September 27, 2015

A 1972 TEB's concert advert found.


Emerging from the Web it's this very interesting 'new' advert from the TEB's glorious past, from a period where little is known.

It's the advert, taken from "Time Out" issued on September 22-28th, 1972, about the concert the band played on September 30th, 1972 at the London Battersea Town Hall (other band involved Matumbi Band, an "afro-reggae" group!), just after the "Macbeth" project...




no©2015 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)   

September 14, 2015

Italian composer ROBERTO MUSCI talks about the Third Ear Band!


Avant-garde composer, performer, saxophonist and guitar player ROBERTO MUSCI (Milan 1956) has recorded  records, made videos, soundtracks for mute films, written books and collaborated among the others with musicians as Chris Cutler, Elliot Sharp, Steve Piccolo, Jon Rose, and Keith Tippett.
After a very interesting project of a tribute to the Third Ear Band unfortunately aborted (a wonderful 5:48 track titled "The awakening of Orus" was recorded...), just recently he has dedicated to the Third Ear Band some short lines at his blog http://robertomusci.tumblr.com/post/44601596678/third-ear-band-the-third-ear-band-was-born-in#notes
This is a short interview with him.


How did you know the Third Ear Band's music?
"Absolutely by chance. At the beginning of Seventies I used to go to Sinigaglia Fair in Milan (it's a flea market) with some friends: we was a bunch of "musical addicts" that every Saturday used to meet there for sharing opinions about records and music. I remember in that period after to be involved in Progressive and (more or less) hard rock I was now more interested in new kind of sounds (as like the so-called Canterbury sound, minimal music, Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew" and some records of Eastern and Arabic music). Just by chance I exchanged one of my albums with another, it was a strange record with a full size purple cover, with clouds and alchemical-ritualistic pictures
inside, and four tracks quoting the four elements taken from the pre-Socratic Archè.
After few days I was folgorated by that music as like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus or as the illumination of Buddha under the tree of Bodhi.
I'd never heard a music like that (and now it's the same, after around 50 years after) - a band with oboe, cello, violin and percussions in a Synth and Marshall world! A strange, deep music, with reminiscents of ancient and magic times; alchemical, sometimes obscure, sometimes solar, dances with obsessed rhythms, sounds from a pre-human world (in  the words of Lovecraft), chants from a far folk and chords of dissonant violins, near to the contemporary music.
I envy who doesn't know the Third Ear Band: the first listening of their music (expecially that related to the 1968-1972 period) is just like to go into a world of sounds and magic atmospheres."


Which elements of TEB's 'poetic' impress you mostly?
"Surely the way of improvisation and composition that generates a unique music; a music that wrap and alienate you.
The use of modal improvisations, with pentatonic and eptatonic scales derived from Arabian and Indian music culture, the mixing of particular timbre, the use of percussive rhytms with a metric dilatation, that ancestral call to the ritual music (from the ancient Egypt to the Druids). It's a strange sensation, but listening to their music in a room it seems that sounds are stratificating on different levels and the listener loses the cognition of time and space...".

How much TEB has influenced your way to compose and play music? 
"They influenced me very much when I recorded my first album in 1984 ("The Loa of music" - Raw Material). When one listen to it it's Glen Sweeney's obsessed rhythms and Ursula Smith and Richard Coff dissonant violins to be very evident. I'm very far from the second phase of the band (from 1988 onwards: "Live Ghosts", "Magic Music" and "Brain Waves") even if several tracks are very good, and it's a coherent evolution of their old atmospheres.
I've been so lucky to hear the Third Ear Band two times in Italy (maybe in 1989 and 1994... I'm not sure of the right dates): in spite I was very diffident (sometimes it happens when the distance between the album recorded in studio and the live concert is huge) I remember they was two wonderful gigs with the band able to recreate that particular magic sound (I don't recall the right line-ups but I'm sure there was an electric guitarist and a soprano player)."
 

Specifically, which TEB's compositions do you think inspired you more?
"Surely their first records: "Alchemy", "Third Ear Band", "Abelard and Heloise", "Music from Macbeth" and "Prophecies". For myself "Earth" and the music for Polanski's "MacBeth" are memorable".

Are you still listening to their records?
"Sure! From that period, with the Popol Vuh's music, Third Ear Band's music is timeless art that I'd listen to forever (and I'm listening to it from about fifty years)". 

One of the several projects made by Roberto in Multimedia.

What about that aborted project of a tribute to the Third Ear Band?
"The lure to recreate that old music atmospheres for letting them live is still great in me. Basically the project was inspired by John Oswald's work who coined the expression "Plunderphonics". His work on Michael Jackson repertoire (with related legal case, i.e the cover: Michael Jackson's head on a female body...) was really clamorous. The idea was to record a tribute to the Third Ear Band just using their original music for recreating that musical poetic and the sensations they gave to me, playing the right instruments and looking for that pictures linked to their specific iconography (ancient Egypt, Alchemy, Druids...). Of course I would like to close this project..." 



ROBERTO MUSCI DISCOGRAPHY 
(a selection)


"The Loa of music" (Raw Material, 1984)












"Losing the Orthodox Path" (Les Disques Victo, 1997)

  






  



"Steel Water Light" (ReR Megacorp, 2001)
 












"The End of the World" (Auditorium, 2003)







   




"Vampyr and other stories" (ReR Megacorp, 2015)

 











CONTACTS
"To absent friends, lost loves and old gods" (blog)http://robertomusci.tumblr.com/
Roberto Musci Web site:
http://www.rmusci.com/
Soundcloud:  
https://soundcloud.com/roberto-musci
Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Musci 

no©2015 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)  

September 09, 2015

New Third Ear Band CD by Gonzo Multimedia out until the end of this year.


Gonzo Multimedia and Luca Ferrari are working on a  new TEB CD planned to be published until the end of 2015. 
It will be titled "EXORCISMS" and it will show recordings from the 1988-1989 period, when the musicians involved was Glen Sweeney, Mick Carter, Ursula Smith, Lyn Dobson and Allen Samuel.
(First hands) Sleeve notes by Luca and art cover (as for the first two CDs) by the great 'pictures wizard' Martin Cook.
no©2015 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)          

September 04, 2015

"Third Ear Raga" aired last July...

 

Californian Estero Bay 97.3 The Rock (http://esterobaycommunityradio.com/) aired last July 28th, 2015 Third Ear Band's "Third Ear Raga" (from "Hymn to the Sphynx"). The programme, conducted by Charlie Rosenberg, is titled "Space does not care: Sonic Attack on estero Bay".
  
no©2015 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)