SERGE GAINSBOURG
Poet And Provocateur
el CD
www.elrecords.co.uk
Incorporating the best of Gainsbourg’s early output, this collection also includes recordings of his chansons by Juliette Greco, Les Frere Jacques and others. Early Gainsbourg songs like ‘Le Claquer De Doigts’ are charming, if musically light, but the sparse live recordings are more compelling, in particular ‘Le Poinconneur Des Lilas’.
Of the covers, Greco’s ‘Les Amours Perdue’ stands out with an alternately rich and eerie string arrangement, with shivers of Saint-Saëns’ ‘Danse Macabre’. Gainsbourg’s own arrangements (by Alain Goraguer) also become more interesting on the second half of the disc, with sang froid jazz instrumentals ‘Angoisse’ and ‘Black March’. Gainsbourg’s songs for the film Voulez Vous Danser Avec Moi close the collection and show both his strength and weakness – ‘La Licorne’ is gorgeous but ‘Cha Cha Flores’, merely drifts by – and though Gainsbourg’s themes and lyrics may often have been provocative and poetic, the music isn’t always as fascinating.
Emma Stott
João Gilberto
Chega De Saudade
el CD
www.elrecords.co.uk
Produced by Antonio Carlos Jobim, João Gilberto’s landmark debut album from 1959 is the sound of history in the making.
As the spark that effectively lit the flame that in turn ignited the international bossa nova explosion Chega De Saudade with the delicate and reflective mood of its songs, Gilberto’s cool and understated performance style, Jobim’s consummate arrangements and featuring as it does the timeless ‘Desafinado’, ‘Bim Bom’ and the all-important title track, played a key role in kick starting the world’s fascination with this most stylish of Brazilian exports.
In addition to the original 12-track album, this reissue also includes Gilberto’s recordings of songs from the soundtrack of Marcel Camus’ award winning film Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus), including ‘A Felicidade’ and ‘Manha De Carnaval’ plus a selection of contemporary vocal and instrumental reworkings of songs from Chega De Saudade by, among others, Elizete Cardoso, Os Cariocas, Walter Wanderley and Bola Sete.
Grahame Bent
KENYON HOPKINS
Rooms
Righteous CD
www.righteous23.com
Born in Kansas in 1912, exploratory conductor Kenyon Hopkins is best known today as a composer of movie soundtracks and television music from the mid-50s on (early film successes were Baby Doll and 12 Angry Men) but he also released a jazz-flavoured sequence of moody concept albums that were at least a generation ahead of their time. Here are two of the best.
The vocal-less Rooms from ’59 is a picturesquely poignant yet eloquently restless trek into the neurotic world of New York City tenement life with thematic tune titles like ‘Alone’, ‘Escape’, ‘Desire’ and ‘Panic’. The much more fleshed out Sound Of New York is tagged as a “music-sound portrait” and wends its way through the bustling city – from taxi and subway trips and a stop at a hip penthouse cocktail party to visits to Chinatown and Coney Island – with producer Creed Taylor atmospherically overdubbing a potpourri of sound effects and backdrop commotion that lends an edgy sense of noirish bleakness to affairs.
Gary von Tersch
SUN RA
Interplanetary Melodies
The Second Stop Is Jupiter
Rocket Ship Rock
All Norton CDs
www.nortonrecords.com
Sun Ra was renowned for intergalactic weirdness since the Heliocentric Worlds sets seeped into the UK in the mid-60s, traversing the spaceways with his Arkestra until his death in 1993. It’s well documented how Herman ‘Sonny’ Blount cut his musical teeth as a jazz-piano prodigy, but the stunning musical excursions excavated from the vaults of Ra’s Saturn label have been hardly documented (many are previously unreleased), showing him working with obscure doo-wop groups, R&B singers and his formative Arkestra, outings like Cosmic Rays’ ‘Second Stop Is Jupiter’ and Nu Sounds’ Spaceship Lullaby’ pointing spacewards to the future.
Yochanan’s mindblowing ‘Message To Earthman From The Sun Man‘, uncannily predates Beefheart, the convoluted grooves and fried doo-wop anarchy foreshadow late ’60s Zappa, while The Crystals’ hysterical ‘Honey In The Bee Box’ could roger any of The Fugs’ knockabout singalongs. Raw, foraging and, unbelievably, untainted by LSD, this is a gloriously warped peak at a musical giant’s formative years.
Kris Needs
VARIOUS ARTISTS
The Bedside Bond & Number One Themes
Vocalion 2-CD
www.duttonvocalion.co.uk
Now here’s a concept to rival Sergeant Pepper: “James Bond as seen through the eyes of the Penthouse Magazine readers”! Released in 1966 – when else? – this album features every lounge lizard trick of the trade distilled to a concentrated paste. There’s elegant brass, cat-like prowls and swinging percussion, and the band – unnamed but presumed to contain at least some of The Ted Heath Orchestra – is light, tight and rhythmic. It’s not barrier-breaking stuff but it’s all well-crafted and enjoyable.
However, the second half of the album, Number One Themes, is far more interesting. It’s a collection of TV tunes released on obscure Decca singles, and is really quite brilliant. There’s the straight-arrowed brassy funk of ‘The Hell Raisers’ by Syd Dale, which is then matched groove for groove with Tony Newman’s ‘Soul Thing’ sounding fresh out of New Orleans. Best of all is the quirky synth ditty ‘Summer Ice’ and the rambunctious ‘Laughing Sam (On The Phone)’.
Jeanette Leech
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Forbidden Planets: Music From The Pioneers Of Electronic Sound
Chrome Dreams 2-CD
www.chromedreams.co.uk
What do we want? “The future!” When do we want it? “Then!”
It’s a delicious irony that such brave, questing and unprecedented music as that collated on Forbidden Planets should now induce such a powerful sense of longing for an unattainable past. Ranging from the shivering theremins of Miklos Rozsa (1945’s ‘Spellbound’) to the indescribably creepy backwards chorale of children’s voices in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s mid-50s ‘Gesang Der Juenglinge’, this superb compilation unites lowbrow and highbrow pioneers of musique concrete with a single imperative – to boldly go, etc. Henk Badings invents Kraftwerk. Kid Baltan invents Joe Meek. Superimpose Edgard Varèse’s ‘Poeme Electronique’ on to Henri Posseur’s ‘Scambi’ and you get the backing track for Frank Zappa’s ‘Nasal Retentive Calliope Music’.
As long as you take on board the simple fact that nothing on here will necessarily compel you to push back the furniture and do the Macarena, Forbidden Planets provides a wonderful way to spend an evening in rapt contemplation of outer and inner space.
Marco Rossi
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Jukebox At The Last Chance Saloon
Righteous CD
www.righteous23.com
Picture the playlist of the time warped country/hillbilly jukebox of your dreams located in some far-flung truck stop somewhere on the lost highway of your imagination and you have the essence of Dave Henderson’s latest compilation of rockin’ antiquities on Righteous. Just one catch – each and every one of the tracks are high octane instrumentals which originally saw the light of day on a host of small-time labels during the long gone days of the late ’50s.
Overall, it’s speed-freak guitar, banjo and fiddle licks-a-go-go as the jukebox rattles its way through the 23-track themed selection. Titles like ‘Bending The Strings’, ‘Guitar Cannonball’, ‘Boogie Battle’ and ‘Banjo Whiz’ tell their own tales of blistered fingers. Artists featured include the prolific Jackie Phelps, Arthur ‘Guitar Boogie’ Smith and The Stanley Brothers while, interestingly, Buddy Dee’s ‘Country Rockin’ and Flyin’’ apparently features a young Eddie Cochran on guitar.
Grahame Bent |
