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Dominique Lawalrée – Traces

Published October 1, 2012 contemporary European , electronic 9 Comments

Belgian composer, keyboard player and educator Dominique Lawalrée, born in Brussels in 1954, studied music in Namur and began composing in 1973. With a name inspired by his love of The Beatles (I Am the Walrus, 1967), Lawalrée launched Walrus records in 1976 when he was only 22 years-old. Walrus was the vehicle of choice for the release of his own music, though he also published a great 2xLP compilation with Baudouin Oosterlynck, Eric de Visscher and Robert Fesler in 1984 (W.L.S. 012/13). Lawalrée’s music until the mid-1980s is a delightful mix of synthesizer exploration in the vein of Brian Eno and Roedelius, piano minimalism à la Satie, as well as personal ideas in the form of field recordings, sound collages and spoken word – for instance, his 1983 mini-LP Six jours à Barcelone (6 Days in Barcelona) included bird sounds. In the 1980s, Dominique Lawalrée also collaborated with musical ensemble TEMV with a.o. composers Guy de Bièvre, Boudewijn Buckinx, Dieter Kaufmann, Jurgen Rapp or Arsène Souffriau. Electroacoustic music composer Annette Vande Gorne was the sound engineer on several Lawalrée LPs of the 1980s like Taciturne and Litanies du Monde à Venir. At the end of the 1980s, Lawalrée changed the name of Walrus to Music Today, the label through which he releases all his music… today (see website).

♫ Published in 1978, Lawalrée’s 3rd LP Traces – the 4th Walrus release – is an instrumental sound diary of sorts, with tracks relating to personal experiences, memories and anecdotes. Immediately striking is the palpable nostalgia permeating this disc, a trait typical from this composer. The LP is also notable for the variety of techniques and experiments, something which will be less present in later solo piano albums. From the backward running tape and electronic drone of the opener to the noisy sound collage of tr. #5 K7 Music, or the atonality and furious dissonant piano chords of #4 First Meeting, the LP clearly documents early experiments in music making. Some tracks also pay homage to Lawalrée’s major influences, like #07 Hello, You’re The W. inspired by The Beatles, and #8, a Satie homage. The strange wordless singing on #06 Pleine Lune reminds Baudouin Oosterlynck’s own work with disabled people.

01 Post-Scriptum (4:45)
02 Well ! (:32)
03 Waiting For The Bus (3:48)
04 First Meeting … (5:12)
05 K7 Music (6:18)
06 Pleine Lune : Insomnie (2:33)
07 Hello, You’re The W. (5:08)
08 Musique Satieérique (1:46)
09 Et Caetera (1:36)
10 Mouvements III (2:21)
11 Minimum II (2:36)
12 Le Temps Fuit Sans Retour (4:42)
13 For Alexandre (1:31)

Total time 43:00
LP released by Walrus, ref. W.L.S. 004, Brussels, Belgium, 1978

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Partial discography until 1985
(all on Walrus Records):

1976 Infinitudes, W.L.S. 001
1977 Le choix du titre est un faux problème, W.L.S. 003
1978 Traces, W.L.S. 004
1978 Brins d’herbes, W.L.S. 005
1979 Vis-à-vis, W.L.S. 006
1980 Vice-versa, W.L.S. 010
1982 Clandestin, W.L.S. 011
1983 Six jours à Barcelone e.p., ref. S1
1984 Still life, W.L.S. 012/13
1984 Taciturne, W.L.S. 014
1985 Litanies du Monde à Venir, W.L.S. 015

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Baobab issue #9 – Altagor

Published September 27, 2012 French , sound poetry 6 Comments

French proto-Lettrist poet Altagor (real name Jean Vernier, 1915-1992) used onomatopeia in his “Métapoésie” writings and an invented language in the “Parole transformelle” visual poetry. Also an instrument builder, he accompanied his poetry readings on the pantophone, a stringed, bowed instrument, and the plectrophone, played with a stick. For an introduction to the sound world of Altagor, please refer to the article and sound file on Continuo-docs.

♫ This cassette is an overview of Altagor’s Métapoésie. The amateurish technical realization is probably the work of Altagor himself. It starts with a short excerpt from Simonia, a poem from the 1950s, supposedly longer than 10,000 verses. Simonia was the chthonian goddess Altagor invented during his frequent walks in Les Eparges forest in North-Eastern France. After a brief Plectrophone solo, Altagor then performs a choice of his Métapoésie poems with Plectrophone accompanyment.

[Thanks to Giuseppe for this rarity]

01 Simonia (2:13)
02 Plectrophone solo (:34)
03 Métapoésie I (12:50)
04 Métapoésie II (8:05)
05 Métapoésie III (4:06)
06 Métapoésie IV (7:50)
07 Métapoésie V (8:00)
08 Métapoésie VI (3:18)
09 Métapoésie VII (2:05)

Total time 49:00
Cassette released by Ed. Pubbliart, Reggio Emilia, Italy, 1981?

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Baobab issue #1

Published September 24, 2012 sound poetry 4 Comments

A precursor of the 3ViTre sound poetry compilations (see previous post), Baobab, subtitled Informazioni fonetiche di poesia, was a sound poetry cassette magazine founded by Adriano Spatola (1941–1988) in 1979 in Reggio Emilia, in the Emilia-Romagna region in North Italy. Spatola had been publishing poetry magazines and chapbooks since the early 1960s in Bologna and Milan. In 1968, with brothers Maurizio and Tiziano, he founded Geiger, a publishing house dedicated to avantgarde writing (see here). After the death of Spatola, 3ViTre publisher Enzo Minarelli took over the magazine and published new issues well into the mid-1990s.

♫ The first issue of Baobab is an international compilation gathering various languages and various takes on sound poetry, from mere reading to tape manipulation, with the B-side dedicated to Italian sound poets. The diversity of onomatopeia, syllables and sound approaches only adds to the variety on offer here, from Fluxus artist Dick Higgins’ hushed, indecipherable murmurings to Adriano Spatola’s homage to Futurist Marinetti’s Zang Tumb Tumb onomatopeic poetry in the excellent Aviation Aviateur (tr.#15). This is the true spirit of Parole in libertà.

[Thanks to Giuseppe for this rarity]

01 Gerald Bisinger Gespräche Gespräche (3:49) listen here
02 Julien Blaine W M Quinzième 1, 2, 3 (1:55)
03 Julien Blaine Conversation Brésilienne 1977 (1:26)
04 Julien Blaine Comptes Rendus 1, 2 (2:53)
05 Fulvio Abbate & Francesco Gambaro Cotito (4:56)
06 Dick Higgins Glass Lass (4:00)
07 Harry Hoogstraten Sara Mi Na Nah 1, 2, 3 (1:36)
08 Harry Hoogstraten The Do-Dah (:51)
09 Harry Hoogstraten Celebrations Galore (1:02)
10 Harry Hoogstraten For The Painter’s Colors (1:39)
11 Harry Hoogstraten Venice Already (1:17)
12 Giulia Niccolai Toti Scialoja (2:55)
13 Giulia Niccolai Maria Theresopiel (2:09)
14 Giulia Niccolai In The Downs (:57)
15 Adriano Spatola Aviation Aviateur (5:55)
16 F. Tiziano Tramgedy (4:01)
17 F. Tiziano To Type To Hit (3:21)
18 Ivano D’Aurelio Concerto Per Stockhausen (2:02)
19 Arrigo Lora Totino Discussione Del Duemila (1:35)
20 Arrigo Lora Totino Dibattito In A (1:24)
21 Arrigo Lora Totino Odissea (:56)

Total time 50:40
Cassette released by Ed. Pubbliart, Reggio Emilia, Italy, 1979

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Baobab cassetography (tbc):

1979 Issue #1 “Antologia internazionale”
1979 Issue #2 “Antologia internazionale”
1979 Issue #3 “Oggi poesia domani”
1980 Issue #4 “Il dolce stil suono”
1980 Issue #5 “Antologia internazionale”
198? Issue #6 Arrigo Lora Totino
198? Issue #7 “Transuraniche”, dir. Luciana Arbizzani
198? Issue #8 “Antologia”
198? Issue #9 “Altagor: Métapoésie”
198? Issue #10 “Antologia internazionale”
198? Issue #11 “Baobab Femme”
198? Issue #12 “Alle Fonti Della Poesia Sonora”
198? Issue #13 “Antologia”
198? Issue #14 “Antologia internazionale”
198? Issue #15 “Antologia internazionale”
198? Issue #16 “Antologia internazionale”
198? Issue #17 “Canto Dell’Anello”
198? Issue #18 “Storia della Poesia Sonora”
198? Issue #19 “Baobab Festival”
198? Issue #20 Adriano Spatola
1991 Issue #21 “Baobab Italia ’90-’91”, 4xk7 set
199? Issue #22 “Voci Ispano-Portoghesi”, 3xk7 set
1994 Issue #23 “L’incanto del verso”, 4xk7 set
199? Issue #24 Luigi Pasotelli
199? Issue #25 “I Nuovi Mondi (The New Worlds)”, 4xk7 set
199? Issue #26 “Europa Cavalca un Toro Nero”
1995 Issue #27 “Italia 1995”
199? Issue #28 “Demain Encore”
199? Issue #29 “L’Europa Sonora”
199? Issue #30 “Whenwordies“

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Various – Savoy Sound Wave Goodbye

Published September 20, 2012 avant rock 7 Comments

In the early 1980s, San Franciscan label Go! Records, ran by Olga Carpmill-Gerrard and husband Gerry, published a handfull of discs by Canadian new wave band Moev, as well as compilation LPs documenting various SF new wave and punk-rock bands (see discogs). The Savoy Sound Wave Goodbye compilation is one of them, and includes bands who played at the short-lived Savoy Tivoli concert venue on Grant Avenue (1980-81). It includes, among others, bands from Subterranean, Adolescent and Ralph Records.

♫ The two Tuxedomoon tracks are brilliant reminders of how the band sounded on stage before they left for Europe. The following acts are less polished than Tuxedomoon and closer to what we know today as post-punk. Somewhere between punk-rock and progressive rock, The Sleepers‘ epic, 9mn track blends Zenith and Theory, two excerpts from their 1981 LP on Adolescent Records titled “Painless Nights”. The reggae of Earl Zero and Skankin’ Babylonian will be a distraction for many, yet the publishers of this record decided it was part of the legacy of The Savoy. Charles MacMahon performs a solo on didgeridoo with added sound effects and also appears on the following track, Snakefinger‘s Culprit Victim. The Mutants ‘ track Furniture is a hi-energy punk-rock song – readers of this blog might remember The Mutants featured John Gullak, founder of A.R.P.H. tapes and the Audio Arm cassette series (see previous post). It all ends with a lock groove of an exquisite synthesizer loop by Eazy Teeth (see their Car Noise video below).

[Thanks to reader Jim for the correction.]

01 Tuxedomoon Music #1 (3:07)
02 Tuxedomoon Jinx (4:51)
03 Cipher Cymetic Mambo (4:06)
04 The Sleepers Zenith/Theory (9:17)
05 Earl Zero Visions of Love (7:00)
06 Skankin’ Babylonians Rough Rider (2:50)
07 Ultrasheen Inferno/Raceway (4:40)
08 Charles McMahon Journey Home (1:57)
09 Snakefinger Culprit Victim (1:57)
10 Mutants Furniture (2:38)
11 Eazy Teeth Taste for Space (4:00)

Total time 47:40
LP released by Go! Records, San Francisco, USA, 1981

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Above: Eazy Teeth – Car Noise, 7in, Dental Records, 1980 (b-side here)

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Byrd Hoffman School Of Byrds – The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin

Published September 17, 2012 théatre sonore 4 Comments

The Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds was an artist community living and rehearsing in a disused, three storeys warehouse on 147 Spring St, NYC in Lower Manhattan, with a performance space on the ground floor. The School was formed by painter, contemporary artist and stage designer Robert Wilson, born in Waco, Texas in 1941, and named after Texan dancer Byrd Hoffmann, who cured Wilson from a stammer in 1958. Wilson moved to New York in 1961 to study at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute and with choreographers George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham. In 1968, he adopted deaf-mute African American boy Raymond Andrews and, in the early 1970s, autistic teenager Christopher Knowles, born 1959 in New York. In 1968, with these people and other disabled people he met in the streets or Harlem public hospitals, Wilson formed The Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds. The troupe was active between 1968 and 1975, producing several ground-breaking plays like The King of Spain or The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud (a 12-hour play), both in 1969, the legendary “silent opera” Deafman Glance in 1971, and the 7-days play KA Moutain and GUARDENIA TERRACE in 1972. In 1975, Wilson started collaborating with Philip Glass to the stage design of Einstein on the Beach, premiered 1976, and The School of Byrds was turned into a foundation.

Produced in 1973, The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin incorporates scenes from previous plays as well as new material. You can see photos of the production on Robert Wilson’s website. The opera lasted 14 hours – the premiere at Brooklyn Academy of Music started at 7pm and ended at 9am the next morning. Allen Ginsberg claimed to be one of the three spectators who stayed for the entire night. Ginsberg and Wilson would later collaborate on Cosmopolitan Greetings (source).

♫ Bob Wilson’s plays of the 1970s are famous for their extended periods of silence, but this self-released LP, collecting sound excerpts from The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, focuses on the various voices and personalities taking part in the play, while also presenting interviews and incidental music. The cast includes a number of disabled people in addition to the aforementioned autistic kids, plus interviews conducted in NY hospitals. Some voices are submitted to sound treatment, like the proto-plunderphonic #7 Times ; #8 An and #16 Opera are country songs with shouts ; #6 Cave is a piano solo and #14 Stalin is a violin solo. There is no obvious plot, rather an amalgamation of incongruous shouts, impenetrable speech and strident yelling. Coming in plain white cover without information, this is an extremely unusual record, one of the most radical artifacts in the Broken Music catalogue. To this day, it still defies comprehension and what we deem acceptable as theater.

01 The (2:44)
02 Beach (3:33)
03 Life (:50)
04 Drawing Room (2:20)
05 And (2:03)
06 Cave (4:04)
07 Times (2:54)
08 An (2:54)
09 Forest (3:18)
10 Of (3:15)
11 Temple (1:10)
12 Joseph (4:13)
13 Bedroom (2:02)
14 Stalin (3:15)
15 Planet (:20)
16 Opera (4:52)

Total time 43:40
Self-released LP, NYC, USA, 1973?

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Marran Gosov – BabyMann

Published September 13, 2012 folk music , incredibly strange music 3 Comments

Self-published in 1977, the Baby Mann LP was the debut release of actor and film maker Marran Gosov (born 1933) and part of his “Dilettantische Lieder” project which included song cycles and home-made short films of selected songs (see previous post). An intensely nostalgic disc, Baby Mann was composed in memory of his mother and refers to the period when Gosov left Bulgaria to emigrate to West Germany in 1960, leaving behind his younger brother Sehn, whom he met again for the first time in Munich in 1973. In Baby Mann, no mention is made of Marran’s father, for whatever reason.

♫ Instrumentation includes acoustic guitar, violin, synthesizer, sound effects and voice, all played by Gosov on re-recording. The violin and synthesizer are treated with generous doses of reverb, giving a rather dream-like quality to the music. The synth often sounds like a musical saw heard in the background, mirroring the psychological, self-analyzing lyrics. In these songs, Gosov’s warm and beautiful voice is of course the main element. More approachable than Vocoding Life, this record is nonetheless a rather overwhelming experience.

01 Lampenfieber (7:53)
02 Clown (3:52)
03 BabyMann (2:36)
04 Kino (5:20)
05 Nehmer gebend (:51)
06 Knoten (6:19)
07 Daneben (4:28)
08 Kusswunde (:44)
09 Walzerflucht (10:03)

Total time 42:00
Self-released LP, Munich, West Germany, 1977

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Marran Gosov discography:
1977 BabyMann: Dilettantische Lieder
1978 Steine kitzeln: Dilettantische Lieder II
1980 Vocoding Life/Psycho-Akustik

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Radical Glass Music #6

Published September 10, 2012 glass music 2 Comments

The 6th installment in our Radical Glass Music series (#1|#2|#3|#4|#5), this episode welcomes glass sound experimentalists from avantgarde music circles and the art gallery world. Note all previous RGM compilations have been reuploaded earlier this year by several generous readers on the “2012 Re-ups” page. Artwork above after German kinetic and optical artist Adolf Luther (1912-1990). Since the 1960s, Luther has experimented with light and optical effect from concave mirrors, glass and lenses, in kinetic sculptures or installations. See German Wiki or English bio here.

01 Dieter Schrade Kristallstimmgabeln & Klangpyramiden (16:32)
02 Daniel Lentz Lascaux (9:24)
03 Roland Moser Stilleben mit Glas (16:41)
04 Agostino Di Scipio Stanze Private 1 & 2 (13:12)
05 Musica Elettronica Viva Spacecraft – live in Berlin, 1967 (13:48)
06 Dawn Scarfe Through the Listening Glasses: Landstrasse (14:05)

Total time 83:42
Compiled by Continuo, 2012

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Dieter Schrade Kristallstimmgabeln & Klangpyramiden (16:32)

German instrument builder and glass artist Dieter Schrade creates crystal diapasons (Kristallstimmgabeln) and crystal pyramids (Klangpyramiden) with unusually pure resonant properties used for healing and relaxation purposes. This is a montage of all the tracks found on Schrade’s sound gallery.

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Daniel Lentz Lascaux (9:24)

Included in US composer Daniel Lentz‘s album On the Leopard Altar on Icon Records in 1984, Lascaux is played on tuned wine glasses by Brad Ellis, David Kuhen, Arlene Dunlap, Jessica Lowe and Susan James, with additional studio post-production (sampler and keyboards) by the composer.

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Roland Moser Stilleben mit Glas (16:41)

Swiss composer Roland Moser, born 1943, was a member of Ensemble Neue Horizonte Bern. His track Stilleben mit Glas was created in 1970 in the Studio für Elektronische Musik in Cologne, and uses glass sounds only, some highly processed and some left as is. Despite the unique sound source, the piece is highly varied in textures and contrasted in dynamics. The track was included in the Ensemble Neue Horizonte Bern double LP on Jecklin, Switzerland in 1977.

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Agostino Di Scipio Stanze Private 1 & 2 (13:12)

Italian artist Agostino Di Scipio, born in Naples in 1962, uses glass jars and contact microphones to record ambience sounds from an art gallery, with added filtering and EQ, as Di Scipio is also an electroacoustic composer.

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Musica Elettronica Viva Spacecraft – live in Berlin, 1967 (13:48)

In Musica Elettronica Viva‘s first incarnation ca1967, Frederic Rzewski was playing a large glass plate with springs and contact microphones, whose scraping sounds were amplified by Richard Teitelbaum’s “flashlights and photocell mixer”. This live recording of their classic Spacecraft brings glass music into noise territory. From the MEV 40 four CD set on New World Records, 2008.

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Dawn Scarfe Through the Listening Glasses: Landstrasse (14:05)

British contemporary artist Dawn Scarfe, born 1980, uses specially-conceived, Heimotz-type glass resonators to filter and enhance environmental sounds. This track is a recording of such resonators installed in a passageway near the Tonspur gallery in Vienna, Austria, in 2010 (see also here). Scarfe also performs on tuned wine glasses with Jem Finer, Dominic Lash, Mel Gough or Jane Dickson.

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Joan Fontcuberta & Das Synthetische Mischgewebe – El Jardi de les Delicies

Published September 6, 2012 sound art 8 Comments

The work of Spanish photographer and conceptual artist Joan Fontcuberta, born 1955, confronts a pseudo-scientific approach to a highly aestheticized pictorial technique. His photos and installations document the results of an imaginary biological or historical research with fake animal species or freaks out of a cabinet of curiosity – like in the 1980 boardgame Quirks. In a way, he applies to photography the same processes as Gregory Whitehead applied to language – focusing on dereliction, combining opposites and applying a distancing effect. Fontcuberta had been showing his work in art galleries since the early 1980s when he sat up this exhibition, held at Centre d’Art Santa Mònica gallery in Barcelona in 1990. Titled El Jardi de les Delicies, or The Garden of Earthly Delights, it was an installation of photographs, stuffed animals, slide projection and sound. The 20pp catalogue came with a 7-inch record by Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, then based in Barcelona and comprising Isabelle Chemin, Guido Hübner and Carlos Jovellar for this project.

♫ As the El Jardi de les Delicies exhibition included a number of frottograms, that is, negative Polaroid films rubbed against the actual object/animal represented on the film, the Das Synthetische Mischgewebe trio have recorded the rather physical process and came out with an immediate, vivid composition they called “frotto/fonos”, as they also presumably actually rubbed the microphone on stuffed animals or a serpent’s skin. Between noise and musique concrète, their soundtrack deliciously sounds like a microphone searching its way inside a fox’s earth!

01 The Growing (1:30)
02 Of the Results (3:27)
03 Into the State (3:41)
04 Of Hyperreality (1:21)

Total time 9:59
Catalogue+7inch record released by Generalitat de Catalunya and Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona, Spain, 1990

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Continuo’s weblog

Archive Page 2

Dominique Lawalrée – Traces

Baobab issue #9 – Altagor

Baobab issue #1

Various – Savoy Sound Wave Goodbye

Byrd Hoffman School Of Byrds – The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin

Marran Gosov – BabyMann

Radical Glass Music #6

Joan Fontcuberta & Das Synthetische Mischgewebe – El Jardi de les Delicies

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