Lockdown in Lagash

Publié en mai 2024 sur le label australien Nice Music, ”Lagash” est le dernier opus du musicien Alastair Galbraith, basé à  en Nouvelle Zélande.

Galbraith est accompagné du guitariste Jackson Harry, suivi d'une face B consacrée entièrement à la splendide pièce instrumentale ”Lockdown In Lagash”, avec Galbraith au violon et Chris Heazlewood à la batterie.

” … dans la musique d’Alastair, il y a une sorte d’intimité et de quiétude, une sorte de solitude fonctionnelle… son écriture est si magnifiquement épurée dans sa structure de base, c’est quelque chose que j’apprécie sur le plan technique parce que je sais combien il est difficile d’être simple et réduit au nom d’un sens spécifique. Mais Alastair parvient d’une manière ou d’une autre à toucher davantage cet espace négatif et à rendre son vide tangible. Et je suppose que cette intimité parle également des aspects émotionnels auxquels je m’accroche dans sa musique… l’idée que l’on puisse prendre un moment ou un sentiment, et le suspendre dans le temps comme une miniature ou une sculpture… un monde sonore qui est si privé, chaleureux et délicat…” la compositrice canadienne Sarah Davachi

Nice Music presents ”Lagash” - the brand new album from Dunedin, New Zealand's legendary experimental songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and tape music idol Alastair Galbraith.

Enter 'Lagash', instantly a left turn at just 4 elongated tracks. 3 on the A side with accompaniment from guitarist Jackson Harry, followed by a B side entirely inhabited by 'Lockdown In Lagash' - a panicked dirge which sees Galbraith on fiddle, pitted against drummer Chris Heazlewood. 

"It’s hard to describe how Alastair’s music makes me feel, and it’s something that I’ve been trying to do for myself ever since I first fell in love with his records many years ago. In a concrete way, there’s a kind of intimacy and quietude, a sort of functional aloneness, that I admire so deeply in his music and that I aspire to in my own music. I’m consistently obsessed with the production and arrangement in his records. His songwriting is so beautifully sparse in its base structure, and that’s something that I appreciate on a technical level because I know how hard it is to be simple and reduced for the sake of a specific meaning. But Alastair somehow manages to touch that negative space further and make its emptiness tangible. And I suppose that this intimacy speaks to the emotional aspects that I latch onto in his music as well – from my perspective, what Alastair is so incredible at achieving in his music is the idea that one could take a moment or a feeling, and suspend it in time as a miniature or a sculpture of sorts that you can walk around and observe and maybe just sit with for a while. It’s an experience unlike much else..." - the Canadian composer Sarah Davachi 

&

"pure speculation"  to listen to

as well  don't miss the movie "Eccentric Isles" which features conversations with Alastair Galbraith,  Bruce Russell, and other "free noise" activist in New-Zealand.

!<0oIo0>!

Glass harmonium

Alastair Galbraith is a musician located in Dunedin, New Zealand.
He started in the early 80s with the band "The Rip" and collaborated with numerous musicians as Peter Jefferies, Matt de Gennaro (for long wires drone experimentation, listen for "Cry" CD released by "Emperor Jones") and Bruce Russell for the free noise band "A Handfull of Dust".
Despite of building recently a pipe-gas organ, he also build a homemade glass harmonium, and did perform it in march 2013 in Port Chalmers. 

and long wires

a part of this post was originally published in september 2013

<-_N_->

Far away

in Japan, New-Zealand, China, Java...

Umeko Ando (1932-2004) was one of the best-known artists of the Ainu, an indigenous, long-suppressed community in northern Japan. The Ainu have suffered from the oppression of their culture and language by Japan, especially since the 18th and 19th centuries. Only recently, in 2008, were the Ainu officially recognized again as an indigenous people culturally independent of Japan. As a result of the marginalization, there are now only a few hundred native speakers of the Ainu language left, making it a particularly worthy object of preservation. This music would not exist if the Ainu had not maintained their culture in remote and secret communities against Japanese hegemony. 

“Upopo Sanke“ was recorded on a farm in Tokachi in the summer of 2003. We hear dogs barking, a distant thunderstorm and voices imitating animals. 

 

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& with the amazing Belgian label OKRAINA Records 

"Don't drown" in New-Zealand with Stefan Neville and Greg Malcolm

(...) "Who would attempt to combine cunning ethnological forgery, Scottish folk songs, claw-hammer guitar, untutored horn-tootling, elastically relaxed drumming and garage electronic fuckery? Only Greg and Stefan, high on sea, sunshine and mis-judged micro-dosing – that’s who. ‘Don’t Drown’ was offered as practical advice during the self-described ‘Yellow Submarine’ phase of making this record. And while they managed to avoid literally doing so (phew), they sound here like they got pretty ‘deep in’ to an Octopus’s sound world all their own. This surprisingly clear analogue recording has just enough Bikini Bottom grit to ensure traction. The tunes are inviting, and the sonic disruptions are too good-natured and goofy to upset even the most delicate digestion.
The sessions have had a couple of years to marinate, courtesy of some pandemic, and are here offered in that most Archducal of vinyl formats, the double ten inch. What are you waiting for, a side of Crabby Patties? Get your water-wings and dive in (unless you’re tripping)!" -- Bruce Russell (2023)

 

but in Ireland? 

 

or in Greece? 

 

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и даже?

en Italie avec Berio et son "Folk song Cycle" par Eloïse Decaze et Delphine Dora  (2015) 

 

  qui ont pris la liberté de jouer, chanter et enregistrer à leur manière le cycle de chansons traditionnelles collectées dans différents pays, rassemblées et arrangées, ou composées, par Luciano Berio pour sa femme, la chanteuse Cathy Berberian. 

 

et la version de Cathy Berberian ICI

 

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and in Indonesia,

with Senyawa (+ Vincent Moon) , "Calling the new gods" (2017)

The film "Calling The New Gods", by Vincent Moon, is the document of musicians Rully Shabara & Wukir Suryadi of the group Senyawa playing & being filmed on location, outside, tracing a path from the outskirts of Yogyakarta, Java (on the border of a rice field, on the edge of a garbage dump, etc.) until the center of the city.

 

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and in Beijing,

 

"UFO space", opened during the interim of two Covid lockdowns, is an experimental music location in Beijing founded by Ryan Lui. The first major event in november 2020 was a meeting with Subjam's Yan Jun, Zhu Wembo and Li Jianhong. 

more about eclectic musical spaces in Beijing and music to listen to in "Global Ear"'s chronicle in the october 2023 issue of The Wire magazine.

 

!_OH_!

The tiger's mind

The Tiger’s Mind

A Cornelius Cardew's verbal notation score (1967)
with Nina Canal (USA), Nadia Lichtig (FR),
Michael Morley (NZ) & Sara Stephenson (NZ)

Sunday 7th june 2009 at CAC Brétigny sur Orge

for the exhibition "Cornelius Cardew et la liberté d'écoute"

curated by Dean Inkster, Jean-Jacques Palix, Lore Gablier & Pierre Bal-Blanc.

... a tribute to this "10 years ago" exhibition
which was shown in Bretigny sur Orge, Künstlerhauss Stuttgart and Culturgest Porto.

Nina Canal

Michael Morley & Sara Stephenson

Nadia Lichtig

 

all pictures by Steeve Beckouet 

"The tiger's mind" score : english version - french version

***

On the same day in the same event,

other Cornelius Cardew' scores

"Volo solo" 

played by Rhys Chatham

and 

"Treatise"

played by Marcus Schmickler, Michel Guillet, Samon Takahashi and Jean-Jacques Palix



original Treatise score's page 67

***

Phil Dadson

The New-Zealander Phil Dadson born in 1946, studied fine arts in Auckland (NZ), majoring in sculpture and time-based arts. He had the chance to work in the UK 1968/69 with Cornelius Cardew's foundation group for a Scratch Orchestra.
Back in New Zealand in 1970, he founded a Scratch Orchestra in 1970 and later in 74 the avant-garde ensemble "From Scratch", which would use everything from old lampshades to customised PVC pipes to perform its intricate, rhythmic compositions.

Since that period, he also activates lot of different projects in between collective performance, sound sculpture, experimental instrument building, video installation, teaching methods, and, of course, rythmical compositions.

Phil who received many major awards and commissions including a Fullbright travel award to the USA, and research, exhibition and performance grants, devotes his energy, full time, to his own work.

some pieces
- SOUND TRACKS, and exhibited Tapping the Pulse; video and film works from 1971-2004
- sound-sculpture TENANTENNAE at the Connells Bay Sculpture Park on Waiheke Island
- has co-authored Slap Tubes and other Plosive Instruments- a DIY guide to building a variety of slap tube instruments,
- In 2011, Phil participated in the Kermadec Ocean project, curated by Gregory O'Brien, in support of a Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary. Phil joined a number of artists voyaging on the HMNZS Otago to Raoul Island and onto Tonga Tapu.

 

a few works

"Drumwheel" with two different versions from 1979 & 2018

"Urban devas" with Carol Brown and dancers - 2010

"Wobble Ova Oases" with Chris Connor in Heart' Heart performance series

and many many other works to look, listen at and follow on his Vimeo Channel

and don't miss From Scratch's piece called "Drum/Sing" -1984

An article to read in the next April issue of Wire around Dadson's heritage of the Scratch Orchestra with Cornelius Cardew in England in the late 60's.

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From Scratch

Phil Dadson is born in 1946, studied fine arts in Auckland (NZ), majoring in sculpture and time-based arts. He had the chance to work in the UK 1968/69 with Cornelius Cardew's foundation group for a Scratch Orchestra.
Back in New Zealand in 1970, he founded a Scratch Orchestra in 1970 and later in 74 the avant-garde ensemble "From Scratch", which would use everything from old lampshades to customised PVC pipes to perform its intricate, rhythmic compositions.

Embracing an egalitarian ethic, focusing on co-operation and  integration, as a intermedia/sound, video, performance artist and instrument builder for the group, Phil Dadson activates lot of experimental sound projects that you can follow on Dadsonics.

A re-issue of the original LP "From Scratch" is now avalaible on EM Records.

In 1980, Phil Dadson, Geoff Chapple, Wayne Laird, Don McGlashan played "Gung Ho" ( means 'work together" and takes it's title from the gung ho workers' co-operative movement established in China in 1938 by New Zealander political activist Rewi Alley).
The one hour work was in 7 sections, with each module exploring consecutive number, triadic and tonal permutations.This video is an excerpt of the 8,9,10 modules.

Eccentric Isles

A la rencontre de personnalités marquantes des scènes alternatives de Nouvelle-Zélande telles que Chris Knox, Michael Morley, Alastair Galbraith et Bruce Russell, ainsi que de quelques figures excentriques croisées au fil de la route.

Meetings with leading figures of the alternative and free music in New Zealand
such Chris Knox, Michael Morley, Alastair Galbraith, Bruce Russell and others
as well  a few eccentric figures crossed over the road,
the full movie "Eccentric Isles".

Music: Chris Knox, Dead C, Alastair Galbraith, Kim Pieters, Peter Stapelton, Michael Morley, Bruce Russell, Jean Jacques Palix

Discussion, production, voice : Zahia Rahmani
Sound mixing & recordings : Jean Jacques Palix
Discussion, interviewes, translation : Dean Inkster
Filming, recording, interviewes, editing : Nicolas Chesnais

A voir sur Vimeo - 70 minutes (code vimeo : stenka)
"Eccentric Isles" 2004 - (sous titré français)

Bagpipes & guitar

Our friend David Watson, born in New Zealand and located in NYC, answered to the 13 questions of the "Prepared Guitar" blog. With a lot of music excerpts...
Originally known as a guitarist, since early 90s Watson's work has also featured new music for the Highland Bagpipes.

 

Pure speculation

"Pure speculation" is a new LP composed by correspondance in between Alastair Galbraith, David Watson & Jean Jacques Palix.
It started in 2009 with sound material exchanged in between Alastair and Palix which generated short pieces, then joined by David Watson' bagpipes and finally mixed by Palix.
As a "limited edition" of 300 copies, this one one-sided LP , explorating drones' ambiances and melodies, is released by La Station Radar.

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Alastair Galbraith : Voice, bells, guitars, casio.
JJ Palix a.k.a. Amiel Balester : Noises, radiators, windmill sounds, electric keyboard, computer.
David Watson : Highland bagpipes.
Recorded and composed in Dunedin (Nz) , Paris (Fr), New York (Usa).
Mixed by Jean Jacques Palix.
Mastered by Thimothy Stollenwerk.
Photography by Alastair Galbraith.

**** 

"Pure Speculation is a record by three people who live in Paris (France), New York (New York) and Taieri Mouth (New Zealand). They have all met each other, but have never all been in the same place together. This single-sided LP now exists physically, yet the music on it lives up to its rather grandiose name – and does not actually exist in the real world. Watson is an improviser known for his bag-piping, Galbraith an instrument builder and song-writer known for his long-form sound works using little-understood acoustic phenomena and for his very short songs, while Palix is a radiophonic composer and sound designer who composes balletic operas for aerobatic teams. All these things are true but all sound like Munchausen’s wildest lies.

There is no point attempting to describe music that has been composed in three separate parts in the mind of such accomplished fabulists, and then realized as a totality via a form of long-distance ouija-board manipulation. It is a highly-fictional salad of bells, gongs, drones and tones which will stick in your mind long after you have heard it. No one planned it, at least two of the musicians were ignorant of its existence for most of its lifetime, and only a perennial over-reacher such as myself would attempt to justify it in prose. When I first heard Pure Speculation, I thought someone had spiked my drink. Then I realized that the name should be taken perfectly literally. So do your ears a favour and indulge in this rarified form of speculation, it’s unlike much else you’ll hear until the next time you’re going under for major surgery – only this auditory hallucination is one you will remember once you regain consciousness. Drink up – here’s to speculation!"
Bruce Russell - september 2013

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"One of my favorite thing about Alastair Galbraith’s records is the dichotomy between “noise” and “song” that permeates his discography. Galbraith has always been adept at creating lurching drone-y soundscapes that somehow manage to give way to moments of melodic bliss. Like many of the best noise rockers, Galbraith’s music creates a world where form, melody, and harmony all rely on/emerge from noise/drone. On Galbraith’s collaborative work Pure Speculation with Jean Jacques Palix and David Watson, the composer utilizes his collaborators to create a sprawling 22-minute work that merges several disparate soundworlds into a coherent whole while continuing to explore the dichotomy between noise and melody. This is articulated early in the track, when Palix creates a gloriously rustling palette of sounds that Galbraith uses as the instrumental foundation for a song before giving way to a massive drone anchored by Watson’s signature bagpipe playing. The ebb and flow between each section of this work too is handled masterfully. When the white noise of the piece’s opening field recordings return, it provides the first obvious sign that the trio imperceptibly structured the piece so that certain formal tendencies reoccur and develop into different themes."
Tiny Mix Tape - October 2013.

****
"Stunning three way collaboration that does violence to any notion of ‘collaboration’, with the songs of Alastair Galbraith bisected and book-ended by bagpipe drones, damaged guitar downs and occult Industrial settings: all three artists recorded their contribution separately before knitting the whole deal together into a delirious side-long setting that moves from what sounds like The Albert Ayler Orchestra plays the A Handful Of Dust songbook into occult regions of scrape and drone that could almost be Nurse With Wound before giving way to one of Galbraith’s most magical and heartbreaking songs, with that forlorn edge-of-the-world sound supported by all sorts of drizzy occult spectra. David Watson’s bagpipe work is particularly psychedelic, rising from Faust-scale nod-out rhythms and deep bass tectonics to sound like an orchestra of berserkers marching through the fog while touching on the fantasy scenario of Ayler’s unmade bagpipe orchestra album for Shandar. Jean Jacques Palix specialises in balletic radiophonics and sound design so I’m guessing he’s responsible for the hallucinatory sound works, with slow tectonic eruptions accompanied by distant Morse melodies and the kind of sleight of hand of a Peter Christopherson using noises, radiators, windmill sounds, electric keyboard and computer. This is a stunning set; imagine Rien or Outside The Dream Syndicate as the kind of Industrial/Orchestral context for brokedown NZ singer-songwriter-isms and you’re close to the dazzling reality-warping potential of this singularly potent disc. Edition of only 300 copies, silkscreened sleeves, very highly recommended!"
David Keenan - Volcanic Tongue - november 2013

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"Constructed by three musicians who live in different parts of the globe and have never been physically present in the same place at the same time, “Pure Speculation” is as much a sound- art installation as a piece of music, each person bringing a different compositional strand to the project creating a 22 minute track that is powerful, emotional and inspiring. Experimental, droning and rich with imagination the track features, electronic sounds (Palix), bells, guitars, voice (Galbraith) and Highland Bagpipes (Watson) each player adding new layers and textures with the Bagpipes having the most impact mainly because it is not a sound that you hear very often in this context, their plaintive drone filling the piece with sound, with Watson skilled enough to be silent when needed, giving the bells and electronics a chance to add scrapes, rattles and chimes to the music. Constantly changing in tone, pace and mood,the music is never still,never dull rewarding the adventurous listener as it seems different every time, the way you hear it dependant on your mood and circumstance as much as the actual composition. Highly recommended, this is my personal favourite out of three excellent releases from a label of high quality."  
Simon Lewis - Terrascop Mag - January 2014



"In a sad indictment of some of the bollocks that passes for music these days I’ve just hurled the last three records off the stereo and out of the window (I wish). I’m only sticking with this as I’m a fan of Alastair Galbraith and once the bagpipe has done its thing it gets pretty interesting. Yup, the one long 22 minute piece opens with a bagpipe drone (who needs that?) before a kind of rubbery beat takes charge and Galbraith whispers his distinctive voice atop.
The track is one long improvised piece by the three composers who all live in different parts of earth. It goes through several moods on its way to completion, a nice organic ambient section follows the vocal bit with bouncy shards of synth being layered one upon the other until it all breaks down to rumbles of thunder and a squeaky gate. A highly atmospheric piece which veers from enjoyable sections to lengthy sonic explorations."Norman Records - November 2013

and another comment

to listen

to order 

more about Alastair Galbraith

more about David Watson

& **** 

Mr Noisy

A short documentary around Bruce Russell who talks about his work and own philosophy.
The New Zealand experimental musician founded the band "The Dead C" with Michael Morley.
After establishing the labels "Xpressway" in the mid-eighties, then "Corpus Hermeticum"
in the nineties, he published an excellent book around the experimental sound scene in New Zealand :
"Erewhon Calling: experimental sound in New Zealand" - Audio Foundation/CRM 2012

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The Dead C

 

Superb live of The Dead C in the "Sonic Protest festival" in Paris

with 

Bruce Russell, guitar

Michael Morley, guitar & vocals

Robbie Yeats, drums

and another extract of the same concert  <<<here>>>

Bagpipe and laptop

Our friend David Watson "live" at the 3rd Annual Anarchist Festival in 2011