Anthologie de la Musique Classique de l’Inde. The Alain Danielou Collection 3LP (1962)

Legendary collection of classical Indian artists and recordings. Alain Danielou traveled throughout North & South India during the 1950s to complete this documentation. This boxset is stated as the earliest long-playing overview of classical Indian music released in a western context.

Key landmark of this set is its feature of the first LP-length recorded duet between Ali Akbar Khan & Ravi Shankar; prior to which only a couple 78-issued recordings of their duets were scarcely heard in India. A highlight for me is the recording “Svara Mandala” by Svami D.R. Parvatikar. Here Parvatikar plays a dulcimer-type instrument called the Cimbalom; really beautiful sounds.. (and on another note matching something not unlike a dream where Tuluum Shimmering composes on the harp.) The vocal performances by the Dagar brothers are also my favorites; jump to track 16 for the “Alapa” performance.. slow, great big drone leanings.

This boxset was re-released in 1997 on CD by Auvidis in commemoration of Mr. Danielou who had passed away 3 years earlier in 1994. There’s a pretty good review on the discogs page for the CD re-release; I’ll include it below for some further details. But onward though – took a while to get this whole thing ripped but it’s a great one, enjoy!

Grumpiness writes:

“An exquisite compilation put together in honour of the cultural philanthropist Alain Danielou. When I first heard this album, my hair stood on end. I’m fairly familiar with the Indian Classical genre, but this was a whole new experience. The majority of the instrumental pieces are performed in the northern Indian style, which has taken some of its influence from the Mughal Empire and therefore has a more Middle Eastern flavour. The vocal performances are sung in the South Indian style, which was never touched by the Mughal Empire, and therefore draws more influence from Dravidian folk music. The effect of these vocal pieces is positively spine chilling. Being accustomed to the North Indian vocal style, I’m used to, (and reasonably fond of) the somewhat grandiose, melodramatic delivery of North Indian Ragas, especially when dealing with pieces which are designed to be a lament, or a dirge. The South Indian Ragas, by contrast, are performed cold. Surprisingly, having been stripped of the roller coaster vibrato, and overacted presentation of the Northern style, these songs come across as even more desolate. I can’t be sure if these Ragas were actually meant to be laments, because I don’t understand the language, (most of them are sung in Kannada, the regional language of Karnataka) but the loneliness, and haunting quality of the melodies is palpable, even though some of them are sung at a relatively fast tempo. I suspect some people may find the style a little disturbing.” (source)

Vox Populi! – Imaginary Myscitisms + Alternative Watermelons (2014)

Vox Populi! was founded by Axel Kyrou in 1981 and occupied a central and a single place in the history of french (ethno)-industrial music. The cold wave and minimalist trends featured on the first record release (the ep ‚Ectoplasmies’, 1983) were soon overwhelmed by all kinds of strange experiments, most often involving very disparate kind of musics (at the same time) : ethnic, electronic, concrete music, funk, experimental, industrial, ….

Jeez, get yer head around this invaluable collection of French psych juices from Vox Populi!, collated and reissued by the peerless V-o-D. Like many other late-comers to their sound, it was Spencer Clark ov The Skaters’s reissue of ‚Half Dead Ganja Music’ LP in 2013 that first alerted us to Vox Populi!’s otherworldly charms. This 2LP set, comprising 29 tracks from various records released 1983-88, plus ‚Myscitismes’ in its entirety hugely expands that strange seed planted in our heads with ‚Half Dead Ganja Music’, revealing myriad spheres of lucid, heightened psych consciousness of the most precious kind. Without resorting to the usual cloying tactics of too much „psychedelia” – onanistic Frippery and egotism – Vox Populi! create dozens of tiny, unique wormholes ranging from pulsing machine experiments to alien exotic waltzes, gamelan-like percussion rituals and sky-reaching synth drones via Nico-esque dirges from a broad palette of instrumental ingredients and tape loops. We can safely say it’s some of the most spellbinding, attuned music we’ve heard for a while. Highly recommended! (boomkat)

Walter Maioli – I Flauti Etruschi (2003)

For thirty years Maioli (Milan, 1950) applies the results of his research on the origin of sound, music and musical instruments (paleorganology) in a great variety of performances, using all kinds of artistic and scientific media: concerts, dance and theatrical performances, art works, expositions, sound tracks for film, video and theatre, music cassettes and CD’s, books and articles, lectures and demonstrations, laboratory workshops, music therapy sessions, in many different contexts including archeological and natural sites. Since 1996 his work concentrates on the presentation of his findings by the group Synaulia. (soundcenter)

Art Of Primitive Sound – Musical Instruments From Prehistory (1993)

Walter Maioli (Milan, 1950) is an Italian researcher, paleorganologist, poly-instrumentalist and composer. Specialized in experimental archaeology and music, in particular that of archaic civilization. He has been researching the music of antiquity and prehistory for more than thirty-five years. Always interested in the music of the Mediterranean, he has gone on journeys to discover the folkloristic Italian and Mediterranean traditions learning the Arabic, African, Oriental, and European music since the beginning of the seventies.

In 1972 he founded the pioneer world music group Aktuala group, dedicated to folkloristic African and Asian music.

In the eighties Walter Maioli’s researches focused on the field of prehistoric instruments, his work was presented at the Archaeological Symposium of Amsterdam for the opening of the Den Haag Museum. In 1987 he prepared the Natural Art Laboratory of Morimondo in the Ticino Park, working on the Art of the Nature, publishing books on the subject for the Jaca Book: “Origins, sounds and music”, and for Giorgio Mondadori: “Orchestra of the Nature”.

In 1991 he displayed the collection called “The Origins of Musical Instruments” to the History of Nature Museum in Milan and presented “Art of the Stars” sounds for the planetarium, at Ulrico Hoelpi Civic Planetarium in Milan in collaboration with Fiorella Terenzi. Starting in 1994, for one and a half years he was coordinating the musical part of the Archeon Archaeological Theme Park in Alphen aan den Rijn in the Netherlands, producing the CD called “200.000 years in music”.

In 1995 he founded Synaulia, a team of musicians, archeologists, paleorganologists, and choreographers dedicated to the application of their historical research to ancient music and dance, in particular to the ancient Etruscan and Roman periods, carrying out an intense activity of conferences, seminars, and concerts in Europe, in particular in the Netherlands and Germany. In Italy, some of his performances were presented on archaeological sites such as Mausoleo di Augusto, Mercati Traianei, Terme di Diocleziano, Ostia Antica, Villa Adriana, Preneste, Pompei and Stabia, with the scope of recreating the sound atmosphere and executive context of the Roman age. When Michael Hoffman (American director), chose the Synaulia group to participate in the shooting of the movie A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1998, Walter Maioli took care of the reproduction of the musical instruments.

Among the collaborations of Walter Maioli and Synaulia, there are performances with Giorgio Albertazzi: “Eros voglio cantare”, “Intorno a Dante”, and “Mammi, Pappi e Sirene in Magna Grecia, and the music composition for the first two episodes of the television program on TV RAI 2 “Albertazzi e Fo raccontato la storia del teatro italiano”.

Two songs of Synaulia were used in Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott.

Walter Maioli and the Synaulia took care of the musical parts of Rome of BBC-HBO, Empire of ABC and the New Line Cinema’s Nativity (2006), let alone other documentaries of the BBC, CNN, Japanese TV, Discovery Channel, National Geographic Society and experimental archaeological videos for the RAI, CNN, Museo Nazionale Etrusco of Villa Giulia in Rome and other museums in Germany. From November 2007 Walter Maioli with the Fondazione Ras has started the laboratory “Synaulia in Stabiae” in Castellamaare di Stabiae.

Rhythm Devils – The Apocalypse Now Sessions (1989)

The Rhythm Devils are a band led by founding Grateful Dead drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart.

The Rhythm Devils had their origins as an informal but frequent fixture in the Grateful Dead concert repertoire. Starting in the mid-to-late 1970s, and continuing until the Grateful Dead’s last concert in 1995, most Grateful Dead concerts featured an extended segment during the 2nd set of improvisational drumming and percussion by Hart and Kreutzmann who took over the stage as a duo (with occasional guests). This segment was variously known to fans as „Rhythm Devils”, „Drums”, or conversationally as „the drums”, and was usually followed in post-1979 concerts by another extended improvisation by the rest of the band, usually without the drummers, which was known as „Space”. The „Rhythm Devils” segment of a Grateful Dead concert almost always segued out of a full-band song, and the „Space” segment almost invariably would segue into the beginnings of another full-band song as the drummers resumed their thrones with the rest of the band. The Grateful Dead album Dead Set has a characteristic example of a 1980 „Rhythm Devils” segment which is titled as such, and which is followed by a „Space” segment.

The Rhythm Devils duo were formally recruited by director Francis Ford Coppola to record the soundtrack to the film Apocalypse Now. During 1979 and 1980, Hart and Kreutzmann, along with other musicians (mostly percussionists), Airto Moreira, Mike Hinton, Jim Loveless, Greg Errico, Jordan Amarantha, Phil Lesh and Flora Purim, recorded sessions at the Grateful Dead’s Marin County studios and „The Barn”, Hart’s studio in Novato. The process included improvising jungle sounds as they watched the film at the same time. The sounds were later edited into the movie. An LP record titled The Apocalypse Now Sessions: The Rhythm Devils Play River Music was issued from those sessions, (Passport Records PB 9844). In October 1990, Rykodisc re-released the original 1980 LP. (wikipedia)

Jon Hassell ‎- Vernal Equinox (1977)

Kompozytor i trębacz Jon Hassell to wizjoner i kreator stylu muzyki, który określa mianem Czwartego Świata, zagadkowego i unikalnego połączenia świata antycznego i cyfrowego, kompozycji i improwizacji, Wschodu i Zachodu.

Po studiach kompozycji i dyplomach na uniwersytetach w USA przeniósł się do Europy, by tam studiować muzykę elektroniczną z Stockhausenem. Parę lat później przeniósł się z powrotem do NY, gdzie nagrywał swoje pierwsze płyty z mistrzami minimal music La Monte Youngiem i Terrym Rileyem. Współpracował ponadto z Peterem Gabrielem i Brianem Eno. (lastfm)

Trumpeter Jon Hassell was the originator and unrivaled master of the musical aesthetic he dubbed Fourth World — in his own words, „a unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques.” Born March 22, 1937, in Memphis, TN, he attended Rochester, NY’s Eastman School of Music and Washington, D.C.’s Catholic University before studying in Europe under the legendary Karlheinz Stockhausen. After subsequent collaborations with minimalist pioneers La Monte Young and Terry Riley, Hassell mounted a number of solo pieces known collectively as the Landmusic Series; the most famous of these so-called „sound monuments” was 1969’s Solid State, an electronic project that evoked the gradual erosion of sand dune formations via a tuned mass of vibrations.

Beginning in 1972, Hassell studied classical Indian music under the tutelage of Pandit Pran Nath, modifying Nath’s vocal techniques to the trumpet to develop the Fourth World concept, which he introduced with 1978’s Vernal Equinox. The jazz-inspired Earthquake Island appeared a year later, and in 1980 Hassell issued Possible Musics/Fourth World Vol. 1, a collaboration with Brian Eno. (A sequel, Dream Theory in Malaya/Fourth World Vol. 2, was quick in forthcoming.) Through Eno, he also began working with a series of experimental pop acts, appearing on records by Talking Heads, David Sylvian, and Peter Gabriel; in 1982, Hassell additionally scored Magazzini Criminali’s Venice production of Sulla Strada, earning an Ubu Award for Best Music for a Theatrical Work. 

Following 1983’s Aka-Dabari-Java/Magic Realism (co-produced by Daniel Lanois), Hassell did not resurface on record until 1986’s Power Spot; in the interim, he composed „Pano de Costa,” a string quartet piece recorded by the Kronos Quartet for their White Man Sleeps LP. The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things by the Power of Sound followed in 1987, and that same year Hassell collaborated with the Burkina Faso percussion ensemble Farafina, a union that spawned 1989’s Flash of the Spirit. The hip-hop-inspired City: Works of Fiction appeared in 1990, and four years later he launched Dressing for Pleasure; subsequent projects have included Lurch, an experimental dance piece choreographed by Gideon Obarzanek, and 1999’s Fascinoma, on which Hassell collaborated with Ry Cooder and Jacky Terrasson. Hollow Bamboo was issued a year later. Hassell returned in 2005 with the release of Maarifa Street: Magic Realism, Vol. 2, which featured live recordings reworked and mixed with studio sessions. In 2009, Hassell released the much lauded ECM effort Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street, which once again featured material woven together from a variety of studio sessions. (amg)

Recorded in 1976 at the York University Electronic Media Studios in Toronto, Ontario, Vernal Equinox is Jon Hassell’s first recording as a solo artist and sets the stage for his then-emerging career as a trumpeter, composer and musical visionary. „Toucan Ocean” opens the album with two gently swaying chords and delicate layers of percussion that provide a cushion upon which Hassell unfurls long, winding melodic shapes. His trumpet is sent through echo and an envelope filter, producing a stereo auto-wah-wah effect. „Viva Shona” features accompaniment by mbira, subtle polyrhythmic layers of percussion, and the distant calling of birds. Again filtered through echo, Hassell’s gliding trumpet lines sound remarkably vocal. „Hex” features a bubbling, filtered electric bass part with a denser web of percussion. From his horn, Hassell elicits moans and sighs that are at first unaffected and later filtered. „Blues Nile” is a long, blue moan. Hassell’s breathy, multi-tracked trumpet lines call and respond to one another, weaving a web of deep calm over an ever-present drone. This track clearly points the way to his later work with Brian Eno, in particular, their „Charm Over Burundi Sky.” On the title track, Hassell’s „kirana” trumpet style is in full bloom as he dialogs with the percussion. Hassell’s most elegant melodicism blossoms forth here, and his unaffected horn often sounds disarmingly flute-like. The influences of his study of raga with Pandit Pran Nath are clearly discernible in the curvaceous melodic lines and overall sense of meditative calm within harmonic stasis. Throughout the album, percussionists Naná Vasconcelos and David Rosenboom add subtle, supple grooves and colors. „Caracas Night September 11, 1975” is a beautiful field recording featuring Hassell’s plaintive trumpet commentary, subtle percussion interjections, and the sound of caracas humming and buzzing in the background. The first several tracks of Vernal Equinox bear the imprint of ’70s-period Miles Davis, in particular the quiet ambience of „He Loved Him Madly” and parallel passages from Agharta. The envelope filter on Hassell’s horn similarly draws a reference to Davis’ use of the wah-wah pedal from that time. Nonetheless, in 1976, Vernal Equinox was remarkably unique and ahead of its time, and sowed the seeds of Hassell’s influential Fourth World aesthetic, which he would continue to develop and refine. Decades after its release, Vernal Equinox still provides an enchanting and entirely contemporary listening experience. (Mark Kirschenmann)