Urban Sax - Urban Sax 1

Urban Sax was founded by Gilbert Artman, French saxophonist, in 1973. The first act was played at the Menton Musical festival and by this time, the group consisted of eight saxophonists. Since then the concept evolved and today it's not unusual for the performance group to have more than 50 musicians on stage at time. It's always with Saxophones as the main instrument, though Artman has let percussion and vocals into the ensemble occasionally.


Since he often integrates local musicians and dancers, the performances can have more than 200 participants. The performances are often of an almost occultic character - the musicians wearing space suits and gas masks, while playing their drones on saxophone.

Pictures, videos and audio can be found at their homepage.

Urban Sax 1 is their third album released on celluloid in 1986 along with Urban Sax 2. The album is minimalistic and droning unlike anything else really. The effect of all those sax'es playing together is undeniable, and.. Pretty amazing. This album is highly recommended, and you can

get it here

Anima Sound/Anima

From the Nurse With Wound list.

Anima Sound - Stürmischer Himmel and Anima - Via (track 1-4 missing)

Get them here

Venetian Snares - Songs About My Cats

Aaron Funk is the man behind Canadian breakcore act Venetian Snares. Calling it breakcore is a limited description though. His tunes and tracks often consists of programmed pianos taking atonality into new grounds, some times it's just the sound of apocalypse, and then again, some times it's almost danceable in some uncomfortable way. The real Beauty of Songs About My Cats struck me one morning after a party, there where a lot of cleaning and a lot of headache involved, when I reckoned it would be fun to piss the other writer of this blog off (he was asleep). So I put the album on, knowing that the chance of my head not exploding was mere. Funny thing happened when the album turned out to be really good music for hangovers. I wouldn't say that i danced, but strange things occurred with my limbs that morning.

Anyway, you should enjoy it too.

Released: 2001
Label: Planet Mu

(That was a new feature. Makes it look cool)

This was written while listening to Iron & Wine - The Creek And The Cradle

Orphanage - 50 Minutes Freestyle

It's not easy to find any info about this hip-hop supergroup consisting (on/off) of Slug, Eyedea, Aesop Rock, Illogic, Sage Francis and Blueprint. You would think that a group like this would get a lot of attention, however they don't. Primarily because they haven't made any official releases, so most of what I was able to find was sporadic freestyles, some co-ops with Atmosphere and some internal work on each others albums. However I did find a show in full album-length with Blueprint and Illogic freestyling and performing some of their respective songs. Throughout the show appearances from the other rappers occur, but as said, it is Blueprint and Illogic primarily. The show suffers from bad sound and some surprisingly bad mic-skills from the rappers. It is a supergroup though, and they are some rather decent freestylers, so it's worth to check out, and it's worth keeping in mind for future releases. If you wan't to listen to some of their studio-work, they appear on Blueprints The Weightroom and Atmospheres Sean Like Ugly Girls 4.

Enjoy here.

This was written under influence of Sunburned Hand Of The Man - Headdress

R.I.P Oink

The shutdown of Oink is one of the most important events in modern music history, and won't go unseen neither to this blog. There's so much to say about it, so many feelings about both the major labels, the shutdown of oink and the music business in general. I won't though. It has all been said way better and with much more power than we ever could.

If you haven't been there yet, read it now.

R.I.P.

Kaija Saariaho - L'amour De Loin

Kaija Saariaho is a Finnish composer, born in Helsinki 1952. She wrote several string quartets (e.g. Private Gardens), before she in 2002 wrote her first opera L'amour de Loin. This opera uses very few implements - often only lead vocal and piano, the piano often using clusters while the female vocal especially, can sound almost schizophrenic at times. The true beauty of this composition lies in the minimalism and the atmosphere created with such small amount of implements. You could draw lines from her piano compositions to composers such as Penderecki (also described here at the index), with the difference that Saariaho uses fewer instruments to create the atmosphere she wants. Saariaho has studied in both Helsinki, Freiburg and New York and is widely acknowledged, meaning that her latest string quartet Terra Memoria had premiere in Carnegie Hall this year. L'amour de Loin is not for the weak heartet, but if you don't happen to be one of those you will surely enjoy.

Listen right here

George Antheil - Ballet Mécanique

George Antheil was an american avant-garde composer (born 08/07/1900). With Ballet Mécanique he took the avant-garde music to new places by including, among else, 8 pianoes, several airplane propellers, an alarm, 6 bass drums, 3 xylophones and so the list carries on. Ballet Mecánique was created for a film by Dudley Murphy and Fernand Léger, but the common project was given up eventually, since the composition was too advanced to perform and record for the film. However the work was played as a concert in Paris in 1926 and later at Carnegie Hall in New York. This is one of the most fascinating avant-garde pieces ever written, and if you think that it is stupid, it is probably just because your toupee was blown of during one of the performance.

You can watch it being performed with modern technique here

Or you can watch the film with the music (rather bad sound though) here

This was written under influence of Current 93 - Black Ships Ate The Sky