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Originally posted April 9, 2007
I wanted to mention the new Emanems again, as we've now assembled the new releases on the site. SME, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, is perhaps the most important historic pair of releases - the great John Stevens was a seminal figure in the Euro free jazz scene, both as a percussionist but also as an influential thinker and conceptualist who died far too young. Frameworks presents 3 original frameworks, which were Stevens approach to formalizing free playing, each with a different group and orchestration, up to 1970's SME lineup including Maggie Nichols (Nichols did a great group improv record called "The Gathering" on Emanem a few years back, a tribute to Stevens. Quintessence is taken from a 1974 live concert with a very different yet historically important lineup including Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Trevor Watts and Kent Carter. Amazing and important stuff.
 Listening more to Tetrault's Snipettes record. As I mentioned the other day, this is a reissue of a very limited set of 1992 cassette tape releases. To me, this is far more interesting than the more recent noise improv that Tetrault has been involved with. Here he created a virtual orchestra from a set of records. The title piece is my personal favorite, an unusual but wonderfully paced set of plundered parts, including Star Trek voice samples from actors other than Shatner and Nimoy, but more importantly, using a very eclectic mix of virtual instruments. It's clear from listening to both works that Tetrault put a lot of careful consideration into the selection of source material and how the pieces were to be performed. It's both remarkable and really entertaining. And inspiring me to play a lot of plunderphonics material on the radio show today...
Other Ambiances related material, the new Malasartes release Muzika of
Damian Nisenson, Jean Félix Mailloux and Pierre Tanguay. Malasartes is an offshoot of Ambiances Magnetiques, part of a trio of releases revolving around bassist Jean Félix Mailloux. Which is a little odd because the label is led by Argentinian tenor sax player Damian Nisenson, who is only featured on the Muzika release. As Ambiances Magnetiques gets more involved in jazz, and easy transition as so much of the work on the label has come close to traditional jazz (think Evidence, or the Ambiances Jazz sublabel, featuring work from Jean Derome or Norman Guilbeault). Muzika in particular deserves a listen, if for no other reason than the work of the great drummer Pierre Tanguay, but more importantly for Nisenson's playing and writing.
A nod to EM Records (Japan), who sent us a nice stack of CDs to consider a couple of years ago, but which we haven't carried yet (we're working on getting the recent Tim Olive release in stock. I gave EM's "Android Sisters" release a play this week, and was really amused by both the music (odd electronica often in a Kraftwerkian mode) and the great lyrics, including a hoot of a piece about how the Android Sisters need to dumb down their songs to get more radio play. Again, meat for the radio show...
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Phil Zampino 2007-04-24
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