Pablo A. Gimenez - The Work In Progress -1988- (Tape, STI: Sindicato de Trabajos Imaginarios), Spain

I'm very happy and enthusiastic that I can announce the first guest contribution to Archaic Inventions by a fellow traveller in music and music selector Juan Vacas, who is also one of the representatives of the Madrid based music collective Real No Real. Some rarities from the Spanish tape culture (and perhaps beyond) will be occasionally presented by him to the blog. Starting with this incredible one! -

Pablo A. Giménez is still one of the great unknown Spanish composers of the 1980’s. He was predominantly based in Zaragoza, with an occasional stay in Paris. During the early 70’s he was involved in a group dedicated to the study of electronic music (Estudio de Música Electrónica) along with Luis Fatás, M. Medalón and Luis Colomer. While in Paris, where he studied philosophy and sociology, he refrained from making music for a few years. Short time after his return, his reconciliation with music began after he was offered to compose for amateur film works. Far from having studied at a conservatory, Pablo A. Giménez belonged to the band Casablanca during the late 70’s. Casablanca was described to be something like the band of a hippie commune that established itself for several years in Logroño. The band was composed by more than seven members and generally leaned closer to progressive rock but with numerous influences which ranged from salsa to jazz, being heavily influenced by bands like Gong, Frank Zappa or Hawkwind. 

Casablanca live in the 70's, Gimenez on sax

Several years after the dissolution of the band, Pablo A. Giménez started working with magnetic tapes, he became interested in the use of computers and eventually worked with simple low budget machines (not that he seeked for this cheapness in any way, but for a lack of better mediums) mixed with professional saxophones. Among his influences, it is easy to highlight great figures of the contemporary music world like Edgar Varèse or musique concrete pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry.

His works have been, for the most part, published by the Zaragoza based label STI (Sindicato de Trabajos Imaginarios, translated: Syndicate of Imaginary Works) that during the 80's mainly focused on avant-garde and homemade music, ranging from noise, to sound poetry or industrial music as well as being involved in mail art projects and run by Javier Cinca. His three first albums vary from more electroacoustic compositions, to more pop and dreamy sounds as well as darker sides mixed with spoken word.

The Work In Progress is his first album published on cassette by STI where he reveals bright saxophone melodies intermingled with subtle drum machines and electronic sequences on the first side, and more abstract compositions during the second half. - Juan Vacas

Pablo A. Gimenez

"Perseguidos por las sombras
caminamos apresuradamente
hacia el olvido..."

Get it HERE

Binder-Sanesi - Oriens & Occidens -1995- (BMM, CD), Hungary/Italy

Károly Binder is one of Hungary's most prominent jazz pianists. He is known for his rhythmic and unorthodox style of playing as well as for his experiments with the prepared piano. Binder takes the piano as a starting point but also uses many percussion instruments on the side. His first albums In Illo Tempore and Kontinentspiel that came out in the 80's in Hungary are great examples of Eastern European free jazz with lenghty pieces exploring rhythms while taking the listener into a world of its own. That is what usually matters: it's not just the plain exploration of sound. The sound is able to birth the existence of an own world. A bit comparable to the Pierre Courbois album I posted a long time ago.

Oriens & Occidens was recorded in the southern Hungarian cities of Baja and Szekszárd in 1995. On the album Binder works together with the Italian percussionist Federico Sanesi from Milan who was greatly inspired by oriental rhythms and percussion instruments like the Indian tabla and Javanese Gamelan. The result is an interesting musical meeting of cultures and free exploration of jazz, rhythm and non-western percussion instruments.

The music is played quite gently most of the time and tends to create an oriental background atmosphere that doesn't demand an overly focused attention from the listener. At times the music breaks loose from this atmosphere reminding me of certain moments of Embryo's Reise or of the British-Indian jazz album Cosmic Eye. Oriens & Occidens seems to fit this great European jazz tradition where Indian and oriental sounds are being combined with free jazz. Some examples of this tradition are the German project Jazz meets India, the British project Curried Jazz as well as the music of the Reform Art Unit from Austria.

In any case, this is a nice album of mid-90's Hungarian-Italian contemporary jazz meeting the orient.

Get it HERE

Calliope Quartet - Incognita -1998- (Cassette, Crossroads Records), Hungary

Calliope Quartet was a short-lived Hungarian Jazz-Rock and experimental folk outfit that consisted of Molnár Tamás on bass, Pásztohy Bálint on drums, Hűvösvölgyi Péter on guitar and Bonyár Judit on cello and vocals. They released this one cassette only album on the Hungarian Crossroads Records. A label that tried to merge the genres of folk, jazz and world music with the contemporary sounds of the nineties.

Incognita that was recorded in 1997 is a stunning album balancing somewhere on the crossroads of rock in opposition, jazz-rock and even hinting towards Hungarian folk music at times. Within a Hungarian context they probably come closest to the RIO group Kampec Dolores, known for their combination of avant-rock, folk and improvisation. The tracks on Incognita are quite lengthy and leave lots of room for the listener to enter the musical world of the band. The tracks have nice abstract and sometimes humoristic titles like Aszimmetrikus Fémbuborék (Asymmetrical Metal Bubble) or Jelmezbál Jazzsznoboknak (Costume Ball For Jazz Snobs). The band plays great quality music, but doesn't lose its approach to have fun while playing. Also they don't portray themselves as academic jazz musicians. 

This is actually a great album from Hungary and already nearly impossible to find after just two decades that have passed. Clearly there is some Zappa influence going on, but it also reminds me of 70's French Zeuhl band ZAO or of Italian jazz-rock group Perigeo from the 70's or of the Ethno-Krautrock sound of Embryo or... should I keep it going?!

Excellent avant-jazz-rock from the East of Europe! 

Get it HERE

Barbieri & Fabbri - Angeli -1988- (LP, Stile Libero), Italy

Next up is another album that connects to the previous post balancing on the thin line of alluring musical ambience and a generous pinch of cheesiness.

Italian Bass player Tiziano Barbieri and Guitarist Moris Fabbri made this quite obscure album of Mediterranean contemporary jazz and late 80's ambient sounds in 1988. Both musicians were not heavily involved in other projects but were definitely active musicians. Moris Fabbri still makes  remarkable experimental music today which you can find on his own Youtube channel.

The music on this album is pretty much divided: the A-side has three tracks of composed atmospheres thriving on Italian Mediterranean guitar, eastern voices and guitar-synths-scapes. Actually no real synthesizer is used on the album and all electronic sounds are coming from the processed guitar. These first tracks are maybe too slick, although you also have the feeling that you're familiar with those melodies already for an eternity. The impressionistic style is similar to the Swedish Vinterhjärta tape I posted some time ago.

The music on the B-side should be more pleasing for the improvisation and experimental jazz fans. Those tracks are more abstract and free-form, showing the cinematic and adventurous side of the duo. It reminds me a bit of the Dutch contemporary Jazz soundtrack Golven by Louis Andriessen, but it mostly reminds me of the biblical Risonanze series of Italian library music that I posted ages ago on the blog.

Maybe something different, but it's definitely the soundtrack of the current Indian summer channeling the elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire while you reminisce of a summer that gently flushes away...

Get it HERE

Arigret - Se Una Notte D'Inverno Un Viaggiatore... -1995- (CD, CMC Records), Italy

Continuing the blog on the track of improvisation CD-only releases from Europe's alternative 90's we have Arigret from Italy. Arigret was an adventurous Italian improvisation group that had a strong contemporary jazz foundation but also used some kind of Rock In Opposition approach with the great transitions in their compositions that were created by sax player Massimo Rossi (who would carry on with a contemporary Italian jazz outfit called Actis Band).

Se Una Notte D'Inverno Un Viaggiatore... was the only album by Arigret released through CMC records from Turin. It has great titles that are somewhat reminiscent of Zappa's. The vocals by singer Rossella Cangini contain nice eccentric lyrics and are a constant highlight when the jazz-patterns make way for the poetical absurdity on the album.

This is another great release from the 90's, specially for the more (free-)jazz-oriented music fans. It reminds me of Italian 80's groups like Ensemble Havadià, Mamma Non Piangere or the stricter impro-jazz releases one can find on Materiali Sonori records.

Get it HERE

Josef Novotny & Max Nagl - AMen # -1989- (CD, EX 96), Austria

Austrian free-jazz and improvisation knows a long tradition that traces back to acts like the pioneering Reform Art Unit that started out by the late sixties. In these musical themes there are distinct Austrian and European sound traditions that are sometimes combined with other musical influences like the eastern and Indian musical traditions, always in an improvisational and free way.

This album created by pianist and keyboardist Josef Novotny and saxophone player Max Nagl directly tries to incorporate the Austrian musical traditions and showcases a complex avant-gardist mixture of free-jazz, church organ and synthesized computer programs. In a way it resembles the German-Dutch album Free Music & Orgel that was posted on the blog a long time ago. On that album the church organ is also used as a free instrument in combination with improvised theme's. AMen # was released as a CD only in 1989.

From the liner notes of AMen #:

The music is a confession to the European, and more specific Austrian tradition, naturally influenced by many cultural currents with which we are confronted. It ranges from traditional church songs to the tonal shape of the Vienna school right up to Jazz Avant-Garde. The pieces are largely improvisations based on fixiated computer-programs and prefabricated sound combinations each of which determine the form and the process.

Get it HERE

Jana Koubková - Bosa -1985- (LP, Supraphon), Czech Republic

Somehow there always existed a relation with Brazilian Bossa Nova in Eastern Europe. Specially in times when coffee places behind the Iron Curtain flourished and nightly neon lights were flirting with western titles creating a concealed idea of a vibrant night life throughout all of the Eastern European capitals. Latin American tunes were played by jazz bands of the fifties and sixties and the particular feeling lived on all the way to the revival of the retro lounge movement around the change of the millenium, reminiscing the geometrical design imagery and nightly recreation created during the socialist times. It was a strange daily life counterpart to a political system that on the other hand ofcourse was looked upon as a system of repression and terror in many ways. Nevertheless exploring  the artists, designers and architects from the time one notices that this culture also contained something unique and refined. Besides that it coincidentally and not so coincidentally had a lot in common with modernism in Latin America.

Jana Koubková is a Czech Jazz singer that was active from the seventies in many Jazz groups like C&K Vokal and Jazz Fragment Prague. In 1985 she created her first solo album Bosa that can be viewed as a unique Czech deconstructed experimental avant-garde Bossa Nova album. Apart from the rhythms that are used, it's mainly a voice and scat album with weird overdubs, free jazz explosions and experimental repetitions. Actually it fits quite well next to the Brazilian contemporary music from the mid eighties that used traditional rhythm and melody with new experiments and unconventional instruments like Andréa Daltro or Cinema.

Bosa examplifies Jana Koubková's creativity and progressive spirit and totally exceeds a mere jazz album. This is true singing talent molded into avant-garde voice experiment art comparable to the amazing work of Russian singer Valentina Ponomareva (or for that matter).

Another one for this summer (letní)!

Get it HERE

Palinckx & Palinckx - Maartse Buien -1984- (LP, Traction Avant), Netherlands

Jacques Palinckx (1959, Tilburg) is a Dutch Jazz and Impro guitarist and composer. He played a.o. with Guus Janssen septet, Maarten Altena Ensemble, Beukorkest, Big Bamboozle and improvised with Free-Jazz and improvisation musicians like Fred van de Hove, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn, Christian Marclay, Daan Vandewalle, Peter van Bergen, Keith Rowe, Joseph Bowie, Gerry Hemmingway, Eugene Chadbourne.

During the early eighties the impro outfit Palinckx & Palinckx was established with brother Bert Palinckx (Bass), Frank van Oosterhout (Drums) and Hans Sparla (Trombone). This first album came out on the Dutch Traction Avant label, which was a sublabel of Eksakt Records. It was established to showcase the more serious Modern Composed and Jazz side of the label.

Maartse Buien is a Jazz album indeed, even more so Jazz in a very Dutch manner. Maartse Buien is the Dutch name for the typical Dutch rainfall during the month of March (and April). Because of the bad rainy climate of The Netherlands the rainfall during this period is often accompanied by hail and snow, creating different states of water pouring from the sky unexpectedly. The title track on the album reflects the mood during this period quite well, reminding me a lot of Louis Andriessens's Golven (Waves) soundtrack which is about the Dutch North Sea. It also hints a bit towards music on the Belgian Igloo label. Palinckx was included on this compilation I posted before.

The entire album consists of jazz that transcends into more experimental improvisational stuff, almost creating cinematographic pieces. Some of the pieces are quite beautiful. The improvisation scene of The Netherlands always merges trained classical and jazz music, with distinct Dutch melodies and anarchic improvisation (examples could be: Instant Composers Pool, The Ex, Han Bennink, Misha Mengelberg, Nine Tobs, Willem Breuker etc etc).

Although March is not here yet... it will come in a blink of an eye. We are bracing ourselves here in Holland!

Get it HERE