A.G. – Polygon:08

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An earlier recording to 2020's excellent Lonea (check here), again piano-based but with a slightly more frequently use of electronics. Sparse, forlorn, ambient elegies. 2010 self-released cdr.

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A.G. - Lonea

 

Hello after such a long time. Things were bad, busy, hectic, lots of changes. Things are still not good, though slightly quieter. Thanks to everyone that asked about me and wrote in general. I know it was not polite not to answer but I really didn't want to get into the idea of having to write again on the blog. But yeah, there's lots of stuff I'd still like to share.

So A.G. is a Greek musician and visual artist. His music is based on piano and sounds and is very solitary, melancholic and deep. I love this album and A.G.'s music in general. I'll post some more stuff.

2020 2 X Lp on Arbouse Recordings.

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The Gerogerigegege ‎– Endless Humiliation

   

The Necks would definitely have envied the atmosphere Juntaro creates with a piano here.  1994 cd on Japan Overseas.

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Enahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou ‎– Éthiopiques, Vol. 21

An Ethiopian nun playing solo piano who released music to raise money for orphan children. This is one of the few records I've played to my partner that she likes, so I guess it must be good enough. She plays really passionate - yet mostly calming - gospel/blues/modal jazz tunes, which is shocking given that she's not African-American. Highly recommended stuff. 2006 cd on Buda Musique.

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Current 93 ‎– If A Star Turns Into Ashes (bonus: Soft Black Stars)

New C93 12" continuing in the recent dark ambient direction of Invocations of Almost and The Stars on their Horsies, something which I really really like. 2020 12" on The Spheres.

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As a bonus, here's a remastered version of Soft Black Stars (among my five top C93 albums), containing all three versions of the track "Chewing on Shadows." Originally released in 1998 on Durtro, this is the 2018 double LP re-release on The Spheres.

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PS: I've read there's going to be a collection of all C93 releases which feature collaborations with Thomas Ligotti (whose short story "Soft Black Stars" inspired this album anyway); really looking forward to it, as I Have A Special Plan For This World is my favorite Current 93 release ever.

Avishai Cohen / Yonathan Avishai ‎– Playing The Room

Avishai Cohen's previous album on  ECM Cross My Palm With Silver was excellent and in this new collaboration with pianist Yonathan Avishai he continues offering beautiful nightly jazz. I love his trumpet tone, he is very close both in accent and feeling to Chet Baker, and I dig that there are no Euro-jazz elements, the ones that ECM keeps releasing and I keep avoiding,but there are huge blues undertones, reminding of Keith Jarret's best moments. Excellent album, highly recommended. 2019 cd on ECM

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Left Hand Cuts Off The Right - Desired Place tape

Yet another beautiful recording by LHCOTR/Robbie Judkins, in which he utilizes piano and effects to reflect on his 2014 suicide attempt. The music is low-key, repetitive but not overall depressing, but with a feeling of recovery. 2018 tape on Hominid Sounds.

More greatness on his bandcamp.

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John Cage - Boris Berman ‎– Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano

A great recording with superbly sounding reverb of Cage's 1946-1948 compositions for prepared piano. It's that good that I put my two-month old baby child to sleep to it- does it need any higher recommendation? Recorded by Berman in 1998, released by Naxos on cd in 1999.

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Sakis Papadimitriou, Georgia Sylleou, George Bandoek Apostolakis - Nosferatu

 

Free improvisation drawing on jazz, atonal and ambient by these three Greek musicians, consisting of piano/organ, soprano vocals and guitars, mixing dark menacing sounds and more playful ones. The whole recording was made live while watching the original Nosferatu film by F.W. Murnau, trying to capture its essence.

2002 cd on LeoRecords.

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Kabukimono - Strega cdr

 

Haunting, spectral, ominous, dungeon-sounding gothic and post-punk by this German (I think) singer and piano player. Her influences include Diamanda Galas, Chelsea Wolfe, Zola Jesus (especially that foggy masterpiece with LA Vampires) and her piano playing shows classical influences, especially from Satie, as well as Middle-Eastern traces. Some tracks include guitar, bass and drums (I'm not sure who else is playing) and a slightly dronier and more improvisational tone. I like this a lot. 2017 cdr on Reverb Worship

Check out and donate some money on her bandcamp.

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Grouper - Grid Of Points cd

My dear mother has been since last week at the hospital in a very serious condition with hypoglycemic shock which stopped her heart. She was resuscitated and now she's in intensive care; doctors say she's avoided danger and they'll need to see what damage has been done. This came to cap the most difficult year of my life so far, a year filled with both immense joy on two levels (which I hope will continue) and excessive stress on all levels, both personal and professional.

The music of Grouper/Liz Harris has always had profound effects on my psychology and I've frequently thought of it as dying or ghost music. It's not that it is that depressive, it's that the music and vocal delivery always sound as if on the verge of passing or getting lost somewhere beyond, and there's that water feeling pervading her music, an element she has often referred to in interviews. It is little surprising, therefore, that with my mother being in this condition, Grouper is almost the only thing I'm listening to these days, revisiting The Man Who Died In His Boat and the two AIA albums, along with Ruins, which is a staple in my car anyway for a long long time.

And now with the new album, Grid Of Points, (released by Kranky) Liz continues where she left off with Ruins. That is, this is strictly piano and vocal music, with the exception of a passing train sample at the end of the album. But where the previous masterpiece had a more heavy, damp and cavernous sound and style, with some traces of her previous work still at play, here the music and the voices are at their most elemental, or the closest to death, one could say, when one's body is completely alone and on that thin line between surviving and passing. The reverb and the multiple vocal tracks almost function as instruments on their own, especially on the central track "Birthday Song," (how can a song on a happy occasion sound so lonely and life-taking is beyond me) and I love the moments where Liz stops singing and just drifts off into playing small melodies on the piano as if improvising, particularly on "Thanksgiving Song." Another aspect that sounds novel here is the inclusion of some fleeting soul/doo-wop/60's girl group elements in the vocal intro "The Races" and "Thanksgiving Song."

I want to thank Liz for releasing this album close to what happened to my mom and for keeping me sane and calm during this hard time. Although her music seems to be oppressively hopeless for me it sounds strangely braving and encouraging. Mom, be strong-I love you.

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Robert Rich & Markus Reuter ‎– Lift A Feather To The Flood

For quite a few years now, Robert Rich's albums have ceased being of much interest to me, partly because they show a retreat of imagination and creativity, but mainly because something dreadful has happened. Rich's music has been unjustly filed under "new age" crap for many years, which was definitely not the case, but I'm afraid that his recent album do fit in that category, something really regretful. I always keep coming back to listen to his new albums but I'm put off very soon, and this happened especially with his new album The Biode. To my great surprise, though, this collaborative effort with Markus Reuter from last year is a change both from the latest albums, and from his previous joint work with Reuter, Eleven Questions, from 2007 which bordered on the new age/ethnic but also contained some better atmospheres. So, the album hereby contains no percussive/rhythmic/electronic beat crap, and is mainly focused on Reuter's dark atmospheres and feedbacks generated with a touch guitar and Rich's serene acoustic piano, without any synths. Rich seems to be very adept at the piano, creating mournful melodies and chords, and the overall ambient/piano idea sounds a lot like Tim Hecker's magnificent Dropped Pianos, albeit being less heavy and depressive. I hope that RR decides to move away from new age mediocrity. 2017 cd on Soundscape.

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Witchblood - Ecsed tape

The return of Johnson/Stokoe finds them in a much deeper and heavier mood. No longer does LJ plays multi-note melodies on the piano, just some very sinister and majestic chords, and the droning background is considerably murkier than the thin sound of the first tape. On the flipside, there is a superb 11-minute track dominated by a shimmering organ chord which, in contrast to the crawling descend that usually characterizes LS's music, has a very ascending and floating quality. As for the title, Ecsed is the Hungarian town where Elizabeth Bathory grew up. Essential. 2016 tape on Matching Head.

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Witchblood - Eponine tape

Witchblood is one of the best projects of the omniscient Lee Stokoe of Culver and Lucy Johnson, one of the most talented women in noise, whose work as Smut I've just posted. As noted in Smut's Piano One tape, Lucy is a superb piano player, and Witchblood's music is very much reliant on resonant piano melodies, while Lee probably accompanies here on guitar ambiences and sound manipulations. The result here is less noisy than what both artists usually present and possesses a psychedelic and spectral quality, which sometimes sound very much like 1970s horror movie soundtracks, or nightmarish nursery songs. Indeed, the fifth track has a very musicbox-hazy child dream melody that is just hair-raising. This ghostly, fleeting mood is also highlighted by the sound which is drowned, and a little bit like recorded on chewed-up tape. Amazing music by some of the most creative noise minds at work at the moment. 2013 tape on Matching Head.

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Smut - Piano One tape

This is one of my favorite pieces of music of all time. No guitars and noise this time, just piano plated with an amazing emotion and abandon that is accentuated further by the low recording quality of a tape that is almost always on the brink of being chewed up. Real classical music from the deep underground by one of the most talented people. 2013 tape on Turgid Animal.

Unfortunately, I don't have the Piano Two tape that was released on Quagga Curious Sounds in 2015, so I'm calling out to any kind person having that to please offer it to the people.

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Soviet Avant-Garde 1 & 2 cds

In a somewhat belated tribute to the most important historic event of not only the 20th century, but of all history in terms of social change, here are the two cds featuring music by early Soviet music composers that were suppressed after the turn to socialist realism in the late 1920s-early to mid 1930s and the purges.

Despite Soviet Union's (and Stalin's personally) immense role in destroying Nazism and liberating a great part of Europe from the shackles of Western imperialism, not to mention the spread of socialism in other continents as well, it ought to be said that the turn to socialist realism, as a tool of serving political expediencies of preparing for WWII, thus needing a more popular form of art that would exult socialist construction and the imminent military effort - that had been correctly foreseen by the Soviet leadership - it was both politically and theoretically unfounded, as was the generalization of the Popular Front tactic that was imposed on the entire list of Comintern parties. The purges, the killings, the terror, and the increasing gigantism of the state and its repressive apparatuses were the logical outcome of such wrong theoretical views, which were, however, up to a certain extent forced upon the Stalinist leadership, as it inherited all the problems laid on the socialist building by the civil war, imperialist invasion and the tactical retreats of NEP and negative military treaties.

The first of the two cds features German pianist Steffen Schleiermacher playing piano sonatas and nocturnes by Sergei Protopopov (whose track starts like a black metal arpeggio!), Alexander Mossolov, Arthur Lourié and Nikolai Roslavetz. It is piano music based on modernism and futurism, with atonalities and very dark moods.

1994 cd on hat[now]ART.



The second cd features more music by Alexander Mossolov (very very bleak), Arthur Lourié, Nikolai Roslavetz, and the unbelievably beautiful tracks of Leonid Polovinkin. 1999 cd on hat[now]ART.

Soviet Avant-Garde 1 download
Soviet Avant-Garde 2 download

Maurizio Bianchi - Dekadenz

Charming piano played by the man. 2009 CDR on Young Girls Records.

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