This is Stefano Bertoncello's Blog (ステファノ・ベルトンチェッロ - トゥーグッドイアーズ − ブロガー、オーディオ＆ミュージック・コンサルタント) devoted to pacific topics like Music - live and reproduced - i.e. discs, audio, guitars and whatever musical: concerts, workshops, exhibitions, etc. Furthermore: travelling - as a mind-game and real globetrotting - and books, movies, photography... sharing all the above and everything which makes Life better and Earth a better place to stay, enjoying Life, in Peace. Proudly ads-free since 2007! Enjoy.💫
How many times I read this words on ECMs’ Records, a real guarantee of quality.
Here is an actual, recent picture of the external of the iconic studio.
Priceless.
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This amazing disk, handmade (yes! look at the artwork...) by Giorgio Salomon and Gino Pavan, with a gorgeous cello played by G. Frezzato on track 4, is a recently discovered beauty, a little gem.
It happened while I was driving in the Dolomites and I was listening to RAI Radio 3 "L'Idealista", a cool program of adventurous, seldom aired and heard music, one of the few still surviving the shitty musical offerings coming from the radio, once a goldmine.
The other intriguing and enriching programs are "Sei Gradi" and "Battiti", always on Radio 3... then, a desert!
Well, I was driving and the program was about H.P. Lovercraft's related music, which immediately captured my attention, as HPL was and still is a fave and a youth hero of mine.
I wrote in the past about the weird time-warping effect of listening to Wendy Carlos' Beauty in the Beast while reading HPL’s novels!
Names like Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu, Necronomicon and R'lyeh resonate deeply and then this music!
Shortly after listening to Tekeli at the radio, I realized the disk was played and produced by Giorgio Salomon, a great music lover and collector who I met several times at concerts and sometimes briefly chatted... we sort-of lived music in parallel, as we used to hang out at same record shops and buy same elusive, now sought-after, collector's items over the decades.
it was quite natural for me to contact him and ask for more informations about what I listened to at the radio.
A few days ago, we managed to meet and we chatted as old friends with common background and he kindly handed one of the few remaining disks.
He proudly told me about the recording, which originated from some homemade tapes recorded decades ago, then manipulated and over and over (up to 64 layers at some point!) to get this dreamy, yet dynamic, sometimes explosive soundscape.
The HPL's reference isn't purely literary but - as a lover of the genre - a true soundtrack to the Ancients' cosmogony with a dark, timeless atmosphere which push the listener to get HPL's books from the shelves and deep diving in this otherworldly parallel universe.
Music-wise, the disk reminded me of some Dead Can Dance, Amon Düül II, Third Ear Band. Tangerine Dream and Brainticket, but are only suggestions as the music is quite unique, dissonant and fractal... but most of all, beautiful and immersive.
Kudos to Giorgio.
P.S. - a very limited quantity of this disk could be still available directly from the Author, so - you curious daredevil from Outer Space - feel free to contact me and I'll put you in touch with Giorgio Salomon.
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… for £ 8.600,00!
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Available to pre-order from Esoteric, Nucleus: Live At Loughborough University 1976. New official 2CD edition of this 1976 concert by the jazz-rock legends, now newly remastered from the original master tapes. 👉 cherryred.co/Nucleus
Ian Carr
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Friends and acquaintances ask me - from time to time - how I managed to afford and purchase rare and expensive audio equipment with a perfectly normal (i.e. - mid-low) income as an employee, now happily retired... the answer is simple, almost banal: I have no children (something natural for me, given that at the age of six, I actively and genuinely helped my mother raise two newborn twin brothers while my friends played, so technically I was a little dad already at a very young age) thus I avoid huge joys - my fault - and HUGE disappointments… and sure H U G E expenses.
Furthermore, I don’t smoke or have booze-habits and I drive a twenty-year-old Mercedes-Benz that, listen up, still consumes 3.9-4.1 liters of fuel per hundred kilometers... I have no pretensions of highway machismo, so I drive carefully and prudently at my pace.
For example, my brother changed 9 (nine) cars in the last 20 years, so you get an idea of what’s about!
Look at the partial odometer: 1,001.9 km with a fuel full tank… and I didn’t reach the car's fuel reserve, yet.
… and reserve reached!
This leaves me with (some) little money in my pocket every month that I can use to buy records and attending to some concerts without significantly impacting the family budget... last but not least, the equipments that makes up my audio system are the fruit of a passion I've pursued uninterruptedly for the last 55+ years and… yes! I’m a big fan of second-hand, pre-owned gears and DIY.
That's all... I told you: it's all so simple, almost banal.
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The Sun by Eduard Munch - 1911.
(University of Oslo)
The Sun is the work you wouldn't expect from Munch, considering his famous "Scream" and the anguish that pervades many of his works. It's a hymn to life. This is a comprehensive work, of universal value. The appearance of the all-embracing sun is a reflection on life. This painting is light that annihilates the darkness that lurked in the painter's complex existential story. We are before a masterpiece, a painting of unprecedented power.
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Bingo!
Congratulations, Mary!
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This is definitely an Eberhard Weber’s kind of afternoon!
His music is addictive and simply “right”…
Charlie Mariano’s reeds (here heavenly playing like a much mellower and melodic, less raucous Jan Garbarek) and - even more - John Marshall’s drumming, are serving the composer’s wills in a majestic way.
Another Eberhard Weber’s gem which I recently found at a flea-market in Austria…
It’s in pristine condition and sounds amazing!
Also if I dearly love ECM, I will never get tired underlining that a 50 years old disc like this sounds MUCH, M U C H better (more dynamic, more silent) than any recent ECM’s vinyl-record… but also virtually ALL the currently pressed/issued discs by any label aren’t perfect, so…
Better enjoying music.
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… no, not the nightmarish, infested and presided over by warmongers actual one, but the great musical trio which was the soundtrack of my youth and whose first record still pleases my ears, 55 years after they published their “An horse with no name” seminal hit which I bought as a 7” 45 rpm single when a kid.
From Michael Fremer’s “The Tracking Angle” review:
“Their original song line up for the album was recorded at Trident Studios in London with famed engineer Ken Scott. Realizing they needed a hit, the band quickly recorded “A Horse with No Name” at nearby Morgan Studios and released it as a single a month before the album.”
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I’m right now listening to Chad Kassem’s 45 rpm double record-set and I’m in awe for the sonics of these discs: just amazing!
A “be here” of seldom-heard quality!
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