welcome visitor
FastCounter by LinkExchange

altair 5
ALTAIR FIVE
THE ALTERNATIVE GUIDE TO INTERESTING MUSIC BY MARK PRENDERGAST.

NB this page looks best when viewed in Netscape 4.0 or above

This is an archive edition.
The most recent issue is here.

MENU

Altair5 ezine: Altair5 live playlists:

Vote for this site in the eZines Database:

To receive email when this page is updated, enter your email address and press the button:
(service provided by NetMind):

CONTENTS


RECEPTION

Two events have sparked my interest recently. The first was a club night in Brixton, London, titled Air Swaraj. It confirmed my belief that Asian youth are now at the cutting edge of dance culture, bringing the psychedelic content of Ecstasy's first rush nearly a decade ago into a new dimension. Based in a deconsecrated church known as Mass the first Friday of every month, Air Swaraj shows Asian youth getting their revenge for years of cultural imperialism. Now the Hindustani and Carnatic traditions are fused into a dance music which is truly cutting edge. And it's authentically multi-cultural with white DJs like Danny MacMillan fitting in nicely with the Earthtribe sound system, Sitar Funk and the Indian princess DJ Suki. If you want to see West Indian/Asian/White Techno fusion of the late 1990s then this is the place to be.

The second event worthy of mention was the BBC Reputations documentary on Jimi Hendrix 'The Man They Made God' (June) which categorically made the point that the record industry destroyed Hendrix's life. After Woodstock, Hendrix was happily esconced in Shokan house with Billy Cox and other black musicians. We were told of managers accompanied by gun-toting heavies forcing Hendrix to go back on the road as they absconded with all his money to the Bahamas. A terrible loveless childhood, years of racial discrimination made Hendrix a real fighter but the dreadful cocktail of endless touring, no control and heavy drug use just wore him down. One of the saddest and best documentaries ever made on the man who still is the greatest rock musician this world has ever known. See Nigel Kennedy's Hendrix tribute in Classical/World.

This time around I'm going for a slightly different format. Like where a date is omitted after record it means it's a current release. Hope you like it.

Mark Prendergast, June 1999,London.


ARCHIVE

RAVI SHANKAR

Like Hendrix, Ravi Shankar dwarf's the 20th Century. He is like no other Indian musician before him or since. Most of the above are re-issues on Angel records via EMI classics. The original covers are inlayed into a new stylised sleeve with new sleevenotes and pictures. 'Improvisations' contains the famous 'Theme From Pather Panchali' plus contributions from American jazz musicians. 'Portrait Of Genius' features flautist Paul Horn. 'India's Master Musician' is a serious set of classical melodies and Ragas where Ravi performs with his very own sitar luthier. 'The Sound Of The Sitar' is an exemplary exposition of the Hindustani musical tradition complete with score exposition and the wonderful tablas of Alla Rakha. The 'Monterey Pop' disc captures Shankar's intense Sunday performance from that 1967 watershed festival which introduced both him and Hendrix to the world at large. 'In Concert' was a simple disc of two performances from an early 1960s UCLA concert released in 1968 after the triumph of Monterey. I've included the 1972 disc, which was produced by George Harrison for Apple, because it contains some of Shankar's most fiery playing in duet with the master sarod player Ali Akbar Khan. Alla Rakha is again on tablas. The call and response intimacy over the three ragas is breathtaking and it should join your collection immediately. All discs are Digital Remasters.

Lord Sitar : The above makes this kitsch disc from the Swinging London of 1968 a true abomination. Advertizing man orchestral music topped over some sitar versions of tunes by The Monkees, The Beatles and The Who. Without a doubt the worst versions of 'Daydream Believer' and 'Blue Jay Way' I've ever heard. It actually sounds like the soundtrack to a terrible horror movie. EMI Zonophone Yuuucchhh!

MILES DAVIS

I always feel a bit nervy when people decide to re-mix classic music. I feel even more queasy when an album of covers comes out, dedicated to a great artist. Last year Bill Laswell's 'Panthalassa' re-construction of Davis's jazz/rock years was a triumph of editing and taste. This year Columbia (www.columbiarecords.com) have pushed it a bit further. 'The Remixes' features Miles in the context of House, Hip-Hop and Drum 'n' Bass. Though we are given six tracks there are really only three as excerpts from 'In A Silent Way' (1969), 'On The Corner' (1972) and 'Get Up With It' (1974) are mixed twice. King Britt, Doc Scott, DJ Cam, Bill Laswell (who gets 16 minutes), Jamie Myerson and the Tokyo-based DJ Krush all do their best. This is dark stuff, Miles Davis (www.miles-davis.com) best served by the blistering drum-heavy scene of Doc Scott. Mark Isham (www.markisham.com) has always adored Davis, his muted trumpet style almost a facsimile. 'The Silent Way Project' is his tribute to Miles recorded at the Baked Potato in Los Angeles with his band in 1996. Its a very Ambient affair, the effect of Eno and Peter Gabriel is everywhere plus that of jazz-rocker John McLaughlin. All sides of Miles's career are covered including Silent Way, Bitches Brew, At The Fillmore, Jack Johnson, On The Corner, Big Fun and Tutu.

STEVE REICH

An amazing record which recalls the use of Electric Counterpoint by The Orb in 'Little Fluffy Clouds' at the beginning of the '90s. It opens with a 10 minute Ambient megamix by Tranquility Bass which liberally takes from Clapping Music, Three Movements, Six Marimbas, It's Gonna Rain, Electric Counterpoint, City Life, Come Out, Drumming and Proverb. DJ Spooky, Coldcut, Ken Ishii, D*Note, Howie B and other sundry muso/mixers give Reich (the original remixer) the techtronic treatment.

TODD RUNDGREN


These days you can download music direct from Todd's very own website at www.tr-i.com. Last year I reviewed the compilation 'Go Ahead Ignore Me, The Best of Todd Rundgren' on Castle which ably put together some of the greatest moments from his career including 'Freedom Fighters', the emotional highlight of an otherwise emotionally barren album ('Utopia' 1974). Now Castle have re-released almost all the original Bearsville albums. I've waited this long to give you my verdict. 'Something/Anything' is essential, a crystalline take on all of rock/pop music's greatest sounds put through an imagination which could play great electronica one moment and metal rock the next. 'I Went To The Mirror' alone presages the work of Peter Gabriel.

'A Wizard , A True Star' was Todd gone psychedelic. A mixture of mescaline, psilocybin, peyote and speed tablets gave Todd the feeling that from his New York apartment he could see God and all creation. One day he noticed the Daliesque art of Arthur Wood and thus the gatefold phantasmagoric sleeve replete with Picasso Todd- head was born. On record 'Wizard' was always a nightmare as many of its 22 songs are no more than a minute long. Only on track 9 ,'Zen Archer', does Todd stretch the song to any proper length (5« mins). We get electronica, metal rock, Disney tunes, silly rock, sound FX, ballad and anything that seemed to come out of Todd's head at the time. Still there are great performances : 'Zen Archer', 'Sometimes I Don't Know What To Feel', 'I Don't Want To Tie You Down', the soul genius of 'La La La La La La Means I Love You' and the layered Gospel finale with spritely electric guitar overdub 'Just One Victory'. CD re-programming can turn what was a bitty album into a brilliant one.

'Todd' has been cited by Ian MacDonald as one of the greatest albums of the 1970s. Originally a double its new single disc status allows for a better appreciation. Great songs and wonderful electronic compositions make for a helter-skelter ride and I doubt if you'll hear anything as heavy as 'No 1 Lowest Common Denominator' or as manic as 'Heavy Metal Kids' anywhere else. 'Faithful' (with its mock Beatles White Album sleeve) saw Todd cover Yardbirds, Beatles, Beach Boys, Hendrix and Dylan songs with so much conviction that his 'studio genius' was obvious. The rest of the album wasn't bad either. 'Hermit Of Mink Hollow' charts a period in Rundgren's life when he separated from Bebe Buell and adopted Liv Tyler (her daughter by Aerosmith's Steve Tyler) and retired to a house in upstate New York , the Mink Hollow of the title. It's light sound hid a lot of pain and it was Todd's most successful album up to then.

KING CRIMSON

On Robert Fripp's DGM (www.discipline.co.uk) website on the 15th April 1999 the said Fripp wrote the following re your Altair5 scribe: " Mark is far too intelligent to write a biography of me. I have so little interest in this as to describe my position as active antagonism. Mark must have had a bad day, a day when his sense of presence and prescience faltered. Fortunately, we have recognised this in time and steered Mark back from the brink of folly." This is an abbreviated version of Robert's response to my suggestion of writing a biography of him. Given the huge amount of self-documentation, boxed sets, live sets, re-issues and collectors' sets it seems that Fripp himself is best appointed to write about his musical career. I have a 'Young Person's Guide' album from the 1970s in pristine condition. The above double CD set (in lovely English antique packaging) is the first of Virgin's 30th anniversary specials (expect all albums re-issued again in new mini gatefold sleeves) and charts live Crimson from 1984-1998 (Disc 1) and from 1969-1996 (Disc 2). With no 'Sheltering Sky' in sight I jumped to Disc 2 which features previously issued takes from 'Epitaph', 'The Night Watch' and 'The Great Deceiver' '90s sets. The rest is new - U.S. '72 and Mexico '96. My fave is the latter metallic k.o. of 'Larks Tongues In Aspic II'.

SPACEMEN 3

Here we have some of Jason Pierce's and Sonic Boom's finest moments on two re-issued Third Stone (www.adasam.demon.co.uk/spaceage/) discs. 'Threebie 3' contains the usual high-octane live Velvets styled noise/feedback drone thingy perfected on 'Starship'. Most of it (excepting the tingly 'Xtacy' theme) recorded in Amsterdam's infamous Milky Way. 'Playing With Fire' pushed the Velvets thing even further, paring it down to the bare minimum of 2 chord mantras to heavenly highs. 'Let Me Down Gently' by Kember is bliss on record. Disc 1 features extra tracks like the electric energy of 'Che'. Disc 2 is a bonus of alternate mixes, versions, demos with two extra covers of 'Anyway You Want Me' and 'Girl On Fire'. Nicely packaged as a gatefold CD sleeve.

OTHER ARCHIVE STUFF

'Space 'n' Bass' is actually a collection of all those Amberdelic Space four CD compilations which began emerging in the mid 1990s. It contains 122 tracks for the price of a single chart CD! The best value I've ever seen in a record shop, some of the tracks here from Chicane, Fluid, Carl Cox, Loop Guru, Drum Club etc are some of the best Ambient electronica ever. Includes Acid anthem 'Stakker Humanoid' plus great fractal covers. The Rubble series was a distant cousin to 'Nuggets' and is supposed to be a good introduction to U.K. psychedelia of the '60s. Most of it was rubbish, the constricted Beat band context just too rigid to be of real interest. There are flashes of interest - Boeing Duveen & The Beautiful Soup, The State Of Micky & Tommy and Free Expression but the whole scene needed Hendrix and Syd Barrett to lift it out of its droll Englishness and send the music into space where it belonged. Weirdly 'Kid' Strange's Doctors of Madness project seemed to begin in a psychedelic Bowie vein, even though they looked like a punk band. Mellotron, violin and moody vocal were well to the fore. Theatrical, at times reminiscent of Peter Hamill's Van Der Graaf Generator, the new 'Late Night Movies' CD comes with bonus acoustic/studio/live tracks and funny pictures of Strange's 'kid' shaped guitar!


MODERN

THE ART OF NOISE

Since their forays into sampling and multi-editing in the early 1980s, The Art of Noise (www.theartofnoise.com) have influenced the entire history of House/Techno music and become revered innovators. Many forget that the original group's main players were Anne Dudley, Trevor Horn and Paul Morley. A sort of Futurist joke they recorded one album for ZTT and became a different Art Of Noise. This new record is their second for ZTT (www.ztt.com) and it's annoyingly pretentious. Dudley's excellent classical musicianship is the thing holding it together, abetted by opera singer Sally Bradshaw. John Hurt narrates as if Debussy's life was a beer commercial and Rakim raps about Charles Baudelaire. Widescreen piano impression is wedged right up close to Drum 'n' Bass, Housy drum beats, breakbeats and such. It's supposed to be post-modern but ends up being annoying as hell. Paul Morley talks, Trevor Horn (ex-Yes) and Kevin Godley (ex-10 cc) play instruments, John Hurt reads autocues about Debussy's life. Yawn, yawn!! My ears only pricked up when Dudley plays Ambient piano in a sonic cavern of electronic tones on the final track 'Out Of This World'. If only the rest of the CD was like this. [Better is 1996 'Drum And Bass Collection' on China (www.china.co.uk/china)]

BASEMENT JAXX

When I heard 'Red Alert' (with its sultry ' and the music keeps on playing on and on ' soul diva chorus) in a Brixton club I had no idea who it was. It just sounded like great Garage music. I phoned DJ Danny MacMillan (TCR/Uptown Connection) and told me it was a Brixton duo named Basement Jaxx. I thought they were black DJs but they are white, two blokes in their 20s Felix Buxton/Simon Ratcliffe who love music. They started a club in a Mexican restaurant in Brixton in 1993, then released club 12" singles before being signed. 'Remedy' on The Prodigy's XL Records is as eclectic a dance album as you'll hear anywhere this side of the Millennium. Funk, soul, Ambient, hip-hop, Ska, Balearic, Acid Jazz, Salsa, Techno and Swing are all here. On first listen it sounds as if the duo are trying to cover all the bases at once but a more careful ear reveals the important details of integrity.

DAVID SYLVIAN

Many have said that it's been 12 years since David Sylvian's last solo album for Virgin. True, but it obscures the work with Holger Czukay, Robert Fripp, Russell Mills and others. Since his move to America in the early 1990s, Sylvian has been as busy as a 'bee' recording with wife Ingrid Chavez (in Minneapolis), Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tom Waits' guitarist Marc Ribot and dozens of other musicians. 'Dead Bees' is sumptuous healing music, celebrating his new wanderer existence in America, the birth of his two daughters and his spiritual development through various Hindu gurus. Trip-Hop, rock, blues, Ambient, atmospheric, Trance, avant-garde and other stylisations are woven into this masterly album's fabric. He samples from Mahavishnu Orchestra, John Lee Hooker, John Cage and Armenian Djivan Gasparyan with some aplomb. The latter features on the album's best track 'Darkest Dreaming', Sylvian's greatest distillation of pain, and redemption through haunting lyric and sensurround Ambient guitar. Check out the double CD single pack of 'I Surrender' for some nice Anton Corbijn photography and four Ingrid Chavez collabs - ''Les Fleurs Du Mal', 'Starred & Dreaming', 'Whose Trip Is This' and 'Remembering Julia'.

TECHNO PLUS

Orbital have always been a tricky subject. Makers of such rave anthems as 'Halcyon ' and 'Chime', the Hartnoll brothers are often praised for their humanisation of dance-beat electronics. 'The Middle Of Nowhere' is their 6th album in ten years and opens with a brassy track titled 'Way Out ->', a sort of Techno equivalent of Love's 'Alone Again Or'. At times wiggy, harshly electronic, meditative and seriously weird this one ends with the sound of a Stylophone! Check out the London (www.londonrecords.co.uk) sleeve design, it's so minimal you'll be hard pushed to find any info whatsover. Carl Craig is a different proposition entirely. A protege of Detroit's Derrick May and a lover of Kraftwerk, the youthful Craig again makes a brilliant album. Working with musicians like Richie Hawtin his 'Innerzone Orchestra' is the most far-out Techno album I've ever heard. It's pure Space music, at home with Hendrix and Sun Ra. It pushes Jazz into new dimensions and extracts Technicolor/Cineramic vistas from electronic boxes. There are voices, drums, acoustic guitars, horns, pianos and the feeling of clear headed organisation. This proves that Craig (www.mich.com/planete) really is a 'genius'.

Aphex Twin aka Richard D. James appears on the cover of 'Windowlicker' with large bikinied breasts, his head obviously grafted onto that of a supermodel's. Full of 'breaks & beats', his new style exhibits a search for a new vocabulary. Confusing noises make this Warp (www.warprecords.com) very listener unfriendly until the third track 'Nannou' with its childlike clockwork charm and spatial vibe. Nightmares On Wax originate from Yorkshire and fuse reggae, funk, Hip Hop, Electro and House. 'Carboot Sale' has rappers and vocalists, is their third album and is pretty strong but groove-laden stuff. Plaid came out of the famous Black Dog Productions of 1990. Bleeps, off-kilter electronica, funk, Latin acoustica and black comedy horror soundtrack are all here in abundance. Capitol K's 'Sounds of The Empire' is a debut 10 tracker from Maltese (via Dubai and Borneo) Kristian Robinson 25,who went to a progressive school in Devon. Influenced by Sonic Youth, here we hear hard grooves, dictaphone samples, elements of 23 Skidoo and Led Zeppelin!

AMBIENT

Ambient recordings have to fulfil two characteristics for me to remain in my collection. First they have to be playable from begining to end without annoying my brain. Secondly they have to be varied and musically interesting. Roedelius on Rykodisc (www.rykodisc.com) ugives us the first of his Global Trotters Projects which incorporate other musicians into his other-wordly vision. The man I dubbed German's greatest keyboard musician, is now actively working with The Orb. Mark Van Hoen on R&S (www.rsrecords.com) begins his disc like Ligeti's 'Lux Aeterna' from '2001 - A Space Odyssey'. Then it coos itself around your brain, like old Aphex Twin stuff and ends with an Arctic chant which mutates into boundary-less Enoscape. Based on the thermal baths complex in the Swiss alps, Paul Schutze's 'Third Site' evokes a journey around the location with various sound timbres and German narration. I've just received 'Dark Side Of The Moog VIII', a live recording at a Hamburg jazz festival of Namlook and Schulze on vintage synthesizers including Moog, Trautonium and VCS3. It's quite loud for Ambient.

Namlook and Bobby Bird's Higher Intelligence Agency is an Intelligent Techno / Tangerine Dream take on X - Files territory even incorporating aspects of the Society of UFO Sightings UFO Detection System (UDS) electronics. Jochem Papp from Holland came into his own during the early '90s as Speedy J. 'VRS - MBNT - PCS 995981' is all titled without vowels ('Various Ambient Pieces 1995-1998 Vol 1', geddit!). 'Flm', 'Trmml-Dx' and 'Mbnt-Plng' etch sound very softly around your consciousness. A beautiful record. Peter Benisch is a classicalk percussionist, sound designer and electro/atmospheric musician from Sweden. 'Waiting For Snow' runs in the Biosphere vein of Scandinavian Ambient. Beats, noises, tones and folk strains abound in this quirky Fax artefact.

Seigen Ono's album was a gift from Yuka Fujii at Opium Arts. It's a three discer of material recorded between 1995 and 1997 in Tokyo, Bari, Finland, Sao Paulo and Leipzig. Some live, more studio. Ono, a famous Japanese engineer whose worked with David Sylvian, plays charango, guitar and sampler with dozens of other musicians. It revels in an appreciation of world instrumental musics, much of it sounding like superior soundtrack music. Return To The Source's 'Ambient Meditations' is true ethnic Ambience and perfect for coming down from a hectic weekend of partying/raving/travelling. Includes Another Green World and Children of Dub with an exotic cover which folds out to reveal a lovely pic of an Oriental temple. My longest running friend, film maker Rodney Breen (www.rbreen.dircon.co.uk) lent me a great new album from New York titled 'Organic Grooves'. This is an exciting new dub friendly groove music which mixes live and recorded sounds. Congas, Moog, Bongos, Guitar, Drums, Scratching and DJ Sasha all combine to create one of the freshest sounding albums I've heard in years. A sort of Cosmic-Dub on Codek (www.codek.com) of which Lee Perry and Augustus Pablo would be proud.

ROCK PLUS

Irish band The Frames release their third album, their first for ZTT. Their leader Glen Hansard did a stint in The Commitments film but this music is bluesy, stoney American rock part-recorded in France. They even recorded an album in 1994 titled 'Fitzcarraldo' after the Werner Herzog film! Nice authentic Western sleeve on the new one. Kristin Hersh keeps putting out her version of 'fright-rock' on 4AD. After 3 children, Throwing Muses and a move back to Rhode Island, Hersh is on another roll. With all instruments played by Hersh with help from Sheryl Crow's producer and recorded in Dan Lanois's New Orleans studio, this is possibly her finest hour. Elements of The Velvets, Suede, Neil Young, Mazzy Starr all abound. Lovely feed-backing guitar lines and explosive lyrics from a woman who has traversed America and lived on the edge. Watch out for the crickets! Steve Parry is a Welsh musician who put out some nice jazzy/Ambient stuff in the 1980s. His new HWYL concept derives inspiration from Hendrix to put together a strange brew of piano effects, treated guitars,percussion and voices which blurs boundaries between rock, Ambient, environmental and John Cage.

In A Nursery (www.inthenursery.com) are the Sheffield brothers Humberstone. They know a lot about technology and silent films. They like writing music for things like Murnau's 'Cabinet of Dr Caligari'. This new album is for a 1929 Russian film 'Man With A Movie Camera' by Vertov documenting Russian life 1924-1928. It's moving, elegiac in places, drawing much of its inspiration from Ambient Trance music. I know nothing about Melbourne. The cover shows an attractive semi-dreadlocked blonde with a white guitar. Carrie & Doug Melbourne could be husband/wife, sister/brother? Carrie plays succulent guitar riffs to a Housy beat. The Chapman Stick 10 string guitar which Carrie plays has a distinctive twang. Doug plays keyboards and Atari computer programmes. This is soft rock with avant edges which improves with every play. Sonic Boom can never leave the studio alone. He loves analogue synthesizer noises played in sheets of sound like the fizzle of some old Sci-Fi movie. He has Synthi VCS3, Oscar, Serge Modular and various oscillator, ring modulator and filter clusters. Working in Coventry he releases music under many names. Imajinary Friends is mad electronic American rock recorded in San Francisco in 1995. It seems Sonic liked the dunky sound of their synths. The new Space Age (www.spaceagerecordings.com) album is a dual artist thingy, one side each! Experimental Audio Research or E.A.R. has at times featured Kevin Shields and Eddie Prevost plus Sonic. 'Pestrepeller' on Ochre (www.ochre.co.uk) is an evolution of Boom's 'data-rape' concept where cheap Texas instruments from the '70s and other keyboard, effects boxes, samplers and such are re-wired to produce new sounds. According to my sources this new album of eerie electronica is a re-make of the recording 'Ultrasonic Attack Wave Pestrepeller' released in 1998 on Sympathy in America


CLASSICAL & WORLD

ANOUSKHA SHANKAR

What is annoying about this debut album from the 18-year old daughter of Ravi Shankar is the packaging. The cover reveals her beautiful face, the inside booklet more images as if they came from a fashion shoot. The back of the CD shows her as she should be seen, in Indian dress with sitar in hand. Would a CD cover of her father show just his face? I don't think so. Anouskha takes on five compositions (raga and derivations) written/arranged for her by Ravi. Given the fact she has been playing for nine years and has the greatest sitar player in the world as a teacher, I found the results underwhelming. Everything is in slow tempo and there's no fire in the playing. If Anouskha is to pass on her father's brilliance she'll have to invest the music with much more passion than is evident on this EMI/Angel disc.


NIGEL KENNEDY

Recorded in Vancouver, Nigel Kennedy with the help of a vibrant chamber ensemble (including Kate St. John) gives his all to the music of Jimi Hendrix. And it works superbly! The combination of violin, cello, guitar, dobro, flute, bass and oboe brings out all the light and shade in Jimi's music. Celtic, modal and Indian nuances appear and the full Classical punch of Hendrix's genius comes into view. The recording works best on the expansive creations such as 'Drifting', 'Little Wing', '1983' and 'Third Stone From The Sun'.


OTHER CLASSICAL

The sleevenotes to the Cage disc contain the following gem - " his interest was in the doing of things, hence his overwhelming preference for lively occasions such as concerts and events. " Chance operations and much imagination inform the two works for violin/piano/harpsichord/organ 'Verging Lightfall'/ '13 Harmonies' contained therein. Astor Piazzolla is Argentina's tango king, a man who studied classical music in Paris, heard cool jazz and expanded 'tango music' to orchestral proportions. Hear violinist Gidon Kremer and various ensembles do him justice on this beautifully's packaged Teldec (www.teldec.com) disc. 'Prayer Cycle' is a huge hymnal concept from movie composer Jonathan Elias (Jagged Edge, 9« Weeks) with all-star cast including Alanis Morisette, James Taylor and such. Multilingual, its best track features Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ofra Haza in Urdu and Hebrew duetting to a French chorus. Still the sprawling work is nothing compared to Peter Gabriel multi-cultural 'Passion' soundtrack from the late 1980s. Another violinist, Daniel Hope takes on the difficult Schnittke, a strange Kurt Weill concerto and the fascinating Takemitsu. The musical mist and water of the latter's 14 minute 'Nostalghia' was dedicated to film director Andrey Tarkovsky in 1987. The Tavener disc is a straight compilation of music from 1981 to 1993. Includes Eastern tinged 'Hidden Treasure' and 'Last Sleep of The Virgin' and Ambient choral 'Song For Athene'. Villa Lobos (pronounced Villia Lobosch) is still seen as a giant of Brazilian music. A melder of Latin, Portugese, African and classical music with the wider sounds of the natural world, his writing (usually heard in a guitar context) also works well in this orchestral setting. The Xenakis is a single monumental work for orchestra and tape written in response to the worldwide uprisings of '68. The 23 strong Alpha Centauri ensemble do battle with the shifting 'noise' of the tape in Sydney in 1988 until finally brass/horn/string/tape sources merge into engulfing strettas of sound.

LOOK OUT FOR THE FOLLOWING UPCOMING RELEASES

WORLD ROUNDUP
Diallo is a West African guitarist fluent in the folk music of his native Guinea and sources as diverse as Senegal, Cape Verde, Brazil and the Caribbean. Settled in Canada with a deal from Paddy Moloney's Wicklow (www.wicklowrecords.com) label, Diallo also plays balafon and percussion. The two Putuymayo (www.putumayo.com) releases come with colourful digipak sleeves and are great fun. The 'Arabic' disc covers Algerian rai, Moroccan gnawa, Egyptian pop and Nubian soul. The 'Native American' disc is an exceptional journey through 'red' Indian culture from Canada through to the Apache and Mohican peoples of the U.S. through Mexico down into Brazil, Peru and Bolivia. You'll learn a lot with this one.

ARCHIVE ALBUM OF THE MOMENT RAVI SHANKAR

THE ANGEL CATALOGUE (1962-1968)

MODERN ALBUM OF THE MOMENT

CARL CRAIG / INNERZONE ORCHESTRA - PROGRAMMED

CLASSICAL ALBUM OF THE MOMENT

NIGEL KENNEDY - THE KENNEDY EXPERIENCE

COPYRIGHT ON ALL OF THE ABOVE RESIDES WITH MARK PRENDERGAST. ANY EDITORS OR PUBLISHERS WISHING TO QUOTE FROM THE ABOVE WRITINGS CAN DO SO AS LONG AS THEY ENQUIRE AT PHONE (LONDON 0181 299 2998) OR FAX (0181 693 0349). THE WRITER IS FREELY AVAILABLE TO CONTRIBUTE SIMILAR IDEAS ON HIS FAVOURITE MUSICS TO PUBLICATIONS WITH A GENUINE INTEREST.

This is Altair 5 signing off for now.....And the music keeps on playing on and on.

No frames? click here
This page is http://www.collective.co.uk/altair5/

This website uses enhanced features of Netscape Navigator 4.0.
Get it for free at Netscape's Home Page.

text © 1999 Mark J Prendergast

graphics & programming © 1999 os1. all rights reserved.

Back to Index

Many of the records above
may be purchased on-line.
Try these sources:		 cdnow music store CDUniverse cdworld music store

Internet Link Exchange
Member of the Internet Link Exchange

www.bannerswap.com
Proud Member of BannerSwap