Re: [microsound] BBC New Music site

[philippe petit <philippe-petit@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>
> to join our growing list of contributors. we'd be especially keen on people
> involved in music that aren't based in the US or UK but the invite is open
> to all of you.
>

definitely recommend that people get in touch with ollie, very supportive man and
with good tastes
you'll find Fallt, BiP_HOp, Sprawl, ant lotsa other up there...




> and Spaceheads, featuring
> the extraordinary sound of Max Eastley playing the Arc: a nine-foot long
> musical construction of wire and wood. You can listen to it live over the
> net in case you weren't at the show
> from the Radio 3 website.
>

of interest


SPACEHADS and MAX EASTLEY : the time of the ancient astronaut [bleep 04]

EPITONIC ? USA ? October 2001
Our generation was subjected to the Mudhoney/Sir Mix-A-Lot collaboration of '93, so
we know it's not always a good idea for otherwise good bands to get together.
However, the collaboration of Max Eastley and Spaceheads couldn't be more welcome.
Painter and sound sculptor Max Eastley got his start back in the '70s with a number
of ambient releases on Brian Eno's label, Obscure Music. Since then, he has focused
primarily on his paintings and sound installations, which have appeared in in
countless galleries across the globe.
Spaceheads' Andy Diagram (trumpet) and Richard Harrison (drums) started playing
together in 1980 after meeting at a "punk jazz" festival. They played together in a
band called Dislocation Dance, recording two albums and a number of singles.
Following that project they worked with The Mud Hutters and Eric Random and the
Bedlamites, touring with the latter as Nico's backing band before she passed away.
One afternoon in 1989, almost by accident, they decided to jam without the rest of
the group and quickly realized they could best accomplish their musical vision as a
two-piece. Throughout the '90s they perfected their sound -- highly percussive jams
steeped in delay and digital effects. True space music.
Eastley's influence is apparent on The Time of the Ancient Astronaut, an album
recorded live in one afternoon and released on BiP-HOp in 2001. Harrison's rhythms
are much more restrained than usual, his furious tribal fusion drumming appearing
only fleetingly throughout the record. Diagram's trumpet, as vibrant and psychedelic
as ever, is perfectly balanced by Eastley's instrument, the arc, a nine-foot
monochord played with a bow or rods. "Interstellar Escalator" is a fantastic
representation of the album as a whole -- gorgeous and ominous ambient music that
builds to an intense and noisy frenzy.
Noel Morrison
http://www.epitonic.com/artists/spaceheadsandmaxeastley.html



ALLMUSIC GUIDE ? USA ? August 2001
The follow-up to Spaceheads?1999 CD ^Angel Station?, ^The Time of the Ancient
Astronaut , a collaboration with sound artist Max Eastley, was as a surprise. The
unit comprising Andy Diagram of Pere Ubu on trumpet and electronics and Richard
Harrison on drums and electronics was mostly known for its groove-oriented
techno-space tunes. This disc is nothing like that and a lot better. Eastley performs
on The Arc, a monochord home-built instrument hooked to electronics. It provides
alien sound textures, the perfect match for Diagram?s pitch-shifted and echo-looped
melodic lines and Harrison?s subtle percussion work in the quiet passages, thundering
free rock drumming during the more intense episodes, and electronically-altered
sheets of metal. This studio session followed an ad-hoc live appearance at a
Manchester (UK) festival. The first 30 minutes (continuous, indexed over six tracks)
unfold like a cross between a haunted house soundtrack and  Star Trek  on acid.
Mostly ambient, it turns into free space mayhem in  Interstellar Escalator  peaking
with an abruptly cut climax.  Hail Bop  is another highlight: the drummer sounds
possessed, hitting everything at once while Diagram blows one of his best solos and
Eastley saws away on his microtonal device. The last three tracks are excerpts of
longer jams. The set close with  Ancient Astronauts  a more typical Spaceheads?
beat-oriented tune. ^The Time of the Ancient Astronaut  is an exciting attempt at a
form of  free space rock " or  space improv  and stands out in the duo?s discography
as something much more experimental and trippy. Strongly recommended.
François Couture
http://www.allmusic.com
>


Other Music Update (May 16, 2001) ? USA
Featured New Releases:
SPACEHEADS & MAX EASTLEY "The Time of the Ancient Astronaut" (Bip-Hop, France) CD
$14.99
RealAudio: http://64.27.65.90:8080/ramgen/othermusic/MEspace1.rm
RealAudio: http://64.27.65.90:8080/ramgen/othermusic/MEspace2.rm
The superb Spaceheads expand to a trio with the addition of sound sculptor and
instrument inventor Max Eastley. Eastley, in my opinion, blew away all others in last
year's Sonic Boom exhibition in London, his were the most creatively organic, both
sonically and kinetically. Their recording, from a live performance, starts with a
distantly eerie set of music with soaring trumpet, drums in irregular march and
Eastley's 'Arc' (an electroacoustic monochord) imitating an out-of-tune violin for
the feel of a soundtrack to a particularly grim part of a '60s Biblical epic. Though
recorded as one long piece, they've thoughtfully indexed the CD into 'songs' or
sections as the sounds change. Andy Diagram's trumpet flutters like a voice in
tremolo, other times filling the space with impossibly long notes (he blows then
expands the sound beyond the temporal range of human breath). Richard Harrison's work
is far more detailed than his usual sensitive funk, mostly altered bowed and scraped
and bent metal. Eastley dances in slow curlicues around them both (at least I think
that's him). Very, very nice.
>[RE]


AQUARIUS ? USA ? May 2001
SPACEHEADS AND MAX EASTLEY The Time Of The Ancient Astronaut  (Bip Hop) cd 15.98
The UK duo Spaceheads have long been AQ staff favorites for their unique combination
of the propulsive, addictive
percussion of Richard Harrison and the otherworldy looped trumpet of Andy Diagram.
And there have been times when we were so lulled by the endlessly evocative trumpet
that we wish it would happen in slow-motion just to stretch out the blissfulness of
it all. Well, on this new outing, Spaceheads have teamed up with Max Eastley, who
wields The Arc (an electric acoustic monochord), and done just that -- removed the
motorik syncopated driving beats and replaced them with shimmering cymbals and small
percussive gestures and squiggles, while extending the trumpet into neverendingly
evocative chilled-out washes of pure vibratoless horn. Although I am not quite sure
what the monochord looks like or how it works, it sounds much like an early analogue
moog synth, erupting in wails at times hellish and chaotic, at times placid and
harmonious. An ambient record. Relaxing yet with an undercurrent that will unsettle
you in a good way.
    RealAudio clip: "The Black Drop of Venus"
    RealAudio clip: "Generator X"


The WIRE # 209 ? UK ? July 2001-07-05
In the 1970s, Max Eastley fixed taut strings to a resonating body and suspended them
in a stream in North Wales. The resultant sounds appeared on his side of " New and
rediscovered musical instruments " (1975), an album he shared with David Toop. As
well as this hydrophone, the album documented other creations such as a jangling
metallophone and a whirring elastic aerophone. It was sculptor?s music, surrendering
control to the natural world, allowing the elements to call the tune. The prototype
was the Aeolian harp, a wind-activated instrumeent taken by Romantic poets to
symbolise the workings of imagination. 25 years later, the title of Eastley?s
collaboration with the duo Spaceheads alludes to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with lines
from " The rime of the ancient mariner" quoted on the cover.
Here Eastley plays The Arc, a three metre long ssingle string stretched over wood,
then sounded with a bow or glass rods and electronically enhanced. The instrument?s
familiar from his " Buried Dreams " album with Toop, but it still appears uncanny.
The Spaceheads are Andy Diagraam channelling trumpet and voice through
pitchshift/harmony machines and echo loops, and Richard Harrison drumming like a man
possessed and striking sheets of metal fed through electronics. At times the trio is
churningg wash sounds oddly close to thaat hydrophone in Llanfyllin, control
surrendered at the interface with electricity. Elsewhere, alien voices and
otherworldly discussions leak through the receptive membrane formed by the enmeshed
instruments.Then Harrison and Diagram cut to the chase, pulsing and burning like
Coleridge?s daemons. It all has a dreamlike coherence that never lapses, perhaps
because the recording was done live and in the course of a single afternoon. Or could
it be that the Arc really is a bridge to some spookier elemental domain ?
Julian Cowley