Mobilis in Mobili

Mobile blogging should be making my experience a lot more interesting.

Terry Riley’s “In C” is viewed as a modern serialist masterpiece, but say there isn’t a performance happening near you any time soon, indeed I’ve only seen it live once, where are we to go to hear the best recording?

My money is on this amazing record by the Shanghai Film Orchestra, where we can truly appreciate this monumental triumph of minimalism.

Simple shapes form a vast shimmering complexity – like light at dusk falling across a giant crystal calabi-yau manifold or hearing the drip off every leaf in a forest after rain. There’s something about the use of classical Chinese instrumentation – the bells, the zithers, the mouth organs, the mangluo gongs, that just sweeps you away. If I had synesthesia this is what the melting of the morning frost would sound like.

This recording was the first modern Western piece recorded in China, on the 25th anniversary of the composition of ‘In C’ – they certainly started off extremely strong.

The Riley composition is followed by two classical Chinese works – Music of a Thousand Springs and Zen of Water. This provide appropriate downtime after the sensory overload that is the Chinese Film Orchestra tackling serialism will full gusto. After the wave of delightful disorientation we get the slow chill room of water dripping down a cave wall, the soft droplet fall in slow motion.

Essential listening for modern classical enthusiasts, and to me the greatest version of “In C” recorded to date.

New domain for my site is www.mobilisinmobili.ca . Should be doing some more updating soon.

What if Suicide never died?

The answer brings us to Dirty Beaches.

Dirty Beaches is one of the more derivative bands I’ve heard in a really long time, but I don’t mean it in a pejorative way at all, because Dirty Beaches has brought derivation to the level of sublime genius.

In 1977 Martin Rev & Alan Vega recorded one of the rawest, slinkiest, punkest, most purely vicious albums of all time. The band and the record was called Suicide. With werewolf howls and husky whispers over a keyboard and a drum machine they proved you didn’t need guitars or glam to produce a wholly realized punk vision. The album dropped like a fully formed creature from the black leather lagoon and tore up the New York pavement.

After that record- they released some more, but it was never quite the same. Until now.

Alex Zhang Hungtai has recorded the follow up to Suicide’s self-titled debut and it’s brilliant. The twisted sonic additions, the neo-noir approach to 50s melodies, the coiffed hair, the puff of smoke, the dangling of a cigarette. Hungtai obviously loves rockabilly more than anyone since Lux Interior and it’s smeared all over this record like grease on a biker’s blue jeans. It’s low-fi, fuzzy, with it’s feet in the gutter and it’s head in the clouds of smoke from a gunning Harley.

This should be the soundtrack to a full length biker movie directed by Kenneth Anger.

Badlands Rising.

Dirty Beaches – Horses

I like unusual records. This album would serve well as the unofficial soundtrack to Ray Bradbury’s ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ – it’s really live recorded simply carnival music from the calliope. Even though the music is upbeat there’s something sparse and almost horrifying about it.

These are live recordings of the calliope, a mechanical almost clockwork instrument consisting of a series of steam whistles and played with a keyboard, in similar fashion to an organ. The music brings me into a weird zone, like just being on the edge of a fever dream that’s about to go wrong. This was recorded by Smithsonian Folkways live in 1961 at various carnivals around the US. The full album is available from their website.

“Proud men‥Call me the ‘Calliope’.‥ I am the Gutter Dream, Tune-maker, born of steam.‥ I am the Kallyope.” – V. Lindsay

Downtown Strutters Ball – Music of the Calliope

When you have someone with the creativity of Merrill Garbus her first two albums hit you like a one-two punch. While Bird-brains was originally indepedent – raw, recorded as simply as possible, but still with incredible song-structure and vocal performances, w h o k i l l sounds a bit more like someone who’s been practicing the sweet science.

As opposed to tiny apartment based recording in Montreal, Garbus has the full force of her label 4AD behind her with New, Improved Studios at her disposal. Having a proper studio gives her the proper technology to really explore her vocal range – from the soft innocent beginning of “Powa” to the full-throated Caribbean howl at the moon she’s capable of producing.

We still have the loops, experimental sounds, ukulele, and original song structures that made the first album such a success. This isn’t a commercial album, but rather an artist who really has the full range of gear to best express herself. The lyrics range from personal to political, with a bit less whimsy than her first outing. Some of this may be due to the influence of her new bassist and bandmate Nate Brenner, who co-wrote a few of the songs.

Strange, wonderful, and endlessly listenable, I’m sure this album will only propel Tune-yards on to greater success.

Tune-yards – Powa

I’m starting today – my 365 days project.

Every day starting today for 1 year I’ll be reviewing one album.

It could be new, it could be old, it could be weird, but always wonderful.

What originally started as popular street marketing technique has blossomed into some of the most vital music coming out of Japan today. Chindon’ya originated in turn of the century Osaka as sing-song street performers hawked goods through songs in public markets. The rise of the military in Japan during the 20s & 30s popularized the concept of the marching band and the bands grew in complexity and showmanship, until during the Golden Age of the 1950s where 18 piece marching bands in outlandish costumes.

It’s this model that bandleader Wataru Okhuma used to form Cicala Mvta, whose name is sourced from the epitaph of  well-known street singer Soeda Azembo (1872-1944). The quote is “The mute cicada that sang and his wife who loved him.”

When Western military music was imported via American soldiers after WWII they brought the invention of brass. Therefore we have a blend of Japanese and Western instruments – gongs with sax, woodwinds with junanagen.

Cicala Mvta blends a selection of folk music from around the world – traditional Japanese kabuki melodies with Klezmer, and Nepalese folk. Brecht becomes blues before swinging around to avant-garde jazz.

The pulse, the throb, the lights, comics, eskimos, freaks, and woodpeckers. This is the wild world of weird disco.

I was stranded in Disco. I went to dozens of darkened places with enough flashing lights to drive the average person mad. I felt lost in the pulse of sheer panic. – Martha Reeves

Today Mobilis in Mobili charts the unfamiliar waters of unusual disco tracks from the rare to the downright bizarre. Just lean back in your easy chair, relax and prepare to tread water, just don’t get lost, or do, in the pulse of sheer panic.

1. the Walker Brothers – Nite Flights – 1978
2. The Residents – Diskomo 2000 – 2000
3. Space – Magic Fly – 1977
4. Children of the Mission – Tears – 1972
5. Video Kids – Woodpeckers from Space – 1984
6. Was (not was) – Out Come the Freaks – 1981
7. Panatda – Flash Disco – 1960s-70s (from Thai Beat A Go Go Vol. 3)
8. Tony Holiday – Tanze Samba Mit Mir – 1977
9. Laid Back – White Horse – 1983
10. Yellow Power – Hai Samurai – 1982
11. Antony & My Robot Friend – One More Try – 2006
12. Amanda Lear – Comics – 1978
13. Public Image Ltd. – Death Disco – 1979
14. Overnight Band – Disco Tossed Salad – 1979

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