From: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (Zorn List Digest) To: zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: Zorn List Digest V3 #278 Reply-To: zorn-list Sender: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk Zorn List Digest Saturday, February 10 2001 Volume 03 : Number 278 In this issue: - Re: revolutionary ensemble Grist for Atavistic Re: blessings blowing in from chicago town Re: revolutionary ensemble Re: Re: TORTOISE Wire/Reynols/Tortoise Re: revolutionary ensemble Re: revolutionary ensemble Re: Request For Ambient Music Recommendations Re: Wire/Reynols/Tortoise monk's music on paper Re: blessings blowing in from chicago town RRRecords Evan Parker and Brotzmann in TEXAS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 12:06:05 -0500 (EST) From: Ken Waxman Subject: Re: revolutionary ensemble Scott brings up an interesting point. Many North American avant garde/free jazz/improv sessions were on obscure, underdistributed labels (or one-offs like the RE on A&M Horizon cited below). Perhaps some company -- it doesn't have to be Atavistic either -- should try to rerelease some of that work.What happened to all the remaining Arista/Freedoms, Arista/Novuses, Nessas, PMs and Inner Citys etc.etc. ? There are vinyl gems that have never seen a CD laser - --or even an LP reissue after first release. Maybe every record company should have a small reissue program. Say that's an idea, Jon. Why not see if another label wants to lease you some of your favorites so you could re-release them on Erstwhile? Ken Waxman - --- Scott Handley wrote: > Speaking of the Revolutionary Ensemble, I heard the > entirety of an RE LP called PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC, or > something like that; I remember it being pretty > unbelieveable, great at least. _That_, Atavistic > should re-issue. Badly. _______________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.ca address at http://mail.yahoo.ca - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 12:46:56 -0500 From: Brian Olewnick Subject: Grist for Atavistic Here's one I wouldn't mind seeing: The back of Brotzmann's 'Alarm' shows what appears to be a play list of the recording session, only half of which was released. The unissued tracks (as far as I know--anyone know otherwise?) include two each by Breuker and Schippenbach and one by bassist Harry Miller (as well as an additional, longer take of Frank Wright's 'Jerry Sacem', a shorter version of which closes out the 'Alarm' LP.) My guess is that they're "straighter" material than 'Alarm', but the aplomb with which the nonet carries off the gutbucket, swinging Wright piece tantalizes me. Brian Olewnick NP: High Rise - Disallow - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 12:58:49 -0500 (EST) From: Jason Caulfield Bivins Subject: Re: blessings blowing in from chicago town As much as I've enjoyed the Atavistic series, I've also been puzzled by some of their choices. I think I've dug some of the releases more than Jon has - for example, I enjoy the Cuypers - but I thought that the Tchicai/Schweizer was a dud. Can't wait for the ROVA release, and for the long promised Hal Russell/Joe Daley trio. But I'm sure that, as Jon wrote, a label like Atavistic could acquire the rights to some of the older classics (what about February Papers? Hook, Drift, and Shuffle?). The glass is surely half full, but . . . - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 13:01:56 EST From: JonAbbey2@aol.com Subject: Re: revolutionary ensemble In a message dated 2/10/01 12:07:31 PM, mingusaum@yahoo.ca writes: << Say that's an idea, Jon. Why not see if another label wants to lease you some of your favorites so you could re-release them on Erstwhile? >> no, thanks. I'm plenty busy as it is doing 8 new releases a year, and my interest and commitment is to new music rather than reissues. don't get me wrong, I'm glad that the Unheard Music Series exists. my only real quibble was with Kurt calling Atavistic "the best freakin label in the damn world", when I've found the bulk of the series disappointing thus far, in comparison to what it could be. I was genuinely curious as to whether other people feel that way, hence my response. the full Victoriaville schedule looks much better than last year. unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to reveal it yet, but it should be released in the next week or so. Jon www.erstwhilerecords.com - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 13:58:20 -0500 From: Nils Subject: Re: Re: TORTOISE "s~Z" wrote: > > >>>In this month's Wire there's a review of it, plus a large article. > The album is released on Warp.<<< > > When THE WIRE subscription went up to $150,000.00 a year I decided to > let it lapse. it's worth noting that the previous parent company recently sold THE WIRE off to a board of directors consisting of a subset of the editorial staff of the magazine. their subscription remains astronomical. for u.s. readers 16 months cost $85. it gets me down sometimes when they compare records to "unreleased recordings" in their reviews. or present a boxed review of stuff like reynols, led by a guy with downs syndrome and credited with records like 10,000 CHICKEN SYMPHONY or BLANK TAPES. it just goes to underscore how much effort they go to be obscure and "underground". i feel pretty obscure and underground as it is, and i'd rather not bury myself. "reynols claims their music to be the by-product of a psychic communion with every object they encounter--humans, pumpkins, rocks, or discarded tape." uh, yeah? > What'd they think of the [tortoise] CD? "an essentially polite, ultra-refined approach to enseble playing"; "as close to a garage record as Tortoise are ever going to make" n - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 15:44:41 EST From: JonAbbey2@aol.com Subject: Wire/Reynols/Tortoise In a message dated 2/10/01 1:51:56 PM, jacobson@frodo.mgh.harvard.edu writes: << their subscription remains astronomical. for u.s. readers 16 months cost $85. >> astronomical? $5 and change per issue, and you get three or four CDs thrown in per year. plus, you may be interested to know that the Wire pays their writers, which isn't true for many publications. <> Blank Tapes is on Trente Oiseaux, Bernhard Gunter's label, and hardly obscure or underground, at least to this crowd. also, while I'm not much of a fan of the Reynols CDs, I saw them perform in Brooklyn last year, and they were amazing. the singer didn't make the trip with them, but they played along to tapes of him, while his image was projected on a couple of TV sets. the guitarists kept looking to his image for inspiration, and played a remarkable psych set, which I can't imagine too many bands in the world being able to equal, save possibly Turkey's Zen (great disc on Ecstatic Peace) and a couple of Japanese bands on their best days. I have a way bigger problem with the Wire giving essentially the same scene two cover stories within four months, November's Chicago Underground and this month's Tortoise. when I saw Tortoise play the closing set at Victoriaville a few years ago, I thought it was one of the most amateurish displayes of mediocre fusion noodling I'd ever seen. TNT is OK, because it takes the best parts of hours and hours of that stuff, and edits them together pretty slickly. haven't heard the new one, but I'm not holding my breath. yeah, I'm in a combative mood this weekend. Jon www.erstwhilerecords.com - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 16:12:34 -0500 From: Steve Smith Subject: Re: revolutionary ensemble Brian Olewnick wrote: > Scott Handley wrote: > > > > Speaking of the Revolutionary Ensemble, I heard the > > entirety of an RE LP called PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC [snip] > > That came out on A&M/Horizon as part of a short-lived series of > relatively well produced albums that included nice bios, scores, etc. RE > was the most "avant garde" of the roster, which also had Jim Hall, Thad > Lewis, Dave Liebman/Richie Bierach. And, let's not forget, Ornette Coleman's 'Dancing in Your Head.' After the demise of Horizon, many of the artists released strikingly similiarly-packaged records on Ornette's Artists House label. > The Charlie Haden duos that I _think_ were also part of this series have > been issued to disc, but I'm not sure about any of the others, including > 'People's Republic'. The Haden discs and 'Dancing' were the only ones I ever saw. I only managed to snag one of the Hadens and the Coleman, of course. They've been long unavailable, but 'Dancing' has of course been reissued by Verve with a bonus track. Steve Smith ssmith36@sprynet.com NP - Dawn Upshaw, "Hark! How All Things" (Henry Purcell), 'Angels Hide Their Faces' (Nonesuch) - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 16:35:31 -0500 From: Steve Smith Subject: Re: revolutionary ensemble Ken Waxman wrote: > Perhaps some company -- it doesn't have to be > Atavistic either -- should try to rerelease some of > that work.What happened to all the remaining > Arista/Freedoms, Arista/Novuses, Nessas, PMs and Inner > Citys etc.etc. ? This has always been a small dream of mine, beginning when I managed to convince my then-employer Koch to reissue the Tim Berne and Jane Ira Bloom discs from Columbia and the Atlantic Art Ensemble discs, and continuing when I convinced Revenant to reissue Cecil's 'Nefertiti' (mainly because I'm lazy and didn't want to pull out the LPs anymore). If I had the money and time, I'd try to set myself up like Atavistic, seeking out and licensing such gems. But of course, it would require the labels that own the recordings to play along, and frequently they won't. Both Koch and Mosaic have tried to license Braxton material from Arista, for instance, but so far it's been no go, inexplicably. Chuck Nessa is gradually getting at least some of his own back catalog out there. The Freedom material all belongs to the German firm D.A. Music, which has done a spotty job at best in getting the stuff back out there (witness both crappy reissues of Cecil Taylor material and Tim Berne's endless headache regarding the Hemphill sessions he wanted to issue). Lately D.A. seems to be taking a greater interest with its gradual reissue of cleaned up masters on 1201 Music. I don't know PM, but it was always my impression as well that Inner City licensed most of its material from elsewhere, like Enja. (But it would be great to get Sun Ra's wonderful 'Live at Montreux' back into circulation.) Same with Pausa, which had some great holdings on loan from MPS, like Cecil's 'Live in the Black Forest' and 'Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!. At least Delmark is getting their good stuff back in circulation. Any report on the Sackville reissues, quality-wise? > There are vinyl gems that have never seen a CD laser > --or even an LP reissue after first release. Maybe > every record company should have a small reissue > program. A few of them have been doing so, now that they have discovered the market for limited edition releases. Blue Note has done this with, among other items, Ornette's sublimely unmarketable 'The Empty Foxhole,' and Verve did a microbatch of their one Alan Shorter disc, 'Orgasm.' I'd expect to see more of this, just not as fast or complete as we might like. Sony, on the other hand, seems pretty hopeless. And Warner doesn't hold much of interest otside of their fabulous Herbie Hancock Mwandishi recordings, which are already out. Steve Smith ssmith36@sprynet.com NP - Dawn Upshaw, Cantata BWV 199 (J.S. Bach), 'Angels Hide Their Faces' (Nonesuch) - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 16:21:11 -0600 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: Request For Ambient Music Recommendations On Sat, Feb 10, 2001 at 11:58:06PM +1100, Adam Rock wrote: > The recent thread pertaining to avant garde electronica served to reignite my interest in ambient music. I really enjoy Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works Vol 2," Brian Eno's "Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks", and certain tracks from Dead Voices On Air's "Piss Frond." Does anyone have any suggestions as to where I might go from here? Hmm. It depends on what you call "ambient" and what is packaged as such. Be careful what you buy, since most of what I run across nowadays that claims to be "ambient" violates the idea of a floating music, equally listenable and ignorable, by having metronomic electronic beat tracks that pound on the head and force the listener into their groove (to use the term very loosely). It's a horrific misuse of the term, which for some reason has gotten widely accepted. Caveat emptor. - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CD: Jerusaklyn http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 16:44:03 -0600 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: Wire/Reynols/Tortoise On Sat, Feb 10, 2001 at 03:44:41PM -0500, JonAbbey2@aol.com wrote: > also, while I'm not much of a fan of the Reynols CDs, I saw them perform in > Brooklyn last year, and they were amazing. the singer didn't make the trip > with them, but they played along to tapes of him, while his image was > projected on a couple of TV sets. the guitarists kept looking to his image > for inspiration, and played a remarkable psych set, which I can't imagine too > many bands in the world being able to equal, save possibly Turkey's Zen > (great disc on Ecstatic Peace) and a couple of Japanese bands on their best > days. I was baffled by seeing Reynols last year. (Disclaimer: they were part of the same performance as Comma, and we fortunately managed to convince the organizers that it wouldn't work to have their barrage of sound and Comma's a cappella vocals happen in the same space at the same time.) Their performance, as I recall it, consisted of a loud backing tape, and of people carrying instruments (often several instruments at once) moving to and from microphones without making a sound. There were no TV sets (I don't think they would have fit there) and no other clues. I've heard that there's some sort of political/metaphysical theory behind what they do, but it sure didn't come across in a performance that didn't let the audience in on what was supposedly happening. - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CD: Jerusaklyn http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 14:43:26 -0800 From: Fred Heller Subject: monk's music on paper Does anyone out there know of a book -- fakebook or otherwise -- of Thelonious Monk compositions. I have two transcription books that mostly feature the more common stuff ("Blue Monk", "Ruby My Dear" et al) transcribed, and I would like to have some of the less obvious stuff ("Criss Cross" and the like) on paper. thanks -- skip h np: Sonny Rollins, SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS (forgot aboout this album but the Ken Burns thing reminded of it. Yowsah!) - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 19:36:05 -0500 From: Lang Thompson Subject: Re: blessings blowing in from chicago town >since no one else chimed in, I feel compelled to ask: does anyone else think >this is true? I hate to agree with Ben Watson on anything, but I'm personally >finding the Unheard Music Series kind of disappointing so far. it seems as if >Corbett values rarity over quality when choosing some of the releases. I'm still working my way through the Unheard releases (probably Barely Heard Music wasn't as marketable a name) and have only heard a handful so far but except for the title track on "Nation Time" I haven't been overwhelmed by any of it yet either. Even "Nipples" which everybody else has raved about seems like a minor effort (my reviews of that and "Nation Time" are on Allmusic). The obsession with rarity is of course a common problem with collectors; the discography at the back of Corbett's book shows it nearly out of control even if it is great reading. Still, I'm glad they're doing something like this and hope it continues. Lang - ------------------------------------------- Adventures In Sound http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/adventures.htm Outsider Music Mailing List http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/outsider.htm Documentary Sound http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/adventures/documentary.htm Full Alert Film Review http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/fafr.htm - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 19:44:01 -0500 From: Lang Thompson Subject: RRRecords Anybody know if RRR is still going? I haven't received a catalog from them in quite some time and the website (which was mostly just a list) is down. Lang - ------------------------------------------- Adventures In Sound http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/adventures.htm Outsider Music Mailing List http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/outsider.htm Documentary Sound http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/adventures/documentary.htm Full Alert Film Review http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/fafr.htm - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 18:52:25 -0600 From: pedro moreno Subject: Evan Parker and Brotzmann in TEXAS Hello Zorn listers, I want to alert the texas residents on the list about these great concerts happenning in April in Austin and Houston. These artists will also perform in New Orleans. I will provide additional dates and cities as they become available. Evan Parker and Susie Ibarra Duo April 10, Houston Texas Hamman Hall - Rice University Presented by Diverse Works http://www.diverseworks.org for tickets and reservations (713)335-3445 Evan Parker and Susie Ibarra Duo April 11, Austin Texas Ceremony Hall (4100 Red River) presented by Epistrophy Arts http://www.epistrophyarts.org for tickets call (512)302-5233 http://www.shef.ac.uk/misc/rec/ps/efi/mparker.html http://www.susieibarra.com Peter Br=F6tzmann and Hamid Drake April 23, 8pm Austin Texas Ceremony Hall (4100 Red River) presented by Epistrophy Arts http://www.epistrophyarts.org for tickets call (512)302-5233 Peter Br=F6tzmann and Hamid Drake April 24, Houston, Texas presented by Pauline Oliveros Foundation and KTRU Houston for information call (281)920-5335 or go to http://www.artswire.org/pof/houston http://www.shef.ac.uk/misc/rec/ps/efi/mbrotzm.html http://centerstage.net/music/whoswho/HamidDrake.html PG moreno Epistrophy Arts Austin, TX http://epistrophyarts.org - - ------------------------------ End of Zorn List Digest V3 #278 ******************************* To unsubscribe from zorn-list-digest, send an email to "majordomo@lists.xmission.com" with "unsubscribe zorn-list-digest" in the body of the message. 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