Alighiero Boetti

Maison Rouge

Crazy telescoping of style and history on this record -- from XVème France and Italy all the way up to the present, possibly even the future judging by the music. I think this is the soundtrack to either a ballet or a film about a ballet. Lovely, Broadcast-y shapes and scapes by Jean Schwarz of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. This is from 1980, but again it really could have dropped out of the sky 30 years before or after that. My wife gave me the gist of the liner notes, but it's probably best if I just type them out in French here. You are welcome for the typos.

La France ou l'Italie au XVème siècle, ou aujourd'hui. Ou encore les quatre, la France, l'Italie, le XVème siècle, aujourd'hui, en surimpression. 

La Province. Un gros bourg. Un couvent. 

Et cet adolescent, orphelin bien sûr, adopté de ce couvent. Un verger aussi, ou peut-être seulement un arbre fruitier au milieu de la cour, avec ses fruits. Un pêcher. 

Et cette terrible sensation des choses crues, comme cette forte odeur de pain cuit que l'on trouve dans le centre de la ville, le dimanche surtout. 

Ou comme ces pages blanches dans ce collège ou dans ce couvent plutôt. Et le cartable aussi, épais, rugueux, presque vide. Juste un cartable presque vide.

listen here

Luigi Ghirri

Hear and Now

You really are in good hands listening to a John Paynter record. The man is simply a genius. I love how much respect he has for the imagination of children. Here he has them imitating car and bird noises and improvising 12 note melodies on woodblocks while chanting white magic spells in some echoey gynmasium. Really mindbending stuff if you're into this sort of thing. I've been looking for this little record for ages and finally found this battered 99p copy on le Bay. This is the companion record to a music ed. book that I've blogged earlier. Simply amazing sounds coming out of these classroom sessions, like Ligeti soundtracking The Owl Service or something. I love how Paynter thinks about avant garde sounds as a starting point rather than an end point for music. Ideal for the beginning musician if you think about it. Enjoy the music and also the smooth soothings of the temptress introducing the record...

Hope everyone's having a nice week. I've been away from the computer. My hard drive melted down and I've been working on some DIY projects. I rented a jackhammer and poured concrete for the first time last week! It's been interesting not listening to music for the last three weeks or so. Anyway I'm in San Francisco for the next few days. So nice to see the sun again. Here's the mix I made myself for the plane ride. No-fi synth plasma for those who maybe like music on the weirder end of the spectrum. Kind of an open love letter to Mutant Sounds, and especially to Robert Turman. D/l here.