Judging Records by Their Covers

My last post reminded me of finding Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass' Whipped Cream and Other Delights in a bargain bin in an Oxfam shop in the Lake District. I bought it purely because of the cover, thinking that even if it was awful, I could at least frame it to decorate my room.

It's a cover that has been parodied probably hundreds of times and Christian Marklay's collection of Whipped Cream covers and parody covers has even been exhibited at Exit Art in New York.

Marklay's article on the Whipped Cream cover can be seen here:
http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/3248/

As it happens, it's also a great album.

The Flock - Dinosaur Swamps

I dug this 1970 album called Dinosaur Swamps by The Flock out yesterday as I was going through my old vinyl. I remember picking this album up at a record standing the old Corn Exchange in Manchester because it featured Jerry Goodman, who later went on to play violin for Mahavishnu Orchestra.

I think at the time I bought it, I was a little disappointed that it wasn't an album of frenetic virtuosity like Mahavisnu's Inner Mounting Flame, but I soon came to realise that The Flock's idea of fusion was a very different beast. As well as the obvious Jazz, Rock and Funk influences you would expect to find on a Fusion album, there is also a very prominent Country sound and elements of Soul. There is also a real Zappa-esque sense of fun about the whole record. Check it out.

Far Out Space Oddyssey

I'm still a big fan of buying music on vinyl and part of the fun for me is making impulse buys based on album cover art.

In this particular case, I was passing Manchester's best (possibly only these days) independant Record shop, Piccadilly Records. Besides the obvious eye-catching nature of the cover art, I was atracted to the blurb promising "Psychedelic Folk, Electronica, Jazz and Rock from the Out There Edges of Brazil!". I mean, what's not to like there?

I must admit, I wasn't going into this completely blind (deaf?) as I'm a huge fan of Soul Jazz's Brazil '70 release of post-Tropicalia Brazilian Rock and their Nu Yorika album released in the '90s. Both great records with more amazing grooves than you can shake a dirty stick at.

Anyway, Far Out Spaced Oddyssey comes highly recommended by me. It's got great tunes and some amazing, and occassionally freaky, grooves. The final track on side, Diretiz Binario, has a groove that will have you checking that your record isn't skipping!!

Requiem by Steve Kilpatrick

Requiem by Steve Kilpatrick

Tokyo Yakimono

Tokyo Yakimono by Steve Kilpatrick

Wingbeats

The Wingbeats project is starting in earnest now. This is the music theatre project that I will be composing the music for and which we hope will form part of the 2012 cultural olympiad.

The themes athat at central to this music theatre project are:

• Flight in all its forms, includeing bird flight and manned/unmanned flight
• How can we fly without leaving the ground through movement, music, text etc.
• The landscape of the East Ridings area
• Vanishing

As part of our immersion into these themes, the librettist/director/producer/mastermind, Adam Strickson, and I spent the afternoon with Steve from the RSPB at Bempton Cliffs.

The point of the day was partly to get a sense of place, as our project is closely related to the East ridings area, and to learn a little about sea birds, their habits and their habitat. Steve was the perfect person for the job and very soon had infused us with his passion for birds and the natural world in general. Within no time, I found myself hugely excited at the prospect of spotting puffins, kittiwakes, herring gulls, gannets, guillemots, razorbills and fulmars.

As well as learning about the birds of the area, this trip also provided me the perfect opportunity to do some location recording. What is so rewarding about location recording is that the microphone functions like a lens in that it has a focussing effect on a particular sound, or group of sounds, that allows you to "see it" in a new way and with some opportunity to remove it from its natural context.

What I found so fascinating about the various calls of the sea birds at Bempton Cliffs was that their vocalisations were so noise-based and were rough, racous and screeching. We often associate birdsong with sweet, chirping, often meodic birds of the inland territories, which has resulted in birdsong featuring in music from the music of Haydn and Beethoven through to Messiaen in the 20th Century. Initially, I would have baulked at the idea of drawing inspiration from birdsong, but in this case, with my interest in noise, I am finding myself drawn to the prospect.

Residue: Voxare quartet at ICMC

On 3rd June this year, there was a special concert of music for strings and live electronics as part of the International Computer Music Conference in New York and I was lucky enough to have a piece included in the programme, along with music by Tommaso Perego (IT), Spencer Topel (USA), Marc Ainger (US), Tom Lopez (USA), and Neil Rolnick (USA). Sadly, due to technical issues, Marc Ainger's 13forLucky was dropped from the programme at the last minute.

The quartet selected to be quartet-in-residence for this years ICMC where the Voxare Quartet (http://www.voxarequartet.com/).

My piece was a piece for string quartet and electronics, entitled Residue, and was a collaborative project with my friend and colleague Adam Stansbie (http://www.composersdesktop.com/stansbie.html). The collaborative process worked this way; I wrote the music for the quartet and then Adam responded to that music with an accompanying part of electroacoustic textures and gestures built up from the sounds of string instruments that he had recorded.

Despite a couple of technical problems, such as my MaxMSP patch not working and then my laptop crashing on me just before the beginning of the performance, the whole thing went really well. I was really pleased with the way the ensemble played my music and the piece in general got a really great reception from the audience.

The Voxare Quartet were very complementary about my music and intend to play Residue again aome time in their concert series. We are also currently discussing them performing another of my string quartet pieces and perhaps me writing a new quartet especially for them.