching „folk and beyond-spheres“ from Lankum. Or the archival reissues centered around Jon Hassell’s 1990 album „City: Works of Fiction“. Or Marc Hollander’s new prank with Aksak Maboul, – a fantastic „singspiel“ about a surreal journey that demands complete attention despite its peculiar „earworms“ – a worthy continuation of the „Made To Measure“ series. 

Some surely interesting new works will not appear because they don’t fit in terms of „narrative“, or whatever – and 55 minutes have their limitations. Otherwise one of the four very long pieces of The Necks‘ „Travel“ would be played out in full, but now I’ll place a „passage“ of the Australians in the centre and build that hour around it.  The long radio nights in earlier years were kind of „epic“, now another  arc (of suspense) is required. „Late night stories“ offer more laisser faire than prime time in the evening. But one thing should remain: „the thrill of it all“. Prepare for a journey. Interview passages in preparation. The final version will be posted on the day of broadcast, March 30. 

Lonnie Holley*** (or London Brew)
Jon Hassell (Psychogeography)
Lana del Rey (or Lucrecia Dalt or Lankum**)
Kammerflimmer Kollektief (or Evgueni Alperine)
The Necks*
Numün (and Stephan Micus)
Aksak  Maboul 
Jon Hassell  (The Living Garden)****
Brian Eno (Forever Voiceless – RSD)

* „Consciously or not, there’s a lot of Zen in the way The Necks go about making music, most particularly in the way habits are used as a way of breaking habits. In the improvisations that make up their live performances, one member of the group is designated to begin before the others join in at a time and in a manner of their choosing. To construct Travel, The Necks created four shorter live-inthe-studio improvisations and subjected them to the sort of post-production techniques used on many of its predecessors, overdubbing extra layers of sonic texture, most frequently the pianist Chris Abrahams’ Hammond organ and the guitars of the drummer Tony Buck. Through these methods they dramatise each piece, enhancing the quality so cherished by their admirers: a slow-burn narrative arc that can lead anywhere, but never on a whim.“  (Richard Williams, Uncut March 2023, album of the month)

** “You’ll find parallels of the same songs all over the English speaking world, sometimes even further. Some older traditional songs exist in folk tale form in India, ancient Persia or some 6th century Hindu text. Borders don’t make any sense in terms of how singing is concerned.” (Ian Lynch, Lankum, The Quietus)

*** All that said, Holley’s music and visual art (for which he has shown at The Met, The Smithsonian and is represented by the illustrious Blum & Poe) is much more about our place in the cosmos than the cosmos itself. It’s about how we overcome adversity and tremendous pain; about how we develop and maintain an affection for our fellow travelers; about how we stop wishing for some “beyond” and start caring for the one rock we have. Holley has never delivered this message as clear, as concise and as exhilaratingly as he does on his new album ‘Oh Me Oh My.’ (Uncut, April 2023)  

**** The Living City captures the Jon Hassell Group in September 1989 performing as part of an audio-visual installation inside the World  Financial Center Winter Garden in New York City, with Brian Eno mixing the band live. Eno had designed an audio-visual installation in the 10-story glass-vaulted pavilion, inspired by the hunting, ceremony, animals, and weather sounds of the Ba-Ya-Ka pygmy tribe from Cameroon gathered by Louis Sarno.  Jon Hassell and his then band, the musicians who had recently recorded the City: Works Of Fiction album, played in the Winter Garden Atrium over the course of three nights, with Eno mixing the band live with the installation sounds. Available on vinyl for the first time

P.S. The March issue of The Wire has a cover story about The Necks, and an in-depth feature about Marc Hollander‘s Aksak Maboul and Crammed Discs