When Devin Hoff’s fretless bass enters, it does so like a layer of molasses; rich, sticky and sweet. Hoff’s contributions are an essential component of the record, calling to mind the vital role that bass plays in the music of Holter forebearers like Kate Bush or Joni Mitchell.  (…) Perhaps the greatest feat of Something in the Room She Moves is that, while there are plenty of organic instruments all over these recordings, it’s the synthesizer playing and sound design that lend the record its characteristic lived-in, sinewy and roving lifeforce. this is what Tom Piekaraki writes. And now our fleeting notes. On side B.

Spinning 

Olaf: A steady beat is the ground from which strange textures blossom – moog, bass, voices, noises, delays, only a few wind instruments for a change. Everything disintegrates towards the end, the textures wither away, the the song tumbles and falls apart. (I repeat myself but I really like what the bass player does, very melodic and sensitive playing.)

Michael: So here we are, at the beginning of side B. The perfect place to let the rhythm in… and, yes, while it nearly all dissoves into air at the very end, another kind of voice takes the lead: calm clear, focussed. The calmness after the dance. The track grabs me more and more. This album seems to be the classic grower.

Ocean

Michael: The ambient piece, the oceanic piece. Julia is smart: instead of delivering a purely peaceful landscape, she let‘s the uncanny in sideways, after a while. You never know, oceanwise… it ends on a tranquil note though.

Olaf: Nothing to add. „Ocean“ is another proof of Julia Holter‘s versatility; unique music, that fits perfectly at this moment. And it wouldn‘t feel out of place on any state of the art ambient album.  This snapshot of the ocean was made in the evening, which brings us to the next song.

Evening Mood

Olaf: A counterpart to „These Morning“. Being tired after a long day, its events appear like a mild vortex on the threshold of sleep. The voice binds the musial elements of this vortex into a song. Again: lovely singing, beautiful bass playing – and a dash of Harmonia towards the end.

Michael: Really, Harmonia? Have to listen again with your ears. The calmness, and zhe apparitions of the day receding… but after initial moments of letting loose and introspection , a lingering irresisitibe melody blows new life into the singer‘s voice and leads us through the evening‘s offerings between the wistful and the dreamlike. All in perfect union with heightened awareness.

Talking To The Whisper

Michael: Maybe the most complex song… you never know where the journey of a single track goes, except sideways, most of the time: in the second half Chris Speed‘s saxophone conjures a dark fantasialand full of wonder, a sense of danger follows, then: boiling point.

Olaf: It really is a complex song, constantly on the verge of ending, laying false trails. At the same time I find it one of the most emotionally engaging songs on this album. There is this middle section that totally gets me: „Let me light, let me throw light/ On your path, little one / Leave me time to stop and say / Love can be / Shattering“.  

Who Brings Me

Olaf: A lullabye to close the album. Major themes reoccur: sleep („As I fall asleep“) water, sound („And the eyes of the water tide / Scanning blind with just the sound to guide“), love („You, my love waking up my every day“). Sparse instrumentation, the string instrument and the overall atmsophere remind me of the Velvet Underground – gorgeous and uncanny.

Michael: This song has to happen at the end. Things calm down. But not like all is good and pancakes. Unsettling dream images pop up… („Fading gusts of luck change my breath“) … and I ask myself: what has that all been about (ready for a second, for sure, deeper journey)… There‘s an interesting balance on this whole album between, well, apparitions from nowhere (dream life), clear structures (for a while), and things / sounds falling apart.

„The film has a few more delicious stories like that one, but also lots of theorizing and philosophizing. Eno, after all, may be popular music’s foremost theoretician. Hustwit’s movie may be interested less in what Eno did than in what Eno thinks – but when “what Eno thinks” encompasses everything from the connection between frogs’ eyeballs and repetitive music to his determination to “rethink surrenderas an active verb” to his love for the Silhouettes’ doo-wop classic “Get a Job,” it’s fun to spend 90 minutes rummaging around in Eno’s brain.“ (Steve Pond)

Four years ago our summer-long trip to the United States was cancelled by higher forces — which is probably the key reason I started being seriously interested in – and have been buying – different Californian wines for the past two years. Now I go to supermarkets here in the American West, and there are so many fascinating wines on the shelves! I’d like to taste them all, but there are just too many! Most of them I have never seen in Europe.

Before I arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, a couple of weeks ago, two different people (musicians) independently of each other suggested I try to arrange to meet two Oregon musicians — David Rothenberg said I have to meet bass player Glen Moore in the far south of Arizona (in the small village Arivaca, a mere handful of miles from the Mexican border, see images above), and Brian Whistler pitched the idea of visiting Paul McCandless who lives less than 20 minutes away from him in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco. Having spend several hours with Ralph Towner last year in Berlin, I felt this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet all (surviving) original members of the band Oregon within one year and talk to all of them about their early (and also their later) years. I don’t know that anyone has done that… Ralph and Glen, friends since 1959, have not talked with each other since Glen left the band in 2014. 

On top of all this, after Steve Tibbetts has suggested to me several times that I have to meet and talk to Hans Wendl, one of the earliest people that worked for ECM (from when he was just 16 years old, in 1969, until 1985), I drove from the Mexican border to Californian wine region Sonoma via Bishop, CA, where Hans has moved a few years ago — after having lived in Berkeley since his departure from ECM. We sat down in his backyard and he shared all kinds of amazing insights, until three in the morning — among other things that he was driving the band on Oregon’s first European tour in 1974 — and obviously, everyone was quite moved by remembering those early years. Glen even brought me a recent recording of Oregon’s 1974 concert in Bremen, a tape they had kept in the vault for almost 50 years, recorded in the Sendesaal, where I just filmed and took photos of two very ECM recordings. According to Glen, this is the band at their best, and like everyone else he spoke about those years with Collin Walcott only with the nicest words. (Photos of Inyo Mountains, where Hans Wendl lives, and from a hike at the Sonoma coast with Brian Whistler, below.)

As chance would have it, I found a bunch of old Oregon records in a Phoenix record store — in amazing shape and for the best prices, so I just had to buy several of them. I asked three different Manafonistas for their suggestions, and Michael, Brian and Hans-Dieter each named their favorites — each named pretty much the same records, only in different order. Brian and Hans-Dieter also provided me with long and detailed comments sharing their deep appreciation of the whole Oregon discography, and Brian on top played me music from the whole McCandless catalogue throughout the day, to prepare me for my meeting with Paul in Healdsburg. On the way there we drive through a beautiful wine region (wine that I later also was offered by my friends in Berkeley), and in general I learned a lot about Brian’s 70 years in California and the Sonoma region in particular. (Tom Waits also has been living in the next town — in the other direction, though — and it’s apparently not that unusual to see him around there.)

Paul McCandless, whom Brian and I went to see together, as Brian has known his and Oregon’s music since their earliest albums, also was in a talkative mood; even though, due to his health, he talks in a rather low voice and somewhat slower that powerhouse octogenarian Glen Moore. On Paul’s CD shelf I spotted lots of interesting music, The Surgeon Of The Nightsky Restores Dead Things By The Power Of Sound, among others, which I believed to be the one Jon Hassell album I never heard (not being aware of the collaboration album with Bluescreen, Dressing For Pleasure), and when I mentioned this, Paul just gave me the CD. Funny to now have a rare Jon Hassell album as a souvenir from a visit to Paul McCandless‘ living room.

As the final stop (so far) on my interview tour across the West, I then went to see Lee Townsend – in his psychology practice in Berkeley. Having studied psychology in his early years, Lee not only went back to this profession after 30 years in the music industry (while still producing a couple of albums each year, Bill Frisell’s mostly), but also shared a lot of knowledgeable insight into his formative years working for ECM during a significant part of the 1980s.  It will take a bit of time, but I will be honored to share those interviews with all of you once they have been edited properly.  

(The final photo is from Big Sur, inspiration for Charles Lloyd’s Notes from Big Sur, and Bill Frisell’s Big Sur.)

… und war ich 15 oder 16, keine Ahnung. Wie ich Uta kennenlernte, weiss ich heute nicht mehr, aber es war ein klarer Fall von spezieller Faszination ohne grosses Verliebtsein. Ein unkonventionelles Vollblutweib – zur Begrüssung fasste Uta Jungs gerne an den Sack. Aber das bekam ich erst viel später mit. Als alles passiert war, oder schon vorher, besuchten wir Lothar, der als hoffnungsloser Junkie galt, aber, politisch noch hellwach, mir eine kleine Lektion in Grosskartellen erteilte. In Lothars Plattensammlung erinnere ich ein Album, „Fragile“ von Yes. In seiner Räucherkammerstube hörte ich es gerne, aber sonst blieben mir Yes eher fremd. Bis ich sie vor Jahren neu hören lernte. Nichts ging darüber, mit Marrokko The Monkess im Fernsehen zu sehen und dabei Luftgitarre zu spielen. Daydream Believer. Und er hatte auf alten Tonbändern den frühen elektrischen Miles – unseren Ohren war es ein Fest, Miles‘ Wah-Wah-Schreien zu lauschen, and a hundred other tiny things. Wir verstanden diese Musik, ohne sie verstehen. In meiner elektrischen Höhle läuft gerade „Bitches Brew“ All die alten Helden sind da so jung, dass es weh tut! Musikalisch war ich ein frühreifes Greenhorn, meine Erfahrungen in Sachen „real sex“ hinkten da deutlich hinterher. Diverse romantische Verliebtheiten hatte ich hinter mir, Frau Funke in der Berliner Strasse in Dortmund-Körne, ich war 5, die Chefin einer Pension auf Langeoog, ich war 7 und liess meinen ersten Drachen steigen, Margarete Scheibenhut und Jutta Kortmann der Gebrüder Grimm-Volksschule (die hiessen wirklich so), alles herrlich romantisch und folgenlos. Na, nie zu vergessen, die Euphorie mit Petra Welz, ein klarer Fall von erstem Blick incl. Kusstaumel zu Iron Butterflys längstem Song: in den grossen Ferien, so lapidar, ihre Abschiedszeilen aus Besancon.

Eh ich mich versah, war die Hälfte der Teenagerjahre rum, Miles rannte den Voooo rauf und runter, und hätte ich eine Jukebox gehabt, wären keine Song öfter gelaufen als Sunny Afternoon und Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) – ich hatte einige meiner erfüllendsten Höhepunkte, wenn ich mit Stéphane Audran schlief, oder Emma Peel, die mir die dunklen Seiten der Erotik nahebrachten, und sich als perfekt dominante und einfühlsame Urtypen entpuppten – nach den jahrelangen Serienträumen mit meiner indianischen „Farbenfrau“, die mich wundersam und nackt umgarnte und streichelte am Rande eines Swimmingpools, in einer Villa der Reichen (ich war 5, ich war 6) – reality seemed to be a lesson faraway. Dann endlich, aufgrund ihrer Rubensfigur und ihrer wallenden blonden Haare von mir nicht wirklich erkannt, betrat die Lady namens Uta B die Bühne, zwei Jahre älter als ich, und drei Welten realsexuell erfahrener, und mein Blatt wendete sich an einem nasskalten Wintertag voller Regen, kaum waren die Siebziger Jahre eingeläutet. Ich stand unten an der Haustür, ganz in der Nähe des Stadttheaters, und schellte. Und jedem Anfang wohnte Unvergessliches inne: wie ich mich aus einer langen weissen Schiesser-Unterhose schälte zum Moschusduft in ihrer Höhle, und die berühmte erste Platte von „It‘s A Beautiful Day auf ihrem Plattenteller keineswegs einsame Runden drehte.

(Unglaublich, aber viele Jahrzehnte später, neulich, trat zwar nicht Uta Bellmann, aber eine ihrer alten Freundinnen in Erscheinung, M., mit einer anderen Freundin, mit unverechselbarem Charaktergesicht: ich erkannte G. sofort, aus dem „Bunker“ in Dortmund 1972, und anderswoher. Die oben abgebildete Platte ist ein schönes Beispiel dafür, dass alles seine Zeit hat, als ich mir dieses Album eneut besorgte, war der alte Zauber dahin, und die Musik funktionierte immerhin noch als „door opener“ in Utas Kammer. Die Kindheit, die Jugend, ist ein spezielles Land, und als ich einmal dorthin aufbrach, ein paar Wochen ist das her, erlebte ich eine andere und sehr traurige Geschichte. Bald. m.e.)

1. Julian Priester: Love, Love
2. Edward Vesala: Nan Madol
3. Mal Waldron: The Call
4. Jan Garbarek: Sart
5. Bennie Maupin: The Jewel In The Lotus
6. Double Image: Dawn
7. Bill Connors: Theme Of The Gaurdian
8. Peter Rühmkorf: Kein Apolloprogramm für Lyrik
9. Stanley Cowell: Illusion Suite
10. Barre Phillips: Three Day Moon

With the exception of Stanley Cowell‘s little gem that I only heard once at a friend‘s cabin on Amrum, around 1975, each of these albums stayed with me from start on, as well aged vinyl, or, later, the cd version. For instance, no one can tell me the second album from Jan Garbarek was somehow popular. SART, for example, is an electrified killer album, influenced by some of these North Men experiencing „electric Miles“ in NYC, in his prime time (and prime time was all the time from 1969 til 1975), then transforming it into a spectacular Nordic Neon / Nordic Noir zone. Of course, AFRIC PEPPERBIRD was killer, too. By the way, Bennie Maupin’s THE JEWEL IN THE LOTUS, gets a well-deserved reissue in ECM‘s Luminessence series, later this year. (In spite the label’s history of cover designs, you can like this one with the lotus and the portrait for nostalgic reasons only.) Speaking of fusion, The Call is „tripped-out space jazz of the very highest order“ to quote a recent essay in Aquarium Drunkard on that nearly forgotten masterpiece. (This is is a list to make time fly by while waiting inside „Nudel Manufaktur“ for freshly made Fettuccine, and will probably disappear within hours or days.)