This Heat - Health And Efficiency

Health and Efficiency is an EP by English experimental rock band This Heat. It was released in 1980, through record label Piano.

Jesse Harvell describes it on Pitchfork in this way:

Health and Efficiency is This Heat’s masterpiece. The title track is, in a complete turn of events for these doommongers, a hymn to the restorative powers of sunshine, and their most traditionally rocking song, at least until it veers off into an extended instrumental slalom with some of Hayward’s most intricate (and violent) drumming. “It seemed to be a quite radical idea to be healthy, happy, acknowledging the sun,” Hayward says in the liner notes. “We’ve all got the same bodies; it’s international.” The B-side, “Graphic/Varispeed”, is an extended experiment in tape loops and studio manipulation, as you might have guessed from the title. 

 

You can now listen the EP as a full album on Youtube:

David Holland Quartet - Conference Of The Birds

Conference of the Birds is an album by the Dave Holland Quartet, recorded in 1972 and released in 1973. It is jazz bassist Holland's second collaboration with composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton, as well as his second album on ECM Records. The liner notes describe how birds would congregate each morning outside Holland's London apartment and join with one another in song.

Anthony Braxton and Dave Holland

Holland's compositions for the album had been performed at a New York City concert by a group including Randy Brecker on trumpet, Michael Brecker on tenor sax, Ralph Towner on guitar, Holland on bass, and Barry Altschul on percussion; Braxton and Rivers, however, were chosen for the recording as better able to respond to the opportunist disjunctions offered within Holland's compositions.

Each piece on the album is "open form," with a theme stated at the beginning to set key, tempo, and mood. The players are then free to improvise in whatever direction they choose. Stuart Nicholson writes: Conference of the Birds emerged as a definitive statement of swinging free expression. It was, in essence, a return to the rugged discipline of early 1960s free improvising by working off melodic foundations using the 'time, no changes' principle to achieve greater control over that elusive quarry, freedom.


Here you have the full album on Youtube.

Lootpack - Soundpieces: Da Antidote!

Lootpack's definition of abstract is
To take the mic in ya one hand, motivation in the other
Flip a freestyle flow and stop biting wack rhymes from another

A.D. 1999. Otis "Madlib" Jackson Jr., Jack "Wildchild" Brown, DJ Romes minds of the strategic hip hop rebirth of the end of '90s by self election: We stay original while your subliminal lines and minimal perception - Poetical enemas for your section. The upper project Lootpack is underground independence, that throbs with fervor and trepidation: poetic investiture on the shoulders, rhymes in the hands, awareness in the brains. 

And Lootpack is a landmark core, experience of maturation and transaction: nobody knows yet, they do, We could do this lyrical or I could bust a beat miracle. Peanut Butter Wolf knows too, he hires them for Stones Throw. They write their flow in the history of vinyls of the West Coast scene, We represent the West, Lootpack […]; they record their first work, unattainable masterpiece of Baroque class: the will to surprise the desire to impress overhangs the contents, the wonder of the exasperated rhyme is  lymph and outperforms the contents of conscious rap and Afro-centric plots of sublime complexes of home. Native Tongues. “Soundpieces: Da Antidote!” is the booom!, it explodes in the liver, and marks the immeasurable growth just after three yeard from the release of their first EP, "Ill Psych Move", for Crate Digga's Palace, label founded by  Madlib, Otis Jackson Sr.' father, still immature: I was "uhh", three years ago. Extreme and brilliant production. L-Double-O-T-P-A-C-K, represent how I live every day "805".  

[by E.S.]

Here you have their full album on youtube.

Bron Y Aur - Between 13 & 16

Playing together since 1995, the four members of Bron y Aur , attracted soon attention thanks to the quality of the first two demotapes (1997 and 1998) and obviously for two previous albums. Always considered a band who take roots in the seventies, they don’t hide having spent their days in youth between Zeppelin and Sabbath, to be fascinated then by the german kraut rock and free jazz. This unusual mix generates an original and open-minded band able to exalt its own rock roots as to interact with musicians of different extractions.

This is the second album of the band, conceived when the band gathers in order to give shape to some intuitions born in their jam sessions, leaving the improvisation take the main meaning. In the following reorder and selection of the material all the parts considered even partially fruit of a composition have been eliminated, the improvisations emerge like the most inspirated moments. The subsequent mixing , where Edoardo Ricci and Jacopo Andreini took part, have been really important in the assembling and treatment of the materials: Bron y Aur becomes part in the large formation of musicians who used the recording studio like an added instrument.

Purchase a copy here and here or download other stuff here.

Die Form - La Dimensione Umana / Die Form + Orgasmo Negato - Live Art Nouveaux (Tasaday Box CD01)

In 1981 Electric Eye released the first tape album made by the band from Brianza Die Form named La Dimensione Umana. The band was formed by Abderezac Ahmed (sax, clarinet), Franz White (vocals), Alessandro Ronchi (guitar), Carlo Ronchi (bass, drum machine), Roberto Girardi (drums), Stefano Sangalli (synth and vocals)

At the time in Brianza there were other bands like Orgasmo Negato, that will change their name in Nulla Iperreale, with Alessandro Ripamonti (synths), Marco Camorali (bass, amputed bass, percussions, vocals), Paolo Cantù (guitar and drum machine).

The two bands started a collaboration melting in Die Form & Nulla Iperreale. They started together an intense activity made by concerts, fanzines, radio broadcastings and a lot of tapes made in coproduction between their label Tasaday and ADN.

Wallace Records released a box-set with 15 cds and a DVD that contains all the tapes, radio broadcastings, videos, live recordings etc. made by Tasaday between 1981 and 2007.

Here you have the full album of the first of these cd that contains the four tracks of the first tape La Dimensione Umana by Die Forme and the Live at Art Nouveaux by Die Form and Orgasmo Negato.

Contact Tasaday to purchase a box-set!