YULE (21 December 2010)

The musick dedicated to this Sabbat is:

VARIOUS ARTISTS

PEOPLE TAKE WARNING! (Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938)


Original Issue: 2007 Tompkins Square (TSQ1875) Buy it here!!!

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

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from Pitchfork:

Times are tough. Times are always tough. But times used to be much tougher.

A recent report noted the global rise of the standard of living, and the U.S. stock market keeps hitting all-time highs. Even if the relative prosperity of America is tempered by the troubling observation that, contrary to the usual positive economic indicators, life isn't getting much better, life in general doesn't seem that bad.

Every so often, though, we get a glimpse of what once was and what could very well be again. The precarious, precipitous housing market leads to talk of recession, which inevitably brings up depression. The Hurricane Katrina humanitarian disaster provided an alternate-reality view of the United States as Third World nation. The resolution of the United Auto Workers strike settled the weight of thousands of jobs bobbling in the balance. The death toll and number of wounded in Iraq and elsewhere creeps upward, reminders of a time when sacrifice was compulsory, not voluntary.

Yes, times are tough, but times used to be absolutely terrible-- rife with starvation, disease, extreme poverty, and senseless death. As relative prosperity continues unabated, perspective predictably fades. People Take Warning: Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938 provides that perspective with three discs of abject misery, songs about misery, miserable people, and the miserable things they've done or that were done to them. It's the epitome of a bad trip back in time, and a riveting collection of musical snapshots capturing a country teetering on the edge of the abyss, looking down, and singing songs about what they see.

Titled "Man V. Machine", the first disc focuses on songs of train wrecks, plane crashes, and the odd car accident, and features lot of songs about the Titanic, in particular. The other two discs are titled "Man V. Nature" and "Man V. Man [And Woman, Too]", respectively, and tackle just what their names imply: natural disasters and good ol' fashioned murdering.

It's harrowing and horrifying stuff, but there's a twisted element of rueful humor to this set, too. "If it bleeds, it leads," goes the cynical journalism saying, and these horror stories, drawn from headlines, serve much the same purposes as the tabloids, providing tales of loss you can't turn away from. It's also a little like the scene of the accident on the side of the highway, with traffic slowed to a near halt so that everybody can get a good look, as if they don't already know what they're going to see.

You generally know what you're going to get here, too, but just because it's familiar sounding hardly means it's full of household names. The set inevitably includes a few songs from such usual suspects as Son House and Charley Patton, as well as often anthologized tracks like Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie's "When the Levee Breaks". There are also plenty of well-known subjects, like the infamous Old 97 train, conductor Casey Jones, the doomed Tom Dooley, and the reliably murderous Stack O'Lee. But there are countless surprises as well, like "El Mole Rachmim (für Titanik)", a song that stresses how much the great ship's sinking resonated with recent Eastern European Jewish immigrants.

Music like this has always been the province of obsessive collectors, and it will probably always remain that way. But there's no question that having this music packaged together by experts and fans beats scouring estate sales for fragile 78s. Whether beautifully packaged (like the astounding gospel collection Goodbye, Babylon), thematically organized (the fun medicine show soundtrack Good for What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows 1926-1937), or both (the still essential Anthology of American Folk Music, which, lest one forget, really was once just part of one man's collection), it's still remarkably powerful and moving all these years-- but really not that many-- later. As Tom Waits puts it in his introductory essay, "The scratches on the 78s sound like the ocean in a shell, and the songs are riding inside across time."

FAREWELL MOON (epitaph musick)

BANASIK CHRISTIAN

IGOR'S SMILE



Original Issue: 1993

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

After visiting San Michele cemetery in Venice and, in particular, Igor Stravinsky's grave (see my picture below), I'm in the need to pay my respectful hommage to this unforgivable Maestro of modern music.

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1 Igor's Smile (14:59)

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from Christian Banasik homepage:

This piece can be interpreted as bridge and metamorphosis between digitally mastered tape-recorded music and a radio play. The theme of the piece is the osmosis of language and music - and of narrative linearity and purely tonal speech material. The musical sections are created through the medium of a sampler.

Brief interludes of Igor Stravinsky´s most well-known ballets are sampled, partially transformed and varied by way of a number of different transpositions and loops. In each case the individual passages from various pieces are moulded into a specifically adapted harmonic context within the respective position.

The linguistic plane is represented by Stravinsky´s original voice from interviews and rehearsals (recorded between 1962 and 1965) as well as by commentaries of the premiere performance of "Sacre du printemps" in Paris (1913) which play a key role here. In turn, striking woodblock sounds serve as mediation between the two planes, accentuating the beginning or end of tones as well as to creating the third, superordinate plane distancing the audience from the historical material. The piece was produced at the Synclavier System of the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt.

List of orchestra samples:

sample 1: "Firebird" - "Infernal Dance" measure 1

sample 2: "Firebird" - "Infernal Dance" [15] m1-m4

sample 3: "Firebird" - "Finale" [16] m3/4, [17] m1

sample 4: "Petrouchka" - Part 1, "Dance Russe" m1-4

sample 5: "The Rite of Spring" - Part 1 (Adoration of the Earth, "Ritual of the Rival Tribes") [57] m1/2

FULL BEAVER MOON (13 November 2008)

The musick dedicated to this Esbat is:

BLOOD AXIS & LES JOYAUX DE LA PRINCESSE

ABSINTHE: LA FOLIE VERTE


Original Issue: 2002 Athanor (ATNR 017) Buy it here!!!

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

A recent discovery for me and an unvaluable gem!

Totally mesmerized by this masterpiece...this is the sound of my beloved Europe!

I am the Green Fairy
My robe is the colour of despair
I have nothing in common with the fairies of the past
What I need is blood, red and hot, the palpitating flesh of my victims
Alone, I will kill France, the Present is dead, Vive the future.

But me, I kill the future and in the family I destroy the love of country, courage, honour,
I am the purveyor of hell, penitentiaries, hospitals.

Who am I finally? I am the instigator of crime
I am ruin and sorrow
I am shame
I am dishonour
I am death
I AM ABSINTHE

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1 Folie Verte (I Am The Green Fairy) (3:40)
2 Symphonie Verte (And Here I Am, An Absintheur...) (4:59)
3 Minutes D'Absinthe (Let Me Be Mad, Mad With Absinthe) (1:59)
4 Absintha Taetra (Opaline) (6:58)
5 Poison Vert (D'Après Frédéric Barbier) (6:57)
6 Avec Les Fleurs... Avec L'Absinthe (With Flowers And With Women) (1:58)
7 Absinthine (D'Après Emile Duhem) (0:55)
8 Variations Sur Le Thème De Corelli (By Venus And Cupid) (4:05)
9 Variations Sur Le Thème De Corelli (That Night, I Drank Deeply) (13:20)
10 Princesse Verte (D'Après Emile Spencer) (5:37)
11 Fée Verte, Vous Êtes Jolie (Chanté Par Affre) (2:10)

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from Athanor webpage:

Absinthe: La Folie Verte is a sonic and poetic invocation combining mind-altering music and powerful recitations of Absinthe-inspired poems of the fin-de-siècle.

These elements unite with a brilliant graphic presentation to conjure an emerald realm of euphoric delirium. It is also one of the most obsessive recordings ever made: the various melodies that float across these soundscapes derive from forgotten Absinthe songs of the past; actual elements of the latter, derived from old cylinder recordings and 78s, have also been carefully stirred and distilled into new formulations by Les Joyaux de la Princesse.

Furthermore, all aspects of this album (instrumentation, spoken recitations, and even the final mixing) were executed under the influence of the drink. The end result is an impressionistic tour-de-force and the ultimate aural hymn to la fée verte, the Green Fairy.

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from Compulsion:

Blood Axis & Les Joyaux De La Princesse release their long-awaited celebration of that intoxicant of aesthetes: absinthe. It is said Van Gogh sliced off his ear while under the influence, Hemingway, Poe, Rimbaud and Wilde regularly imbibed the green liquor, Picasso even painted The Absinthe Drinker. Long outlawed in many countries Absinthe is regarded as one of the most potent drinks ever, its psychotropic effect a result of the wormwood herb and exceedingly high alcoholic content.

Michael Moynihan has long been an advocate of the transcendental nature of absinthe, and has been instrumental in its resurgence in America. The debut Blood Axis album, The Gospel of Inhumanity, even featured an ode to this bedevilled drink. Like Moynihan, the other musicians on this CD have all become obsessed with the drink, distilling their own recipes and creating their own rituals to accompany their absinthe sipping evenings.

Absinthe: La Folie Verte is imbued with stirring orchestrations and lush string segments, while Moynihan with deadpan delivery recites poems culled from the late 19th Century. Absinthe: La Folie Verte evokes a turn of the century Parisian café with age-old absinthe songs salvaged from the past. Produced in collaboration with the Absinthe Museum, Auvers-Sur-L'Oise, this is a beautifully packaged and extensively researched document that should appeal to anyone transfixed with the mystique of the Green fairy. When one considers that the EU ban on Absinthe has been lifted, variations of the drink are available in UK public houses, and numerous books have just been published documenting the effects of the Green liquor it appears that Blood Axis and Les Joyaux De La Princesse have managed to capture the zeitgeist of today while conjuring an atmosphere of 200 years ago.

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from FluxEuropa:

In a collaboration with the French project, Les Joyaux de la Princesse, Michael Moynihan's Blood Axis forsakes militaristic bombast to deliver a homage to absinthe, the notorious fin-de-siècle tipple distilled from an infusion of wormwood. Michael reads from contemporary texts condemning or examining the gods and demons of the absinthe experience, against a dreamy mood-evoking ambient soundscape. With snatches of period music weaving in and out of the cacophony, the album successfully captures that sense of distance associated with intoxication as it takes us on a journey into the addled brain of the absintheur.

Absinthe had such a bad reputation - at least partly due to harmful additives - that it was widely banned for most of the twentieth century. An idea of the taste of historical absinthe can be gained from Pernod, a modern wormwood-free absinthe. Pastis is similar but the dominant flavour is liquorice rather than aniseed. Michael Moynihan and Annabel Lee of Blood Axis and Erik Konofal of Les Joyaux are all imbibers of the liquor and have long experimented with homemade varieties. Modern, commercially manufactured absinthe has only a tenth of the psycho-active 'thujone' present in the original, but my own experience suggests that even this has an effect more akin to drugs than alcohol.

FULL HUNTER'S MOON (14 October 2008)

The Musick dedicated to this Esbat is:

VELVET UNDERGROUND (THE)

APRIL 1966, SCEPTER STUDIOS (NORMAN DOLPH ACETATE)


Original Issue: 1966

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

Dedicated to all my dear male followers...from Margot, your "Venus in furs" ;-)

shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather

whiplash girlchild in the dark

comes in bells, your servant, don't forsake him

strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart


downy sins of streetlight fancies

chase the costumes she shall wear

ermine furs adorn the imperious

severin, severin awaits you there


i am tired, i am weary

i could sleep for a thousand years

a thousand dreams that would awake me

different colors made of tears


kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather

shiny leather in the dark

tongue of thongs, the belt that does await you

strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart


severin, severin, speak so slightly

severin, down on your bended knee

taste the whip, in love not given lightly

taste the whip, now plead for me


i am tired, i am weary

i could sleep for a thousand years

a thousand dreams that would awake me

different colors made of tears


shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather

whiplash girlchild in the dark

severin, your servant comes in bells, please don't forsake him

strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

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1 European Son
2 The Black Angel's Death Song
3 All Tomorrow's Parties
4 I'll Be Your Mirror
5 Heroin
6 Femme Fatale
7 Venus In Furs
8 I'm Waiting For The Man
9 Run Run Run

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from the E-Bay auction:

This auction is for a unique 12" LP acetate whose unearthing has been storied in several underground/label international news features, periodicals and a documentary over the last several years including Rolling Stone Magazine (December 30, 2004), Mojo Magazine (May 2005), U.K. Record Collector Magazine (May 2005), Goldmine Magazine (December 8, 2006), The Globe & Mail (May 28, 2005 and January 14, 2006), and the 2006 Documentary "Velvet Underground Under Review (An Independent Critical Analysis)".

Following is excerpted and adapted (with the author's approval) from the article written by Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records in Portland Oregon which is featured in the December 8, 2006 issue of Goldmine Magazine currently on news-stands through mid December:

THE MYSTERY OF THE VELVET UNDERGROUND'S "REAL FIRST RECORD" (AND HOW THE ONLY EXISTING COPY WAS BOUGHT FOR 75 CENTS)

In September of 2002 Warren Hill of Montreal Canada was perusing a box of records at a Chelsea, New York street sale when he happened upon a nice Leadbelly 10" on Folkways, a water damaged copy of the first Modern Lovers LP on Beserkely, and a brittle 12" piece of acetone-covered aluminum with the words "Velvet Underground. 4-25-66. Att N. Dolph" written on the label. He purchased the three records for 75 cents each.

As I have a small knowledge of records and am an old friend of Warren's, I got a call from him the next day in which he described the acetate. Because of the date and the unique type of pressing, we both agreed that it was probably an in-studio acetate made during the recording of the first Velvet Underground LP back in 1966 (I had heard that they occasionally would have a vinyl cutting lathe in the studio to cut records of the day's recordings for the artists and/or producers to take home for review). Warren didn't want to play the mysterious platter due to the fragile nature of acetates, and the cheap nature of his record needle, so we agreed that the next time he was visiting me in Portland we would check it out together. If it turned out to be what we thought it was, maybe we could sell it at Mississippi Records, the small neighbourhood record store in Portland that I work at. Sight unseen and sound unheard, I assumed that it was likely an acetate pressing of the recording which would be eventually be released as the group's first album, "The Velvet Underground & Nico".

It took awhile for Warren to visit, but when he did he brought along the acetate. We cued it up and were stunned -- the first song was not "Sunday Morning" as on the "Velvet Underground & Nico" Verve LP, but rather it was "European Son"- the song that is last on that LP, and it was a version neither of us had ever heard before! It was less bombastic and more bluesy than the released version, and it clocked in at a full two minutes longer. I immediately took the needle off the record, and realized that we had something special. Between the two of us we had heard many Velvets outtakes on both official and less than official releases, but the present material had never been heard by either of us.

The next few days found us scrambling for clues and information about what to make of this find; calling every record collector/historian we knew and reading everything we could find concerning the early recordings of the VU. We pieced together that this was probably a surviving copy of the legendary Scepter studios recordings which had been regarded as lost (hence the epic moniker "the lost scepter studios recordings" applied to these unheard sessions over the years). The recording is comprised of the primitive first "finished" version of the LP that Andy Warhol had shopped to Columbia as a ready-to-release debut album by his protege collective "The Velvet Underground".

This acetate, which is possibly the only surviving copy, represents the first Velvet Underground album as Andy Warhol intended it to be released.

Though the same compositions and even a few of the same "takes" (albeit in different mixes) were used on the subsequent commercial release, that which was eventually issued as their debut album on Verve, "The Velvet Underground & Nico", was a significantly different creation. I had heard of these nascent recordings before... it was said by some that the master tapes had burned in a fire, by others that all of those recordings ended up being on the released album, and still by others that the only existing copy of that material was on an acetate owned by David Bowie, and that he was known to tout it as his most prized possession.

The truth about what we held was fuzzy until Warren managed to track down the N. Dolph referred to on the label for an interview.

Norman Dolph was a perennial in the New York art & music scene of the 1960's. He worked as a sales representative at Columbia Records through 1967, and was deeply involved with different facets of the independent music world on the side. Andy Warhol, who was managing the Velvets at the time, contacted Dolph & offered him a painting in exchange for services as "ghost" (uncredited) producer for the Velvet's first recording session. Warhol wanted to record a Velvets album before they had a record company behind them as this would tend to minimize meddling label executives' mobility in compromising the musical arrangement's distraught primal force, not to mention the unprecedented taboo lyrics which openly address sex, drugs, and depravity. Warhol's plan was to have Dolph record it and then shop it around to labels (first & foremost Columbia) as a finished recording.

...and so Dolph rented out Scepter studios, and with an engineer named John Licata by his side, they recorded the Velvets for four days. At the time Scepter studios was between reconstruction and demolition with walls falling over and holes in the floor. Velvets' bass & viola player John Cale would later recall the environment as "Post-Apocalyptic".

Dolph took the master tapes made during this session to the Columbia building, which still had an in-house pressing plant, and cut the acetate "after hours" with people he knew on the inside. Dolph then sent the acetate to Columbia to see if they were interested in releasing it. It was returned promptly with a note that said something akin to "do you think we're out of our f**king minds?" Dolph then gave the acetate to Andy Warhol or John Cale, he cannot remember which.

Six of the songs recorded during the Scepter session made it on to the "Velvet Underground & Nico" LP, albeit with radically different mixes. The other four songs were re-recorded in LA by Tom Wilson. As far as we know, the only listenable copy of the original versions of Heroin, Venus In Furs, I'm Waiting For The Man, and European Son exist on the acetate that Warren found. (A Japanese bootleg of the same material did appear, but in poor, arguably ‘unlistenable' sound quality. It is possible that the source tape for the Japanese bootleg was made from this very acetate decades ago when it was in different hands. Who knows?) We have since realized that we are in possession of a likely one of a kind artifact - the first recordings by one of the most influential rock bands of all time!

After establishing the authenticity of Warren's find we photographed the item and made a high quality digital back-up copy of the material. A media frenzy ensued, with articles appearing in Rolling Stone, Mojo, Record Collector, The Globe & Mail, and many other news sources. Calls started flooding in from people interested in buying the acetate, as well as record companies interested in releasing the songs on it. After much consideration, we decided that it would be best to release it to the highest bidder through an auction facilitated by our good friends at Saturn Records in Oakland, California (a store that has a well-established presence in the international vinyl collecting community, and an excellent reputation on the internet).

As to the most interesting mystery brought up by the appearance of this item - how did such an important artifact disappear for 37 years & end up at a Chelsea New York yard sale priced at 75 cents? ...We have no answer.

The track differences between the acetate versions and the commercial recordings on "The Velvet Underground & Nico" are detailed as follows:

1.European Son- completely different version,. Guitar solo is much bluesier. Less noisy and experimental. Longer by 2 minutes or so.

2.Black Angel's Death Song-Same take as released version. Different mix.

3.All Tomorrow's Parties- Same take as released version. Different mix.

4.I'll Be Your Mirror-Same take as released version. Radically different mix. No echo on Nico's vocals. Background vocals on end of song are more subdued.

5.Heroin-Completely different take than released version. Guitar line is different. Vocal inflections different, and a few different lyrics. Drumming is more primitive & off kilter. There is a tambourine dragging throughout the song.

6.Femme Fatale- Same take as released version. Radically different mix. Percussion more prominent. Alternate take on background vocals. Much more "poppy".

7.Venus In Furs- Different take than released version. Vocal inflections completely different. Instrumentation more based around Cales' violin than the guitar as in the released version.

8.I'm Waiting For The Man- Different take than released version. Guitar line is completely different. Vocal inflections different, and a few different lyrics. No drums, just tambourine. Bluesy guitar solo.

9.Run Run Run- Same take as released version. Different mix.

CRAZY MOON (incredibly strange musick)

ADDLESTON/MEUNIER/FAUSTMANN

17th AND 18th CENTURY WORKS OF FUNERARY VIOLIN

BABCOTTE/SUDBURY/EATON

THE ENGLISH SCHOOL OF FUNERARY VIOLIN

Original Issue: unknown

Reissue: The Guild Of Funerary Violinists (No Number) Buy it here!

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Margot-meter: ? moons / 5

Read here the fascinating history behind the recordings.

If you have even one single drop of mittel-european blood running through your veins, you'll be moved (to death) by these sounds!

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Tracklists here and here

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from Aquarius Records (cut-up of various reviews):

What is more amazing than discovering a whole movement in music that had never been documented, let alone even heard of. EVER! No mention in any books, magazines, not a single trace. What if that music was in fact the music of Funerary violins. A music created and composed to be performed at funerals. The only evidence of these musics, some scratchy old wax cylinder recordings, some faded photos, and brittle sheafs of old sheet music.

Hard to say which would be more amazing, a wholly undiscovered hidden dark corner of musical history, quashed by the church and relegated to be lost forever, or an insanely detailed project, the ultimate conceptual art piece. Either way, we are in love with this stuff.
Simply from a musical standpoint, this is everything we could hope for. The recordings are fuzzy and staticky, bathed in layers of crackle and grit, and years of neglect and decay, but beneath the recording inconsistencies we love so much, are some truly moving and emotionally rich performances, the melodies are so intense and sad, minor key and mournful. truly funereal. It's impossible not to imagine some old funeral procession, a row of black clad mourners, trudging down a dirt road, with their deceased atop an old wooden cart, the sky grey, the music of the Funerary violinist winding around the procession like wreaths of black smoke. So goddamn lovely. We have been listening to this non-stop since we got it.

And then there's the story. The "history". Is it real? Is it possible that a musical movement could disappear so completely. So much so that not a single person anywhere EVER had heard of the Guild Of Funerary Violinists? Or is it all a huge put-on? A massive made up world? The ultimate outsider art project. Either way, we are completely blown away. If this is indeed real, HOLY SHIT! How utterly mysterious and romantic!! We do sort of want to believe it's real. It's so perfectly evocative of some other time, of death and sadness throughout the ages. But if it is in fact made up, it has to be one of the most brilliantly conceived and executed hoaxes of all time.

Wailing, plaintive funereal laments on solo violin, sad and morose, lilting and so completely lovely, bathed in all manner of grit and hiss, fuzz and antique distortion, sounding like the old wax cylinders these recordings purport to be. Imagine some old timey violin music treated by Tim Hecker, and spun in some ultra morose DJ set by Philip Jeck...
The music is so evocative, of dark clouds at dusk, rain swept fields, huge brooding stone houses, lush gardens beneath grey skies, and of course, funerals, and the slow stately trudge of the funeral procession to the grave site. We've gushed about pretty much every volume so far, and by now are probably just repeating ourselves, but we just love these discs, read the other Funerary Violinist reviews for more on the music and the mythology, and you'll realize just why it seems impossible to us to not fall totally in love with such a well executed piece of what ultimately amounts to performance art. The music, dark and delicate, creepy and so beautiful, even removed from the mythology is totally amazing, the story and the text is as well (there's even a book you can track down, detailing the entire recorded history of the Guild) but the two together, are simply magical....

Even without the fantastical back story, the music is worth the price of admission. Each piece is wonderfully crafted and beautifully performed, all solo violin, keening mournfully, minor key melodies drifting dreamily in some, the scrape and sawing of the bow constructing miserablist dirges in others, all except the more recent bathed in a thick cloak of crackle and static, giving it that Jeck / Hecker fuzzy-blurry-dreamy vibe we can never seem to get enough of. The fact that this music is set amidst such a dense and complex, passionate world of intrigue and mystery, love and death, only makes it that much more exciting. And the fact that every single bit of it is made up, well, as far as we're concerned that just seals the deal.

CASTAWAY MOON (desert island musick)

Kawabata Makoto's (of Acid Mothers Temple) all-times favourite album (read more at this page; #12 )

STUDIO DER FRÜHEN MUSIK

TROUBADOURS - TROUVÈRES - MINSTRELS

Original Issue: 1966 Telefunken (SAWT 9567-B), 1970 Teldec (6.41275 AW), 1974 Telefunken (SAWT 9487-A)

Reissue: 1995 Teldec (4509-97938-2)

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

A more than refreshing listening after my recent holidays in Provence & Languedoc-Roussillon! Essential

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CD 1

1. Pierre Vidal: Baron, de mon dan covit
2. Giraut de Bornelh: Leu chansonet' e vil
3. Salterello
4. Bernart de Ventadorn: Can vei la lauzeta mover
5. Veris ad imperia
6. A l'entrada del temps clar
7. Raimbaut de Vaqueiras: Kalenda Maia
8. Beatriz de Dia: A chantar m'er de so qu'eu no volria
9. Jacques de Cambrai: Retrowange novelle
10. Guiot de Dijon: Chanterai por mon courage
11. Lasse, pour quoi refusai

CD 2

1. Gillebert de Berneville: De moi doleros vos chant
2. Gace Brulé: Biaus m'est estez
3. Etienne de Meaux: Trop est mes maris jalos
4. Li joliz temps d'estay
5. Walther von der Vogelweide: Mir hat her Gerhart Atze ein pfert
6. Walther von der Vogelweide: Unter der linden an der heide
7. Walther von der Vogelweide: Nu alrest lebe ich mir werde
8. Neidhart von Reuental: Meie, din liehter schin
9. Neidhart von Reuental: Blozen wir den anger ligen sahen
10. Pseudo-Neidhart: Fürste Friderich
11. Neidhart von Reuental: Meienzeit
12. Chanconetta Tedescha I
13. Reinmar von Brennenberg: Wol mich des tages do mir alrest ist worden kunt
14. Chanconetta Tedescha II
15. Der Unverzagte: Der kuninc Rodolp
16. Frauenlob (Heinrich von Meissen): Ez waent ein narrenwise
17. Wizlâw III von Rügen: Ich warne dich, vil junger man, gezarte
18. Wizlâw III von Rügen: Loibere risen

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from Makoto's Listening Room:

This 2CD set is the most favorite album in all music in the world for me. Of course i have a vinyl box set too. I bought this cd at Fnac in Paris in Autmun 1999. then i could find so many troubadours cds at this shop, i was very surprised...because I'd never see such large troubadours' CD space in anywhere.

But one of my friend told me this CD and all this series were out of print now...
oh man... why??? I think any record company have to keep the catalog of "good music", even if the sales was not so good!

If i have to choose only one record in all my life, I'm sure to choose this one. I've never listened such beautiful and heavenly music... and I can feel very "acid folk" atmosphere too...

CRAZY MOON (incredibly strange musick)

CONET PROJECT (THE)

RECORDINGS OF SHORTWAVE NUMBERS STATIONS

Original Issue: 1997 Irdial (59 ird tcp 1) (Be notified when the reissue is available)

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Margot-meter: ??? moons / 5

For sure, one of the most chilling and frightening aural artifact ever released!

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Tracklisting here

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from Hauntedink:

Static. Faint voices. Seven slow, monotonous tones. A pause. Suddenly, you hear music--one of those wind-up songs played by a child's toy. The melody repeats three times. A pause. Suddenly, you hear a female voice counting off the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 in German. A pause. She repeats the numbers. A pause. The children's toy melody returns.

So begins The Conet Project, perhaps the greatest collection of found art ever produced. This is not only a monumental work; it is also a monument, a testament to 50 years of Cold War espionage, a living document of the world's most secret agencies. That most of these agencies are still around today merely enhances the importance of this work.

To explain this collection, I have to explain the concept of numbers stations.

Numbers stations transmit coded messages through shortwave radio. These messages are transmitted from places all over the world, yet the basic numbers station message is remarkably uniform. It usually consists of a voice (most often female) reading off a series of numbers. On many occasions, this reading of numbers will be preceded by a song--usually familiar (like the English folk song, "The Lincolnshire Poacher") or distinct (the weird children's toy music I mentioned earlier, which is called "The Swedish Rhapsody"), though there are signals without music and signals that simply transmit Morse code messages. Above all else, one thing remains constant: nearly every transmission begins on the hour, lasts between ten and fifty minutes, and is almost invariably repeated several times over a 24-hour period.

What are these messages? Well, no one has ever come forward to prove that these stations are linked to spy networks, but almost everyone who has ever studied the signals believes that they are. But why would a spy network like the CIA or the KGB or Israel's Mossad or Osama BinLaden's Al-Qaeda--with all their money and resources--bother transmitting messages through something like shortwave radio, a cheap technology that would allow anyone in the world to listen in? There are two reasons. First, shortwave is not only cheap but also common, meaning a spy can easily carry around a good shortwave radio without attracting any attention whatsoever. Second, the messages use what is called a one-time pad, which is generally considered the most secure cipher ever created--provided that the sender and the receiver are the only ones in possession of the key to unlock the message.

Knowing that the tracks on The Conet Project are actual messages sent from a government or group to a spy, and knowing that those messages might contain orders that, at one time, probably instructed that spy to go kill someone or dig up dirt on a politician or just stay where they are, makes for a rather enticing listen, to say the least. But the meaning behind these messages will remain a mystery because there is just no way to ever come across a one-time pad key (they are destroyed after use), and though it is fun to speculate about these sounds, that speculation gets tiring after a while for all but the most die-hard listeners.

However, this historical context--the secret agent messages--is not really the point of this work. This is, first and foremost, a work of art, a work founded on challenging our conceptions of history and documentation. The artists at Irdial who selected the tracks and compiled the work did everything they could to choose tracks that were interesting to listen to; the listening experience, then, was more important than the clarity of the signals. As a result, many of the tracks here are filled with static and other noises floating in and around the sounds of voices and music, obscuring the messages to such an extent that it often takes several listens before you can discern which language the voice is speaking. They did not choose these tracks because they were the only ones available--I've heard plenty of clear recordings of numbers stations on other compilations. No, there was a reason to make the music muddled here. They wanted to recreate the experience, the thrill that must have come to those lonely souls who, over the past few decades, discovered these signals and recorded them.

Shortwave radio has never received the credit it deserves for shaping electronic music. Most early electronic musicians--especially those in Europe, where shortwave radio is more common than in the US--will tell you that their early musical education came from trying to sift through shortwave bands to pick up pirate stations all over the Atlantic. No doubt the act of sifting through walls of static to pick up a faint but hip signal can be seen as the inspiration for at least some of electronic music's obsession with distortion, aberration, and noise. A lot of electronic music, in fact, can be read as an elaborate attempt to give shape and purpose to random noise: to turn static into a signal.

If you think about it, number stations are doubly encased in interference. Not only are the signals themselves hard to pick up, but the messages are impenetrable. The artists behind The Conet Project understood both of these mysteries. By creating a work that is not only historically important (being, really, the primary introduction of numbers stations to the world at large) but also musically relevant, Irdial has created a powerful, evocative work that has, in recent years, inspired artists as varied as Cameron Crowe (Vanilla Sky) and Wilco (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) to tap into some of its power. This is a classic in every single sense of that word.

CRAZY MOON (incredibly strange musick)

CROWLEY ALEISTER
THE GREAT BEAST SPEAKS

Original Issue: 1999 M.O.D. (Disgust 1)


Margot-meter: ??? moons / 5

1: Intro
2: The Call Of The First Aethyr (Enochian)
3: The Call Of The First Aethyr (English)
4: The Call Of The Second Aethyr (Enochian)
5: The Call Of The Second Aethyr (English)
6: La Gitana
7: The Pentagram
8: One Sovergin For Woman
9: The Poet
10: Three Hymns for Man
11: Fingernails
12: The Titanic
13: Hymn To The American People On The Anniversary Of Their Independence
14: Collects From The Gnostic Mass
15: Viva La France

I think that audio documents of such historical importance are impossible to rate, especially if they're centered around one of the most controversial human being of all times...
"the Wickedest Man in the World"!

Click here for track-by-track details & transcriptions.

from Wikipedia:

Aleister Crowley, born Edward Alexander Crowley, (12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947, pronounced /ˈkroʊli/) was a British occultist, writer, mountaineer, philosopher, and mystic.
He was an influential member in several occult organizations, including the Golden Dawn, the A∴A∴, and Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), and is best known today for his occult writings, especially The Book of the Law, the central sacred text of Thelema. He gained much notoriety during his lifetime, and was infamously dubbed "The Wickedest Man In the World."

Crowley's other interests and accomplishments were wide-ranging—he was a chess player, mountain climber, poet, painter, astrologer, hedonist, bisexual, drug experimenter, and social critic. Crowley had claimed to be a Freemason, but the regularity of his initiations with the United Grand Lodge of England has been disputed.

from Ambience for the Masses:

20 minutes' worth of devious recitations, transferred off the original wax cylinders.

Wonderful piece of spoken wordedness, with the only drawback being that it's a horribly crackly lo-fi recording (though faithfully bootlegged into the digital medium). It sounds spooky, and it's definitely the Man, though it's really hard to hear what he's saying. Then what do am I supposed to expect, right; it was made in 1920.

More poetry than ritual, I'm afraid, but you do get to hear Uncle Crowley sing in the last track.