The Dynamic Curve

 

Another Ed Ball post today to keep the thread going. The World Wide Web doesn't provide much information (anymore) if you want to find out something about “the Dynamic Curve” of Sand. Sand were another side project from Edward Ball, this time together with Creation Records colleague Richard “Dick” Green, who was also involved in various The Times albums.

I don't think many people know this album, at least you never read about it and when Edward Ball is mentioned, Sand is never mentioned and no track on it ever appears on Ed Ball compilations. At least I don't know anything about it.

One review claimed that it was "the album Mike Oldfield has wanted to make for years."

Well, I can't say, but it is indeed a great, chill instrumental album. The album was released in 1991, Ed Ball was in his highly productive phase with several The Times, Love Corporation, Teenage Filmstars albums in a relatively short period of time. For me at the time it was simply unbelievable how many different genres he was active in. And certainly not every one of his songs was a hit. But under the influence of ecstasy he came up with a very high number of fantastic and convincing tracks. “The Dynamic Curve” has aged well and especially the opening track “Felatio” is 10 minutes of pure happiness and I always enjoy playing it, even after “Star 6 7 8” by the Orb or similar chillers. I envy everyone who is still able to discover this album.

„Sand was a duo comprised of British songwriter Ed Ball and the co-owner of Creation Records, Richard Green. Ed Ball’s background with post-punk and neo-psychedelic rock bands like Television Personalities, ‘O’ Level, and Teenage Filmstars is felt in the album’s atmosphere. “Felatio” is an epic opener, beginning with strumming guitars and launching into gorgeous synth melodies and rolling percussion. The song progresses with a triumphant spirit and sounds like the accompaniment to flying over snowy mountains and fantasy landscapes. “This Thinking Feeling Moment” follows with a more somber mood, an arpeggiated guitar melody repeating throughout while synths and sound effects swirl in and out of the soundscape. “Consent” and “Absolution” are more laid back and sunny, resembling Harmonia and 1980s era Tangerine Dream. The album is highly diverse and serene, invoking a consistently unique atmosphere. The Dynamic Curve is a thought-provoking listening experience able to sound both retro and ahead of its time, even influencing one of the best metal albums of the century, The Mantle by Agalloch. Sand were a short-lived project, but they made something special in their brief tenure that sounds both adventurous and blissful.“

-Benjamin Kuettel-

You can hear the full album here:

https://www.discogs.com/master/334109-Sand-The-Dynamic-Curve

Give me some Love

 

Give me some love was also released in 1991 as a 12“ inch produced by Andrew Weatherall & take

the “Lovers” theme from the album of the same name. Weatherall wouldn't be Weatherall if he didn't turn it into something completely independent and powerful. The B-side was produced together with Ed Ball and is a bit tamer, but that doesn't make it a worse track.

The Lovers theme was also taken up again in the cover design.

One thing I really like when it's done well. I can then buy albums just because of the layout, theoretically.

Only for Lovers

„You made a few albums under The Love Corporation banner in the early 90’s. I really loved the ‘Tones’ album which I still regularly listen to. when did you first get into dance music? Do you think you’ll ever release anything else by The Love Corporation?

Thank you for saying that about ‘Tones’. Listening to it now, it sounds like a Quentin Tarantino film soundtrack – ’60s inspired themes interpreted by Kraftwerk on a ’70s porn film set, the whole sweetmeat produced by Giorgio Moroder. Not bad for 1989. The first of its kind on Creation. even though I’d dabbled with pop electronics on “Hello Europe” 1984, I couldn’t put my hand on my heart and say I was into dance music, more the pirate concept of sampling, half melodies, noise, the deconstruction and the excuse for another disguise.

Having to programme drum machines, grab the latest loops, blah de blah, was a bore and mostly got in the way of the really exciting stuff; stealing dialogue from films, lifting ‘grabbable’ voices and riffs from records . . . rather like bringing a graveyard back to life! Me and Dan could probably make a brilliant dance record. Maybe we will!!“

Reading this part of the Creation interview with Ed Ball, it seems surprising that it

albums like “Tones” & “Lovers” ever existed. Mister Ball was not only a musician, but also had to take on considerable tasks in the Creation Record offices. The production of the second My Bloody Valentine album continued to be postponed and cost enormous amounts of money.

To keep the label going and money into the U.K. coffers. Rinse, records were produced in record time, most reliably by, you guessed it, Edward Ball. Acid house and ecstasy conquered the island and also the Creation Records office, which had previously been noticed more by guitar-oriented rock / pop. And Edward Ball, the good soul, right hand man and tireless help to Alan McGee, delivered. Legend has it that “Tones”, the first album as Love Corporation, was created at the same time as The Times’ second album “E for Edward”. It is considered an acid house album, I never understood or heard it as an acid house album. At that time. It's definitely a pretty interesting & well-aged album though, with "Palatial", which was later remixed by Shoom co-founder Danny Rampling & being something of a hit on the album.

„Creation's headlong plunge into the world of acid house in reality took some time to work its way into the release schedule, with the first offering in the new genre only coming out in January 1990 despite the influence of the ecstasy culture having gripped the label for some months. Ironically, the first album to take the plunge was another release from Ed Ball, recorded at the other side of the studio while he was making The Times' E For Edward album. Acid house had first appeared in the nation at the end of 1987 when clubs began to open up that attempted to reproduce the ecstasy-fuelled Summer highs of Ibiza, and the grip it soon gained over the nation was startling, mirroring the impact of the punk revolution of the late 1970s. To the indie kids who had supported the label from the early days, Creation's change of tack flew in the face of everything in which they believed. A six-track mini-album lasting 33 minutes, a third of this was taken up by the last track 'Palatial' that was remixed for a single release by Danny Rampling, founder of one of the original acid house clubs, Shoom. This has a relaxtion tape narrative played over plenty of 'dap-dap-dapping' and seems to last for ever.“

If you listen to the second album “Lovers” from 1991, the differences to “Tones” are obvious.

It's a completely different, deeper soundscape, just through the basslines (listen to "Crystals"), the sound is more humorous and happy. “Lovers” is definitely the sound of the summer and probably the reason why it’s closer to me than “Tones.” Afterwards, it makes sense to play “Madstock” by Candy Flip or the Beloved. In any case, Ed Ball appeared for me with the two Love Corporation where I didn't expect it, even if the three The Times albums from the years 89 - 91 showed certain signs.

„Following Hypnotone's initial offering, Ed Ball returns with the second album from Love Corporation, this time a full-blooded, 37-minute offering. The differences between the two releases are immediately apparent. Ball's work is less seriously focused with his sense of humour often encroaching into the tracks which themselves are so stuffed with samples you feel they might explode. They also go on a bit. The opener 'Love' is six minutes of a cackling rhythm over piano with a nice organ solo in the middle, and 'Warm' has a hymn-like opening with barking dogs, oriental chanting and a female vocal ……“

( & recovered as beautiful guitar „Ballad of Georgie Best“ on „Alternative Commercial Crossover“ by the Times in 1993) 

„….'Crystal' is full of Captain Scarlet samples with dancing keyboards and a bubbling back beat, whilst 'Sun' opens with David Bowie's 'Diamond Dogs'“ 

(& could have been left over from “Tones”. - I think)

„Three shorter tracks end the album, with 'Lovers' again dense and heavy going and 'Smile' being all the better for being more of a straightforward dance tune leaving you with some room to breathe.“

Interview passages from creation record site

Review passages in Apostrophe from -isolationrecords-

Pure & Et dieu cre la femme

 

I recently read Alan McGee’s autobiography. A book that is easy to read.

Of course, the question arises as to how many of the many stories and anecdotes that McGee tells actually happened. After all, alcohol and many, many drugs were always involved. Of course I would have liked to read a lot more about Ed Ball, who was an important man for McGee and Creation records. And also more about the creation of the albums themselves. Fact is, Creation was an important label for me at least from 1989 to, say, 1995. Everything that came out there was super interesting and had to be checked first. A lot of it wasn't really my cup of tea, but there was a lot to discover and celebrate besides Ed Ball (My Bloody Valentine,Hypnotone, Primal Scream, Momus, Pete Astor, Pie Finger, Sheer Taft, Lilac Time, Dreadzone). I already wrote that Ed Ball was hyperactive and creative during this time. In addition to his house and yard project the Times, he had many other projects going on (Sand, Teenage Film Stars). Love Corporation was certainly his most famous side project.

Between The Times albums “Et dieu cre la Femme” and “Pure” there were 21 catalog numbers,

In between there were other Ed Ball records. “Pure” was my introduction to the Ed Ball cosmos. I discovered the previous two albums retrospectively, so to speak.

I already wrote about “E for Edward”. Not all of the songs on the 3 albums take me away, but here too there are wonderful Ed Ball gems, from the fantastic Blue Monday cover “Lundi Bleu”, the great “Ours is a Wonderlove World”, the almost kitschy “Pour Kylie” ( the second Kylie anthem after KLF's "Kylie said it Jason"). Other pretty good tracks include “A Girl called Mersey”, “Confiance” and the very electronic “Aurore Boreale”.

Together with his side projects, there's enough material for a pretty varied 90 minute tape and summer car rides.

Given that the dust has really settled on Creation now, what are your favourite releases on the label now?

Of my own? Probably ‘Pure’ The Times 1991 for being so anarchic and disrespectful. Recorded on a £600 budget, it sounds like a mental breakdown waiting to happen. Not surprising given the amounts of LSD I was ingesting . . . far beyond ReCreational doses. (Alan maintains that in hindsight, I’d suffered a minor breakdown around this time). Also ‘Star’ Teenage Filmstars 1992 which appeared only months after “Loveless” for achieving that intangible vagueness. As for everybody else who made records on the label, I’ve adopted Joe’s view that they were all brilliant.

I’m not sure that’s true though, about the dust settling. Creation was the brainchild of a man who had 20 ideas a day, some of which changed thousands upon thousands of people’s lives. Some are timebombs still waiting to go off. The mid-period of the label is currently in vogue and there’s alot of fascinating music and madness to discover therein. The last quarter of Creations music history is largely overshadowed by Oasis’s staggering success and the change in the company’s working mechanism, but it was still mostly Alan’s idiosyncratic vision. That period wasn’t always about trying to occupy all 40 positions in the charts every week . . .

Interview Passages from Creation Records.

Rainbow Springs & the Great Barrier Reef

 

6 years ago Natasha Home aka Sunmoonstar went on a small European tour and exactly 6 years ago today played a living room concert in Berlin's “o Tannenbaum”. In 2018 I was still driving and so in the summer temperatures in the evening I went looking for Berlin's smallest bar (?) and a parking lot nearby. Berlin. Big city. You know?

Arrived, nothing missed yet, nothing happened yet. Everything very intimate. First a beer.

Send a message to them in Messenger. “I’m here.” I'm a little nervous, but of course Natasha is wonderfully relaxed and very, very nice & cool. She finds a little time before the set.

Back then, Natasha played three very different shows in Berlin, and I was only able to attend this one. A shared set, a wonderful New Age improvisation together with Galya Chikiss, Eva Geist, Mutya Macatumpag and Jessica Tucker.

Living room atmosphere, intense, very close to the musicians & to the music.

Afterwards we share a beer together. She actually comes from Australia, but lives in North Carolina/USA at the time of the tour. She herself once described her music as ambient rainforesty space music. Listen to the 25 minute “Rainbow Springs” from the album of the same name and you’ll know what’s meant. Together with “The Great Barrier Reef”, these two albums are my favorites of hers, to which you can and want to return again and again, without getting bored, without it not triggering anything, without it not relaxing. As a young person, I hated New Age, or at least what New Age was available and known to me at the time. At my age, you open the windows, lay out the ISO mat, light the incense candles and look into the distance.

“The textures, colors, and scents of a soft landscape.” And gosh, Natasha Home ain’t kidding. Home’s music as Sunmoonstar blooms in the sunlight filtering through forest leaves, becoming part of the mind’s ecosystem and expelling psychic oxygen back to us to perpetuate the life cycle. Rainbow Springs is graceful and uncomplicated, appealing to all senses without prejudice: it’s equally a light source, a temperate locale, a spring day, an ocean breeze. I don’t know what it tastes like (and I am not putting the tape in my mouth), but I’m sure it’s gentle and sweet on the tongue. The fact that it extends so far beyond the auditory cortex and envelops one so cleanly and completely makes it a natural fit for Oakland’s Inner Islands, a label focused on personal well-being and internal health.

It’s not hard to lose yourself in the world of Rainbow Springs, and the 25-minute title track taking up the entirety of side B even includes birdsong to wrap it up, just in case you’ve forgotten to marvel at the beauty of the outdoor world. Is Rainbow Springs an escape for Home too, a portal out of the college town environment of Gainesville, Florida, and into the fantasy world behind her eyelids? Or is she simply finding inspiration wherever it appears? Can this heavenly balm erase the tension of modern life? Possibly, probably, and definitely: its aesthetic mirrors that of Home’s label Elestial Sound, the “celestial” quality of the music losing its “c” and descending to Earth with the full intent of healing. And heal it does, curing the weary or troubled mind.“ 

-Tiny Mix Tape-

File under: Ambient I New Age

Aqua Solar Cura

 

A few years ago Soda Lite played one of his rare concerts in Melbourne, which of course I couldn't attend due to the distance. A friend at least sent me photos of this event (which of course I can't find on my hard drive right now) and a little later I came into contact with Alex Last via social media.

We exchanged ideas about his music, Discogs entries and my mixes.

Alex now lives in Tasmania and enjoys the added peace and quiet in his life. 2017 saw the release of the incredible “In Eco” (later in this program), his first album to move away from the vaporwave genre. Since then I've always been eagerly waiting for a new release, but Alex is basically a gardener at heart, a man of art and nature who approaches things with humility and slowness and is therefore not the fastest musician. Which I can understand, I feel the same way with my mixes. Albeit for different reasons. There's always something going on in life, and when the time comes, it's not the right moment.

“Aqua Solar Cura” is already 2 years old, released on Britt Brown's always wonderful Not Not Fun label, and here too, nature is not absent for a moment on the 10 tracks.

Available as Tape or MP3.

„Tasmania-based gardener and composer Alex Last aka Soda Lite specializes in an elusive, ethnographical mode of outer reaches ambient, alternately immersive and immaterial, uninhabited and uninhibited. Their latest collection, Aqua Solar Cura, is a meditation on “relationships to land,” triangulating its titular elements – water, sun, care – within a woozy, warbling palette of keys, haze, and field recordings. Trills of birds and the gurgling of creeks murmur from windswept peripheries; dawn light shimmers in dewdrops and emerald ponds. Each piece feels excerpted from a vaster ongoing ecosystem, teeming with lifeways and hidden cellular harmony.  

Much of the source material, from commingling waterfowl to screeching Tasmanian Devils, was tracked at Trowunna, a progressive wildlife sanctuary that rehabilitates species to be returned to the wilderness – a prime expression of ‘cura.’ These tracks evoke a similarly protean harmony, panoramic and indivisible, suffused with the synergy of seasons and seedlings adrift on fragrant air. It’s music of reverie and regeneration, glimpsed mid-bloom, in league with the brave mysteries of nature unveiled.“

• midheaven-

File under: Ambient I New Age

Love , Peace & Happiness

Just reading again in Matthew Colllin's & John Godfrey's "Altered State" about ecstasy culture 

& acid house and the second summer of love. In there I found this copy of a newspaper ad. 35 years ago today (!), in my hometown: the first acid house party in the cultural center of the city of Potsdam. No sales at the box office!

I'm trying to remember. The fall of the Iron Curtain was yet to come. The situation in the republic was confusing. Many people left the republic through various means. There was a lot of uncertainty about what would happen next; work colleagues and neighbors, as well as acquaintances and friends, suddenly disappeared overnight. You started to think about what to do. When the first party took place (there would be a second party in June), none of this was so noticeable. I remember it was a bit of a sensation. And of course it couldn't be compared with anything that was written in the book mentioned or anywhere else. Not comparable to what you could experience after the fall of the wall. But it was special in the situation.

The music was more exclusive than at other events you usually attended, but still more like S-Express, Bomb the Bass, than Baby Ford and Mr. Fingers.

35 years……oh man.

Make A Wilderness

 

Today's Sunday Service comes from the always great Jonny Nash.

After his fantastic, exotic collaboration album with Firecrackers' Lindsay Todd for Dan Mitchell's 

Island of the Gods, „Fauna Mapping“, 

( „Jonny Nash and Firecracker's Lindsay Todd get barefoot and turn out a stunner of an LP. Over the course of 12 compositions we find the pair utilising their recordings in a variety of ways, avoiding the well-trodden clichés of the "exotic" and instead attempting to achieve a personal interpretation of the flora, fauna and climate of the Indonesian island of Bali.“- Clearspot), 

Jonny appeared in a completely different place with this album, which is based on the late Talk Talk and yet of course sounds very unique and different. If you look at his back catalogue, that's not really surprising. First Album on Mood Hut „Snaker 04“ was Surf Sambas, Basslines & haunted Electro, „Phantom Actors“ melodic Detroit new Age Techno,  & 

„In „Eden“, Jonny finds his soul somewhere between a gong bath, avant-jazz minimalism and 4th world new age, at times recalling a slightly slackened version of Elodie’s sublime tension and at others recalling the drifting scents of K. Leimer’s early work, but with an opiated smudge which is not familiar to either of them, yet distinctly unique to the seductive, quietly radiant aura of Eden.“ 

- Boomkat -

„The world is supposedly a big place, but that’s not so when you travel with a guitar,” François Baschet observed. In the years following World War II, eager to circumnavigate the globe with his instrument, the French musician came up with a solution: an inflatable guitar with a balloon for a body and a foldable wooden neck. That humble invention was the origin of what Baschet and his older brother, Bernard, an engineer, would make their life’s work: sonorous objects that blurred the line between sculpture and musical instrument. The otherworldly sounds generated by the Baschet brothers’ sound structures, as they called their devices—like the Cristal Baschet, an array of glass rods played with wet fingers—have inspired musicians from Tom Waits to Jean Michel Jarre. Now, the instruments form the basis of Make a Wilderness, the first solo album in two years from the ambient musician Jonny Nash.

It’s easy to see why Nash would be attracted to the Baschet brothers’ objects, with their rich, resonant timbres, which suggest electronic sounds produced using non-electronic means. Whether solo, in collaboration with Susanne Kraft, or as a member of Gaussian Curve, Nash tends to pursue the ineffable in his music. An early EP, Phantom Actors, invoked his ambient forebears - Jon Hassell, Mark Isham, Wally Badarou—in tones and textures evocative of tropical sunsets, ripe peaches, a lover’s sigh. His music has only become more diffuse from there, the edges between synthesizer, piano, and standup bass steadily softening, as though worn away by erosion.

Make a Wilderness is his most ethereal effort yet: a modest set of instrumental sketches that feel cloaked in mystery. The glassy timbres and microtonal harmonies of the Baschet brothers’ objects lend to the desert-mirage air, though it’s impossible to discern how any of these songs were made, or even whether they were composed at all. Their movements are as gently haphazard as the clanking of wind chimes. Studies in stillness, they suggest a winter breeze whistling through a scrapyard, or the creak and murmur of a boat harbor at night.

There are no melodies to speak of, though the album’s ephemeral meanderings are not at the expense of more consonant pleasures. A minute and a half into “Shell,” a rich, reassuring piano chord rings out, and it is repeated throughout the course of the piece, regular as a beacon in heavy fog. Nash’s minimalist tendencies suggest that he has taken to heart the late Mark Hollisˋ advice: “Before you play two notes, learn how to play one note. And don’t play one note unless you’ve got a reason to play it.” Nash’s touch is distinguished by its patience: He layers his tones with exceptional finesse, taking care not to waste a single sound. Each note feels earned.

Much of the album, in fact, draws its inspiration from the quietest, most secretive corners of Hollis’ and his group Talk Talkˋs discographies. That’s particularly true of “Shell,” with its ruminative piano, and “Language Collapsed,” the 10-minute centerpiece of the B-side, where vibraphone paints broad strokes across a blurry backdrop in which flickers of brass and woodwinds flash out from the darkness and disappear just as swiftly. Those ephemeral appearances mark Make a Wilderness’ defining characteristic: Gorgeous while it plays, it’s almost impossible to remember once the needle has hit the run-out groove. But that transience only makes Nash’s mood music that much more alluring. Make a Wilderness makes good on François Baschet’s youthful desire to find a sound that travels well. It’s not just portable; it dissolves into thin air.

-Philip Sherburne-

"Make a Wilderness" was released in 2019 not on Jonny Nash's own label Melody as Truth, but on the equally large Music from Memory.

File under: Ambient I Ambient Jazz I Folktronica I Modern Classical