" – Peu importe d’où l’on vient. Il n’y a pas de tonique. Le thème et son développement ne sont qu’un mirage…
Il y a une musique toujours inattendue.
– Et les dissonances ?
– Dieu les a créées, elles aussi…"
Jaume Cabré - "Voyage d'hiver" - 2014

”La terre, il se pourrait bien après tout que ce soit une espèce
de merveilleux petit appareil enregistreur, plaçé là par on ne sait qui,
pour capter tous les bruits qui circulent mystérieusement dans l’Univers.”
Pierre Reverdy - ”En vrac” - 1929

”J’entends tous les bruits de la terre grâce à mes oreilles et mes nerfs de cristal
dans lesquels circulent le feu du ciel et celui des volcans.”
Michel Leiris - ”Le point cardinal” - 1927

"L'écoute, c'est l'ombre de la composition"
Pascal Dusapin - 2008

"Go, go, go! ... Go! go! ..."
John Lee Hooker"

 

30/09/2012

Jesus, joy of man's desiring

Amazing installation!
A giant xylophone playing the Bach's "cantata 147" excerpt in the middle of a forest.
An idea of Morihiro Harano commissioned by the Japanese mobile operator NTT Docomo.


     by "everyday listening"

29/09/2012

Arguments for Vinyl


HERE'S HOW RECORDS GIVE YOU MORE OF WHAT YOU WANT:

1. THEY'RE‘YOUR BEST ENTERTAINMENT BUY. Records give you top quality for less money than any other recorded form. Every album is a show in itself. And once you've paid the price of admission, you can hear it over and over again.

2. THEY ALLOW SELECTIVITY OF SONGS AND TRACKS. With records it's easy to pick out the songs you want to play, or to play again a particular song or side. All you have to do is lift the pick-up arm and place it where you want it. You can't do this as easily withanything but a long-playing record.

3. THEY'RE CONVENIENT AND EASY TO HANDLE. With the long-playing record you get what you want to hear, when you want to hear it. Everybody's familiar with records, too. And you can go anywhere with them because they're light and don't take up space.

4. THEY'RE ATTRACTIVE, INFORMATIVE AND EASY TO STORE. Record albums are never out of place. Because of the aesthetic appeal of the jacket design, they're beautifully at home in any living room or library. They've also got important information on the backs — about the artists, about the performances or about the programme. And because they're flat and not bulky, you can store hundreds in a minimum of space and still see every title.

5. THEY'LL GIVE YOU HOURS OF CONTINUOUS AND UNINTERRUPTED LISTENING PLEASURE. Just stack them up on your automatic changer and relax.

6. THEY'RE THE PROVEN MEDIUM. Long-playing records look the same now as when they were introduced in 1948, but I there's a world of difference. Countless refinements and developments have been made to perfect the long-playing record's technical excellence and ensure the best in sound reproduction and quality.

7. IF IT'S IN RECORDED FORM, YOU KNOW IT'LL BE AVAILABLE ON RECORDS. Everything's on long-playing records these days... your favourite artists, shows, comedy, movie sound tracks, concerts, drama, documented history, educational material... you name it. This is not so with any other kind of recording.

8. THEY MAKE A GREAT GIFT because everybody you knowloves music. And everyone owns a record player because it's the musical instrument everyone knows how to play. Records are gifts that say a lot to the person you're giving them to. And they keep on remembering.

AND REMEMBER... IT ALWAYS HAPPENS FIRST ON RECORDS'

CBS - 1969

28/09/2012

Conférence sur rien



The movie "Conférence sur rien", a french reading by Eve Couturier of the John Cage's "Lecture on nothing"
was part of the movies' program in the exhibition "Cage's Satie: composition for museum" curated by Laura Kuhn, director of the John Cage Trust in New-york, at Lyon (France) at the contemporary art museum "Mac-Lyon" december 2012.

movie by Jean-Jacques Palix
french translation & lecture par Eve Couturier 



duration : 52 minutes 

Paris - 2002
 

Secret language



Our friend David Coulter associated with Ralph Carney, well known for his long association with singer Tom Waits ("Raindogs"), have combined their creativity and talents for this new CD "Secret language" at Trestle records
Didjeridoo, saxophones, clarinets and winds!



One of the tracks was released on The Wire Tapper 30 (september 2012)



26/09/2012

Jesse

A pure beauty by Scott Walker - a song included in "Drift" opus , one of my best CD in 2006



Nose holes caked in black cocaine

Pow! Pow!

No one holds a match to your skin
No dupe
No chiming

a way off miles off
No needle through a glove
Famine is a tall tall tower
a building left in the night

Jesse are you listening?

It casts its ruins in shadows
under Memphis moonlight
Jesse are you listening?

Six feet of foetus flung at sparrows in the sky

Put yourself in my shoes
A kiss - wet - muzzle
A clouded eye
No stars to flush it out
Famine is a tall tall tower
A building left in the night

Jesse are you listening?
It casts its ruins in shadows
under Memphis moonlight
Jesse are you listening?

Pow! Pow!

In the dream

I am crawling around on my hands and knees smoothing out the prairie
All the dents and the gouges
and the winds dying down
I lower my head
press my ear to the prairie

Alive

I'm the only one
left alive
I'm the only one
left alive
I'm the only one
left alive

25/09/2012

The Turin horse



The begining of the amazing last movie of Béla Tarr starts with the story of a horse, in Torino, which is violently whiped by his coachman. The story says that Friedrich Nietzsche who was there embrace the neck of the animal, before to burst out stobbing... before to lose his mind.

"Nietzsche fut assez fou pour pleurer auprès d’un animal, sous le regard ou contre la joue d’un cheval que l’on frappait. Parfois je crois le voir prendre ce cheval pour témoin, et d’abord, pour le prendre à témoin de sa compassion, prendre sa tête dans ses mains”.
Jacques Derrida - "L'animal que donc je suis"  - ed. Galilée - 2006
 
As usual, the floating camera of the great artist Béla Tarr, in an absolute fluidity, works to generate a sensitive journey in clouds, dreams, torpor and sublime emptiness' contemplation.
A continuous wind, provoked by an helicopter during the filming, as well a minimal musical phrase used as a metronomic counterpoint bring us in a luminous meditation about existence of human being.
A masterpiece!


24/09/2012

Girls' bands

      Mandoline club - 1920


      Temperance Ladies' Brass Band - Auckland - 1910
 

      Bura Ladies Brass Band  - Australia - 1915


     unknown band & location - 1932


     Kohala girls - Chicago  - 40s    >>>---<<<
 

     Trocadero ladies band  - Sydney - 1938


     Goldie and the Gingerbreads - 1964


     The Heartbeats - 50s



     The Honolulu Girls - Switzerland - 60s

22/09/2012

Cross-currents



"Cross-current", a new release of the french label Shiiin, with a piece of Carol Robinson and Cathy Milliken.
Both of them are playing 35 sequences of musical objects with their oboes and clarinets.  These sentences are played by random with a software in a computer.
The acoustic space can be changed, and the musical result is always unpredictable.
... and amazing... a real sensual immersion into the sound as well an aesthetic pleasure ...

"... the improbable, in other words, that which is" - Yves Bonnefoy


     Carol Robinson @ Souffle Continu record shop - 22 sept. 2012

21/09/2012

Bouba Sacko

 
Bouba Sacko was a malian legend, a virtuoso ngoni and guitar player, filmed by RTM.
He is here beside of the singer Sokona Sacko who represented the Kayes' region at the artistic biennale of Mali in the 80s.
He died last 2011 december.

18/09/2012

Ottorino African Jazz

  Gino Bordin with the "Ottorino African Jazz band",
  playing the musical saw


      picture extracted from the booklet of "Gino Bordin, virtuose de la guitare Hawaiienne"
      courtesy of Grass Skirt Records

17/09/2012

Gino Bordin

Gino Bordin, born in 1899 in Vicence (North Italia) started with his brother
in the "Ottorino's African Jazz ", an orchestra which mixed accordions, banjos, guitars, bùmbass with horn, as well musical saw played by Gino himself.
In the early 20s, he went in Paris to play banjo and musical saw, as well an impressive harp-guitar, at Bousca's, a Bastille's famous place for dancing in Paris where the french "musette" started to be fashionable.
He supported Antoine Bouscatel who was one of the masters of the "musette" (bagpipes from Auvergne, France) and Charles Péguri at diatonic accordion.

"C'est une valse qui chante"
by Gino Bordin (muiscal saw) and Charles Paknadel (violin)
Parlophone 80483 - 1930/1931 / courtesy of Grass Skirt Records





Then he started to play guitar in the Hawaiian style, and became successfull through his concerts, radio shows and records on his own name, as well accompanying known singers as Tino Rossi, Lucienne Delyle, as well accordion aces as Louis Ferrari, Gus Viseur, Fredo Gardoni and many others.

A reissue of Gino's acoustic steel guitar music from the 30s had been published by Les Cook, manager of Grass Skirt Records and our friend Cyril Lefebvre who signed the excellent booklet. 



excerpt of the tribute played by Loïc Hula Boy in L'isle sur la Sorgue, south of France,  last week-end, where was fixed a commemorative plaque on the wall of the house where Gino finished his life in 1977.
 

06/09/2012

Lloyd Miller

Lloyd Miller (b. 1938) is an american musician and brilliant ethnomusicologist
who received a doctorate in musicology with his thesis entitled "music and song in Persia".



He is also known as Kurosh Ali Khan, a name he used while hosting a prime-time television show in Tehran, Iran in the 1970s.

Lloyd Miller demonstrates how piano can be properly used to play traditional Persian music. 

05/09/2012

100 years

John Cage was born on the 5th september 1912, 100 years ago precisely.


Sonata V from "sonatas and interludes for prepared piano"
played by Bobby Mitchell.
(my best version is still by Gérard Frémy)

Beurdoquer

BEURDOQUER: v.tr. bringueballer, s'entrechoquer
origine : Saintonge


from performance "The great Learning - paragraph 5" at CAC Bretigny sur Orge - 16th may 2009
in the exhibition "Cornelius Cardew and the freedom of the listening"
photo: Steve Beckouet



GLAGEOTER: v.tr. se dit du bruit produit lorsqu'on traverse une flaque...
origine :Marne

04/09/2012

Berdailler

BERDAILLER: v.tr. S'est dit pour produire des sons désagréables en agitant des objets...
origine : Normandie



GLINGUER: v.tr. S'est dit pour émettre un bruit de ferraille...
origine : Marne

& une illustration avec nos amis  "Jeune fille orrible"
 

02/09/2012

Hygiaphone


L’Hygiaphone est né suite à l'épidémie de grippe de 1945  qui fit de nombreuses victimes parmi la population et contamina une grande partie des agents de vente de la SNCF.


01/09/2012

Microscopic grooves



Tim Sanders' microscopic photographs of two full rotations of the grooves within three different genres of vinyl records.
The grooves have been increased in scale from their original scale by 100.
This allows the viewer to understand how audio is translated when pressed into a vinyl record.
The patterns of grooves are explained and compared between genres of music.