#gianni mocchetti

[zef-zef]

Franco Battiato - Propiedad Prohibida from: Franco Battiato - Clic (Bla Bla, 1974)

first CD release 1992 (Artis Records ‎– ARCD 037)

latest re-release 2018 (Sony Music Entertainment (Italy) S.p.a. ‎– 19075831631)

#1970s #italy #electronic #abstract #experimental #synth #synthmusic #franco battiato #gianni mocchetti #gianfranco d'adda #1974 #music #music blog

[dustedmagazine]

Franco Battiato — Sulle Corde Di Aries (Superior Viaduct)

If someone put out Sulle Corde Di Aries for the first time in 2017, they’d get approving nods a-plenty for their good taste. “Sequenze E Frequenze,” the tune that takes up all of side one, opens with an apparent tussle between some horns reminiscent of Atlantic Records-era Ornette Coleman and voices that sound like they were plucked from some scary movie-worthy Penderecki chorale. Both give way to a droning, ecclesiastical synthesizer melody and Battiato’s clarion voice, which in turn cut to layers of echoed guitars. But this isn’t some mash-up of good ideas plucked from a hip bank of mp3s; this is the first formation of those ideas, ambitiously hatched and grown by some obscure Sicilian freak.  

Battiato would not stay obscure. Rather like English prog singer Peter Gabriel, he remade himself in the late 1970s as an esoterically minded but essentially accessible singer. He’s gone on to score some massive hits whilst occasionally indulging his eccentricity; in 2006 he made a film that stared Alejandro Jodorowsky as an aged Ludwig Van Beethoven hanging out with a time-traveling TV producer. 

But Sulle Corde Di Aries may be the gutsier move, because despite some likely influences cribbed from Ornette and Terry Riley, it really doesn’t sound much like anything else that was going on at the time. Nor does it sound like it’s plunging into some art-for-art’s sake abyss. Hearing it as music in 2017 rather than the new thing in 1973, it’s notably on target and balanced. Whether he’s waxing spacy or dramatic, he never takes it too far. And the sounds he gets out of his VSC3 synthesizer (amongst other instruments) and his and Gianni Mocchetti’s guitars are not only template-setting, but just right for the tunes they convey. This record isn’t just ground breaking; it is quite good.  

Bill Meyer

#Franco Battiato #Sulle Corde Di Aries #Superior Viaduct #bill meyer #albumreview #dusted magazine #reissue #Italy #prog #synthesizer #1970s #franco battiato day 2k17

[stormyrecords-blog]

memorial day new arrivals

happy memorial day weekend!!

THANK YOU to all of our service men and women, past present and future. a single day a year is really not enough to thank you for all you have done for your country. your selflessness and courage deserve to be honored everyday.

in on thursday

DEVIOUS ONES Plainview Nights lp $14.99

brand new music on vinyl from detroit's own Devious Ones! LP is limited to 500 copies that are hand numbered. Very classy cover art - not a surprise for any project Rob St Mary is involved with!!

Hollie Cook Vessel Of Love LP $20.99

Many women started playing music because of history’s first all-girl punk band, the Slits. But the British singer Hollie Cook launched her career as a reggae singer after being in the Slits. She was, in some sense, destined. Cook was born in 1987 to Jeni Cook, a backing singer for Culture Club, and Paul Cook, the drummer of the Sex Pistols who infamously helped steal all the gear that history-splitting band used to get started. Boy George is Cook’s godfather, and it is unlikely that Johnny Rotten has been in a photo more adorable than one, shared recently by Cook, of the pair backstage at a 1996 Sex Pistols reunion show. At 19, Cook was tapped by a family friend to sing at a recording session. It was Ari Up: the status-quo-annihilating, dreadlock-donning, firebrand Slits singer—a woman who, in her freedom of mind, was so controversial in punk’s early days that she was knifed on the streets of London; who not only fused punk with reggae, but subsequently moved to Jamaica and made a life there.

Destroyer Your Blues LP $22.99

City Of Daughters LP $23.99

Thief LP $23.99

3 wonderful albums by Destroyer, with both City and Thief being newly remastered and pressed on heavy vinyl

Tracyanne & Danny s/t cd $14.99

lp also available $ 25.99

Throughout the whole of the 21st century, Camera Obscura have sated the world’s appetite for bookish yet luxuriant Scottish indie-pop, ruling a lane left wide open when Belle & Sebastian went full jazz-hands. But the band has been inactive in recent years following the 2015 death of keyboardist Carey Lander, so we haven’t had the privilege of hearing Tracyanne Campbell’s voice ringing out ever-so-articulately over lush retro production.

Enter Danny Coughlan of the English band Crybaby, Camera Obscura’s friends and former opening act. Glasgow-based Campbell and Bristol-based Coughlan had been talking about collaborating since before Camera Obscura released 2013’s Desire Lines, but they didn’t properly revisit the idea until some time had passed following Lander’s death. Now they’ve gotten down to business and recorded a whole album together under the name Tracyanne & Danny.

great restock on HIP HOP releases including multiple Drum Breaks lps, some J Dilla, El Michels Affair and Will Sessions!!!

in on friday  

Sun Ra: God Is More Than Love

CD $15.99

LP $23.99

"God Is More Than Love Can Ever Be is something of a rarity in the Sun Ra catalog -- a cohesive album with none of the stylistic eclecticism and musical chair shifting many of the artist's self-released LPs were known for. Recorded at Variety Studios one day in 1979, the album's five tracks comprise a solid jazz trio set. God Is More Than Love... is the only complete piano-bass-drums studio session in the massive Sun Ra catalog. The album offers an intense set of cosmic vagabond moods, reflecting the telepathy that is the essence of small combo jazz. Other than an overdubbed second piano on 'Days Of Happiness' the five works were spontaneously generated and forever fixed: none of the titles recur in the encyclopedic Ra discography. Originally released on Saturn in several small press runs under the alternate title 'Days Of Happiness' between 1979 and 1981, fully realized artwork was never established and the album never got much circulation, thus it has remained a largely overlooked session in the Ra omniverse. Nearly 40 years later, the record is long overdue for acclaim on its second time around. Newly remastered edition on CD and LP (with tip-on style jackets/ RTI vinyl)"

NWW: Sinister Whimsy For The Wretched  2CD $21.99

Sinister Whimsy For The Wretched contains the long out-of-print albums, Sugar Fish Drink (1992) and Large Ladies With Cake In The Oven (1993). Both discs are remastered by Andrew Liles. You will never hear these better. Sugar Fish Drink, "Cod Surrealism", is a distinctly wet aberration on paranoid aesthetics occasionally coordinated by John Balance and Steven Stapleton. For Large Ladies With Cake In The Oven, all tracks were previously released in some form or another. Songs titles have been altered from their original forms on their original releases. "Head Cold" is very close to being the exact song as the Miss Ticker remix of "Cold" from the Thunder Perfect Mind CD reissue and "Steel Dream March Of The Metal Man".

Pharoah Sanders -  Juan Les Pins Jazz Festival '68 CD $17.99

Pharoah Sanders, live from the Juan Les Pins Jazz Festival, Antibes, France on July 20th, 1968. Having made his name playing with John Coltrane as of 1965, Pharoah Sanders soon came to be recognized as one of the most innovative jazz players of his generation. Having formed his own quartet, he was invited to perform at the Antibes Jazz Festival in Juan-les-Pins, France in July 1968. Originally broadcast on French radio station WDR3, this superb recording captures a great musician in his early prime. Includes the entire WDR3-FM radio broadcast is presented here, digitally remastered, with background notes and images. Personnel: Pharoah Sanders - tenor saxophone, percussion; Lonnie Liston Smith - piano; Norman "Sirone" Jones - bass; Majeed Shabazz - drums.

Schickert, Gunter: Labyrinth LP $23.99

Günter Schickert, four decades of multi-instrumental cosmic explorations, under Berlin's sky, above genres, and compromises. Marmo present on his seventh album to date, Labyrinth, the first to be released on vinyl format since 1983's Kinder In Der Wildnis. Schickert's Samtvogel (1974), equaled the imaginative leap and sonic power of the early Pink Floyd, Manuel Gottsching's 1975 album Inventions For Electric Guitar (MGART 401CD/901LP) or A.R. & Machines's Die Grüne Reise (1971). Überfällig -- originally released on Sky Records in 1979 and reissue by Bureau B (BB 096CD/LP, 2012) -- little acclaimed, spans a large spectrum of music styles, always through a distinctive and personal aesthetic, that is deeply linked to the one he firstly crafted back in '74, when Schickert pioneered the use of echo effects applied to guitar playing. And now Labyrinth, a record that stands for versatility, where soundscapes or life situations take over. The album is divided into two parts, two different production bulks and periods of Günther Schickert's life. Side A features a selection of tracks recorded in 1996, appearing on the 2012 album HaHeHiHo, released via Pittsburgh based VCO Recordings. The raga-inspired "Morning" opens Labyrinth with exotic charm and bitter-sweet nostalgia. "Sieben" kicks off with the same guitar scales of the previous theme, before the motorized progressions of a Korg MS-20 synth surprisingly storm in. "Ninja Schwert" remains on astral dimensions, it is a struggle of cosmic forces, where the steady ride of a pounding beat gets embraced by different guitar layers and analog electronic filtering. The side closes up with "HaHeHiHo", a slow ballad featuring Schickert on vocals, guitar, bass guitar, and drum machine. Side B contains material produced between 2007 and today. "Tsunami" shows the multi-instrumental and recording abilities of Günter Schickert: a field-recorded storm with mesmerizing powers, a peculiar progressive approach to guitar playing. In contrast, "Oase" muffles the intensity and jumps into a completely different soundscape, where in liaison with the sounds of a rolling drum tom and a desert-like trumpet. Like "HaHeHiHo", "Checking" represents the vocal gem of the B side, in a raw and direct way of songwriting like if Syd Barrett was his invisible helper. "Palaver" assembles different vocal recordings of Schickert into a bizarre free-style conversation. "Morning (Slide)", reprises the opening theme, this time solely performed through the caressing dilated sounds of Günter's slide guitar. Includes printed inner sleeve and download code.

Battiato, Franco: Clic LP $33.99

"On his fourth album, Clic, Franco Battiato moves further out -- into realms of pure and elemental approaches to sound -- to create a seminal work that flows naturally from one musical form to the next. Every second ripples with orbital chords, kosmische textures and schizophrenic string quartets, yet somehow manages the same dramatic pacing and variety as his avant-rock albums Fetus and Pollution. Originally released in 1974 on Bla Bla, Clic features Battiato on VCS3 synthesizer and piano, along with trusted collaborators Gianni Mocchetti on guitar and Gianfranco D'Adda on percussion. While only 'No U Turn' bears the maestro's voice, these seven tracks contain some of his boldest melodies, an underlying thread that runs through the choral arrangements and meditative compositions. Clic's dedication to Karlheinz Stockhausen comes into focus on the final piece, 'Ethika Fon Ethica' -- a rapidfire journey into Italian shortwave radio, interrupted by fleeting fragments of folk music from around the world (sampled from Henry Cowell's celebrated Folkways compilations from the 1950's). It's the perfect ending to Battiato's beautiful and expansive tour of the cosmos, signaling the uncompromising experimentalism that would dominate much of the composer's mid-1970s oeuvre. Superior Viaduct presents the first-time domestic release of Clic. Reproducing the original gatefold jacket and booklet, this reissue is part of an archival series that chronicles Franco Battiato's masterful body of work from 1971 to 1978."

Durutti Column: LC LP $26.99

restock on this incredible release!!

David Grubbs & Taku Unami: Failed Celestial Creatures LP  $33.99

Empty Editions present Failed Celestial Creatures, an unexpected collaboration between composer-guitarist David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol, The Red Krayola) and Tokyo-based musician Taku Unami. Primarily recorded in Kyoto, the album takes inspiration from the duo's shared musical and literary influences, emerging just as much from their improvisatory explorations as from an eclectic reading list exchanged prior to the recording sessions. The album's narrative inclinations are rooted in both artists' previous experiments with the complex reciprocity between sound and text, including Grubbs' work with the poet Susan Howe and Unami's collaborations with writers such as Eugene Thacker and Evan Calder Williams. Failed Celestial Creatures draws in particular upon a group of short stories by the short-lived Japanese author Atsushi Nakajima (1909-42) -- perhaps best known for inflecting Classical Chinese folktales with a modernist vein of absurdist and existential foreboding -- as the imaginary backdrop for its set of guitar-based instrumental explorations. In Nakajima's The Moon Over The Mountain, a mad-poet metamorphosed into a hybrid-tiger recites poetry with an obscure defect, while The Rebirth of Wujing sees the titular river monster self-identifying as a "failed celestial being" [堕天使]. The cryptic collapse read in both of these episodes resonates with Unami's research into the etymology of the chinese character "堕," meaning "to fail" in modern usage, but historically understood as referencing "sacred meat from the altar fallen on the ground." Such a primordial scene evokes the violation of the sacred as a tacit aspect of ritual. This failure of ritual, always a condition (and perhaps even a technique) for musicians of Grubbs and Unami's ilk, can be broadly understood as the primary point of departure for Failed Celestial Creatures. Situated within this affective terrain, the album's title-track consists of a side-long progression of dirge-like riffs enveloped by clouds of vaporous electronics -- eventually erupting into unruly squalls of feedback as Unami joins Grubbs on electric guitar. The B-side features a cluster of luminous guitar duets which are beguiling in their seeming effortlessness and simplicity. Threadbare and fallen, Grubbs and Unami invoke the failed ritual, the spilling at the altar, always suggested at the precipice of sonic emergence. Recorded by Taku Unami at Soto, Kyoto, August 7th and 9th, 2017; Mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering. 180 gram vinyl; Edition of 500.

Wire #412: June 18 MAG $10.50

"On the cover: Laurie Anderson (More active now than ever, the multimedia artist and performer discusses a career marked by hybridity, borderless networks and a new interest in virtual reality). Inside the issue: Cecil Taylor (When the revolutionary pianist died in April, jazz lost one of its most uncompromising individualists. Author, photographer and historian Val Wilmer recalls their encounters); Senyawa (Javanese musicians and instrument makers Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi fuse metal with trance to create overwhelming fields of sound); Global Ear: Veracruz; Invisible Jukebox: The Storm Bugs; plus: Tansy Davies, Rodrigo Tavares, Sarah Hennies, Futura Records and more."