KMXT is live broadcasting the Kodiak City Council work session which may run past 9 pm.
The show will begin as soon as the work session ends or 9 pm if the meeting ends early.
Be sure to follow KMXT FreeForm Radio on Facebook and Bandcamp.
Please support FreeForm Radio and KMXT by going to KMXT.org and pledging your support.
The music you hear on tonight's show is available on the artists' Bandcamp pages and websites. (links below)
We urge you to support the musicians you hear on FreeForm Radio.
The title track which opens procedures is a case in point. Boddy crams into its seven minutes more drama than many would manage in a side length track. Soft textural chords soon give way to a pulsing arpeggiator playing from his venerable Roland System 100-M modular. Just when the piece seems to be settling into a cyclical groove a series of transpositions move the harmonic interest along before a climax of percussion and synth textures soar toward a stunning crescendo.
The next piece, “Messiaen M31”, in contrast is a calm, floating track with an unusual harmonic chord progression based on Olivier Messiaen’s music theory with a beautiful Ondes Martenot style solo line. “Rings” features layers of sequencers and arpeggios that twist and turn through various key changes toward another stunning climax.
“Teutonium” is pure Berlin School with a thundering Moog bass line interspersed with edgy, glitchy interjections before subsiding to the calm, gentle fluctuations of “Flow”.
Finally “Silver Surfer” is a slice of Synthwave fun featuring the crisp tones of the 100-M set against a syncopated bass line and a beautiful Ondes Martenot duet over a transposing sequencer line.
“Coil” will be released on both CD digipak as well as a limited edition 180g vinyl edition.
credits
Our thanks to Ian for providing us with a promo copy of this release.
All tracks composed, patched and recorded by Ian Boddy January - March 2022.
Mixed and mastered by Ian Boddy March 2022.
Instrumentation:
Serge & Eurorack modular systems
Roland System 100-M
Buchla Easel Command
Make Noise 0-Coast
Moog Voyager & Matriarch
Novation Summit
VCS3
Analogue Systems French Connection
Analogue Solutions Generator
Spectrasonics Omnisphere
Kontakt playing sample libraries by Spitfire Audio & Soniccouture
Ableton Live
ambient em electronic electronic music electronica downtempo modular synth synthwave Sunderland
Mark Shreeve (2 June 1957 – 31 August 2022) was a British electronic music composer. After initially releasing his early work on cassette through the label Mirage Records, he went on to sign for the newly formed Jive Electro in the early 1980s,[1] and released the albums Assassin, Legion, and Crash Head.[2] His last solo album to date, Nocturne, was released in 1995. A live album, Collide, was released in 1996 featuring his live performance at EMMA two years before.
Shreeve was born in Great Yarmouth on 2 June 1957.[3]
Shreeve also composed scores or sections of scores for some feature films, recorded a number of library music CDs and wrote the song "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)" for Samantha Fox, which was released and hit the chart in 1986. He also worked briefly with Christopher Franke of Tangerine Dream and has had some technical association with producer and modular synthesiser expert Ed Buller.
In 1996, Shreeve formed the group Redshift with his brother Julian, James Goddard and Rob Jenkins. The group has recorded nine albums to date and played live in the UK and in all Europe, including one concert made at Jodrell Bank Observatory.
Shreeve died on 31 August 2022, at the age of 65.[4]
Fan of horror movies and books? Unconditional of Stephen King? How about listening to the music The Stand? It's obviously inspired by this book that Mark Shreeve built the 7 tracks, the 40 minutes of his 8th solo album. LEGION stands out from the more exploratory genre of Mark Shreeve's first solo albums with shorter and more explosive compositions. A catchy EM conceived around hard sequencing patterns, synths more in synth-pop style and samplings drawn from the sonic librarie of 1980's horror movies. Without a doubt, it's England School's most rock album at the time when Tangerine Dream still enthralled thousands of fans and dozens of musicians with its Underwater Sunlight tour in 1986. It's also possibly the flagship album of English artists' response to Berlin School. Movement which brings EM into more rock basis and which popped out with the emergence of Ian Boddy, Andy Pickford, David Wright and Wavestar, just to name a few. As far as I'm concerned, it's the most pop, heaviest and the most catchy album I've ever heard in the wonderful world of Electronic Music. A heavy opus with jerky and unbridled rhythms that are backed up by a sequencer and breathless electronic percussion to support simple, effective and catchy melodies. An album that has aged quite well!
Using samplings to the maximum, LEGION is full of satanic winks. It's therefore with a strange incantation, like a Black Mass, that a big and heavy line of bass sequences, like a bass, opens the procession of Legion. From then on, the rhythm becomes fast. It coughs on good percussion, metallic chords and a powerful sequencer that sculpts a hard and heavy rhythm with the support of a swarm of percussive keys that roll like the drumming of drums. Subsequently, the rhythm gets tribal. Big trance-like percussions (which may have inspired Juno Reactor) pushes the limits of synthesizer strings a bit philharmonic, but which sound like guitar riffs. It's a heavy, fast and totally demonic title that you've probably heard. Because it was part of the soundtrack of the film; The Jewel of the Nile in addition that it played a lot on dance floors, as evidenced by the many mix and the 7'' that have been made since its release. This shot is not isolated! There are several other very rhythmic tracks that are animated by a sequencer as heavy as fluid on this album. Like Sybex Factor with its hammering percussions and its long synth solos combined with those of Chrissie Bonnacci's guitar. There is Icon with its unbridled rhythm and the ultra paced sequencer, and as fast as that of Chris Franke for example, as well as these metal wings and these cries of bats. Finally, there is Hammer & Cross which arrived on the late. This is a bonus track that appeared on the 1st CD edition on Centaur Discs.
The melodies are still well anchored. And there are some that are simply catchy. Like Storm Column rolling on a structure of rhythm as wild, as jerky as the title-track. It's a loud and nervous title with light and melodious choruses that are in harmony with a very sharp synth. Moreover, this mixture of voice samplings on a rhythm as that jerky is quite great. Flagg is another stroke of genius! The longest track of LEGION opens with a very gloomy intro, as in a horror movie of series B. A little keyboard turns a melody into a threatening rhyme on a line of diabolical sequences that accelerates the pace in the long winding lines of a magnetising synth. The pace pounding a slow walk, at times it looks like a walk of vitamined zombies, and again the sampling is superbly successful. With Domain 7, it feels like being in a surreal marsh with birds and wolves coexisting on momentums of violins and a harmonium keyboard that hovers with good silky impetus whose lines follow the long sensual curves of a dark electric guitar and suggestive of Pat McManus. The effect is demonic! And even more with the violin strings that resonate on little more symphonic layers. The guitar is sublime. We feel the strings being scratched so much the effect is realistic. Being more sentimental than rocker, it's my favorite track. But after The Stand! We hear a synth crying and suffering in an envelope of melancholy so deep that we feel the threads of our soul shivering. Behind a slower rhythm structure and a lot fog effects, a synth line turns its harmonies into those of a trumpet. This track finally comes to give me these goosebumps that has resisted so far throughout this adventure that is LEGION. Not by its roughness, but by its sensitivity and the hold of evil that seems to triumph. It sounds like Ennio Morriconne who made a pact with the Devil in a more Mexican final than Mephistophelic. But the crying of a baby brings us back to reality behind the precepts of LEGION.
Even if closer to a synth-pop, quite progressive and very worked on the other hand, than the other albums of Mark Shreeve, LEGION remains a major album. Just see the asking price on Ebay so one understands its importance in the chessboard of contemporary EM. Its canvas is the kind that can appeal to fans of Gothic music, even if at times the melodies are at skin's edge, lovers of synth-pop and/or hard and heavy E-rock. Everything is well structured. It's a music filled of surprising samplings and unbridled sequences which preserves, in spite of these two elements, all of its melodic dimension. Simply great ... And that should be very kind if one day Mark Shreeve decides to reissue it, because the asking price on eBay is closer to a stealing option than to please the fans of Mark Shreeve.
Sylvain Lupari (September 8th, 2006) *****
Recorded at Battery Studios, London.
Words to 'Flagg' by Mark Shreeve based on a character created by Stephen King.
Equipment used on this record:
Fairlight
CMI, Emu Systems Emulator II, P.P.G. Wave 2.2, Oberheim OB8, Roland
Jupiter 6, Roland Jupiter 8, Yamaha DX7, Linn Drum 9000
Linn Drum 2, S.C.I. Drumtraks, Roland TR808, Roland MSQ 700
Tracks 8 and 9 are bonus tracks.
Raffaele Pezzella
credits
Our thanks to Raffaele Pezzella and the Unexplained Sounds Group for providing us with a promo copy of this release.
Published by ©Unexplained Sounds Group
Curated and mastered by Raffaele Pezzella (Sonologyst)
Special thanks for their precious collaboration to Nicolas Malevitsis, Ion Christodoulidis, Dimitris Tsironis.
Cover image “Dyonisus on a boat”, 550-540 BC.
© 2022. All rights reserved
experimental avant-garde drone improvisation musique concrete sound art Italy
Posts
