André Cholmoneley (guitar player in Project/Object) plays the guitar in DELICIOUS, a noisy, spaced-out, rock trio.
- FRI JUNE 5 2009 - Asheville NC -- Stella Blue, 11pm
www.myspace.com/delicious
AUGUST 2009 EUROPE
This comes as no surprise. The latest Zappa album has been bootlegged on vinyl.
It doesn't look bad if I may say so: 180 g vinyl, available in three colours (blue, black and yellow) - limited to 100 copies - and in black vinyl - limited to 200 copies.
Plus a booklet and two posters...
Octafish has a new album out. You might consider this quite spectacular, as their previous album got released about 10 years ago.
"Doktor Fleisch" is the third Octafish album and it's absolutely great.
Doctor Meat is a supber mixture of contemporary angular rock rhythms, jazz noises, eastern influences, and something that one might label "instrumental zappa weirdness".
Good grief... This is good...
Think of The Muffins, The Wrong Object, Flat Earth Society, X-Legged Sally, ... and add a little extra spice.
"Land Unter" and "Hai Girls" were pretty impressive albums. "Doktor Fleisch" beats them.
It's the best album I've heard this year!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Track 5 is a Zappa tribute. It's called "Thxfz" and it's nice little guitar piece that has Heiner Willers (on guitar) toying with various Zappa quotes and licks.
The icing on the cake.
Saturday august 22 2009 19h00
Prices : 20 € by evening. 2 evenings: 30 €
A bit over 10 years ago, John Hinds released "The Strangest Secret", the third album on the Omni Sonic label. Taking care of guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion, and aided by Peter Hinds on drums, John Hinds made one great album.
Where "Connections" and "Another Curiosity Piece" were very free and experimental, "The Strangest Secret" has a more jazz / blues / rock approach. The music itself reminds me a lot of Zappa's music.
This is the kind of stuff that I like: freaky solos, improvisations and motheresque fun.
This second release on the (John & Peter Hinds / Sun Ra Research) Omni Sonic label features the four musicians that could already be found on John Hinds' "Connections" album. This time, all of the compositions are by Plonsey / Hinds, and all of the musicians participate on the entire recording.
Experimental stuff. Worth diving into!!
1996 saw the first release on the Omni Sonic label: multi-instrumentalist John Hinds's "Connections".
This is experimental guitar music at its best. There's lots of influences all over the place: from free jazz and Sun Ra to noise and surf music ('Cosmo Surfing') or fusion ('Shifts').
I like it.
"Thoughts about stacking, stomping and starting out - 3 Sonatas for Piano" is the latest Frank Nuyts album.
I have seen Frank Nuyts performing contemporary music, I've seen him performing rock music with Hardscore and I have heard his compositions being performed by various arists.
Each and everytime Frank Nuyts keeps amazing me.
"Thoughts..." is a great piece of music. It's very hard to describe as the music changes and evolves all the time.
Melodies, rhythms and musical styles are mixed and blended. All for solo piano.
The result is an album that I will never be able to whistle, and I don't consider that a bad thing.
Recommended !!
When I reviewed this album a couple of days ago, someone mentioned that the tracks of this album are also available on Markus Stauss' site.
Here's some extra info from Markus on the subject:
- The mp3 downloads are for clubs and concert promoters and for the hardcore fans that couldn't wait etc. to hear a splash of our music. These files are in low quality (not only about the fact that mp3 is always lower quality than a real 16bit CD!!!). The final mix on the CD contains some aditional work e.g. to get more pleasure when play it very loud. The mp3 files sound horrible when you play them very loud on stereo equipment with real speakers. -
When I first heard the TZGIV demo in 2006, I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it was a nice little one-time-project. Who would have thought that this project would actually tour and would release a couple of albums...
November 2007, I saw TZGIV in concert in Baarle Nassau and I was really impressed. The band played a very varied set and there was a lot of room for improvisation.
One year later, the band performed (at least) two concerts where they performed a set of Zappa material. It's a part of the Waremme concert (2008/11/28) that surfaces on this album.
The choice of compositions is great:
The performance great to say the least. Four top musicians and the band has found a fine equilibrium between the beautiful themes and melody lines on one hand, and free and freaky improvisations on the other. I love it.
Essential !!
John French worked, toured and recorded with Captain Beefheart from the early years (1967) until Beefheart's "Doc At The Radar Station" (1978) album. The fact that he was also an important factor in how Don Van Vliet ideas and thoughts were to be translated and transcribed into music is still highly underrated.
During the late 80's John did two impressive progressive / experimental rock albums with Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser and Richard Thompson.
In 1995, he released his first solo album "Waiting On The Flame", followed by the Japanese-only "O Solo Drumbo" (a solo drum album !!) album in 1998.
In 2002, John was asked to put The Magic Band back together for a couple of shows. In the end, and not without any troubles, this evolved into more gigs and even some touring, the result of which can be heard and seen on two CDs and one DVD.
"City Of Refuge", John's latest album, links perfectly to the Magic Band project and to his early Beefheart days. For one, it's 'Drumbo' and not John French who made the album, and second, as he states on the sleeve notes: "I have returned to my roots."
It was 2004 when Malcom Mills of Proper Records learned that John French had been writing original material. He asked if he could hear some of it, and was impressed.
With the aid of Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad), Rockette Morton (Mark Boston), Ella Guru (Greg Davidson) and John Thomas, John French was able to have the music performed as he wanted it.The result is fantastic.
From the first note of 'Bogeyman', the music has the unmistakable sound of Drumbo's drumming. Zoot Horn Rollo's guitar on the left and Ella Guru's guitar on the right make it all sound like the pumping Magic Band blues train we all love so much.
Great songs, fine arrangements and superb performances. I've played the albums two times in a row, and I'm pretty sure that I'll be playing it a lot more in the near future.
Highly recommended.
http://www.properuk.com/
First of eventual 3 interviews from 1991 where Essra speaks of 1960's NY, Frank Zappa's biz-like ways & his invite to join The Mothers of Invention on the spot.
Hear their recording "Bizarre Beginnings" @
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw45qc...
Visit http://essramohawk.com/ to see Essra's credits including vocals on School House Rock plus as the songwriter of hit songs on the Pop, Rock, Dance, Rn'B, Country, TV & Kid Video charts.Song in background is "Making Time Stop"
on YT @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvLpmy...
info & YouTube movie: Frank from NY
Early March, Zappatika released "Live and Kicking" to coincide with their UK tour: London, Exceter, the Zappateers party in Manchester, Nottingham, ...
"Live and Kicking" offers 14 tracks, including a couple of Zappa songs.
I like what Zappatika does with the Zappa compositions. They get a bit of psychedelic / 70's treatment: laid back playing, fuzzy spacy solos,...
But the thing that does it for me, is the mix with their own tunes: 'Spanish Highwaz', 'Thru The Wormhole', 'Mahavishnu Mind', the hilarious (and very Cream-like) 'My Little Pony', 'Rainy Days', 'Space Flip' and the instant-classic 'The Ballad Of Leroy'.
Very nice!
You can still order this little nice little dittie throught the band's MySpace site:
Sun Ra talks and Sun Ra explains.
He talks about love, about beauty, about music, his influences and much more.
The album also includes some nice musical fragments, including a short (almost 5 minutes, but still way too short) piece that features Sun Ra, John Gilmore and Avreeayl Amen Ra.
A perfect mix.
The Sun Ra Research CDs are the audio versions of the fanzine with the same name.
Interviews, Sun Ra explaining stuff, and pieces of music.
Essential !!
The 2003 edition of the Uncool Festival was dedicated to Marshal Allen.
The 2008 edition of the ZXZW festival had the Arkestra performing almost every day of the week.John and Peter Hinds are known for their excellent Sun Ra Research CDs, and for the beautiful Sun Ra Research fanzine.
I only recently discovered that the Hinds Brothers not only had a great taste in music, but that they are great musicians as well. Search the YouTube catalogue for Hinds Brothers or for Sun Ra Research and you'll get some great sounds...
Imagine my suprise when "Dubmixer" hit my mailbox last week. "Dubmixer" is a CD by the Hinds Brothers. It got released in 2002 on their Omni Sonic label.
Reason enough to do a bit of investigation.
After a bit of googling, I think I've got the Omni Sonic label discography sorted out:
"Dubmixer" features John Hinds on piano, synth, bass clarinet, organ and percussion, and Peter Hinds on percussion and bass.
The music has a very electronical sound (as the synth is the main instrument) and it uses a lot of hypnotic and trance patterns.
"Dubmixer" probably is what dance music sounds like on the planet Saturn.
Interesting!
Read a feature on the Hinds Brothers in the SF Weekly:
http://www.sfweekly.com/2003-04-30/music/to-sun-ra-with-love/1
"Live At Montreux" got recorded during the Arkestra's 4th Europeon tour, live at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland on 1976/07/09.
The concert got taped and broadcast by Swiss television in the same year.
Also in 1976, Sun Ra released a 2LP set with recordings from this concert on his Saturn label. In 1978, Inner City Records re-released the album, and last year, the same Inner City Records label issued "Live At Montreux" on a 2CD set.
Free Jazz fans will probably have this album high up in their charts. It's a superb recording and has the familiar Sun Ra mixture of straight jazz tunes and free improvisions.
Originally released in 1978 (or was it 1976?), Sun Ra's "Cosmos" got released on CD in France on the Spalax Music label in 1999. A couple of years after that, it was made available on CD in Japan on the P-Vine lable. And last year, finally, it got re-released in the usa.
"Cosmos" is a Sun Ra classic. If you want to check out Sun Ra and his Arkestra, "Cosmos" is the path you want to take.
Swinging tunes with hard bop soloing. I love it.
Essential Sun Ra.