siberian knights

I swore that I wasnt going to post any holiday music this year after last year's overkill, but I already broke my promise a couple of weeks ago with my Loren Connors post. So I may as well drop some more on ya heads...

Twilight 22 was the brainchild of Gordon Bahary with some help from lead singer and co-songwriter Joseph Saulter (pictured). Gordon created the group initially through a love of computers and synthesizers. At the age of 16 he sat in with Stevie Wonder during the recording of Songs In The Key Of Life. Impressed by his suggestions, Stevie invited Gordon to produce and program synthesizers on his next album, Journey Through The Secret Of Plants. Gordon met Joseph Salter through Herbie Hancock (Gordon also worked on Herbie's Feets Don't Fail Me Now). Joseph had been the drummer with LA-based band "Rhythm Ignition". After the group just missed out on a recording deal with Motown, Joseph and Gordon hooked up to work as Twilight 22.

The year was 1983 and electro was probably as big as it would ever get. Twilight 22 had a monster of a breakdance jam with Electric Kingdom. However, where Vanguard Records got off letting them release a sentimental Christmas tune is beyond me. Poppin' and lockin' to sleigh bells? Check. Synth steel drums playing Jingle Bells? Check. Cheerful kids caroling? Check. Silent Night line played with crystalline "White Lines" fx over top? Check. Ridiculously bad guitar-synth? Check. Vocoder? Oh hells yea check. So many xmas ditties are weaved into this breakdance medley its a little disturbing. Insert your own joke about christmas wrapping. Christmas in Hollis has got nothin on this!

Twilight 22 - In the Spirit

der Zorn Gottes

This is the account of how
all was in suspense,
all calm,
in silence;
all motionless,
still,
and the expanse of the sky was empty.

At the end of the 1960s, Florian Fricke formed Popol Vuh in Munich. Named after an ancient Mayan scripture tome, their music very much fit into the same realm as Tangerine Dream of the era. What seperated them, though, was their strong spirituality to their music. More trancey, and what I hesitate to say could be pre-worldly-new-age. And definitely one of the strongest arms of the krautrock movement.

By the late 60s, Werner Herzog had already been making films for nearly a decade when he first worked with Fricke. My favorite Herzog movie, and also a collaboration between the two is 1972's Aguirre: the Wrath of God. Starring the always unpredictable Klaus Kinski, its story is the chronicles of an ill-fated 16th century Spanish quest for El Dorado and the madness that the jungle drives them into.

The score is gorgeous. Fricke embraces a wide spectrum of music yet manages to easily make it all heartfelt and captivating. From the plaintive Spirit of Peace pieces (which I swear I hear the rumbling of Arvo Pärt's prepared piano Tabula Rasa piece, which came a few years later), to the swirling choirs of holy heatstroke and the dancing flute jig of a native mountain musician and Takoma-esque guitar figures.

Fricke was the first one to show to a whole musician's generation (electronics or not) how to transfer ancient sacrality into modern popular music using the rigour of classical music.

Popol Vuh - Aguirre I
Popol Vuh - Spirit of Peace (Part 2)

something in the hills

Chances are you haven't ever heard of Sibylle Baier. Don't feel uncool though, most everyone has not. Her only recordings were made in the early 70s in Germany and have never seen the light of day. Sibylle was depressed, as young adults often are. Her friend Claudine took her on a perspective-changing road trip across the Alps. Upon arriving home Sibylle was refreshed and had her spirits lifted. She wrote her first song.

Baier's songs are gentle and intimate. A soft lullaby of simple guitar and soothing voice. Sibylle reclines under a willow tree in the summer, across the way a young couple rolls in the grass. Look the other direction and a rugged and drunk Leonard Cohen weeps. A voice so pure, songs so simple in their elegance, she could have brought loud bars to complete silence with just one of her fragile refrains.

If you are a true trainspotter maybe you will recognize her name or voice, as she did appear briefly in Wim Wenders' 1974 film Alice in den Städten. Thanks go to Orange Twin for resurrecting this new lost classic. Out in early 2006.

Colour Green is a gem of an album that will blow your mind. You will ask yourself how it is possible you have never heard this before? Sibylle is a star who chose to shine for her friends and family instead of the whole world. An un-crowned queen of the 70's underground folk scene - Nico meets a female Jim Croce.

Sibylle Baier - The End
Sibylle Baier - Forget About
Sibylle Baier - Colour Green

instant sin sheds skin

Neneh Cherry has a story far older than her recent collaboration on Gorillaz "Kids With Guns". It even goes back further than her huge late-80s single "Buffalo Stance". Perhaps it first began with the union of an artist and a musician in the 60s. Soon, her new step-father, Don Cherry, stepped in. Raised around a deluge of music definitely had its effects on a young Neneh, as the family would often tour with Don.

But all this didn't stop her from rebelling either. Neneh dropped out of school, moved to London and formed a punk band as a teenager. Eventually she ended up joining a new group with part of the Pop Group and naming themselves after a Roland Kirk LP.

Rip, Rig & Panic gets lumped in with the post-punk scene going on at the time - and they did have many similarities - but they were far beyond funky abrasive tunes for the new wave punks to dance to. Often mixing in jazz flourishes of piano, free-jazz horns and flat out weirdness. Existing from 81-83, they managed to put out 3 albums and a half-dozen singles over the time.

Listening again they might be the direct ancestor of Dutch kitchen sink punks like Dogfaced Hermans. Or maybe not. Regardless, the RRP stuff is quite hard to find but a couple of tracks are available on the new GRLZ compilation along with a dozen other great tracks of estrogen-laced post-punk. Including Maximum Joy who I mentioned a last week.

Rip, Rig & Panic - You're My Kind of Climate
Rip, Rig & Panic - Storm the Reality Asylum

selling me short while stringing me long

With all the amazing reissues coming out these days, how is there time for the deluge of new music? Bobb Trimble is yet another in the seemingly neverending stock of psych-folk musicians from yesteryear. Whereas most of the jewels being unearthed are from the actual psychedelic era, Bobb is a musician out of his time and place. He did his recordings in the late 70s/early 80s near Worcester, MA.

Trimble echoes the ghosts of Bolan, Buckley, Rapp, Spence, and Wyatt. But instead of xeroxing the blueprint like many of today's bearded dudes, Bobb makes it his own. Freely incorporating a pastiche of phasing guitars, answering machine noise, spliced up tapes, and an heaping helping of god knows what. (False endings, candid studio out-take intakes, backwards loops). A staggering work of genius for a guy who obviously has only so much to work with.

When listening in, you assume he is some long-lost musician, only accidentally discovered and forever gone and untraceable. But apparently he still pops up around the Wormtown scene. His small issue records have demanded considerable sums of money online and now he is in talks to have his music legitimately re-released in 2006 on both CD and LP.

Bobb Trimble - If Words Were All I Had
Bobb Trimble - Armour of the Shroud

sails descending

I first encountered Patrick Phelan back in the late 90s when a representative from Jagjaguwar handed me a CD by South because I was gushing about Labradford. Seems they shared an extra hand in the Richmond, VA scene.

South didn't sound like my boys over at Kranky, but I loved it anyway. They tied together my love for minimalist composers and late era Talk Talk and their followers, Bark Psychosis. They only put out their one album, but one-third of the group, Phelan, has been slowly releasing his own solo work ever since. His third solo record, Cost is out now.

Cost begins with the instrumental In Words (hah) - like Eno cut adrift, a perfect soundtrack for the grey skies and slow-mo snow outside. But the second track quickly proves this is not a recording of audio wallpaper and overt minimalism. A full arrangement propels as Phelan coos back and forth. The band keeps at it, even adding a distorted guitar solo, making for the most rock moment of his career. But worry not, the standard dreamy sad sound is still around and abound. Finger picked guitars, strings, lap steel- a beautiful collection of sounds sparse enough to not muddy up the sound whatsoever but full enough to keep you awake. A gorgeous album, worth the wait that has kept me hitting repeat for days now.

Patrick Phelan - Lesser Laws