Showing posts with label spain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spain. Show all posts

21 March 2023: Granada; Node; Deep Red: A Tribute to the Cinema of Dario Argento

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Granada biography
Founded in Madrid, Spain in 1974 - Disbanded in 1979

Pioneering early-70's Spanish progressive band, GRANADA (from Madrid...) was the musical project of multi-instrumentalist Carlos Carcamo (flute, violin, acoustic - and electric piano, mellotron, clavicordio, 12-string guitar, percussion and vocals!) and the other musicians Michael Vortreflich (electric guitar), Antonio Garcia Oteyza (bass) and Juan Bona (drums and vocals).

GRANADA had a unique style. They remind of the Mexicans ICONOCLASTA, and also other Spanish bands like TRIANA or COTO EN PEL. The British influences come from YES, JETHRO TULL and other Italian bands very present in their sound. The emphasis of GRANADA relies on the keyboards (with profusion of moog and mellotron) and guitar instrumental passages, but with more keys than guitar. They sound like a mix of fusion and symphonic influences. 


 Excellent disc of Spanish Symphonic Prog with all caracterist of genre and one of most complete of the history of the symphonic rock in Spain (excellent mellotron). Instrumental Master combination of styles like Canterbury Jazz, Symphonic Prog Classic and RockAndalus.

 


When synth supergroup Node first surfaced with their eponymous album in 1995 they, more than anyone else, nailed “that sound and vibe”, which had become the obsession of so many others. They seemed to encapsulate the very essence of the early German electronic music pioneers such as Tangerine Dream but with production values to die for courtesy of Node founder members Ed Buller & Flood, who were of course internationally renowned producers in their own right. But it was another 19 years before their follow up album appeared on DiN as “Node 2”, (DiN44) to be closely followed (by Node standards), with their live concert album performed at the Royal College of Music, London.

Up to that point that was the total canon of their work except for the EP “Terminus” recorded at their infamous Paddington Station gig. Surely they must have more material hidden away in their vaults and indeed this is exactly what the album “Singularity” is, the legendary “lost” Node album. Recorded at the same time as their original sessions in 1994 this has DiN stalwart Dave Bessell join Buller & Flood alongside original member Gary Stout who was later replaced by Mel Wesson for the two DiN releases. Presented here for the first time, mastered to modern standards but otherwise untouched and in its original form and recorded to two track with no overdubs. As a bonus the track “Terminus”, mentioned above, is included in the release.

The music is a snapshot in time 29 years ago when Node were first powering up their huge banks of vintage modulars and sequencers to create a tapestry of electronic sound. At times raw and almost out of control and at others delicate and ethereal this quartet of fabled musicians can create atmospheres and soundscapes like no other. The crackling energy of the sounds they coax out of these steam driven behemoths positively pulsates with life and organic energy and will be a real treat for aficionados of the Berlin school style of electronic music.

Another great release from the DiN imprint released in a beautiful Digipak CD edition with a special 8 track booklet with photos taken at the time of the original recording sessions.
 

credits

released March 17, 2023
Our thanks to Ian Boddy for a promotional copy of this release.

Dave Bessell - disguised guitar, interactive phrase synthesizer, atmospheres and keys
Ed Buller - monster moog, sequences and keys
Flood - sonic interventions, sequences
Gary Stout - ring modulated trumpet, atmospheres and keys

The legendary lost Node album. Recorded in 1995 in the same sessions as the first album but largely unheard until now. Over the intervening years one or two things intended for the album escaped into the world but the majority of the material on this recording is previously unreleased. Presented here for the first time mastered to modern standards but otherwise in its original form - recorded straight to two track with no overdubs. These recordings include original member Gary Stout who was later replaced on more recent Node recordings by Mel Wesson.

Node wish to thank all those who were involved in the Node project over the years, too many to list but you know who you are!

Cover photos from the collection of Hans Jenny (1904-1972) who coined the term Cymatics to describe the patterns made by soundwaves on a sand covered metal plate.




Dario Argento was born in Rome, Italy, on September 7, 1940.Before becoming a screenwriter and later a director, he was a film critic. Ever since his "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" heart-stopping directorial debut in 1970, Dario Argento has been redrawing the boundaries of cinematic horror with flamboyant violence, feverish plotting, and deliriously stylized compositions. Initially associated with giallo, the pulpy Italian subgenre he helped formalize and would later take to unprecedented heights with his international breakthrough, Deep Red (1975), Argento embraces a gamut of fantastical influences—from sublime Gothic art and penny dreadfuls to Murnau, Hitchcock, and Disney with his distinctively baroque style of disorientating cinematography, stained-glass colorwork, and elaborate musical scores (often composed by his own rotating house group, Goblin). As far as horror film directors go, few are more influential and prolific than Dario Argento. With over half a century of films under his belt, the Italian Argento became a popular purveyor of giallo, but none made more of an impact than Argento.
"With his first cinematic foray, Argento instantly elevated giallo into an art form. Horror was never the same again. The director is often referred to as the Italian Alfred Hitchcock, and while both auteurs were skillful at building pressure-cookers for plots, Argento developed a trademark style, sophistication, and perversity all his own. In film after film — The Cat o’ Nine Tails, Deep Red, and Suspiria among his very best — he employed the familiar trope of a maniac on the loose to build delicious, glamorous, vivid, and vicious jigsaw puzzles, with plenty of blood, eerie electronic music, whispering psychopaths, children’s nursery rhymes, vertiginous camera angles, odd animal cameos, and, Argento’s particular forte, over-the-top baroque deaths. Argento was making murder and mayhem into something far stranger: a seductive deep dive into our dark psychologies, with all the attendant political and sexual upheaval of the time".

To celebrate the cinema of Dario Argento, Eighth Tower has called musicians from various countries and asked them their musical interpretation of his movies and his "dark giallo" universe".
 

credits

released March 3, 2023 
Our thanks to Raffaele Pezzella (SONOLOGYST) for a promotional copy of this release.

REVIEWS

Ver Sacrum
www.versacrum.com/vs/2023/03/aa-vv-deep-red-a-tribute-to-the-cinema-of-dario-argento.html

Bizarrechats (Michael Housel)
bizarrechats.blogspot.com/2023/03/dark-fiction-6-terrorvision-stories.html


Previously unreleased music by:
Michael Bonaventure, Grey Frequency, Rapoon, Joel Gilardini, 400 Lonely Things, David Strother & Carl Royce, Gianluca Becuzzi, Kloob, Mario Lino Stancati, Arrighi-Bocci-Fontana-Lepore, Pluhm.


Published by Eighth Tower Records
Curated and mastered by Raffaele Pezzella
Design by RhaD
© 2023. All rights reserved

22 November 2022: d'Voxx; Deaf; Granada

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It’s always said that the second album by any band is the difficult one to create and release. This could well have been the case for the duo d’Voxx who launched their debut record “Télégraphe” (DiN58) on DiN in 2019 too much critical acclaim. Rather than continuing in the same vein they have really raised the bar with a stunning sonic interpretation of the classic twentieth century novel “1984” by George Orwell. Not only that but they have the blessing and permission of the estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell to not just use the novel’s title but to directly quote from this seminal work.

Over the course of eight tightly focused tracks, which feature stunning sound design, what unfolds is a musical work that really captures the essence of this great work. Male and female voices quote from the novel as modular systems churn and chatter around their syllables. Throbbing sequence lines and incessant percussion grooves worm their way into your consciousness as the overall sense of unease and paranoia is gradually ramped up throughout the course of the album. Heartrending strings and melodic themes twist and turn to superimpose an emotional layer over the brutality of the underlying message.

Written in 1949 the dystopian themes of the novel seem even more relevant today than when it was first published. Most importantly the ways that truth and reality can be manipulated by governments and large corporations seem to be an insidious force that affects us all. This unique album by d’Voxx could well be the greatest musical interpretation of this novel to date and is another milestone in the burgeoning catalogue of the DiN imprint. 

credits

Our thanks to Ian Boddy and DiN for supplying us with a promo copy of this release.

released November 18, 2022

Composed and produced by Nino Auricchio and Paul Borg.

Nino Auricchio plays Winston
Wendy Auricchio plays Julia
Paul Borg plays O’Brien

Mastered by Nino Auricchio

Cover image by Nino Auricchio
Designed by Jamie Currey

Special Thanks to Ian Boddy, Florence Reese & Bill Hamilton at A.M. Heath, Penguin Random House, HMH Books & Media, Mark Roland & Neil Mason at Electronic Sound Magazine.

This album is a musical interpretation of George Orwell’s 1949 novel, 1984.

Use of the album title 1984 and spoken text has been granted by permission of the estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell.

ambient em electronic electronic music electronica eurorack downtempo eurorack modular modular synth Sunderland

Review by DamoXt7942
FORUM & SITE ADMIN GROUP Avant/Cross/Neo/Post Teams

3 stars DEAF were an extremely obscure Swiss Krautrock outfit around 1970 and we can hear their "real" soundscape only from their one and only compilation "Alpha" including the longest album-titled suite and three live sessions. Of the whole album, such a mixture of heavy & peppery guitar-based kick and drunken keyboard walk can notify us some fragrance of Krautrock.

From the beginning "No Time" we can be knocked out by freak out flute, percussive rhythm section, simple and persistently fluctuate bass, and sometimes familiar sometimes heavy attacking Samuraish rock ensemble. Against clear heavy rock texture, obscure voices (like this band's history ... cannot understand what they said) are there. In the latter half, eerie keyboards catecholamine intermittently follows drumming solo. A mysterious and interesting stuff. The second "Run You Off The Hill" can shoot into our brain dreamy drowsy bluesy heavy missiles from Swiss Deaf-y launcher. Basically a simple blues number, but simultaneously with groovy keyboard-based glimmering psychedelia. In "The Galactic Pack Of Kari" a warped flute and a greasy acoustic guitar can be very active and aggressive over the percussive rhythm stage especially in the middle part. Definitely not a single poppy ballad but delightful tragedy theme we can hear alright?

The last Ravel's Boléro-based extreme suite "Alpha", one of their few and rare studio sessions, should be absolutely beyond expression. Calm and gracious falsetto chorus with exotic, ethnic woody-moody percussive melodies by flute and clarinet solos, plus a bit weird shouts, not entirely united and polished but slightly scattered into each of instrumental pieces. Nutty and dry-fruity merged organ sounds themselves can remind us some Kraut-ish keyboard-based soundshower. Quirky percussion and a bass solo with spacey synthesizer-elevated tribal jamming ensemble is not fundamentally honest at all but a bit whacked-out with merry-go-rounder flute sounds and complex, flexible drumming. Certainly shoegazey garagey made-on-trip sounds follow the whackey bloody footprints by struggle between a guitar and a synthesizer. Maybe they cannot be too soft nor too heavy in the last part. Well-balanced bluesy boogie fever can rush into confusion world. We cannot realize and well-read where and how this longest suite goes until the very last, and just after listening to it, no fresh air nor comfort but something missing (maybe DEAF themselves I do consider!) should be left around us surely.

Listen to the entire album, Alpha, by Deaf 1972

 Studio Album, released in 1975

Review by apps79
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator

3 stars 3.5 stars...

Short-lived but worth hearing,GRANADA were the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Carlos Carcamo,who started this project in 1974 in Madrid.Musicians would come and go,before Carcamo found a stable trio for the guitar/bass/drums section,while he was responsible for the vocals and the rest of the instruments,including violins,keyboards,accordion and flutes.

''Hablo de una tierra'' came out a year after GRANADA's formation and it is an album of pure progressive rock with different influences and sounds.In this work mellotrons and pianos battle with Spanish folklore through flamenco guitars and accordion,while a jazzy feeling tries to capture the symphonicism of the album.Carcamo does an excellent job,especially his mellotron playing is dreamy and nostalgic,while he also handles the flutes in a fine way,sometimes in a softer style,while others he marks JETHRO TULL's Ian Anderson as a big influence.I'm not really sure if he is also responsible for the flamenco guitars,but this blending of Spanish sounds with nice keys and backing vocals is also very attractive,not far from what co-patriots TRIANA were trying around the same time.Besides this flamenco stuff,the album contains also a fair amount of acoustic passages with backing mellotron and flutes and a balanced dose of vocals to make it even more interesting and worth searching for,while several Italian bands of the same style come to mind (PREMIATA FORNERIA MARCONI, BLOCCO MENTALE, OSANNA,QUELLA VECCHIA LOCCANDA).This is absolutely fascinating Spanish flamenco-tinged symphonic rock with tons of romanticism and a relaxed but atmospheric dimension.Recommended! 

Hear the entire album here.


 
 

04 December 2018: Joachim Cooder - Quantum Tangle - Iceberg



















Fuchsia Machu Picchu continues Coode's ethereal explorations. The title song, as Joachim explained while opening for his dad in concert recently, began as a simple serenade to a plant he was urging to grow in his Los Angeles garden. Among the best of the seven tunes are “Everyone Sleeps in the Light,” a performance of which you can view below (Hey, who’s that old guy on bass?), and “Because the Moonlight,” which has a little Talking Timbuktu-style guitar sprinkled into the music courtesy of Dad. The album is a definite departure from the conventional roots music often featured on this blog. It’s not for everyone, but if you’re in the mood for some flowing, atmospheric melodies but aren’t looking to go full Eno, Joachim’s music might hit the spot. The EP is available for download at various places around the internet.
Where is the most compelling and innovative music being made right now in Canada? Your first guess might be one of the country’s major urban centres, but a strong argument can be made that Canada’s North is truly changing the game. Case in point is Quantum Tangle who, after their 2016 EP Tiny Hands won the JUNO for Indigenous Album of the Year, have followed it up with a dynamic full-length debut, Shelter as we go…

Quantum Tangle combines the wide-ranging artistic visions of Greyson Gritt and Tiffany Ayalik who draw from their respective Anishinaabe-Métis and Inuit backgrounds to create a fusion of old-world sounds and new-world flair. Woven throughout Shelter as we go…, deep blues riffs, traditional throat singing and haunting melodies intertwine with hard beats and equally hard-hitting storytelling.

Proudly and boldly displaying their Indigenous roots, Gritt and Ayalik tailor their music to examine systemic racism and colonialism, while offering ways to empower marginalized groups. As vocal advocates for gender-equality and the need for safe-spaces, Quantum Tangle looks back through history to challenge, educate and encourage audiences to be socially aware.

With their JUNO win and the release of Shelter as We Go…, Quantum Tangle joins Tanya Tagaq and A Tribe Called Red as artists who are revolutionizing the genre of Indigenous music and bringing it to the mainstream. These are the most vital voices in Canada at this moment, and they will no longer be denied.

1. Tiny Hands Listen/Download on Bandcamp

2. Igluvut Listen/Download on Bandcamp

3. Freeze, Melt, Boil Listen/Download on Bandcamp

4. Love is Love Pt.1 Listen/Download on Bandcamp

5. Love is Love Pt. 2 Listen/Download on Bandcamp

6. Ikersuaq Listen/Download on Bandcamp

7. Tiny Hands (Reimagined) Listen/Download on Bandcamp

8. Angnahiak Listen/Download on Bandcamp
Founded in Barcelona, Spain in 1974 - Disbanded in 1979 

ICEBERG from the middle of the 70's were easily one of *the* best Progressive bands to come from Spain. This Spanish band ICEBERG came (like Manuel from Fawlty Towers) from Barcelona and consisted of: Max Sune (guitar), Josep Mas Kitflus (keyboards), Primi Sancho (bass) and Jordi Colomer (drums), Angel Riba (voice) could only be heard on the first record. Their style was definitely jazzier but with continuous conversations between the guitars and keyboards in a mixture of fusion and symphonic sounds. The band mixed RETURN FOREVER or THE MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA's crazy and energetic music and SANTANA's more latin one.

ICEBERG made four studio-albums entitled: "Tutankhamon" ('75), "Coses Nostres" ('76), "Sentiments" ('77) and "Arc-en-Ciel" ('78). Their final release was the live-LP "En directe" from '79. Their debut album "Tutankhamon" (eleven tracks) is their most 'symphonic': tasteful songs with many shifting moods, ranging from fluent with biting and howling, wah-wah drenched guitar solos to dreamy with floods of choir-Mellotron and tender Fender Rhodes piano. The vocals are often passionate and the interplay between guitar and keyboards is flowing. The other albums contain splendid jazzrock/fusion music with spectacular guitar - and keyboard work. Try for "Coses Nostres" or "Sentiments" as they're a bit better than "En Directe" or "Arc-En-Ciel" though any of these are fantastic. "Coses Nostres" is a very strong release from the ultimate Spanish fusion ensemble. An absolute must if you can find any of the albums. FOR THE FUSION-LOVERS...!