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Ambient Landscape

~ Digressions & musings on Ambient, Electronica, Mixing & the Ether

Ambient Landscape

Category Archives: Post Rock

l a n t e r n a

19 Saturday Sep 2020

Posted by gabulmer in Ambient, Experimental, Jazz Fusion, Mixing, Post Rock

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lanterna | Ambient/Jazz/Post-Rock/Experimental | 87:04

This was my first mix:
Begun in 1999 (via cassette), revised in 2004 (CD) then in 2014  for its 15 year anniversary – digitally eclipsing the CD edition to 94+ minutes, ‘lanterna‘ (named after & wrapped around the classic album by Henry Frayne) was my first real (segued) mix, has earned numerous trades/requests, feedback from Henry Frayne himself…& has now been updated with new opening & closing tracks…(including a short composition from Pink Floyd’s The Endless River).

…a personal, ether/guitar-driven, ambient/experimental favorite that has held together over the years.

Update/ June 2019 (20 year anniversary):
Track 1 was swapped out for ‘What Floats Beneath’, by Michele Rabbia & Gianluca Petrella & Eivind Aarset (from Lost River; ECM, May 2019) – The guitar work on this track fits in perfectly with the aural themes of this project. Now, at long last, this mix has been officially stamped “Complete” by our dedicated engineering staff.
: )
87:04 (headphones-earbuds required)

Download via Bandcamp



01 Michele Rabbia & Gianluca Petrella & Eivind Aarset – What Floats Beneath
02 Henry Frayne – Dawn
03 Brian Eno – Stars
04 Henry Frayne – Ethernet
05 Oystein Sevag/Lakey Patey – Wind Wave
06 Jeff Pearce – Unrequited
07 Tim Story – Sister of the Flood
08 Henry Frayne – Dark Spring
09 R.E. Young – Magister Ludi
10 Henry Frayne – End of the Tunnel
11 Andy Summers – The Somnambulist
12 Henry Frayne – Passage
13 Robert Fripp – 1985
14 Channel Light Vessel – Train Traveling North
15 Henry Frayne – Silent Hills
16 David Gilmour – Mihalis
17 Tangerine Dream – Dolls in the Shadow
18 Henry Frayne – Achieving Oneness
19 Virlyn – Fjord
20 Pink Floyd – The Lost Art of Conversation
(interpolating a few seconds of Pete Kelly’s ‘Peace’ at track’s end)

Original Cassette & CD covers

Image

additional information . . .

26 Sunday Jul 2020

Posted by gabulmer | Filed under Ambient, Classical/Neo-Classical, Experimental, Jazz Fusion, Mixing, Noise, Post Rock, Rock, Tech/Glitch

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The Longest in Terms of Being, by Markus Reuter

27 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by gabulmer in Ambient, Experimental, Mixing, Post Rock

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Markus Reuter is the master of the ambient touch guitar. This instrument, in the hands of this virtuoso, produces a very distinct sound. When Markus adds manipulations and treatments, the sound goes over the top, into uncharted zones.

He recorded the tracks for The Longest in Terms of Being from July, 1999 through October, 1999 with one track from March, 2000. This set is a progression and a roller coaster of emotions. Markus has chosen to take listeners on a whirlwind tour of their own psyches. It promises to be an intense journey and to run the gamut of the dark side of the self. There are brief respites of contemplative melancholia but the overwhelming moods are dark, somber and ominous. At times, the disc even threatens to go sinister. This CD, released in 2001, is an excellent companion to Markus’ collaborations, group projects and other solo efforts.

– Jim Brenholts

released July 1, 2001

Written and performed in real-time by Markus Reuter

Composed By, Performer, Guitar – Markus Reuter
Cover – Michael Kuhne
Edited By [Digital Editing And Assembly] – Philipp Quaet-Faslem
Producer – Markus Reuter, Philipp Quaet-Faslem

Name Your Price

Björk – Quicksand

22 Friday May 2020

Posted by gabulmer in Experimental, Post Rock

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Yeah . . . I felt like pushing the boundaries & straying a bit . . .

Fractal Guitar (feat. Markus Reuter, David Torn) by Stephan Thelen

10 Monday Feb 2020

Posted by gabulmer in Experimental, Mixing, Post Rock

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Guitarist and composer Stephan Thelen releases his debut album for Moonjune Records worldwide on January 18, 2019. It’s an instrumental, post-progressive album co-produced by Markus Reuter (Stick Men), featuring guest appearances of many leading electric guitarists including David Torn, Markus Reuter, Henry Kaiser, Jon Durant, Bill Walker, Barry Cleveland and Matt Tate, as well as drummers/percussionists Benno Kaiser, Manuel Pasquinelli and Andi Pupato. 
Stephan Thelen is American born Swiss who composes, produces and performs music at the fringes of rock, jazz, experimental and classical music. His current main project as a leader, guitarist and composer is the minimal groove band Sonar, who have quickly gained international reputation for creating a unique blend of music that fuses a rigorous minimal concept with the power of a rock band and the sensitivity of a jazz combo. 
Former projects include playing guitar and electronics with Swiss ensembles Radio Osaka, License To Chill, Broken Symmetry and Root Down, producing albums (for example Andy Brugger’s No No Diet Bang and Peter Schärli Sextet), as well as composing music for many theater and film productions. The celebrated Kronos Quartet recently recorded and frequently performed Stephan’s string quartet Circular Lines, a piece commissioned by the Kronos Arts Association and Carnegie Hall for a visionary project called “Fifty for the Future”. The Mannheimer Schlagwerk, a percussion ensemble from Germany, also recently premiered his composition Parallel Motion. 
Fractal Guitar features the atmospherically dense, polyrhythmic tapestry for which is Sonar is well known, but focuses much more on the sonic and ambient possibilities of the electric guitar. In the liner notes, Stephan Thelen writes : “After a few years of playing without effects apart from reverb in Sonar, I felt the urge to compose and record some pieces in which effects were an integral part of the music. I especially wanted to use an effect I worked with before Sonar, which I call “Fractal Guitar” — a rhythmic delay with a very high feedback level that creates cascading delay patterns in odd time signatures such as 3/8, 5/8 or 7/8. The other desire I had was to work with and to have some serious fun with a few of the many great guitarists I’ve met over the years to create an album that features some of the more forward-looking possibilities of the most mysterious, compelling and eclectic of all instruments, the electric guitar. ” 

########################### 

After a few years of playing without effects apart from reverb in Sonar,
I felt the urge to compose and record some pieces in which effects were an integral part of the music. I especially wanted to use an effect I worked with before Sonar, which I call “Fractal Guitar” — a rhythmic delay with a very high feedback level that creates cascading delay patterns in odd time signatures such as 3/8, 5/8 or 7/8. 

The other desire I had was to work with and to have some serious fun with a few of the many great guitarists I’ve met over the years to create an album that features some of the more forward-looking possibilities of the most mysterious, compelling and eclectic of all instruments, the electric guitar. 

The five tracks on this album grew out of a mind-boggling amount of 
activity and crystallized out of myriad soundfiles, recorded across the 
Western hemisphere during the last 3 years. Thanks to all my great friends who helped me pull it off, especially to Markus Reuter, who shared his exceptional talents and endless creativity with me on every step of the way. Thanks also to Grace, Devin and Anil Prasad for their generous hospitality, to Brandy Gale and Henry Kaiser for inspiration and to Leonardo “Moonjune” Pavkovic for inviting me into the illustrious Moonjune Club. 

– Stephan Thelen, Zürich, August 2018 

Releases January 18th, 2019


Methoden und Maschinen, by Bersarin Quartett

13 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by gabulmer in Ambient, Classical/Neo-Classical, Mixing, Post Rock

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Nikolai Erastowitsch Bersarin, the ambivalent colonel general, communist and first Soviet city commander of Berlin, had an accident with his motorcycle in 1945 at the age of only 41. In the enraptured, now somewhat more compressed and at the same time more colorful (not more cheerful) electronic sound(track)s of the strange Bersarin Quartett, in its East Block sea landscapes with latently kitsched wallpaper and double bottoms, shadows of this strange figure Bersarin can be guessed – still or again – at a good 70 years later. But perhaps that is also irrelevant. This ‘band’ could just as well play imprisoned in the remixed court of the eternal, crazy North Korean presidents, whether embodied in an orchestra, quartet or as masked solo entertainer. It brings us supposedly post-rock and post-socialist grandeur, which has degenerated very slightly, in a great new splendour amidst all our irritations and emotions. And everything takes place in our heads.

The Bersarin Quartett – after thirteen years and three epic, (bad-) dreamlike beautiful albums – have settled down with their fourth album “Methoden und Maschinen” (“methods and machines”). For the time being. Because at the same time many new layers and paths are emerging. Playing live in many arrangements and at great concerts in Slovenia, Poland, Czech Republic and Russia, this has grown into a quartet, but it is still the project of DJ, musician, graphic and audio designer Thomas Bücker. The numerous concert evenings with Andy Stott, Tim Hecker, Fennesz, Murcof, Dictaphone or Hidden Orchestra, among others, are undoubtedly noticeable on “Methoden und Maschinen”. The Bersarin Quartett continues to stand for the outing of a complex musical subconscious. ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’, only that the moon is shimmering here, at least now and then. It’s probably also due to the sun shining on it. Minimalism and bombast go together. Constantly developing and entangling contrasts, paradoxes and contradictions are the motor. Constantly caught between two sides. Don’t believe the hype! 

Released November 29, 2019

The Quietened Mechanisms, by A Year In The Country

09 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by gabulmer in Ambient, Experimental, Mixing, Post Rock

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The album is an exploration of abandoned and derelict industry, infrastructure, technology and equipment that once upon a time helped to create, connect and sustain society.

It wanders amongst deserted factories, discarded machinery, closed mines, mills and kilns and their echoes and remains; taking a moment or two to reflect on these once busy, functioning centres of activity and the sometimes sheer scale or amount of effort and human endeavour that was required to create and operate such structures and machines, many of which are now just left to fade away.

The CD and Bandcamp download include accompanying notes on the tracks by the contributors.


The Quietened Mechanisms is released as part of the A Year In The Country project, a set of year long journeys through spectral fields; cyclical explorations of an otherly pastoralism, the further reaches of folk culture and the spectral parallel worlds of hauntology – a wandering amongst subculture that draws from the undergrowth of the land.

As a project, it has included a website featuring writing, artwork and music which stems from that otherly pastoral/spectral hauntological intertwining, alongside a growing catalogue of album releases.

Accompanying the music releases is a book called A Year In The Country: Wandering Through Spectral Fields which gathers and revises previous writing from A Year In The Country alongside new journeyings.

The book and the written posts on the site are intended to draw together and connect layered and, at times, semi-hidden cultural pathways and signposts, journeying from acid folk to edgelands via electronic music innovators and pioneers, folkloric film and photography, dreams of lost futures and misremembered televisual tales and transmissions.


“…the first book of it’s kind to catalogue all these disparate strands, many of which cross over time and space to influence one another.” DJ Food

“…an essential field guide to a distinct aesthetic that remains loosely defined, like a fluttering night moth that would die if pinned down.” Ben Graham, Shindig!


On A Year In The Country and its previous music releases:

“A Year In The Country quietly go about their business releasing beautifully packaged music that is influenced by folk, electronica, drone as well as by landscape, time and place… each have themes running through them, tying the music together and seemingly telling a story as they unfold.” Terrascope

“…another exquisitely packaged affair… murky and ominous as befits the guiding thematic: places that are spectrally imprinted with past conflicts and struggles… a conceptual compilation of excellently eerie electronic music…” Simon Reynolds, author of Retromania and Energy Flash

“A Year In The Country… operating like some sinister rustic arts and crafts movement manifesting online via a Wi-Fi connected scrying mirror… an almanac of unearthly sonics to tide you through the winter nights.” Shindig!

“…a response to British folk traditions that acknowledges the history without seeming beholden to it.” John Coulthart, Feuilleton


www.ayearinthecountry.co.uk

Released October 2, 2018

Stickmen, Dosey Doe, Houston, TX

30 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by gabulmer in Experimental, Jazz Fusion, Post Rock

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We are now making recordings like this publicly and officially available (free Bandcamp download) for purposes of archiving, (our own) historical research, and for your enjoyment as a fan and collector. Each show is offered for appropriately chosen price and the proceeds from these downloads will get split evenly between Tony, Markus, Pat, and Robert, the four people who worked as a team to make this music come alive. Feel free to donate more if you can.

We appreciate your interest and your support. We have many audience recordings lined up for this series (unauthorized audience recordings, but also Robert Frazza’s board mixes, as well as many of his multi-track recordings, which still need to get mixed), and we will be adding more in good time.

Released October 10, 2018Tony Levin: Chapman Stick, Voice
Markus Reuter: Touch Guitars® AU8, Live Looping
Pat Mastelotto: Drums, Loops, Samples
Robert Frazza: F.O.H. engineer
.

Forget Lodger, Iggy Pop’s ‘The Idiot’ Is the Last Piece of Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy

28 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by gabulmer in Ambient, Post Rock, Rock

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Jeremy Allen, 3.13.17

Was David Bowie’s trilogy actually a quadrilogy; heck, was it actually a pentalogy; or, asks Jeremy Allen, is Berlin simply a state of mind?

“Rock & roll has been really bringing me down lately. It’s in great danger of becoming an immobile, sterile fascist that constantly spews its propaganda on every arm of the media”
David Bowie, 1976

David Bowie supposedly changed musical styles as capriciously as he changed his hairstyles during the 1970s, and yet what’s rarely discussed is how difficult – and even painful – that process sometimes was. In the same way that conventional wisdom told us for too long that disco sucked, or that punk toppled prog leading to some kind of year zero, it has been assumed that Bowie suddenly rocked up in Berlin with Iggy Pop, knocked the drugs on the head, and then made three lauded albums of experimental electronica with Brian Eno at his side. That assumption is as misleading as it is fallacious.

There’s certainly no clear narrative regarding the Berlin triptych, which, depending on how you look at it, couldn’t have happened without one mentioning at least five or maybe six interconnected records, including two under the name of Iggy Pop. The location too, is often far from Berlin, starting on the West Coast of America and ending on the East Coast, taking in studios in rural France and in Switzerland too. Truly only “Heroes” can claim to be a record fully conceived and actualised in the German city among the three recognised Berlin albums.

Perhaps the greatest mystery regarding Bowie’s productivity during the mid-70s is how he managed to make a record as magnificent as Station To Station when he was so far down the road of cocaine addiction, subsisting on a well-documented diet of milk and red peppers. Rumours abounded that he would keep his urine in jars in the fridge for fear an evil magician might put a spell on him (the logic can no doubt be easily unpicked if you’re reading this sober). For immediately after Station To Station, his creativity appeared to be shot through, from the aborted soundtrack of The Man Who Fell To Earth which Nicholas Roeg is rumoured to have kiboshed on the grounds that it wasn’t very good, to early attempts to produce Iggy Pop, who was suffering from a drug-induced madness even greater than his own.

In a legendary Rolling Stone piece with Cameron Crowe, the author records Bowie ranting about Nietzschean übermensch, the fact he hates his own rock & roll albums and that he might have been “a bloody good Hitler… an excellent dictator”. Crowe also sits in on a recording session with Bowie and Iggy in Los Angeles. The former spends nine hours composing, producing and playing every instrument on Iggy’s demo, before allowing his friend to unleash a snarling improv that on paper doesn’t appear to be one of his best.

“Bowie touches a button and the room is filled with an ominous, dirgelike instrumental track,” wrote Crowe, before recounting some of Iggy’s freestyle screaming:

”When I walk through the do-wa.
I’m your new breed of who-wa.
We will nooowwwwwwwwww drink to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” drooled Iggy, who then disappeared with a girl he’d been trying to get off with, never to return. When he called days later to apologise for his no show, Bowie told him to “go away”. Although the song did apparently make a brief appearance during Iggy’s solo tour of 77 (featuring one David Bowie on keyboard), ‘Drink To Me’ was never released.

Meanwhile one of the tracks that was intended for The Man Who Fell To Earth soundtrack would eventually turn up on Low in substantially different form, as closing track ‘Subterraneans’, an ambient, mostly instrumental track with the cryptic “share bride failing star / care-lines driving me Shirley” lyric. In fact Bowie apparently sent a copy of Low to Roeg on completion with a brief note that said something to the effect of: “This is what I was trying to do.”

‘Subterraneans’ was perhaps the first track conceived for the Berlin trilogy, and Low appeared in record shops first in January 77 (deliberately tucked away at the start of the year, away from the other big releases) ahead of The Idiot’s March release. Iggy Pop’s debut solo album was actually recorded before Low, and it’s fair to say much of the experimentation that was a feature of the latter started with the former, and not in Berlin, but at the Château d’Hérouville, north of Paris. It would also be fair to say that Bowie delayed release of The Idiot on their shared label RCA, in order that it wouldn’t be seen as the originator – in which case Iggy might be perceived as some kind of cynosure of a new movement. Although it might look Machiavellian in hindsight, Bowie was justified, as The Idiot is a David Bowie album in all but name (Allan Jones of Melody Maker cruelly suggested it was his “second favourite David Bowie album”). With Lust For Life, Iggy took back control, but on its predecessor Bowie directed and played many of the parts, with Iggy appearing at the conclusion of the process of each track as some proto-punk deus ex machina. Bowie was experimenting with a new kind of music, and Iggy Pop was his willing guinea pig. Quid pro quo, it was a deal that benefitted both of them, and suggestions that Bowie was purely manipulating Iggy for his own ends are wide of the mark. (Bowie stepped in in 86 to work with him again on Blah Blah Blah when Iggy was in yet another tight spot; just one example of a friend indeed assisting his frequent friend in need.)

Château d’Hérouville was probably suggested by Tony Visconti, who had recorded The Slider with T-Rex there. For whatever reason, the producer couldn’t quite make the commitment to oversee The Idiot in the end; he would however produce every subsequent Bowie album up to Let’s Dance. The 18th century chateau had been home to Chopin and George Sand, and was said to be haunted by the composer and his paramore. Years later, the country castle had fallen into disrepair, but it was revived in the 60s as a recording studio. Elton John, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and Gong (amongst many others) recorded albums there, the Bee Gees made ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ at the famous address, while Jean-Michel Jarre once told me he worked there as an assistant when he was younger, where quotidian duties might include preparing treatments for Terry Riley.

Although it’s located not far from Paris in the Val d’Oise département, getting there is actually harder than it looks, and I know because I’ve tried. The recording studio is a going concern again, though the staff are not great at answering their emails (a request to have a look around was met with silence). Located in bucolic surrounds at least 9km from the nearest town – Auver-sur-Oise where Van Gogh and his brother Theo are buried – the only way to get there really is to drive. In other words, it was the perfect location for a couple of recovering misfits looking to avoid temptation and get on with the process of making music away from L.A., a place Bowie had come to loathe, describing it as a “wart on the backside of humanity”.

The record then, thrives from the focus of its creators, with a slightly suffocating, almost underwater quality that comes from the close proximity of those involved, and also the technical incompetencies from working without a recognised hotshot producer like Visconti. ‘Funtime’ is clearly about socialising back across the pond, and written in the first person plural, it demonstrates how joined at the hip the two protagonists were at the time.

“Hey baby we like your lips/
Hey baby we like your pants”.

Bowie’s vocal is high enough in the mix that it could be a duet, at least if the effect on both voices didn’t make them sound like an automaton; the almost mechanical delivery symbolises the ritual of going through the motions when you’re a social butterfly, even if it stops being fun (and then what do you do with yourself if you don’t go out?) ‘Dum Dum Boys’ is inspired by Iggy’s time in the Stooges, while opener ‘Sister Midnight’ – built around a Carlos Alomar riff – actually came into being before The Idiot, played by Bowie on the Isolar tour supporting Station To Station. Intriguingly, Bowie uses the same riff on ‘Red Money’, the final track on Lodger, a rounding off that surely canvases for The Idiot’s inclusion in the body of work. More on that in a bit.

Perhaps ‘Nightclubbing’ is the only track that could reasonably be assumed to have been inspired by Berlin, throbbing as it does with the sleazy ambience of a Kreuzberg club such as Club SO36. Indeed the muffled drum machine that thumps like a slowed down heartbeat almost sounds like it’s coming through the floorboards. “Bowie kept saying, ‘But we gotta call back the drummer, you’re not gonna have that freaky sound on the tape!’” recounted Iggy Pop, “and I replied, ‘Hey, no way, it kicks ass, it’s better than a drummer.’”

The drummer in question was Michel Santangeli, who’d been called over from Brittany, and dispensed with again before he’d barely got his sticks out of his drum bag (it had become a working practice of Bowie’s to get the drums down as quickly and spontaneously as possible and then build the track around it). Santangeli had been brought in by the chateau’s sound engineer Laurent Thibault, who also happened to be Magma’s bass player. Bowie surprised Thibault firstly when it became clear that he was intimate with the prog rock band’s own music, and again when he hired him as bassist for The Idiot. And session guitarist Phil Palmer was brought in and given an unusual brief. According to Paul Trynka’s Open Up And Bleed, he was told to imagine the sounds of different clubs as if walking down Wardour Street, and to replicate the sounds from each as he passed.

It should be noted that regular contributors, drummer Dennis Davis and guitarist Alomar, also appear on the record, and Visconti did some of the mixing back in Berlin as well as Munich, though who did exactly what was left off the sleeve. The cover art itself was inspired by Die Brücke expressionist Erich Heckel’s Roquairol, which hung in the Brücke Museum an hour or so away from Hauptstrasse 155, Bowie and Iggy’s Berlin residence. They’d secured and paid for the rights to use the painting for the cover of The Idiot, but instead went with a photo of Iggy imitating the image instead. Bowie would then do the same himself for the cover of “Heroes” in 1978.

A month’s studio time had been paid for and was now left over at the chateau, and so Bowie reconvened there for the Low sessions, with a crew whose personnel would more or less be present throughout the trilogy, including Visconti and Eno. He’d informed his collaborators that work may result in something or nothing, a Dadaist no programme where the point was to create art for its own sake. Having sought to curb his own nefarious ways, he was suffering from writer’s block lyrically, which is perhaps why he was throwing himself so enthusiastically behind Iggy, and definitely why Low is so short on actual words, and why it fades in and out so often as though it’s an assemblage of clips. The raison d’etre for The Idiot, and by default for Low, echoed the words of the Cabaret Voltaire’s Hans Richter, who wrote that there “was a brief moment in which absolute freedom was asserted for the first time. This freedom might lead either to a new art – or to nothing”.

The Idiot was the dry run for Low, and against the odds, it had turned out to be a great album. Ditto with Low, which in turn was the dry run for “Heroes”, which was also of the highest standard. If Low explores uncertainty and offers few answers, then “Heroes” forges ahead with confidence, but ultimately its victories are as a result of the toil achieved during Low, which will always be critically more appreciated for doing it all first.

While much of Low – which was going to be called New Music: Night and Day until the last minute – was laid down at Château d’Hérouville, the relationship with Thibault apparently broke down after conditions at the facility deteriorated. Starving after neglectful staff had apparently forgotten to stock the cupboards, Bowie and Iggy both went down with food poisoning from some dodgy fromage. Bowie, Visconti, Iggy and assistant Coco Schwab disembarked for Berlin where they’d finish the album at the “Hansa Studio By The Wall”. Lust For Life followed, which was then succeeded by “Heroes”, both recorded in West Berlin. A gap then ensued as Bowie went off to film Just A Gigolo with Marlene Dietrich (although the two filmed their shared scene from different cities). The final piece in the jigsaw puzzle – Lodger – was recorded much later over a six month period between September 1978 and March 1979, firstly at the plush Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland (where Bowie officially lived for tax reasons) and then in New York (where he would settle from 1993 onwards).

Two recent books on Bowie’s time in Berlin – Heroes by Tobias Rüther and Bowie In Berlin: A New Career In A New Town by Thomas Jerome Seabrook – pay little lip service to Lodger. Seabrook dedicates whole sections to song breakdowns not just of Low and “Heroes”, but of The Idiot and Lust For Life too, while neglecting to do the same for Lodger; Rüther meanwhile seems to spend more time on the ill-fated Just A Gigolo than he does on the final album in the series. One can see why. Lodger is a fine album for sure, and an underrated one (or as much as a David Bowie album can be underrated), but its links with Berlin are tenuous to say the least, and not just because it wasn’t recorded there. The personnel might be the same, but Bowie had moved on from his own personal Weimar period, and that’s reflected in Lodger’s international flavour. ‘African Night Flight’ for instance, is based on trips Bowie took to Kenya, while the exploration of rhythm would act as a catalyst for Eno, who would explore such ideas further with David Byrne on 1981’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. And speaking of moving on, it would appear Eno and Bowie had done just that, from each other, though they’d come together again on 1995’s 1. Outside.

For all of the above reasons, The Idiot has a greater claim to being one of the Berlin three in preference of Lodger in my opinion, though perhaps it would have been disrespectful to Iggy Pop to regard it as such, given that it’s his name on the record. Carlos Alomar said many people felt “they were due a trilogy”, according to David Buckley’s Strange Fascination, but perhaps they’d already been delivered one without realising it. If Lodger is a Berlin album then so is The Idiot, so should it perhaps be a Berlin tetralogy with some French flavour? And while Iggy seized back a little control on Lust For Life, it’s difficult to imagine some of the quickfire lyrical improvisations that Bowie laid down on “Heroes” had he not been inspired by Iggy working on Lust For Life in the first place. “Bowie’s a hell of a fast guy,” complained Iggy later. “I realised I had to be quicker than him, or whose album was it gonna be?” Also take your mind back to the intense crooning on, say, ‘Wild Is The Wind’, and compare it with the deep sprechgesang delivery on Low; that could only have really been inspired by Iggy’s vox on The Idiot. These albums are all intertwined, so should we look at them as a Berlin pentalogy? Whatever you might decide, Lodger is without doubt the most anomalous of them all.

Perhaps before we leave this discussion, I should point out that the Berlin triptych never was official, and you’re free to compartmentalise records as you see fit. Or perhaps, as Bowie’s old friend Lou Reed proved, Berlin is simply a state of mind. Having never been to the city himself when he wrote the titular chef d’oeuvre, it could be argued that Berlin, or Berlin, is simply a symbol of decadence and faded glamour rather than somewhere situated in reality. Bowie once described it as the “greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine”, while the (little known outside of France) former French minister for culture Jack Lang said it best when he said,
“Paris is always Paris, and Berlin is never Berlin.”

Down Transmitter, by Impulse Array

28 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by gabulmer in Experimental, Post Rock, Tech/Glitch

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4 tracks of dark techno performed & recorded using both hardware & software instruments.

Released August 24, 2018 

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Greg Bulmer's Artwork

Dean Frey Leadership and Life

In pursuit of excellence

Ambient Landscape

Digressions & musings on Ambient, Electronica, Mixing & the Ether

Weird Jazz Collective

Jazz is the Teacher - Funk is the Preacher

TEAM Centurion

lead from the front

LIFE and Leadership by Chris Brady

Soul Caffeine

Christian inspiration and encouragement to give a jolt of caffeine to your soul.

Team AO

We started and we will finish

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