Pierre Henry - 'Mouvement-Rythme-Étude' (Philips)

I can't find any record of this particular edition anywhere online (spine/catalogue #6510 017) but it's well-known under the same title with a different cover. This edition may be a bit less attractive but the copy I found was in really nice shape and that's a good thing, because with Henry and similar musique concrete records, the space is important. Surface noise would get in the way of the echo, which resonates off of the gurgles and bloops that mostly populate this record. I can't imagine what it must have been like to see this dance piece being performed; I think a lot of this was recorded with a microphone in a room, because you really hear the echo, though maybe it's a tape effect. And Ninjinski was somehow part of it! As a non-visual source for psychedelic enjoyment, it's hard to get much better than records like this - eschewing any recognisable genre, including drone/noise, these are sounds assembled in a way that creates a whole new musical ontology. Which is why the title of this record is so apt - it seems bland at first, but fuck yeah it's all about movement and rhythm, and Henry is often thought of (by me, at least when I'm not thinking too deeply about him) as purely a technological innovator and not so much as a composer. And while an electronic record from the 70s with a track called 'Continuum' could be a stereotype, the sounds contained within are a far cry from cosmic synth rackeffects or freakazoid drone - its more like a strange object bouncing around several dimensions, occasionally refracting with the sound that you hear when MP3s are compressed poorly, except this was caused probably by Henry grabbing the spinning reel-to-reel loop with his hand (or some other such trick). There's an incredible amount of diversity across this record, and maybe that's the reason (along with the expense) that I've never hunted down any other Pierre Henry records: this is satisfying enough. 'Pureté' is maybe the most dazzling in terms of 'how the fuck did he do that', a constantly shifting series of mild sound-bumps, still sounding like a future we could only dream of even though it's been nearly half a century since it was recorded. The 'Adagio' pieces here refer to a traditional musical mode here, and that's another reminder of how this record reinvents music itself, the aforementioned ontology of its own. For people who are scared of the 'avant-garde', I'd recommend a dip into this record, because there's enough of an embracing of the fundamental concepts of 'music' here that it can be grokked by anyone with even a remotely open mind.

Group Ongaku ‎– 'Music Of Group Ongaku' (Seer Sound Archive)

1960 was a long time ago, even in the accelerated and compressed culture-span that has informed so much of my own accumulation here. And the first side of this record is a long 33 minutes recorded these 56 years ago, where all sorts of crazy echo-laden sounds are performed by the Japanese avant-garde of the time, in this case a six-person ensemble led by Takehisa Kosugi, later of the Taj Mahal Travellers. No instruments are credited on 'Automatism' or 'Object' but we can hear all sorts of things, and the historical liner notes (on this less-than-legitimate reissue) tell us some of what is used. It's not recorded so well, at Shukou Mizuno's house, so it feels like a strange distant radio broadcast. I'm reminded a bit of Cage's Variations IV, perhaps in the static-laden, wooly quality of the sound as well as the wonder as to what produces the sounds. There's a lot of voice as well, hollering and grunting, and it feels serious and playful at the same time; one would guess that tapes and other recordings make up about half of the sound, thus being a live electro-acoustic improvisation and a quite early one as well. You could even imagine it being scary, audio terror from a past era, if you tend towards fear in your curiosity. The b-side is the two-part 'Metaplasm', recorded a year later with a slightly different lineup and with instrumentation credited. And a good thing, these notes, as it's a significantly more 'instrument'-based approach, with clear saxophone solos (by Kosugi and Yasunao Tone), plucking about on guitars and cellos, and a piano. This has a unsurprisingly 'open' feel, with the musicians taking their time to feel out space and interact without stepping on each other's toes. It's shocking how much this sounds like today's "non-idiomatic improvisation", as absurd as that term may be; could this just be a human-nature blueprint for how to approach open sound? The second part of 'Metaplasm' is where the tapes come in, and it continues the exploratory vibe, this time through machinery. Remember, this was recorded before the Beatles hit and when rock music was not much (if any) of an influence on these artists; it's an avant-garde that feels pure and untouched by commercialism or marketing. 'Ongaku' means 'music' in Japanese, so the name of the group is even a bit ironic, or a bit generic; I'm not quite sure which.

Commuters (Amphibious)

This is one of the more obscure entries from the Dagmarverse, by which I mean the spiraling discography of the great Dagmar Krause. Commuters is a trio of her + Ronald Heiloo and Harold Schellinx, and it's a 45rpm concept-EP, with ten songs telling the stories of abstract, well, commuters, I guess. We learn about 'The Architect', 'The Poet', etc - with pretty much all of the music being electric piano played in various styles. It's a pretty great idea and it works well; the songwriting is full of strange chord changes, weird modes, and sudden tempo changes, yet Dagmar manages to convey something direct and beautiful despite the "classical avant-garde" nature. Commuters is a playful record - 'The Gentleman on the Stairs' bounces around like a cat with a ball of yarn, always elusive. Her Kurt Weill influence is pretty apparent here, both in the melodic inflections and in the way these are all narratives, and this of course reminds me of Art Bears, specifically The World As It Is Today - almost like these could be Art Bears demos, if Frith and Cutler were to sketch tunes on piano. 'The Man on the Island' is built around a swirling cloud of Cecil Taylor toneclusters, while others are very minimal on the piano - 'The Philosopher' is just a few errant notes to prevent a-capella, and 'The Priest' is barely there at all. Schellinx wrote all of the lyrics and this feels like a one-off fun project, though the notes indicate that it took about a week to record. My copy, unlike this photo I found, doesn't have any text on it, making it a mysterious, Residents-like object that I was delighted to find in a yard sale years ago (really!).