David Ayers

I am pretty sure the next batch of RVG's will be arriving any day now...

I guess I would just like to talk about the music, not the label. Do people really see the likes of Roscoe and Evan as sell-outs for working with ECM? Hmm.

Best damn ad hoc rhythm section ever. And one of the best album titles ever, which was only equalled by its mighty antidote, Hook, Drift and Shuffle. Some Coltrane memorials have been more interesting for the (original) rhythm section...

2010 copyright on this disc. I got mine at Dusty Groove in May of 2010. Would love to have a new reissue of Contrasts. You can say that again. After all, "you know who" is on that date. I do know who is on this date - well, I don't but I can check - but which 'you know who' is the stand out in your mind?

Well it's OOP *now* but not when it came out and you were 'waiting' for it. Seems you waited years for it to go OOP. I can help you with other aspects of the internet though - a search on 'Russell' and 'Delius' on youtube yields -

That Heaven on Earth is a TOCJ. Contrasts is available again as an LP, but... Who knows, they are throwing a few obscure ones into the TOCJ list these days so anything might happen.

It was issued on DVD a few years ago so you needn't have waited so long! It is also on youtube as are the other Russell bio-pics.

Well, I got around to Evan Parker's Boustrophedon, which is one of the two days recorded with the Transatlantic Art Ensemble. This group combined regular collaborators of Parker and of Roscoe Mitchell, with Mitchell leading one session Composition/Improvisation Nos 1, 2 and 3 and Parker leading the other. I hadn't been overwhelmed by the Mitchell disk - perhaps others disagree - and so I hadn't rushed to hear the Parker-led session. I got to it now and I am pleasantly surprised. The format, which simply pairs soloists from each player's squad, seems mechanical at first, but in fact the music (which seems to have a large compositional element) has a lovely lightness about it and is rather compelling, though building up to a suitably intense climax in the section involving Parker and Mitchell as soloists. Anyone else heard this?

Surprisingly, here in Cornwall we are getting 'superfast broadband' rolled out thanks, in part, to a European Union grant. Just had the BT engineers here and had BT Infinity installed. And we are very rural. First impressions are good. Websites load very quickly and downloads whizz by. I have a feeling that 'superfast' means what we should have had in the first place but heigh ho. Good for you. Let us know what speeds you are getting! The engineer did a check and said 40 mbps download speed and about 3.5 mbps upload speed. Of course, it depends where you're downloading from as different sources throttle speeds at different times of day. The most obvious difference is that websites load a lot faster and with BBC iPlayer the video loads fully almost instantaneously instead of continuously buffering. *sigh* mind you, upload speed is still pretty rubbish

Surprisingly, here in Cornwall we are getting 'superfast broadband' rolled out thanks, in part, to a European Union grant. Just had the BT engineers here and had BT Infinity installed. And we are very rural. First impressions are good. Websites load very quickly and downloads whizz by. I have a feeling that 'superfast' means what we should have had in the first place but heigh ho. Good for you. Let us know what speeds you are getting!

That one is released by Soul Brother. http://www.soulbrother.co.uk/reviews/92627.html

I really do like most of his works! OK. I really like all of the piano works that are still ‘current’ – the Notations (1945), the Piano Sonatas - the pithy 1 (1946) the hammerklavier-like 2 (1948) and the quite different 3 (1955-7 & 1963), as well as Structures II for two pianos (1961). I love the fairly early (but later revised) work for soprano, mezzo, chorus and orchestra, Le visage nuptial (1946; 1951; 1988-89) and I guess also its sidekick Le soleil des eaux (1948-1965). I guess I am for whatever reason not as familiar with Le marteau sans maître as I am with Pli selon pli (1957–62; 1983; 1989) which is the centre of gravity, for me, I suppose. Add to that Rituel - in memoriam Bruno Maderna (1974) though I guess I find a little less in it. Of the later acoustic works I love the amazing Sur incises for three pianos, three harps and three percussionists (1996–1998) and also get a lot out of Dérive 2 for eleven instruments (1988; 2002; 2006). Right up there for me are the orchestral Notations of which I believe there are still five... I do really love the works for electronics and acoustic instruments, top of the list being ...explosante-fixe... for solo MIDI flute, two shadow flutes, chamber orchestra, and electronics (1991–93) and not far behind is Répons for two pianos, harp, vibraphone, xylophone, cimbalom, ensemble and live electronics (1980; 1982; 1984), as well as the, in effect, violin sonata Anthèmes 2 for violin and live electronics (1997) which I *believe* forms the basis for the violin concerto which was handed to Anne Sophie Mutter a few months ago. I don’t exclude the major works I haven’t mentioned but I know them less well.

I've recently revisited Boulez in concert and on disk, and my liking for his work is growing. Am I alone in this interest? I'd like to share a few remarks about his works in this thread - but only if there is anyone sufficiently enthusiastic to join in. What I like about Boulez' work is its generosity, the way it has sought to fill the spaces available to the ear with amazing harmonies and textures. Is anyone else here familiar with his work?

I was going to buy the Murray - although I have got it all on vinyl I still thought it would be fun to revisit. This error makes that more difficult - how can I be sure, months or more from now, that I am buying the corrected box. Pity. Oh well, I suppose I do have it all already...

Bedazzled tv - who posted this - have lots of great mainly 60s clips, sadly most in terrible quality! http://bedazzled.tv/

He reckons he did the first film on the blues: http://www.commeaucinema.com/notes-de-prod/le-blues-entre-les-dents,10069

In case people don't get past the cryptic header, this is a nine-minute documentary on Sun Ra made by French TV in 1969. It's on youtube and the rights-holders and performers have certainly been paid by whoever put it there. I feel sure they must have been.

Forgetting is fun. First I learned to forget small stuff that didn't matter, like the number of seeds in an average dandelion clock. It was easier than I thought. The total number of air miles logged by the Anglo-French Concordes was harder to forget, but I did it. The next challenge was harder: forget the name of everyone who participated in Hitler's Nuremberg rallies. So many names to forget! And how to forget Hitler? To forget him, I needed to forget World War I, because that was what motivated him. To forget World War I, I had to forget the causes of World War I (once upon a time they flocked to mind only too easily - now: nothing). Really the whole epoch of international diplomacy since the Eighteenth Century had to be rendered nothing but a featureless rubble. Then the rubble had to be swept under the carpet. Then the carpet had to be thrown into next-door’s skip and replaced with laminated flooring. That had to warp, be removed, broken in pieces and jammed into the bin. Then the bin had to be wheeled away down the street, past the end of the street, past the end of all streets, way out beyond the city, beyond cities, to and beyond the end of civilization, until the wheels rotted and became dust, the bin walls biodegraded (taking about 200 years) returned to the environment, became one with the environment, which then had to change and change again beyond recognition, absolutely unrecognisable each time, never leaving any trace in my mind to remind me what once might have been. Ah, those were the days. It's all coming back to me.

No -- first on this cd in 1988: http://allmusic.com/album/sharp-edge-r159961 I know. Sadly for me, I did know. But I think that first one may have been rather more on the licensed side than the one that is now on sale...

Very soon (January 31) Hiroshi's business will be gone and it'll be a bit more difficult to get any Japanese releases. True, but there are ways...

Re. these December TOCJs - as we are saying there is quite a lot of material seemingly new to CD. Has anyone worked it out systematically what is new and worth bothering about. These are available now and very soon they will be gone so it is time to set priorities!

Immortalized on CD by uh 'Solar Records'...

And then there's always Skydrive. Who will be next...?

Fiction? Or fact? Spooky.