ANT PEEL BLOG - MUSIC, MUSIC LISTS/CHARTS, HISTORY OF RECORDED SOUND, FILMS, CULTURE, ART...
| A1 | Acrid Avid Jam Shred | |
| A2 | The Waxen Pith | |
| A3 | Wax The Nip | |
| B1 | Icct Hedral (Edit) | |
| B2 | Ventolin (Video Version) | |
| B3 | Come On You Slags! | |
| C1 | Start As You Mean To Go On | |
| C2 | Wet Tip Hen Ax | |
| C3 | Mookid | |
| D1 | Alberto Balsalm | |
| D2 | Cow Cud Is A Twin | |
| D3 | Next Heap With |
Track title anagrams:
ACRID AVID JAM SHRED = RICHARD DAVID JAMES
THE WAXEN PITH = THE APHEX TWIN
WAX THE NIP = APHEX TWIN
WET TIP HEN AX = THE APHEX TWIN
NEXT HEAP WITH = THE APHEX TWIN
COW CUD IS A TWIN = CAUSTIC WINDOW
| A1 | Naked Lunch | ||
| A2A | Hauser And O'Brien | ||
| A2B | Bugpowder | ||
| A3 | Mugwumps | ||
| A4 | Centipede | ||
| A5 | The Black Meat | ||
| A6A | Simpatico | ||
| A6B | Misterioso | ||
| A7 | Fadela's Coven | ||
| B8 | Interzone Suite | ||
| B9 | William Tell (Complete) | ||
| B10 | Mujahaddin | ||
| B11 | Intersong | ||
| B12 | Dr. Benway | ||
| C13 | Clark Nova Dies | ||
| C14 | Ballad / Joan | ||
| C15A | Cloquet's Parrots | ||
| C15B | Midnight Sunrise | ||
| C16 | Nothing Is True; Everything Is Permitted | ||
| C17 | Welcome To Annexia | ||
| C18 | Writeman | ||
| Bonus Tracks | |||
| D19 | Hauser And O'Brien (Complete) | ||
| D20 | Dual Typewriters | ||
| D21 | Simpatico (Reprise) | ||
| D22 | Martinelli | ||
| D23 | Intersong (Take 2) | ||
| D24 | Bugpowder (Take 9) |
A watershed moment in the career of an avant-garde giant. Takemitsu composed several hundred pieces of music, many of them massive and orchestral in scope; scored over 90 films; and published 20 books before his death in 1996. Interestingly, much of his early output was marked by his contempt for traditional Japanese (and, more broadly, non-Western) music, colored by his experiences of the war, during which Japanese music was associated with militaristic and nationalistic cultural ideals. In his own words: “There may be folk music with strength and beauty, but I cannot be completely honest in this kind of music. I want a more active relationship to the present. Folk music in a ‘contemporary style’ is nothing but a deception.” So severe was his enmity with tradition that he famously destroyed several of his own works upon discovering that he had unintentionally incorporated “nationalistic” elements of traditional Japanese scales. An early proponent of musique concrète, his work has often been cast as in synchronicity with Pierre Schaeffer; however, neither were aware of the other at the time (though Takemitsu was an ardent admirer of John Cage).
Still, despite his fierce commitment to avant-garde experimentation, by the 1960s he had started to more deliberately incorporate traditional Japanese scales, elements of folk songs, the tones and modes of Gagaku, and, as evidenced in Kwaidan, ancient instruments like the biwa.
A quartet of heavily stylized supernatural vignettes rendered in intensely saturated color, Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan
was the most expensive film in the history of Japanese cinema at the
time of its release. Takemitsu turned out a score ambitious enough to
match, channeling his ambivalence towards tradition into a mangled,
strangled take on the folk sounds of his upbringing. Silence acts as a
prominent texture, but in between the strained gaps are twisted
shakahuchi lines, shrieking winds, ghostly metallic clangs, splitting
wood, an occasional distant drum, Noh-style vocals recalling a storied
mass suicide on a battle ship, and a whole lot of that biwa, played with
such venomous ferocity that one can only wonder how many strings had to
be replaced over the course of recording. Sparse, horrific, and very
potent. Enjoy, and happy Halloween!
Tracklisting:
1. Ki
2. Yuki (The Woman Of The Snow)
3. Biwa-Uta (The Battle Of Dan No Ura)
4. Bunraku
1 Bismillahi 'Rrahman 'Rrahman 2 Two Songs: 1. Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord/2. Butterfly Sunday 3 Madrigals Of ...
