Out in town midday, I was getting some food items and then went around a few of the charity shops, and not looking for anything specific. However, serendipity took hold, as I ventured into one I tend to forget about and found a CD that you would not normally see in a chazzer. Robert Hampson's Main - a post-rock electronica drumless ambient group. I found the CD by them Firmament II for a quid!

It came out in 1996 on the Beggars Banquet label - the label that gave you the jazz fusion hit by Freeez, called Southern Freeez. Now if you have heard of that track well here it is plus some by Main.

Freeez - Southern Freeez



One of the top tunes when I was a DJ in Brighton!


Main ‎– Firmament III



ENJOY

This is a Brighton based improvising and experimental collective. When I lived in the city I saw them enumerable times and they played locally in churches, local hall, of charity shop spaces. I knew all the members of the band including Stephen Drennan and the instigator of the collective Alasdair Willis. In fact, The Vitamin B12 is a varying number of individuals, from one upwards, but nearly always including Alasdair Willis.

There are few YouTube videos of them and also their music is on small self-produced albums or cassettes.

The Vitamin B12 - keio rhythm 03



The Vitamin B12 - North Lane and The Laines



The Vitamin B12 - Formation 21




Vitamin B12 - Sleep patterns



ENJOY

I have not dome a music post for a while so I will start with two tracks from a band I have seen twice, as they are based in Brighton. Yes, my old city that lived in for many years, and bought their first album on LP and a couple of CDr's. They self-produced all their recordings and hence available only on Lp or CDr. This can make their recordings hard to find but their last major work from 2015 is available - and if not the whole album is downloadable at Amazon.

I also knew a couple of the members of the band.

That album was also number 8 in Wire's Avant Rock best of 2015 in the Jan 2016 issue of the mag.

So here are a few tracks from that 2015 album on CDr only -

Hamilton Yarns - Thick of It




>Hamilton Yarns - Forget Things




Hamilton Yarns - Across the Sky



ENJOY

Finally, live recordings from YouTube -

Jaimie Branch’s FLY or DIE quartet | Vision Festival 23



Jaimie Branch's FLY or DIE quartet perform compositions from their self-titled debut record. Performed and recorded on May 28, 2018, at Arts for Art Vision Festival 23, Roulette, Brooklyn.

Jaimie Branch - trumpet, composition / Lester St. Louis - cello / Chad Taylor - drums / Anton Hatwich - bass

Susie Ibarra and Roberto J. Rodriguez - Concerto Electric Kulintan



Susie Ibarra and Roberto J. Rodriguez: Concerto Electric Kulintan - Teatro Fondamenta Nuove - Venezia - Italy

I have actually seen Susie Ibarra live way back in the 2000s in one of the yearly L.M.C (London Musicians Collective) festivals. of free jazz, improv and such cross-pollination.

ENJOY

After the recent death of the wonderful Chick Corea, it is sad to hear of another great improviser and drummer Milford Graves.

Milford Graves: jazz drummer dies aged 79

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/feb/13/milford-graves-jazz-drummer-dies-aged-79




Milford Graves HeArt Quintet | Vision Festival 20



Milford Graves - drums, percussion, Charles Gayle - tenor sax, Hugh Glover - alto sax, Ted Daniels - trumpet, William Parker - bass

Milford Graves led the HeArt Quintet at the 20th annual Vision Festival, an ensemble of close collaborators including William Parker, Charles Gayle, and Hugh Glover, who is best known for performing with Graves throughout the ‘70s and documented on the recording Bäbi.

From the Festival program:
Graves is a renaissance man whose original drumming is rooted in African and Caribbean rhythms. His scientific research on the effect of rhythm on the heart translates into music that moves and challenges. The members of Graves’ heart Quartet understand that rhythm is healing when it comes from the body’s rhythms and that music is most powerful when it is in tune with the heart.

Filmed and recorded July 9, 2015, for AFA Vision Festival 20 at Judson Memorial Church, NYC.

Ancient texts and spirituals meet electronica -

ARIADNE - Stabat Mater



ABOUT STABAT MATER:
Stabat Mater is a 20 movement cycle of audio/visual ecstatic visions from experimental sacred audio/visual duo ARIADNE. The cycle is being released as a purely musical work on cassette tape and as an interactive audio/visual web-based experience. Stabat Mater is heavily inspired by the visions of female Christian mystics Hildegard von Bingen and Teresa of Avila. The lyrics for Stabat Mater include adaptations of writings from these mystics fused together with text taken from surrealist poet Aase Berg’s With Deer and Dark Matter (both translated by Johannes Göransson and published by Black Ocean).

DIGITAL / WebGL:
The audio/visual version of the album is implemented as a web-based 3D interactive experience, wherein each of the 20 visions are depicted as an integrated audio/visual experience. The visuals are generative and use real-time audio analysis, physics simulation and user input to determine the animation so that each experience is unique.

BIOGRAPHY:
ARIADNE is an experimental sacred music and new media art duo whose work explores the intersection of mysticism, dream analysis and the failure of digital systems through a synthesis of music performance, digital and interactive art, poetry and dramatic experience. Much of ARIADNE’s output consists of interactive audio/visual performances which employ custom built hardware and software, real-time 3D animation, and machine learning to create immersive and captivating experiences. ARIADNE’s body of work includes feature-length audio/visual albums, web-based virtual reality, and a/v installations.

DIGITAL – audio stream & download
http://ariadne-music.bandcamp.com/alb...
WebGL – interactive audio/visual experience
http://www.ariadnedigital.net/release...
CASSETTE – physical audio relic
http://aurisapothecary.org/shop/ariad...

Music fo the morning - and all my listeners -


Sigur Rós - Ti Ki



The Matthew Herbert Big Band - The Three W's



From their 2003 album: "Goodbye Swingtime".

Arvo Pärt - Arbos




Enjoy

Okkyung Lee - Teum (the Silvery Slit)



Okkyung Lee is a South Korean cellist, improviser, and composer. Lee moved to Boston in 1993, where she received a dual bachelor's degree in Contemporary Writing and Production and Film Scoring, and a master's degree in Contemporary Improvisation.

Teum (the Silvery Slit) is, as the title suggests, an overture, an opening to the game of multiplications, fragmentations, duplications. But it is also the opening understood as the void that blossoms between two borders, a break from which escapes a double tension, both the pulling force of these two edges which move apart and the opposite force of reconciliation, of compression. Okkyung Lee invites us to a truly telluric moment, a rare moment of expression where tectonic movements and shear stresses become music. If the earthquakes were, as we thought in the 18th century, due to underground thunderstorms, there is no doubt that this piece of music, both celestial and continental, could have been their audible manifestation.


Springing from a decade's deep body of work, defined by a rigorously singular and adventurous approach to sound, cellist, composer, and improviser, Okkyung Lee, returns with Yeo-Neun, her first outing with Shelter Press, and arguably her most groundbreaking and unexpected album to date.

A vital, present force in the contemporary global landscape of experimental music, Okkyung Lee is widely regarded for her solo and collaborative improvisations and compositions, weaving a continuously evolving network of sonority and event, notable for its profound depth of instrumental sensitivity, exacting intellect, and visceral emotiveness. Yeo-Neun, recorded by Yeo-Neun Quartet - an experimental chamber music ensemble founded in 2016 and led by Lee on cello, featuring harpist Maeve Gilchrist, pianist Jacob Sacks, and bassist Eivind Opsvik - represents the culmination of one of the longest and most intimate arcs in her remarkable career. A radical departure from much of the experimental language.

Okkyung Lee - Yeo Neun

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Back in the early days or Wire - the eighties to nineties, the music of Meredith Monk received a lot of mentions. So, after all these years, I am beginning to appreciate her work more.

So here is one from 1983.

Meredith Monk - Turtle Dreams



Turtle Dreams, produced for WGBH-TV, originally aired September 2, 1983. Shot by Ping Chong. Composed by Meredith Monk, performed by her and her Vocal Ensemble. For more information, visit meredithmonk.org.

Some music for this winter solstice -

Roger & Brian Eno - Wintergreen



Terje Isungset - Wood in forest (3)




Björk - Solstice



Orlando Gibbons - The woods so wilde



From the Fitzwilliam virginal book, a set of 8 variations on a popular tune.A piece by Orlando Gibbons which confirms his stature as one of the most brilliant keyboard players of his generation. Source: CD Francis Tregian's Collection, Vanguard Classics, Martha Cook, harpsichord.

Blazin’ Fiddles -Lochaber Gathering



ENJOY