via @studiozimoun
Watch the full compilation video (17min) on www.zimoun.net
„Zimoun is best known for his installative, generally site-specific, immersive works, mostly based on recycled materials. He employs mechanical principles of rotation and oscillation to put materials into motion and thus produce sounds. For this he principally uses simple materials from everyday life and industrial usage, such as cardboard, DC motors, cables, welding wire, wooden spars or ventilators. For his works Zimoun develops small apparatuses which, despite their fundamental simplicity, generate a tonal and visual complexity once activated – particularly when a large number of such mechanical contraptions, generally hundreds of them, are united and orchestrated in installations and sculptures.
Zimoun’s works continually embrace oppositional positions, such as the principles of order and chaos. Works may be arranged in a geometrical pattern or ordered and installed according to a system, yet they behave chaotically and act – within a carefully prepared framework of possibilities – in an uncontrolled manner as soon as they are mechanically activated. As if in a clinical study, the pattern and the systematic approach enable an overview, so that the chaos generated by the mechanical process can be better analysed. Mass and individuality also belong among these oppositional positions. The artist often employs a large number of identical elements, but each element develops its own individuality and unique nature through the dynamic interplay of mechanism, rotation and material. The mechanical elements, prepared by hand in the studio, which have a consistently reduced, minimalistic form, function and aesthetic, possess only apparent precision, because the manual production creates divergence from the ideal treatment of the material, allowing imprecisions that emphasise the emerging individual behaviour of the materials, enable it or indeed provoke it.“ Ulf Kallscheidt, SIKART
Via @rbr.music
Max Roach - Triptych.
One of the most gifted musicians in jazz history, Max Roach helped establish a new vocabulary for jazz drummers during the bebop era and beyond. He shifted the rhythmic focus from the bass drum to the ride cymbal, a move that gave drummers more freedom. He told a complete story, varying pitch, tuning, patterns, and volume. He was a brilliant brush player, and could push, redirect, or break up the beat. In 1948 he participated in Miles Davis’ seminal Birth of the Cool sessions before forming his own quintet with iconic bop trumpeter Clifford Brown. In 1953, he served as drummer in “the quintet” for the historic Jazz at Massey Hall concert, alongside Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Charles Mingus. Later, the drummer’s seminal 1961 We Insist! Freedom Now Suite set the tone for Civil Rights activism among his peers. Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, Roach continued breaking new ground. He formed the percussion ensemble M’Boom in 1970, issuing a handful of acclaimed albums including 1973’s Re: Percussion, M’Boom in 1979, and To the Max in 1991. He worked with vanguard musicians including storied duos with Anthony Braxton (The Long March) and Cecil Taylor (Historic Concerts). During the ‘90s Roach taught at the University of Massachusetts and continued to perform. He never stood still musically: he worked in trios, with symphony orchestras, backed gospel choirs, and with rapper Fab Five Freddy. Friendship, his final album in collaboration with trumpeter Clark Terry, was issued in 2002.
Song of the Week
The Pharaohs Love Y’all
by
The Pharaohs
The Pharaohs only managed one release during their short lifetime, 1971’s masterful Awakening.
But when Luv N Haight reissued Awakening in 1996, they also came out with a brand-new album of mostly previously unreleased material called In the Basement.
Most of this album was recorded live in 1972, after the already enormous 11-piece band had grown to include four more players, including a sixth drummer.
The live tracks are fascinating, because where Awakening sounds like an earthier and more Afrocentric version of Earth, Wind & Fire (which several members of the Pharaohs would go on to found in 1973), the In the Basement nonetheless makes one wish that the Pharaohs had lasted longer, just to see what would have happened next.
#raregroove
Song of the Week
I Have Changed
by HP Riot
Recorded at Can-Base Studios in Vancouver, BC in 1973, HP Riot’s eponymous album was produced by Michael A. Flicker for the Concept Records label.
The multi-ethnic funk band (known as H.P. Riot) was named after its San Francisco, CA home neighborhood, Hunter’s Point, that was marred by race riots in 1966.
They have often been confused as being Canadian because Concept Records was based in Regina, Saskatchewan and they spent much of their time touring western Canada.
The track “I Have Changed” was previously included in the Luv N’Haight compilation California Soul 2 but this is the first time the full-album has been re-issued.
#raregroove
#bayareafunk
#songoftheweek
via @bbc6music
Kraftwerk in their Düsseldorf laboratory circa 1975 🔊
Unarchived from the BBC, Derek Cooper reports on the bespoke electronic instruments and sounds of Kraftwerk.
Originally broadcast 25 September 1975
#kraftwerk #bbcarchive
Song of the Week
Movin’ in the Right Direction
by Steve Parks
Steve Parks’ big song on this LP is the epitome of rare groove music in the 90s.
Almost every club and radio would play this every night – it would be banging out of The Mud Club, Astoria, The Wag, and all the other hot, sweaty, very brilliant clubs of the 80’s and 90’s.
Movin’ in the Right Direction is definitely on the ultimate soundtrack to that funky era.
This iconic cover only happened because his friend, Rico, coerced him into wearing the shirt, and took him to Leon’s BBQ by the beach and buy them both lunch.
#raregroove
#songoftheweek
SONG OF THE WEEK
BLACK RENAISSANCE
BY HARRY WHITAKER
Harry Whitaker, piano player, producer, and arranger recorded Black Renaissance “Body, Mind, and Spirit,” at the age of 26. The album is a holy grail amongst collectors of soul-jazz and rare groove, and an album so rare it’s virtually a myth to many.
Given its rarity, when asked if he was surprised that people knew about the album Whitaker jokes “I’ve told enough people about it over the years! Now they can actually hear it. It was a record before it’s time. It’s not a commercial release - I think of it as classical. You can call it jazz, but it’s free, it’s got African roots, it’s for people who people who dig that sound.”
Harry Whitaker has enjoyed a successful career as a producer, arranger and composer, cutting his teeth on the best of the Roy Ayers Ubiquity releases and making a living working closely with Roberta Flack - as her musical director, even playing on her big Eugene McDaniels’ written hit “I Feel Like Makin’ Love.” Black Renaissance “Body, Mind, and Spirit,” was his first attempt at a project where he wrote and composed the music and played keys on both tracks.
The Black Renaissance project was recorded on Martin Luther King Day, January 15th, 1976 at Sound Ideas Studio in New York City. “With all the turmoil going on during Kings time he had come to mean a lot to all kinds of people. I wanted to put something down to celebrate his memory - and the date was just about the only thing that we planned ahead of time on this record.”
When a friend of Whitaker’s house burned down years later, included in the possessions lost were the masters to the Black Renaissance album. “I decided that was the end of it all and that I should move on from trying to get a deal in the USA, until you guys (Ubiquity) called me!”
Whitaker played with Roy Ayers’ Ubiquity band from 1970 until 1974. He wrote, produced and arranged many of Ayers classics - including playing k
