This is a Recording

Georg Friedrich Haas is a contemporary Austrian composer of "art music". "Haas's style recalls that of György Ligeti in its use of micropolyphony, microintervals and the exploitation of the overtone series; he is often characterized as a leading exponent of spectral music" says wikipedia. Only a relative few of his many compositions have been issued on CD - many more of them can be found on YouTube. On this 2020 disc are three of his works in which standard classical instrumentation is augmented and altered by "live electronics". Two are string quartets and one is for solo piano. Is a string quartet still really a quartet if there are meanwhile some other people with laptops busily twizzling the sound? There is a live performance video of the 'String Quartet No. 7', the first work on the disc, where the JACK Quartet are supplemented by a trio of sound boffins to realise the composition. Whether it's properly a quartet or a septet is neithe...

Is rock'n'roll dead? A shadow of its former self at least, or a ghost of it. Metal still seems to be thriving, but looks to have evolved away far enough from rock'n'roll to be considered a separate species. Of course there are dedicated individuals who won't let it lie still: Jim Jones, for one, has been doing his level best to keep it alive, or to animate its unholy remains, whether as part of Thee Hypnotics, The Jim Jones Revue, or Jim Jones and the Righteous Mind. This CD single: 'Till It's All Gone'/'Walk It Out' is unique among the records on my shelves in that I won it. I've mentioned before being a regular listener for years to Marc Riley's Radio 6 evening show. Among its recurring features is 'Who's On My T-Shirt Tonight, Then?' a quiz where the prize is a T-Shirt on which a guest to the show has been persuaded to draw the likeness of a band or musician. A series of clues are supplied and listeners invited to guess th...

My cousin Jeff, three years my senior, had an extensive record collection. Plenty of what he liked, I didn't, but our tastes did intersect. I distinctly recall him playing the first three tracks on side B of Trans Europe Express to me one Sunday; assuming, correctly, that I'd be interested - it certainly wasn't like anything else I'd heard up to that point. That would have been a few years before I started buying music of my own: nevertheless, it planted a seed. What we have here is a 1994 German CD issue of Kraftwerk's sixth album, with the original monochrome cover design. It has unkindly been said that Germans prefer the English-language versions of the band's songs and English-language speakers prefer the German ones: in any case, that is generally true for me. I'd had Autobahn on cassette since the '80s, and then later on CD, but had dithered about buying any others until my German music phase of '07/'08, when I acquired this disc and ...

I was very lucky to find a '60s copy of the justly famous Getz/Gilberto LP for a very reasonable price seven or eight years ago, but have had less luck with Getz's work since then, picking up and discarding a few albums bearing his name that I didn't much care for. I was in two minds, then, about buying this one last year, a 1964 UK issue of a record originally released in '57, all the more so as its sleeve was in rather grubby condition. The record turned out to be decidedly dirty itself: barely playable until a first thorough cleaning, and not sounding too good until a second. I'm glad I persevered with it, as it's an excellent slice of straight-ahead late '50s jazz, and the disc, now free of its accumulated patina, sounds great. Getz is part of a quartet here, joined by Lou Levy on piano, Leroy Vinnegar on bass and Stan Levey on drums. The mid-tempo 'Blues For Mary Jane' kicks things off in confident style, the only number on the record composed ...

My first experience of Portishead (the place) would have been in '94 when my colleague Martin Robinson invited me to join him and his girlfriend to make up a team for a pub quiz somewhere at the edge of that town. I must have had a reputation as a bit of a know-it-all. As luck would have it, the questions played to my strengths and we won, despite most of the other teams having four or five members. I think by then I would have already experienced Portishead (the group). I first heard them on (I think) Pete Tong's Radio 1 show, 'Numb' issuing weakly from my bedside clock-radio. I took notice at once, loving what I heard, and bought Dummy on cassette as soon as I could find a copy. I played it a great deal, and got it on CD too a few years later. The CD ended up with a lot of mileage as well: though perhaps I listened to it too often, as there eventually came a point where its appeal began to fade, whereas its near-contemporary Maxinquaye has better retained my affect...

Was it on the kind of mix CD that one might find affixed to the cover of a music magazine where I first heard 'Jellybones' by The Unicorns? Or was on a hand-made CD-R mix that someone kindly sent me from the other side of the internet? I can't remember, but I fell for the song and ordered the album, specifically the UK CD version, on the strength of it. It's a whimsical, odd, inventive record, although, for me, nothing else on it quite matches the charm of 'Jellybones'. It's not a CD I've played a great deal. When I do, I'm impressed afresh by it, without my admiration amounting to love. It's not the first time the act of writing about a record has been the stimulus that leads to my letting it go: I'll be releasing this one back into the wild in the near future. The sleeve design is exactly right. My second-favourite tracks on the disc are probably the spectral segue of 'Ghost Mountain' & 'Sea Ghost', and also 'Let...

Between lockdowns in 2020 I purchased a pre-owned vinyl copy of The Singles compilation by Pretenders. It includes sixteen of their golden greats. I always liked the sound of Chrissie Hynde's voice and enjoyed many of these songs when they were new, while being ambivalent about others (notably 'Brass in Pocket', and some of the later hits). I wasn't enough of a fan to investigate their albums, so its a case of a "Best Of" being ideal. In general I prefer the less polished stuff on side A to the glossier material on side B, but I can sit back and enjoy almost all of it, with the exception of the closing track, the version of 'I Got You Babe' Hynde did with UB40 - an interloper in my estimation that doesn't really belong. Hynde wrote or co-wrote eleven of the sixteen tracks, so the album's a testament to her top-notch songwriting skills. A further two songs are from the pen of her one-time partner Ray Davies, and another two, besides 'I Got ...