Manafonistas

Storytelling with slowly burning songs (Or: how to make radio magic)

There are some radio shows in the world that ignore the limitations of genres. For instance, Fiona Talkington´s “Late Junction” (BBC) or Michael Engelbrecht´s “Klanghorizonte” (Deutschlandfunk). A song by Mark Hollis (Talk Talk) can be played in a row with a John Cage piano track, an interplanetary Sun Ra excursion, Brian Eno´s “Lullaby for the End of the World”, some weirdness from the infamous “Punkt” family, an ECM classic from the 70´s – and a field recording from the Outer Hebrides. The question is how to create a unified vison from such different sources without delivering a “high brow” post-modern exercise in “anything goes”. One answer: you have to spend a lot of time on the “sequencing” of the tracks, and the stories you´re telling. In fact, the future of non-mainstream radio is in parts connected to old traditions of griot, campfire stories, and very personal contributions of the “nighthawk” at the microphone. Listen to a special “radio perfomance” by Michael Engelbrecht that will combine controversial thoughts on music, with a series of tracks from the broad field of “textural minimalism” – and some late night stories told in the middle of the day!

(…)

And, Brian, in a kind of Borgesian fantasy, I always dreamt of this imaginary work:

The title, the musicians, the instruments, the tracklist and the cover of one of my favourite future records that will never see the light of day

Brian Eno w/ Robert Wyatt and Arve Henriksen: Black Linings

Brian Eno: comp, vocals, treatments
Robert Wyatt: vocals,  percussion
Arve Henriksen: trumpet, vocals
Alison Statton: guest vocals on „Brazilian Pepper Dream“

Tracklist:

– Below The Waterline
– In Spanish Moss
– Jumble Of Shacks
– Brazilian Pepper Dream
– Next Small Thing
– Snow Dance
– The Scheme Of Things
– Growing Through Holes
– A Semicolon In Between
– Buried In Mud

This sounds fantastic Micha. I love the idea of a radio DJ being an electronic Griot. That makes perfect sense to me – a DJ is somebody who connects dots you hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t ever thought could be connected. Someone who makes new shapes in the culture.

I’m also enjoying thinking about the Great Unmade Album you’ve described above. I think i can already imagine ‚The Scheme of Things‘ and also ‚Growing Through Holes‘. By strange coincidence I just wrote to Robert W … I think I’ll send him this as well. He needs a bit of cheering up at the moment, having just broken a leg.

Special requests: Leo Abrahams on guitar, and Jan Bang doing what he does.

XXBrian

Die erste LP, die wir unserem Sohn schenkten, war „Stop making sense“ von den Talking Heads. Unsere Tochter war Roxette Fan. Ich begleitete sie auf alle moeglichen Roxette Konzerte und fand diese Tenniewelt sehr reizvoll.
Wir diskutierten heute, welchen musikalischen Kanon wir unserer Nachwelt als Erbe hinterlassen sollten.

Hier meine ersten Vorschlaege:

Bob Dylan: Masters of war, Hard rain is gonna fall und Mississippi
Neil Young: Rockin‘ The Free World
CSN&Y: Teach your children well, Find the cost of freedom
Peter Gabriel: Biko
Kinks: Everybody is a hero, Don’t forget to dance
Joni Mitchell: California
Zappa: Brown shoe’s don’t make it
Wilco: I’m a wheel
Rolling Stones: White horses
Beatles: In my life

Was sind denn die wirklichen Musts aus unserem Erbe?

Habe beim Umsortieren eines Regals ihre private E-Mail-Adresse aus der Zeit vor elf Jahren gefunden. Große Chance! Fortsetzung folgt.

When I woke up this morning, I was starting the Lake Radio (see our blogroll), and what caught my ear immediately: an uplifting Eno song from Another Green World, and, afterwards, Peter Brötzmann and Han Bennink with some field-recordings and hard core free jazz eruptions from somewhere deep in the Black Wood, Germany. Funny, if you don’t try to make sense out of it. Sometimes it’s uplifting to be part of a musical roller coaster. I do have small reservations about the multi-coloured lake photografies (for me it looks more like the awful side of new age than the bright part of psychedelia, but, in this moment in time, let’s wait and listen for a while … A proposal for the designer: make it all in black and white! :)

 
Dear Micha

thank you for your thoughts and for helping us get the word out about The Lake.
Naturally we like The Lake in its current visual shape, but the idea is that we change the images when the timing feels right. Maybe one day it will be black and white!

all the best to you,
Rasmus

 

Dear Rasmus

Let me know the point of time your lake world turns into black and white. Or you’ve installed Eno’s 77 Million pictures. These lake photos don’t really work as undercurrent or visual counterpoint for the music.

I think there’s a sense of irony in your last sentence. I don’t expect any black and white before 2066. We will then, in the distant future, re-post you on our blog roll.

I also appreciate post-industrial, rotten areas, or landscapes in decay. Jon Wozencroft’s visuals for his Touch label undermine every new age connotation. Or stills from Tarkovsky films. If you want to rely on „lake motives“, let nighttime do the job!

Best, Michael

 

Another Punkt premiere: Laurie Anderson has invited Norwegian trumpeter/composer Arve Henriksen to join her Saturday performance at Fønix Kino. This will be the first time that the two collaborate. To experience this you’ll need either the Festival Pass, the Saturday Day Pass or the An Evening with Laurie Anderson ticket. If you also want to hear Laurie Anderson talk at the Punkt Seminar, you will have access there with the Festival Pass or the Friday Day Pass.

Luca Vitali – „Il Suono del Nord ‐ La Norvegia protagonista della scena jazz Europea” (The Sound of the North – Norway champion of the European jazz scene)

This is the first monograph dealing with the small, Norwegian jazz scene. A gap has finally been bridged with the reconstruction of a story which, by analysing the key moments, acknowledges the fundamental role played by Norway in Europe to emancipate jazz from its Afro‐American roots. The journey began in the 60s with the arrival in Oslo of George Russell, who brings us right up‐to‐date to give us one of the world´s most innovative and original scenes. The author transforms this journey into a passionate tale of concerts, musicians, clubs and labels, festivals and meetings … such as the one in Bologna between Manfred Eicher, future patron of ECM, and the very young Jan Garbarek, the prelude to a close association which was to open the gateways of the world to Norwegian jazz, bringing international success not only to Garbarek, but also to an entire „ECM generation“. The book endeavours to clarify the role of the numerous ECM recordings in Oslo and of the historic Club7 and Blå.

It analyses the most significant phases of a scene in which the tales and stories of some of its Norwegian and non‐Norwegian protagonists have been constantly evolving over the last forty years. It explores the connections between jazz and other musical genres, it analyses the influence of political movements, and attempts to reconstruct the environments – the clubs, dance halls, theatres and professional conditions.

Each useful element is processed as part of a global investigation, and close attention is paid to detail, which never becomes encyclopaedic. Numerous are the names, stories and musical experiences travelling across these pages, because this is Norway: a young country with an unobtrusive tradition and a proud people, which has lived in relative isolation from the rest of Europe, endowed with a spirit of adventure which perhaps relates back to the Viking era. All this means that, today, Norway offers a highly effervescent scene with a powerful interior drive in search of a personal style. Mediated by its vocation for improvisation (the real essence of contemporary Norwegian jazz) this style is expressed in a universe of music that fuses together a vast panoply of sounds ‐ from Ligeti to Björk via Coltrane, King Crimson and Frank Zappa ‐ without the usual hang ups of: „Is this jazz, or is this not jazz?“.

Publisher: Auditorium Edizioni

Preface by Paolo Fresu, introduction by Fiona Talkington (BBC Radio3) and Jan Granlie (Jazznytt)

Zapp4 is a band with the line-up of a string quartet. It combines groove, improvisation, and fantasy with passionate solos. On stage the group is a blast: They interact with high speed and have a wide musical spectrum. No matter how wild or mild they get, there is always a poetic side to their music. Another striking item about the quartet is that all four members compose for the band. The uniqueness of the group and its repertoire makes Zapp4 very acceptable for a large audience including all sorts of music lovers. Because of this quality Zapp4 won the Sena Toonzetters Performers Award (a contemporary award for the best ensemble of the year) in 2012 and the Kersjesprijs (a prestiguous classical award) in 2005. The band continues to look for new adventures so there is much more to expect for the (near) future. Whoever is present at a Zapp performance will be guaranteed to leave the place with a big smile and freshly washed ears!

Zapp4 – The art of an improvising string quartet
 

The members of Zapp4 have gathered a broad variety of improvising styles, during the last 15 years. Not only as individuals playing jazz and improvised music in the dutch scene, but also in their projects as an ensemble they have developed a hybrid way of playing.

In this seminar Zapp4 will tell about their experience in this field of playing as a chamber music group. They show different ways of improvising and all kind of textures, colors and grooves which they use. Also they tell about their inspirations and play several pieces as examples of how they work and interact.

Laurie Anderson’s recording career, launched by “O Superman” in 1981, includes the soundtrack to her feature film “Home of the Brave” and “Life on a String” (2001). Anderson’s live shows range from simple spoken word to elaborate multi-media stage performances such as “Songs and Stories for Moby Dick” (1999). Anderson has published seven books and her visual work has been presented in major museums around the world.

In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her 2004 touring solo performance “The End of the Moon.” Recent projects include a series of audio-visual installations and a high-definition film, “Hidden Inside Mountains,” created for World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. In 2007 she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for her outstanding contribution to the arts. In 2008 she completed a two-year worldwide tour of her performance piece, “Homeland,” which was released as an album on Nonesuch Records in June 2010. Anderson’s solo performance “Delusion” debuted at the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad in February 2010. In October 2010 a retrospective of her visual and installation work opened in Sao Paulo, Brazil and later traveled to Rio de Janiero. In 2011 her exhibition of new visual work titled “Forty-Nine Days In the Bardo” opened in Philadelphia, and “Boat,” her first exhibition of paintings, premiered at the Vito Schnabel Gallery in New York. She has recently been appointed as a three-year fellow at both EMPAC, the multi media center at RPI in Troy, NY, and PAC at UCLA. Anderson lives in New York City.

Mike Harding (Touch) describes how changes over the past generation have affected the working relationship with artists and the impact this has had on their work. From analogue to digital (and back again?), there have been substantial changes in the way audio is perceived, marketed and consumed and this has had a pronounced and perhaps fundamental effect on the way artists work now.

Jana Winderen responds, describing her approach to her work, why she works like she does and how Touch has influenced her choices. Jana will describe how her investigations unfold and how the compositional process begins before anything may even be recorded. Also how format decisions are made for a new project, for public distribution of the work, whether commercial or not.

Both presenters will illustrate their talks with audio examples of these processes and respond to questions from the audience, some of whom may have been through this process themselves.

Henning Bolte is a music journalist and writer based in Amsterdam contributing to printmedia, online magazines and radio in The United States, The Netherlands and Germany. He curated the Amsterdam series Amsonanza and co-programmed / presented the pianolab.Amsterdam-series at Goethe Institut, worked as a jury member (a.o. Dutch VPRO Boy Edgar Award, Danish Annual Music Awards) and acts as advisor to the Arts Council of the Netherlands as well as to the Dutch Fund For The Performing Arts. He holds a Ph.D. in linguistics and had been long-standing affiliated to the University of Utrecht.

Seducing the seducer – a conversational navaid to Bangsonics

A conversation a time ago planted the seed to re-enter that realm and that mode to share (some of its) resonances and transpositions with people interested in the work of Jan Bang.

Our conversation will plumb the depths of electronic sound qualities and its shaping in improvisational action, touch upon issues as how to dig into (and trust on) the potentials of one’s intuitions, how to stay in concordance with one’s sense of form and to be aware it is a game played with the other(s) who have to be invited and drawn in. Related the tension of letting music happen and steering it determinedly will pass in review. The nature of melody, the quality of ether and the indeterminacy of form might be a punkt as well as the differences between the process of creation and the semiotics of interpretation.