January 22, 2014

Another record inspired by the Third Ear Band...?


Third Ear Band is still a strong reference for many artists. In the last years we have seen as many bands use to refer to TEB's music, not always with right reasons to state it...

Anyway New Zealander Alastair Galbraith, with his 2013 album titled "Cry", somewhere seems to be very near to TEB's mood - that particular, unique climax that makes the music of Glen Sweeney & C. so charming.
Listen to the short instrumental "Wish", for example, and you'll find some of it...

Ian Fraser from The Terrascope (http://www.terrascope.co.uk/Reviews/Reviews_March_13.htm) writes about the record:

Gilbraith in 2011
"New Zealander Alastair Galbraith is a prolific multi-instrumentalist whose fourth album Cry, recorded between 1998 and 2000, receives a belated release (hence our interest) and which pitches him somewhere twixt Ivor Cutler, Rock Bottom-era Wyatt and a discordant Third Ear Band. The Cutler comparison is in no short measure due to the lavish and atmospheric application of harmonium which immediately strikes you from the opening bars of “Bellbird”. The thirteen mostly short tracks (some just seconds in length) all plink and fizz along in a nagging drone that evokes not so much kitchen sink as camp stove psychedelia of the most curious variety, with backwards tapes, scratching violin and all manner of found sounds neatly enough interspersed with Galbraith’s mostly spoken word vocal. The ingredients all come together beautifully on the criminally short “One Method” and another highlight, “Koterana”, which sounds like a nest full of wasps, gorged on seasonally mellow fruitfulness and having a rare old time knocking out drunken jigs and reels (or so you’d imagine). All oddly pleasing and pleasingly odd, and a welcome (re) release to be sure".

Issued on vinyl for the first time in a run of 500 LPs and available digitally, you can listen/download/buy the record at http://mie.limitedrun.com/products/511937-alastair-galbraith-cry-lp, then let me what do you think about it...

Other related links:
http://www.discogs.com/artist/56202-Alastair-Galbraith

no©2014 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)  

January 16, 2014

Found an unpublished sketch for a Third Ear Band poster made by Glen Sweeney in 1991.


I've found in my personal archive this sketch made by Glen Sweeney in 1991 for a planned poster of the Third Ear Band, year when he reformed the band with Barry Pilcher at saxophone with the idea to be more alchemical than ever.
Infact in a first time he called the band Alchemical Third Ear Band with the usual reference to his favourite Buddha icon.
The project failed (he called it Elektric Third Ear Band and recorded few tracks for a new record, then re-recorded with a different line-up and published in 1993 as "Brain Waves"...) and this poster, that he sent me at that time, sinked into oblivion.
Now it is emerged just for the curiosity of everyone still involved in the esoteric story of the Band...


no©2014 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first) 

January 06, 2014

Brand new 180 gram audiophile vinyl edition of "Alchemy" out now.


Just at the end of past December a new 500 copy limited edition of TEB's "Alchemy" (on 180 gram audiophile vinyl format) is available in the shops at 25-30 euros.
As you can see below, the main trait of it - published by Timeless Record (as TIME 732) - seems to be the laminated original cover here treated as a negative of a photograph.
As we know it was designed by David Loxley, taken from an old engrave published on "Atalanta Fugiens" by Michael Meier in 1617 (read here at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2009/12/origins-and-meanings-of-alchemy-cover.html).

 
Timeless Records is a label specialized in reissues of old underground records: they have reissued artists as Pete Brown & Piblokto, Edgar Broughton Band, East of Eden, Bonzo Dog Band, Nucleus...
It's really wonderful that this record is still in catalogue after all these years and it does exist in so many different formats (original 1969 LP, remastered CDs, limited vinyl edition...)...

 
no©2014 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)