THE GOLDEN PALOMINOS – The Golden Palominos (CEL 6662 / LP-1983)

Label: Celluloid ‎– CEL 6662

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: France / Released: 1983

Style: Avantgarde, Free Improvisation

Recorded at Radio City Music Hall Studio/NYC and OAO Studio/Brooklyn

Mixed at RPM Studio/NYC and OAO Studio/Brooklyn

Design [Layout] – Jan Luss

Photography By – Thi-Linh Le

Engineer – Don Hünerberg, Martin Bisi

Engineer [Assistant At RPM] – Mike Krowiak

Mixed By – Anton Fier, Bill Laswell, Martin Bisi

Executive-Producer – Karakos, Roger Trilling

Producer – Anton Fier, Bill Laswell

Producer [Associate] – Arto Lindsay, Martin Bisi

Repetiteur [Vocal Coach] – Peter Blegvad

Matrix / Runout (A-Side Runout, Etched): Cel 6662 A

Matrix / Runout (B-Side Runout, Etched): Cel 6662 A

side 1:

A1 - Clean Plate   (Fier, Lindsay) .............................................................................. 6:32

A2 - Hot Seat   (Fier, Noyes, Miller) .......................................................................... 5:13

A3 - Under The Cap   (Fier, Lindsay) ........................................................................ 5:32

A4 - Monday Night   (Fier, Lindsay) .......................................................................... 6:29

side 2:

B1 - Cookout   (Fier) ................................................................................................. 4:38

B2 - I.D.   (Fier, Lindsay) ........................................................................................... 6:45

B3 - Two Sided Fist   (Fier, Lindsay, Frith) ................................................................ 7:42

Musicians:

ARTO LINDSAY – vocals, guitar

ANTON FIER – drums, oberheim DMX, percussion

FRED FRITH – guitar, violin

BILL LASWELL – bass guitar

JOHN ZORN – alto saxophone, clarinet, game calls

NICKY SKOPELITIS – guitar on "Monday Night" / "I.D."

THI-LINH LE – vocals on "Monday Nigh''

MARK E. MILLER – vocals on "Hot Seat", turntables on "Hot Seat" / "Monday Night"

DAVID MOSS – percussion on "Clean Plate" / "Under the Cap" / "Two Sided Fist"

MICHAEL BEINHORN – drums and Oberheim DMX on "Hot Seat", piano on "Cookout"

JAMAALADEEN TACUMA – Steinberger bass guitar on "Clean Plate" / "Two Sided Fist"

ROGER TRILLING – tape on "Cookout"

The group first featured drummer Anton Fier, singer-guitarist Arto Lindsay, saxophonist John Zorn, bass guitarist Bill Laswell and violinist/guitarist Fred Frith. Their self-titled debut album was released on New York's Celluloid Records in 1983, and featured guest appearances by bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, percussionist David Moss, turntablist M.E. Miller and others.

Arto Lindsay / Anton Fier

For twenty years, the Golden Palominos have been musical chameleons, continually changing lineups and styles. The only constant has been drummer Anton Fier, whose vision and interests have steered the group through two decades of music making.

The Golden Palominos were formed in the early 1980s, as a joint project, by drummer Anton Fier and noise-guitarist Arto Lindsay. Fier came from Cleveland where he had played with new wave cult band Pere Ubu. In 1978, he left Ohio for New York City. Once there he moved through various bands including a band he formed himself, the Feelies and the Pedestrians. At the end of the 1970s, with Lindsay and John Lurie, he co-founded the Lounge Lizards, a band that played an indescribable combination of noise, rhythm, and jazz. “Actually, when I first started playing with the Lounge Lizards, Arto and I wanted to call the band the Golden Palominos,” Fier told Down Beat’s Bill Milkowski. “We liked the name but Lurie didn’t.” Lindsay, Fier said, was the reason he joined the Lounge Lizards. So when Arto left the band, Fier did too and decided the next step was for the two of them to form a new band together, which they were able to name the Golden Palominos.

The group’s first incarnation was as a super group of the late-1970s New York downtown improv scene. Its participants included luminaries such as saxophonist John Zorn, guitarists Fred Frith and Nicky Skopelitis,and bassists Bill Laswell and Jamaaladeen Tacuma. The music the band made was a marvelous combination of incongruous styles. On the one hand, the music was improvised, free, uncontrolled even. Lindsay, the Palominos de facto frontman, played chunks of noise on his 12-string guitar which he deliberately refused to tune and squawked out truncated, nonsensical lyrics, while Zorn was as likely to accompany the band with bird calls as with his horn. On the other, when the band played it locked into a throbbing, unrelenting funk groove driven by Tacuma and Laswell’s basses and Fier’s unerring backbeat.

The group gave a series of critically well-received concerts in the New York City area in 1982, and in 1983 released a record, simply titled Golden Palominos, on Bill Laswell’s Celluloid label. The New York Times lavished praise on the album. Down Beat called it “a masterpiece…an enormously important and satisfying album” and gave it five stars, the magazine’s highest rating.

If you find it, buy this album!

FRED FRITH – Step Across The Border (2LP-1990)

Label: RecRec Music – RecRec 30

Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Compilation / Country: Switzerland / Released: 1990

Style: Avantgarde, Experimental, Jazz-Rock

Music for the film by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel, Recorded between 1979 and 1989.

Artwork [Lithography] – Busag, Zürich

Design [Cover] – Peter Bäder

Engineer – Benedykt Grodon

Photography By – Oscar Salgado

Recorded By – Jean Vapeur

Compiled with additons and alterations at Sound Fabrik, Munich Dec. 89.

A1 - Sparrow Song ........... (1:31)

A2 - Voice of America, Part III .......... (4:26)

A3 - Selluloid Restaurant ........... (3:12)

A4 - After Dinner .......... (1:49)

A5 - Houston Street .......... (2:56)

A6 - Drum Factory .......... (2:04)

A7 - Regardless of Rain ............ (3:07)

B1 - Candy Machine ............ (3:02)

B2 - Romanisches Café .......... (6:22)

B3 - The Border ........... (3:31)

B4 - Nirvana Again ............ (1:55)

B5 - Scottish Roppongi ........... (1:50)

C1 - Norrgarden Nyvla ............ (2:59)

C2 - Birds ........... (2:21)

C3 - The As Usual Dance towards the Other Flight to What Is Not, Part 3 ........... (1:50)

C4 - Williamsburg Bridge ........... (1:56)

C5 - Same Old Me .......... (4:13)

C6 - The As Usual Dance towards the Other Flight to What Is Not, Part 7 ........... (2:28)

C7 - Lost and Found .......... (3:20)

D1 - Nine by Nine .......... (5:54)

D2 - Evolution ........... (3:23)

D3 - Union Square .......... (1:44)

D4 - Morning Song .......... (2:03)

D5 - Voice of America, Part IV .......... (2:05)

D6 - Too Much Too Little ........... (2:09)

D7 - Too Late ........... (2:25)

Line-up / Musicians:

- Fred Frith / guitar, violin, bass, home-mades, DX7, Casio, voice, percussion, bottles, trumpet

- Tom Cora / cello, drum, voice

- Zeena Parkins / keyboards, drum, voice

- Bob Ostertag / Serge synthesizer, tapes, samples

- Bill Laswell / bass

- Fred Maher / drums

- John Zorn / alto saxophone

- Daihachi Oguchi / factory sound

- Jean Derome / alto saxophone

- René Lussier / bass

- Kevin Norton / drums

- Eino Haapala / guitar

- Marc Hollander / alto saxophone

- Lars Hollmer / keyboards

- Hans Bruniusson / drums

- Tim Hodgkinson / bass clarinet

- Iva Bittová / violin

- Pavel Fajt / beer cans, guitar, voice

- Eitetsu Hayashi / taiko

- Tina Curran / bass

- Haco / piano, voice

Step Across the Border is a 1990 avant-garde documentary film on English guitarist, composer and improviser Fred Frith. It was written and directed by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel and released in Germany and Switzerland. The film was screened in cinemas in North America, South America, Europe and Japan, and on television in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France. It was also released on VHS by RecRec Music (Switzerland) in 1990, and was later released on DVD by Winter & Winter (Germany) in 2003.

Shot in black and white, the 35mm documentary was filmed between 1988 and 1990 in Japan, Italy, France, Germany, England, the United States and Switzerland, and shows Frith rehearsing, performing, giving interviews and relaxing. Other musicians featured include René Lussier, Iva Bittová, Tom Cora, Tim Hodgkinson, Bob Ostertag and John Zorn.

The film won "Best Documentary" at the European Film Awards in 1990. A companion soundtrack album, Step Across the Border was also released by RecRec Music in 1990.

A ninety minute celluloid improvisation by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel.

"Improvisation" here refers not only to the music, but also to the film itself. Humbert and Penzel state in the 2003 DVD release of the film:

“In Step Across the Border two forms of artistic expression, improvised music and cinema direct, are interrelated. In both forms it is the moment that counts, the intuitive sense of what is happening in a space. Music and film come into existence out of an intense perception of the moment, not from the transformation of a preordained plan.”

The film is not narrated, and the musicians, the music and the locations are not identified. Instead it is a sequence of "snapshots' taken of Frith and musicians he has worked with, rehearsing and performing, interspersed with apparent random images of movement (trains, cars, people, grass) that blend in with the music. The improvised nature of the film and its Direct Cinema approach make it more of an art film than simply a documentary on a musician.

The music in the film is performed by Frith on his own, with others, and by others on their own. Some of the music is improvised, some is composed material performed "live", and some is previously recorded material played as accompaniment to many of the "movement" sequences in the film.

The recording of the film coincided with the formation and activity of Frith's review band Keep the Dog (1989–1991), and many of the participants of the band appear in the film. There are even a few rare glimpses of the band rehearsing. René Lussier in particular, features prominently and "interviews" Frith about his musical upbringing and approach to music.

The title of the film comes from the lyrics of the song "The Border", recorded by Skeleton Crew on their album, The Country of Blinds (1986). A brief "video" of this song also appears in the film.

Although this is technically the soundtrack to a film of the same name by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel, Step Across the Border actually serves as an excellent overview of Fred Frith's groundbreaking work as a soloist, bandleader, and collaborator. There's an example of his "guitars on the table" approach ("Romanisches Cafe"), and a couple of excellent duos with tape manipulation whiz Bob Ostertag ("Voice of America, Pt. 3," from the lost and lamented Voice of America album they made for the defunct Metalanguage label). There are also scraps of material from his work with Skeleton Crew as well as numerous other well-chosen miniatures that vary from tuneful and charming to stark and forbidding. Perhaps the best thing this album accomplishes is that it puts some of the material from the astounding (but, sadly, long out of print) album of avant-garde power trio compositions and improvisations Frith recorded with Bill Laswell and Fred Maher under the name Massacre back into circulation: the very fine "Legs" is included here, as is a previously unreleased live track from 1983. Very highly recommended.

_ Review by Rick Anderson

The collection itself is wonderful, showing all sides of Frith's skillful and innovative playing and composition. The songs range from sounds similar to The Residents, whose Commercial Album featured Frith as a sideman, to early Zappa, and even one song Evolution, with high pitched vocals and a reggae influenced beat, that sounds sort of like a deranged version of The Police.

This is a gem in my collection. Highly recommended for the RIO fan.

If you find it, buy this album!

LOU REED, JOHN ZORN, LAURIE ANDERSON - Live At Middelheim Park (2009)

Lou Reed, John Zorn, Laurie Anderson - Live At Middelheim Park
Date: 2009-August-13
Venue: Middelheim Park; City: Wilrijk (Antwerpen); Country: Belgium
Style: avant-garde, free improvisation, jazz, modern rock
Original Design by ART&JAZZ Studio SALVARICA
Artwork and Complete Design by Vitko Salvarica - 2012


Jazz Middelheim 2009 
Park Den Brandt 
Antwerpen, Belgium 

The Jazz Middelheim festival is nearing its fortieth anniversary, but it's a weekender that hasn't relinquished a fondness for adventure. Nuzzling up against its stellar bookings are acts, Belgian and otherwise, who seek to jolt the expectations of many audience members. The entertaining middle way is subverted by the sideways thrust of jazz extremity. This, too, can often be entertaining. 2009 is the second year that Bertrand Flamang has been in charge of organization and programming. He's already known for nearly a decade's sterling work running the nearby Gent Jazz Festival, and has rapidly established a house style at Jazz Middelheim.

There's a similar format, in terms of stylistic contrasts, timing structure, food vendors and Belgian beer range. The main practical difference to the Gentfest is that the marquee stage is more integrated with the landscape of its park setting; all of the bars, stalls and food outlets ranged in a roughly circular fashion around the festival's musical heart. It's possible to sprawl on the lawn and still enjoy a (distant) view of the performers, should such a casual engagement be desired. If choosing to sit up close, an early arrival is advised, as attendance is gratifyingly swollen, even in these hard times.

Review:

Lou Reed and John Zorn played their first gig at The Stone, a New York experimental joint operated by the saxophonist. This was in January of 2008, severely stretching the capacity of a space that can just about contain 73 punters. Laurie Anderson was their special guest on that night, and here that threesome was reunited, this time performing in front of a thousands- strong throng, seemingly a one-off festival exclusive for Jazz Middelheim. Reed and Anderson are to play subsequent European dates, but without Zorn. When Reed and Zorn met again at New York's Poisson Rouge club in November 2008, the target was eardrum destruction, with the pair in a highly aggressive state that didn't waver all night. Reed churned and Zorn caterwauled, to ripping effect. The addition of Anderson might be a factor in this gig's greater lyrical content, as she's fond of crafting layered electro-violin washes, often disguising her output by making sonic processing tweaks.

For the first thirty minutes or so, the trio flailed around, attempting to locate the sometimes elusive coalescence of improvisational magic. It was Zorn who primarily took the lead, frequently turning up a new direction as he graduated from compressed squawking to open bebop grace, then reverting that same flow. Reed appeared the most unfulfilled, riffing sluggishly and failing to connect. This is the big risk of free improvisation, particularly when taken in front of a huge (and hugely expectant) festival audience. Around halfway through the set, all three suddenly intersected, catching onto a simultaneous energy. The hypno-riffing locked, built and burst, with Reed even singing primitivist fragments at one stage, before ditching his guitar and triggering grimy samples on his mixing desk/keyboard. Zorn was both technician (gloriously precise shrieks) and hysterical intuitive (gloriously throttling bell-into- inner-thigh glottalisms).

This was a divisive performance. Even punters who have obviously turned out on the strength of these star names (either one, two or maybe even all three) were drifting off impatiently into the night, presumably displeased by such experimental antics. What did they expect? The majority, though, were transfixed, and ultimately enthusiastic, rewarding this now-laughing sternoid three for their extremely involved noise-sculpting session. Yes, Zorn and Reed were looking remarkably cheerful, a demeanor that was already expected from Anderson.

By MARTIN LONGLEY, Published: September 28, 2009 (AAJ)

Comment underneath was for the record in "The Stone", New York, 2008:

If you haven ’ t heard of John Zorn, Lou Reed, or Laurie Anderson , you probably don ’ t follow progressive rock or experimental music all that closely.
The three are what seem to be the “ three musketeers ” of experimental music and have been playing it since the heyday of Andy Warhol ’ s Factory.
You'll find plenty of over-blowing saxophone, electric violin, screeching, and singing throughout this recording.
If you are in the mood for a relaxing, calming sound, this is not for you.
If you are in the mood for a musical performance that will get you thinking, you have found the right catalyst.
The Stone: Issue Three is filled with plenty of arresting, cinematic, and sonic textures that will have you on the edge of your seat – if this is your sort of thing. If not, you ’ ll be heading for the door.
The record is a performance of freedom run wild with three iconic New York City Downtowners put to the test to collaborate and come up with something meaningful, sonic, and interesting.
They do not fail, though many critics would rather pan this work than see it for what it is – a truly innovative and worthy experience.
The album is one without structure, which is everything and nothing these three musicians are about. Reed, Anderson, and Zorn hail from making music with a strong narrative, rock sound, jazzy influence, and lyrical influence and this is what we get a glimpse of on The Stone: Issue Three though it seems that they do move away from their norm in each performance. There is no specific parameter nor is there a specific structure.
There are three tracks on the album aptly titled Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. There is no use for a name on this record.
John Zorn plays an awesome saxophone, Laurie Anderson provides her cool, disembodied voice, and Lou Reed offers up his guitar genius.
This is a truly avant-garde record if there ever was one.
Since this is a performance album, it is worthy to note the venue at which it was recorded. The Stone is a non-profit performance space strictly dedicated to experimental and avant- garde works.
There is no sale of merchandise or refreshments here, and everyone is always welcome.
The Stone is located in New York City ’ s Lower East Side.
The Stone: Issue Three was recorded during a performance by the three artists, who are legendary in and of themselves. The venue itself books performances only on a curatorial basis and never accepts a demo.
It is a place where artists may come, perform, and feel free in their freedom of expression.
Even if you are not completely interested in experimental music, The Stone: Issue Three is worth a few minutes of your time.
When listening to this record, you will be allowed to experience the genius of three truly modern rock geniuses.
This is a legendary record, even for those who were not at the actual performance.




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