Linda Perhacs 🍀

 

She’s safe and that’s important.

Read here.

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Bauhaus

 

Martin OM-42 (2007) 💫

 

I yesterday gifted myself a “new” guitar, actually a second-hand, pre-owned Martin OM-42 made in 2007 and carefully played by previous owner - whom I thank for so nicely “opening” its tone - and which I played at least three times in the shop where it was put on sale, some months ago.

As I wrote, I visited the shop three times and played and played it ‘til getting itchy fingerstips … and every time I felt inexplicably uncomfortable leaving it at the shop, until I suddenly decided to bring it home.

It’s the most recently made guitar I own and it makes me wet as it plays like a vintage, well matured instrument with lots of overtones and sustain.

Happy for the purchase… also if I didn’t really need another guitar.

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Morton Feldman - New Directions in Music

 

Morton Feldman's first album, "New Directions in Music 2", returns for the first time since Columbia Masterworks issued it in 1959 - eight early works for strings and pianos, recorded when almost none of this music had been committed to record. David Tudor at the piano, a drawing by Philip Guston on the sleeve, liner notes by Frank O'Hara. The original artwork and the original running order, both discarded by the only previous reissue. A foundational document of the New York School, back in the world in the year of Feldman's centenary.

Morton Feldman "New Directions in Music 2" (LP)

The number in the title has nothing to do with Feldman. It refers to Columbia Masterworks' short-lived series, whose first volume paired Stockhausen's Zeitmaße with Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître under Robert Craft in 1958. Volume two, issued the following year, was handed to a thirty-three-year-old American who had barely been recorded at all. Morton Feldman's debut album, and one of the earliest sustained documents of the music that would come to be called the New York School.

The eight works gathered here span 1951 to 1957, the years in which Feldman worked out the notational problems that shaped everything after. Extensions 1, Structures for String Quartet and Projection 4 all date from 1951, followed by Extensions 4 for three pianos, Intersection 3, Two Pieces for Two Pianos, Three Pieces for String Quartet, and Piece for Four Pianos. In the Projections and Intersections, the score is a grid: register, duration, density, and little else. Pitch is left to the player and rhythm is only loosely fixed. Sounds are placed rather than developed, and left to decay at their own speed.

Amos Zimmernan remembers Bert Jansch 💫

 

“Wow, that’s brave!” a friend told me when he heard that my new album includes only guitar and vocals, with no additional instruments, no backing vocals, no additions whatsoever. And honestly, I hadn’t really thought about the “bravery” aspect. I was just fulfilling a dream. So I wanted to tell you where that dream began.

Quite a few years ago, a different friend recommended that I listen to the 1965 debut album by Bert Jansch. I’ll admit it took me a little while to get around to it, but the moment I pressed play for the first time, I couldn’t stop. I fell deeply in love with that album. I played it every night as I went to sleep, listened to it on headphones on the bus, played it on my living room system… it’s probably the album I’ve listened to more times than any other in my life.

What captivated me about it, beyond the perfect songs and Jansch’s unique voice, was that the album consists of nothing but guitar and vocals. So I wrote a Facebook post asking if people could recommend other studio albums like that, that are completely bare.

The responses started trickling in (and then pouring in), with dozens upon dozens of people, each suggesting a different album and saying, “Here you go!” Believe me, I went and listened to everything people sent. But with every album, I ran into something that spoiled it - a song with a harmony vocal, or a track with a violin, or another guitar, or a flute… in short, I couldn’t find another album quite like it. So I promised myself that one day, I would make one.

Since then, quite a few years have gone by. Every time I wrote a song, I thought about this future album and considered whether the song would fit it. Slowly, enough songs and pieces accumulated to finally record it. I also realized that the album would include as many songs as possible with alternative guitar tunings, and that I would play the entire album using only my fingers, with no guitar pick at all.

When I actually began seriously working on it as an album, it was clear to me that I wanted it, somehow, to be in dialogue with Jansch’s album... but I didn’t yet know how. Then one night, about three years ago, I had a realization and formed the concept you see below: the albums would mirror each other. Wherever Jansch has a song with lyrics, I would too. Whenever he has an instrumental piece, I would as well. And I’d give those pieces titles that echo the titles of his. The cover would be similar. The number of tracks would be identical. The albums would be like stepbrothers meeting each other unexpectedly after 61 years.

Bert Jansch passed in 2011, around the time I first started listening to him. If he were alive, I swear I would fly to London, knock on his door, sit him down, make him some tea, and play him the album. So Bert may no longer be with us, but there’s you, this community, who can listen to it and maybe connect with that same spirit and conversation between the two records.

Hope you enjoy the album (link's in the comments below), it has a lot of Bert in it and it's dedicated to the loving memory of my mom. Thank you for reading. 💚

Thanks for your efforts, Amos.

Azimuth 💫

 

This is a vintage CBS Technology Center Model 1690 Azimuth Meter.

This specialized analog test instrument was historically used by audio technicians and broadcast engineers to precisely align and adjust the azimuth angle of magnetic tape heads on high-end tape decks (such as reel-to-reel and top-tier cassette decks like the Nakamichi Dragon). 

Key Functions & Details Azimuth Alignment: Ensures the playback/recording tape head is perfectly perpendicular to the direction of the tape travel. Misalignment results in severe loss of high-frequency response.

Scale Indicators:

The central needle measures deviation in minutes of an arc (left or right from zero). 

The lower scales measure frequency loss (in kHz) caused by a 3 dB drop. 

The lowest scale measure the attenuation at 10 kHz. 

Controls: Features a Reset button, an Auto/Off/Manual toggle switch, and a fine-tuning knob on the lower right to calibrate the instrument.

Miles’ hands 💫

 

“The Hands of Miles Davis,” photographed by Irving Penn in 1986 during the cover shoot for Tutu.

When Penn arrived for the session, Miles greeted him with characteristic skepticism.

“I bet you want me to take this shirt off,” Miles said.

“Yep,” Penn replied.

“I bet you want me to take all these gold chains off, too?”

“Yep.”

The two spent the next hour working together. As the shoot wrapped, Miles surprised Penn with a kiss on the mouth before leaving. Reflecting on the encounter years later, Penn said that once he came to know Miles’ music, it struck him as “visual art of a most profound kind.”

Among the photographs Penn created that day was a remarkable series focused solely on Miles’ left hand. Set against a plain background, the images capture his fingers in various positions, as if pressing the valves of an invisible trumpet. Simple yet powerful, the photographs distilled Miles’ artistry into the very instrument through which he changed music.

Photos by The Irving Penn Foundation

Tibor Varga on Triston masterdub 💫

 

Another Jürg Schopper’s gem.

💎 

Eric Rohmer’s “Pauline à la plage” & Frank Zappa/Capt. Beefheart “Bongo Fury” 💫🤯💫

 

Some TV screen-shots of the movie… look what’s handling Pauline’s boyfriend…

Was it chance or a choice of the director?

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€ 5

 

Flea-market gems 💫

 

Mostly ECMs’ and an FMP-related solo guitar improvisation (recorded with Hans Reichel’s loaned recording gears!)

Eberhard Weber’s Syndrome 💫

 

I cannot but think to a sort-of (positive) disease, an obsession about the music of Eberhard Weber, as I’m constantly listening to his music and compulsively buying (see some previous, recent posts) his amazing records from early ‘70s onward.

I knew him and his ECM vast production, but I only owned a bunch of his records.

It happened suddenly but inexplicably and inexorably after I bought one, then another and a third and then more and more discs at flea-markets and secondhand shops and - on a more systematic form - on Discogs, dealing with reputable sellers to complete what appeared like a complete EW’s collection.

I’m hooked and in blissfull awe at the impressive compositions body this German musician issued!

A genius.

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