Harmonia - 'Music von Harmonia' (Lilith)

The Russians did a nice job reissuing this, ticking all of the boxes (nice hard cardstock LP gatefold, good thick pressing, that thing where they put a plastic liner inside the paper sleeve) and even including some nice liner notes by Asmus Tietchens, in both English and Russian.  If they have infiltrated the American government's executive branch, then hopefully we'll at least get some more nice reissues out of it! You may have noticed that I don't own any Cluster LPs, though that's due to circumstance, not because I don't like them. The pairing of Cluster with Michael Rother is a true supergroup and I think the stuff with Eno on the Harmonia '76 CD is pretty good, too. This first album really gels, and the few decades since have seen its ideas repeatedly return to the vanguard, cyclically.  'Sehr Kosmisch' is the homerun, an 11 minute piece in the middle of side 1 where slowly separating and re-converging drones float over a dark pulse, with some effected newagey keystrokes plinking about in the outer speaker space, a tickling of the higher consciousness. It sounds thick and staticky on vinyl, and after a lifetime of hearing beautiful and mysterious electroacoustic soundscapes, it ranks as one of the best. It feels energetic despite its slow momentum, crackling with electricity (as does the entire record). The way it slides into 'Sonnenschein' is a magnificent transition, as the latter track explodes with a strong mid-tempo rhythm and conjures images of colonial expeditions, space travel, and the promise of plastic. Side two are made up of shorter pieces and there's a lot of motorik Neu! sounds (like the nervous 'Veterano') and warm, analog synth/keyboard tones throughout. For artists that I always think of being 'electronic music', Cluster and Harmonia are remarkably organic, with recognisable instruments throughout and a nice wooden feeling. Yet there's a futurism at play here - just listen to 'Dino', which after 40 more years of experimental sound development still sounds fresh and inviting, like an undiscovered world. 

Brian Eno/Harold Budd with Daniel Lanois - 'The Pearl' (Editions EG)

It's a summer day and my window is open while I revisit The Pearl, an album that I remember as being deceptively intangible, always slipping away from a centre. With the voices of children, playing in a nearby park, creeping in with the various wind, traffic and bird sounds, it's difficult to distinguish Eno's production techniques  on this album from what's drifting in. Drift it does, and I realise as soon as I pull this off my shelf that I should really file it under B for Budd (and that is in fact where it will be refiled) but I imagined that one day I would have The Plateaux of Mirrors to put alongside it, which never happened. Budd's piano is the constant, sometimes glowing with a harmonic resonance that is beautiful if a bit easy. It's not a thick sound, and when it really gets sparse, as on 'Against The Sky', allowing its minor key intervals to wire-frame a mood, it's an exceptional entry. Daniel Lanois gets a co-credit here and I'm not sure what he's done and what's Eno, but it's all so delicate that I'm sure the party sessions afterwards were legendary. If you haven't heard this record but know anything about these musicians, you can probably guess what it sounds like. "New age" is the term often thrown about and it's definitely a step closer to it than than, say, Music for Airports - in terms of how 'active' it is, and how much it follows musical conventions of melody/harmony. It's somber as it should be, and because this is such a pre-defined concept there's no chances to be taken. I like this album - I don't listen to it regularly, but at any volume it has the power to completely transform a situation, even if it's more felt than heard. My Eno trip ends here as I don't think his later work tends to appear on vinyl, so no Nerve Net for us.

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!).

Birdsongs of the Mesozoic - 'EP' (Ace of Hearts)

I love Great Pop Things, the comic strip done by the dude from the Mekons, and if he ever did one for Birdsongs of the Mesozoic the subtitle would be "They tried to change the world through dinosaur masks and embracing chamber music!". Of course it's the Mission of Burma connection that lodged these records in my consciousness, but I'm glad for it. They came to me at a time when I was looking for something smarter to go with my meat and potatoes rock/punk diet. Instrumental rock music with synths, lots of tape manipulations courtest of Martin Swope, and synths/keyboards to boot - what could go wrong? Now I hear this as fitting into that whole New York school of art music, like Elliot Sharp and Glenn Branca, though I don't really know why since it's a lot more rock than I remember it being. Not stadium-filling, Aerosmith-style rock, but rather the Henry Cow/Crimson variant. Though they're not afraid to use canned/synth drums, which provide a weird plastic centre over which 'Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous' can ebb and flow. I also like how 'Transformation of Oz' has this manic piano breakdown where Roger Miller is bashing about on some tom-toms and then it cuts out into a more elliptical, neo-classical piano solo - and then the riff comes back in. Martin Swope actually plays electric guitar here, so all of the Burmaisms have been inverted. I used to spin the full-length quite a bit but this EP is less known to me. A shame too, cause 'Drift' is a truly lovely seaside raft in turbulence. This EP is rather dominated by Roger Miller's piano, which sounds great though slightly Windham Hill at times. When complemented by Karen Kaderavek's cello on 'The Orange Ocean', I can't help but think of this music as a reaction to punk's naievete. Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, despite their dinosaur schtick, are the first few steps towards the indie-classical hybrid that got big about fifteen years later - artists like Louisville's Rachel's and maybe even you could throw Godspeed You Black Emperor into that category. These five songs pass by relatively quickly, but there's a full-length just around the corner.