What do you listen to????????

AeroSPAM:

There is more than one way to walk.

 

It's heliocentric, y'all.

 

Recent discoveries:

Akira Ito ‎(伊藤詳) - Marine Flowers (Science Fantasy) (1986)

Spoiler

There is a time in any good musician’s life when they absolutely nail down whatever they had to place. Akira Ito, one time keyboardist for influential Japanese psych rock outfit The Far East Band, could have stayed with that group rehashing “out there” musical troupes – variations on psychedelia with The FABs or Kitaro-like, Jean-Michel Jarre-aping electro-prog as in his early, solo career – or he could, you know, grow the hell up, and accept that music evolves, and so must he. There’s only so much Ummagumma aping one can do in a lifetime. That’s what makes Marine Flower his first release under his own Green & Water record label truly interesting. It shows his shift to a particular electronic aesthetic that his country was cultivating at the time.

Marine Flower (Science Fantasy) was far more minimal and exploratory than anything he’d ever done before. To my ears, it appeared that Akira was taking influence from German elektronic kosmische music of Cluster, Manuel Göttsching, and Neu and trying to chisel it down through a Japanese aesthetic – essentially using the more holistic, environmentally conscious, spacial aware ideas of other Japanese electronic New Age artists like Hiroshi Yoshimura etc. as a sifter/filter to temper the influence of that kind of music. It was/is a beautiful set of electronic mood music with meditative overtones of nostalgia, comfort, and sweetness for good reason.

Album highlight “Essence of Beauty” puts all these feelings of aware reflection into full view. Essentially written as part of a musical series called “Music For Inochi”/Music for Life on his label, each album in this series attempted to carry along intently a specific mood. Water-based music, forest-based music, macro-life music like Yumiko Morioka’s Resonance – simple ideas that took all those far out, less inviting, explorations into far more personal and focused pieces.

Although Marine Flower (Science Fantasy) was meant for the New Age market, it ventures far outside the genre. Drum machines, saxophones, electric violin, and all sorts of assorted mallet percussion find ways to make their presence felt in what really is supposed to be a set of percolating “floating” synthesizer music. Not entirely perfect – but what is? – it does have so much to offer as another important piece in this whole structure of Japanese electronic music we’re uncovering (with our Western ears) piecemeal.

Jon Gibson - Two Solo Pieces (1977)

Spoiler

For his second album, Two Solo Pieces, Jon Gibson forgoes the dense, multi-layered timbres of Visitations in favor of simple textures and tone. While Two Solo Pieces serves up further evidence of Gibson's centrality to American minimalism – witness its inclusion in Alan Licht's famed Minimal Top Ten list – this profoundly intimate record also reveals the beauty of enclosed spaces and infinite harmonic vistas.

As its unadorned title suggests, Two Solo Pieces consists of a pair of side-long tracks featuring the composer alone. While "Cycles," an iridescent improvisation on organ, achieves a downright eerie sense of expansiveness, Gibson's captivating alto flute on "Untitled" draws the listener inside the instrument itself.

The photo on the album's back cover – a seated Gibson surrounded by cascading rows of organ pipes and the vaulted ceiling in Manhattan's Peace Church – offers a striking visual complement to these gorgeous recordings.

Originally released in 1977 on Philip Glass' Chatham Square imprint.

Terry Riley / Don Cherry ‎– Köln – February 23, 1975

Spoiler

A legendary recording that pairs Don Cherry’s heavenly trumpet stylings, Terry Riley’s psychedelic/minimalist organ work and the vibes of Bengt Berger in a great live concert recorded in Koln in 1975. Riley is in stunning form playing the kind of endlessly rippling dosed organ drones with a sense of stasis in expansion that is uniquely brain-razzing. Cherry’s playing is heart-stoppingly beautiful, curling slow, melancholy arcs and threading high angel tones through Riley’s electronic matrix. A great document of a key moment in the history of minimalism music and a beautiful combination of great artists.

Not for all, but certainly for me.

 

Some appreciations of the digging of Don:





Ode to Billie Joe by Lou Donaldson;
Afro Puffs by The Lady of Rage;
You Can Fly by Sons of Champlin;
Murder and Homicide by Ultramagnetic MCs;
Turtle Walk by Lou Donaldson

 

Some appreciations of the digging of Don II:





The Sorcerer of Isis by The Power of Zeus;
Just Rhymin' with Biz by Big Daddy Kane and Biz Markie;
Cleo's Apartment by Marvin Gaye;
Spinning Wheel by Dr. Lonnie Smith;
Don't Change Your Love by The Five Stairsteps

 

Some appreciations of the digging of Don III:


And, of course...

You'll Know When you Get There by Herbie Hancock;
Outside Love by Brethren;
and the break from
New Orleans by Nat Adderly.

I don't know how this is possible, but I'd forgotten all about The Cenobites... Thanks for the reminder, @---NT---!