Glen Sweeney's percussion on "Air"...

January, 30th 1971: on the last issue of "Melody Maker" a fan asked a question about what percussion Glen played on  the second album...

Sweeney in a rare photo taken during the sessions for the second album.

 no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first

A 1970 Third Ear Band's unrealised live recording found in Germany!

Dear TEB aficionados, lovers of fine antiques, 

I was contacted a few days ago by Made In Germany (M.I.G. Music), a German label specializing in reissues and discoveries of 60s and 70s albums and recordings (http://www.mig-music.de/en/), to collaborate in the production of an extraordinary new live album by the Third Ear Band!

As announced months ago (read HERE), this is a recording of the performance that the band (in the quartet line-up: Sweeney, Minns, Smith and Coff) played on April 24, 1970 at the Essen festival, recorded and broadcasted by German radio. I am working  to analyze the seven tracks, partly taken from "Alchemy", partly from the upcoming "Elements" album, with some brilliant surprises.

An extraordinary new chapter in the band's history is therefore expected in the coming months. I am sure that it will amaze and captivate you as in the past. 

Keep in touch!

no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

"How I got the third ear". Memories from Finland.

TEB fan Mauri Kankaanpää gives us some memories closely related to the Third Ear Band...

"1st of December 1973 was a remarkable day for a 17 years young man. On that day, exactly 50 years ago,  the mailman gave me a ticket to pick a box of records from the local post office. I can’t remember the content of the box as wholly, or if there even was more than one LP, but that very one is still in my shelf, from the band I got into in previous summer. 

 

Easy to guess the name of the band. The LP I bought first was the one known as Elements. It really changed my musical world. At that time, I was also interested in esoteric things, theosophy etc. so the music fitted to my taste like glove in the hand. How did I find this world? First step was taken on a Fool’s day the previous year. I was able to visit our capital Helsinki and a large record shop there. I had saved lots of money to buy three records, one of them was Pink Floyd’s "Meddle" (I still have the copy). 

 

 

The record itself was extremely important to my music taste which was turning to progressive rock, but also the inner bag, ”the Harvest shopping list”. Following summer I bought Roy Harper’s "Flat Baroque and Berserk," starting my long lasting fandom to him and a week later my first Third Ear Band record, "Elements" - just by the name of the band, the cover of the LP and the typography on it. So it’s 51 years and 4 months now when I gave Glen & C. my other ear lobe, after which they took the whole ear, then the second on the other side of my head and finally they gave me a third one to start hearing.
Back to the date mentioned in the beginning. The album was "Alchemy". More of the magical music, thank you very much. 

One thing where vinyl beats cd is the cover size. Of course, vinyls need space if you have a lot of them, but the information and the emotional aspect of handling the cover, it’s almost like shaking hands with the artist. You get closer to them. 

 
So, I was 17, and I was living in Western Finland in the middle of an agrarian flat, known earlier as the bottom of the sea which now, after the ice age, is rising 5 mm in a year. Pop music was extremely rare on the radio. There were two channels, one for serious music and things like that, the other was for common people, almost funny ones. But please remember that people between 12-20 didn’t really exist for radio management, it was still in the ice age. And then there were minorities with their occult hobbies.

Again, I was handling the cover you know now. Turning it front and back, open and close, reading the text as much as my English did bend to it, more or less hypnotized from the music. Then there was the photo, with a monument where the players were hiding or just stepping out. Oh how far they are! Wish could visit that place! For a 17 years old person such a thing was like a flight to the moon. England is so far, three times around the world and only rich people here could afford to fly - and then they go to Mallorca... And if I ever get to England I surely will get lost. And where is that monument, if it is a grave there must be a graveyard, or thousands of them! Not for me! A desperate case.

But the years will roll. Inevitably. We are in 2019 in this story, now. Thanks to the internet and Wikipedia, sources and sites I found the name of the graveyard and got the name of the monument. I had found England earlier and the City of London in it, too.
London is an interesting town with all the layers the history had left there. I was travelling with my now ex-lady and had spent a couple of days in the town enjoying its arts and taps. After leaving the town, the metro rattled in a narrow gap through sleepy suburbs like in some Ghibli movies. Old dirty cables were hanging on the sides like lianas in the jungle. The car was almost empty. Now I was sure it will happen. 

 

Kensal Green cemetery is one of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries in London (I've seen two of them now). And what a relief, the grave was quite easy to find, thanks to the officer of the cemetery and the map she gave. The very moon of this story is the grave of Charles Spencer Ricketts (1788–1867). 

We landed at the cemetery on the 16th of September, at last. I felt excited when starting to walk the paths of the place. And finally, there it was!

 

 

The grave was smaller than I expected but it stood out of the area in its pale colour and strong decorations. Looked like it was ready to take a walk. Unfortunately I forgot to say something immortal like... “this is one small step for mankind but one giant leap for man”, but just something like “siälä se on!” (there it is! in Finnish) directed to my partner. 

However, it was unbelievable that it had been waiting for me all this time!"

 

Mauri Kankaanpää

 

Other stuff in this archive about the Kensal Green cemetery:

https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2017/06/ray-stevensons-memories-on-kensal-green.html

https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/01/teb-first-photo-session-by-ray_30.html

https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2017/08/original-contacts-from-first-1969-teb.html
 

no©2023 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

"The Secret Canticle Of The Elements". JENNY SORRENTI and TULLIO ANGELINI celebrate the Third Ear Band!

 

At the beginning of 2020 Italian musician Jenny Sorrenti and musician/promoter, Tullio Angelini  wrote a short piece about their favourite psychedelic record  for a special issue on psychedelic music published by Italian magazine Classic Rock. They selected TEB's second album inspired by the primordial elements. A piece that's a real act of love for the band, full of passion and emotion. Here below you can read a more extensive version of it, written by them later, exclusively for Ghettoraga Archive (Jenny and Tullio also proposed the pictures included).

 

 

 

   THE SECRET CANTICLE OF THE ELEMENTS

"It was March in the early '70s when someone told me about a house in Vomero, a neighbourhood in the hilly area of Naples, where some guys were listening to great music. At the time the vinyl was 'just out' and imported from England. We young musicians, afflicted by that process of decay that music was undergoing, increasingly more deficient in emotion, expressed words of great satisfaction for this.

 

 

 

He was a Neapolitan photographer who opened his house to let us listen to the latest news in various musical genres: from underground to psychedelia, from folk to rock. He had lived two years in London, working in the photographic field and selling newspapers outside the subway.
So it was in that Neapolitan house that I tuned in, for the first time, with the vibrations and frequencies of the Third Ear Band, and the secret was immediately revealed to me.  

I don't remember exactly where, but in that period I bought the second record of the band, the one with the same title, dedicated to Air, Earth, Fire and Water. This listening brought me a significant personal change. The Third Ear Band's sound is rarefied, ancestral, continually hovering between non-ordinary writing systems. 

 

The settings describe forms and compositions in a constant dialogue between East and West. Frequent is the reference to the Indian raga integrated by the improvisational practise, a band's true staple. A particular interest seems to be dedicated to the recovery of some sounds, memorized without any formal declaration and internalized as if they were in clandestinity. Since that time my perception of music and life were totally new, to the point that this profound transformation helped to free my mind. A process and alchemy that led me to live with visions, colours, sensations never experienced before and without having to resort to who knows what psychotropic substances.

  

 

This record let me foreshadow the excellent, wise mutation, and so I approached the listening with surprise, amazement and fear: a fear as of something of unknown and esoteric. The weaves between oboe and violin, hypnotically supported by percussion, were the paradigm of a language in progress that I had intercepted and undertaken. It had broke that classicism, until that moment, so prominent in the structure and form of the songs.

Those notes, that succession of phrasings and performances led me to a naturally altered vision of reality, encouraging me to explore in the depths of my heart and my sensibilities... Without any hesitation, it was the most beautiful psychedelic record ever heard: in fact, in our first album of Saint-Just, titled with the same name of the band, I deservedly thanked them in the sleeve credits. 

 

Jenny Sorrenti (photo by Francesco Desmaele).

I remember that... in '74 I discovered that Paul Buckmaster, already a member of the Third Ear Band, in Macbeth album, had participated, as a musician, to the first album of a Neapolitan percussionist friend of mine. I was intrigued by the character. So I discovered that he had studied cello at the Conservatory of Music San Pietro a Majella in Naples, where I also had done some exams when I was studying Opera. Paul was of Neapolitan mother and English father... precisely the opposite of me!

His mother, a graduate pianist, had chosen for him where he would grow up and study, so he preferred my hometown. I felt honoured by it. When I went to London to contact some musicians, I also wanted to meet Paul Minns. I wished that, but I couldn't, I had a little time. I had to return to Italy to continue working on "Suspiro", my first solo album.
 

Tullio Angelini (photo by Luca D'Agostino).

Despite the succession of generous and honourable plots of violin, oboe and cello, supported by the percussive procession, the music of the Elements is still unalterable today, like a rock worked by strong arms and able to carve over, images and representations resistant to the passage of time. 

 

A doubt arises...! "Could we really interpret all this?"

 

A workshop of sounds and symbols that, at first, surprised us like an almost mischievous spirit and immediately afterwards filled our hearts with its initiatory grace. The instruments used were like knockers in the night, which made our devotion grow even more... to the point that, through their messages, the music itself became part of our being. Even now their sound is powerful, vigorous and we seem and know that we can still blush when we listen to them. In the album of elements the heavens unfold, the earth stretches out, the waters flow, the fires are unleashed. So if there is a music that has helped our artistic self to become more creative and courageous, that music has undoubtedly been this and will reveal so much more as we continue to walk our way the same way... through lives. 

That's how the music of the Third Ear   Band sounded, that's how it sounds, an extraordinary sonic wonder that makes us imagine that we are among the rare and lucky secret witnesses.
What is highlighted in this album is the rise of sound, its becoming. You can perceive something not imagined and even less organized or edited. Not even improvisation can sanction this overcoming. Along with the notes of the score, behind them or perhaps within them, it seems to be a place where extraordinary things happen, in the guise of a temporal extension capable of putting the musicians out of control. 

After all, air, earth, fire and water belong to Nature, to its divinities, to the formation of the world. This is not conditioned by scans of existential time, without difference between past, present and future, but by the contemplation of the eternal. The harmonies, rhythms, melodies of the four album's tracks of the album are always and only functional to the creation of dimensions that have the common characteristic of inescapability.
Slowly the knowledge of sharing an unaltered and in time never dormant attraction for this band... so ineffable. This is the first motivation for this writing, which we signed with four hands.

Paul Minns playing at the German TV in 1970.

 

Finally, we would like to affirm that Paul Minns' oboe (he is still our hero!), with its timbre, continues to emit signals that reach us from afar... perhaps bound to the secret of archaic rituals. It never caught us unprepared but, on the contrary, always receptive to the sublimation of... signs."

Jenny Sorrenti and Tullio Angelini
Rome, November 2020

 

CONTACTS

- Jenny Sorrenti -

https://www.facebook.com/jenny.sorrenti3

https://www.facebook.com/SaintJustJennySorrenti/ 

https://www.facebook.com/JennySorrentiofficial/ 

mail: jennysorrenti@gmail.com

- Tullio Angelini -

http://allfrontiers.it   

 

https://www.facebook.com/AllFrontiers

 

mail: momusit@yahoo.it

 

no©2020 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Munster Records announces "Third Ear Band" reissue in vinyl format.

After being published "Macbeth" soundtrack, Spanish label Munster Records (http://munster-records.com/) is going to release the vinyl edition of "Third Ear Band", the extraordinary album known by fans as "Air, Earth, Fire & Water" (in the Seventies) or "Elements" (later).

More details soon.

 no©2020 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Soon a vinyl reissue of "Mcbeth" soundtrack...

As announced, Spanish label Munster Records is going to publish the old TEB catalogue on vinyl format licensed by Cherry Red Records.
First issue will be the vinyl reissue of "Macbeth" soundtrack, followed by the "Elements" album...

Info at:  http://munster-records.com/en/label/munster/product/macbeth

This is the press release  (with some historical bad errors included!): 

"As a luxurious aperitif for the future release of the “Elements” album (including its extra sauces), Munster Records bring us “Macbeth”, the staggering soundtrack by the English band Third Era Band for a Roman Polanski’s film, recorded and produced in 1971.

A magical invitation urging the listener to dive into unsuspected regions of boldness, unpredictability, and an intimate abstract-folkster-experimentalism. According to the founding member Glenn Sweeney, “the music was called alchemical because it was produced by repetition”. However, mind it, such repetition doesn’t follow the same musical structures of, let’s say, Terry Rilley, Steve Reich or Philip Glass due to its indefinite nature of internal-twisted and tormented passages of a peculiar poetic enchantment.

The band, formed in Canterbury, started in 1967 playing an oriental hypnotic-free-form-folk. Signed to the prosperous cult label Harvest, they debuted in 1969 with “Alchemy”, an instrumental jazzy-psych improvisational album. A fully formed masterpiece came in 1970 on the already aforementioned self-titled opus, also known as “Elements”. For “Macbeth”, their third one, just the main chief Glenn Sweeney (assorted percussion) and Richard Coff (viola and violin) remained from the original four-piece line-up. It was recorded when half of the quartet - Richard Coff (viola and violin) and Ursula Smith cello) – had already departed, and they were about to record a third album entitled “The Dragon Wakes”, which had promised to be an electric album with rock influences. Aside from a few sessions, this album was never completed.

The themes presented on the film were composed in an improvised manner while watching black and white excerpts of the oeuvre. The music, recorded in six weeks at George Martin’s Air Studios, in July 1971, has the same unconventional and quite unique dimension as the film itself. It is an auteur music for an auteur film. The music seems to fit perfectly the deliriously idiosyncratic free narrative of the story adapted by Polanski, even if it was used sparingly or remixed in a debatable form for a purist music fan.

Glenn Sweeney summarized his creation better than any critics attempted: “Third Ear Band music is a reflection of the universe as magic play illusion simply because it could not possibly be anything else. Words cannot describe this ecstatic dance of sound, or explain the alchemical repetition seeking and sometimes finding archetypal forms, elements and rhythms...”

There is an arty-medieval atmosphere overall, and it’s folkishly ludic in tracks like ‘Overture’, ‘Iverness’, ‘Court Dance’ and ‘Fleance’, where the experimental interjections function as colorful devices. ‘Fleance’ – with the guest singer Keith Chegwin - is a scintillating highlight.

The poetic assaults of concrete music are present in themes like ‘The Beach’, ‘Ambush’, ‘Prophesies’, as if every drumming fractures, singing seagulls or sharp whistles where conducting us to waves of fear into the unknown. There are other lost beauties in its official 44 minutes like the minimal oboe melody of ‘Lady Macbeth’ floating as a centipede of dreams or the lyrical guitar chords of ‘The Banquet’ punctuating a climax of sheer mystery. And, by the way, that is the song played during a banquet at the castle when the band appears for a few precious seconds on the film.

Taking in consideration the uniqueness of the film, we have in here a sublime soundtrack for it. A music that makes us feel the unfathomable and the unpredictable, sometimes going softly as a solid mystery piece. Close your eyes and enjoy an adventure in this kaleidoscopical carpet of unexpected possibilities of the imagination."

 no©2020 Luca Chino Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

A review on "Alchemy" on Facebook...

Esoteric according the G-man, on his Facebook page, reviewed here  "Alchemy"...

Sometimes, I wonder why I do this to myself.........after the “Elements” album being quite, shall we say, “challenging”, I was consumed with curiosity, bearing in mind I'd never heard any of their albums before now, to see what happened next........
…..to which the answer is........things got “less challenging”..... you can see this review is really gonna help, can't you.......
With a whole CD and a bit of previously unreleased tracks, let's start with the “Alchemy” album itself. The whole package is instrumental – get that out of the way first – and the main album is a whole lot more cohesive and structured than what came before, or it certainly sounds that way. For the first track, against a shuffling tabla rhythm, the violin, or viola, interweaves with the oboe and the effect is both mesmerising and hypnotic as the instruments kind of stride along with the textures counteracting and creating an almost melodic feel to the density. The 10+ minute “Ghetto Raga” that follows, is, however, the first time for this band, that my ears (lol) pricked up and something really grabbed me, coz this track is an absolute gem. Again, with tabla rhythms to the fore, the viola and oboe continue to weave, soar, drone, stride and fly over the ever gathering rhythmic clouds and something akin to Terry Riley meets Indian, unfolds in all its glory to remarkable degree and itr's this track that makes you think “thank the heavens I bought this album” as, despite what comes next, you somehow manage the resist the urge to loop this and make it last about 10 hours, never mind 10 minutes. There follows a couple of 3+ minute tracks that are more sedate, as the tabla rhythms calm, the strings plink and pluck and drone their way to infinity while the oboe continues to whirl and swirl, the whole thing achieving that Philip Glass/Terry Riley kind of cyclical nirvana, but injected with greater texture, less intensity and more melody.
“The 8+ minutes of “Egyptian Book Of The Dead” (kinda gives it away, really) starts more of a wail before the slow tabla beats begin, the dervish like dance of the oboe begins and it all gets rather rhythmic in a quite unexpected but delightful way, as the cello unfolds a mournful meandering underneath, and you can just picture the boat with the body on it, floating down the Nile, as the mood darkens, the strings shimmer eerily and the beats keep beating.
From there on in, things swing to and fro from slowly sailing to wickedly dervish swirling and most points in between, the whole album a huge step up from the first and, although I never thought I'd say this, something I'll be listening to again when the mood is right (you know, funerals, bad news, your girlfriend's dumped you – that sort of mood). As a bonus there are two 6 minute tracks froma 1969 “Top Gear”session which continue the mood of the album, only here in a “live” situation, the viola and cello sound incredibly Cale-esque (that's John, not JJ) while the oboe is just sensational sounding with the tablas as the heartbeat that keeps it all alive – superb stuff and a thoroughly excellent CD.
The extra bonus CD consists of all previously unreleased tracks from recordings made in 1968 (back to “challenging” although not quite as harsh) plus tracks recorded at Abbey Road studios in 1969 which are more varied yet consistent with the moods of the main album, but I won't go into detail as (a) you'll be bored, and (b) life's too short. Suffice to say, the main album is a stunner so give this a go and if you only ever own and love one Third Ear Band album, this is definitely going to be the one.

no©2019 Luca Chino Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Some interesting short reviews on TEB's historical albums...

Mike McLatchey wrote some interesting reviews on TEB's first era albums. It's all published on "Exposé" an American  Web site devote to "exploring the boundaries of Rock".
The Third Ear Band's page is at http://www.expose.org/index.php/artists/display/third-ear-band-eng.html

with reviews of "Alchemy" and "Third Ear Band", and "Druid Grocking" 1970 video with a very funny title:"Any Band without a Silver-Jacketed Oboe Player Is Not Cool Enough".

Here below you can read the reviews...

ALCHEMY

"There really was no other quartet like the Third Ear Band, they were even singular in 1969, showing up on the Harvest label next to Pink Floyd. They're difficult to describe, perhaps something like a psychedelic medieval raga band might be close. The instrumentation was unusual with its mix of cellos, violins/violas, oboe/recorders, and table/hand drums, and the combined sound was a bewitching acoustic drone that could sound like Indian classical music, renaissance folk, and hippie drum circle all at once, although the musical strands came together in a very cohesive way. The pounding, insistent drumming sets up something very pagan and tribal, with the strings chopping away and the oboe weaving modal melodies on top, the results lifted by the mythical and mystical titles. I've always found this a completely mesmerizing listen, like opening up some imaginary fabled land and culture from aeons ago. Discogs files them as Neo-Classical and Avantgarde, neither of which seem to fully capture what their sound was like."
 

THIRD EAR BAND

"The Third Ear Band quartet got even more experimental for the follow up to their debut album, reducing a bit of the Renaissance feel of some of the compositions on their debut Alchemy. The results were quite a bit more dangerous and certainly more dissonant, with the strings adding some eeriness to the proceedings. I still remember playing this album for the first time in a local record store friendly to progressive music in the early 90s. A customer who had been shopping started shooting quick stinkeye looks at the manager who was at the counter and began to pace the aisles frantically until the dissonant violins and cellos madly moving the album forward must have made her break. She steamed up to the front, screamed "How can you listen to this music?!" and both the manager and I kind of stood with our mouths opens until she immediately exited the front of the place in a huff. We looked at each other and I go, "You should save this one for when you need to clear the place," and we both broke into laughter. So yeah, not for the squeamish, this one, but the album does vary more than what this customer heard, giving unique sonic paintings to all of the four "Elements."

                    TEB 1970-1972 with Paul Minns dressed with the cool silver jacket!

 no©2016 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)    

Japanese reissues in CD format of original Third Ear Band's albums!

Japan EMI-Harvest has recently reprinted the first three Third Ear Band's albums in a limited press CD format at the cheap prize of 1143 yen (9.47 euros - 7.98 pounds - 12.14 dollars).

Published on February 27, 2013, the label has sent to the shops "Alchemy", "Third Ear Band" and "Music from Macbeth" with the original artworks and the famous Japanese strip, as you can see on the pictures of the "Alchemy" edition here below:

 These are the details:

"ALCHEMY" (EMI Music Japan TOCP-71515)

"THIRD EAR BAND" (EMI Music Japan TOCP-71516)

"MUSIC FROM MACBETH" (EMI Music Japan TOCP-71517)

It would be interesting to check the audio quality, if some engineers have worked on the original masters, expecially for the "Macbeth" soundtrack available for years on CD just in that awful BGO edition...

Anyway, all things considered, a must just for compulsive kollectors! 

You can buy the CDs at http://www.cdjapan.co.jp

no©2013 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first) 

The core of it. Some personal autosuggestions of postfolk-shaman Sedayne about the Third Ear Band.

An artist is an artist - an artist, an artist, an artist - as George Sand would tell today about Sedayne (Sean Breadin), the English postfolk shaman devoted to strong fieldworks on traditional soundscapes.

These are some inspired suggestions by him to get us ready for the Autumn-Winter season...

"A visitor to my house recently looked through my CD shelf and was surprised to see more than the three old Third Ear Band albums they were aware of. They hadn't known of the Hydrogen Jukebox, nor yet the re-union era Italian albums, much less Abelard and Heloise and The Magus; they hadn't known of all the rarities that have emerged in recent years from The National Balkan Ensemble to the session material (ancient & modern) or the German DVD and the French TV footage.

Time was, I was well content with my three Third Ear Band albums - old habits die hard: on cold Autumn mornings I always play Macbeth. Alchemy is special beyond measure - I only play it when it snows! Elements I play on stormy elemental evenings remembering the friends I never saw again after I first played it to them - Gong they could cope with, but the Third Ear Band was going too far.

These days - God knows. I often find myself playing Brainwaves when I'm cooking. It's nothing special in the way the other albums are, but it is Glen - the heart and soul of the Tertius Auris; Shaman, Trickster and catalyst for some of the finest music I've ever heard. Hell, even The Magus has its moments of utter transcendence, and Druid Grocking on the German footage is one of the most astonishing things I've heard in my entire life. 

The core remains the pure Alchemy of the four elementals though, as revealed on the French film: Richard is Fire - he burns & blazes, relentless, hungrily consuming the silences whilst lighting the very dark & warming the bitter cold; Paul is Air - he blows as the rushing wind that moves the waves & sets the very trees a dancing; Glen is the Earth - the stone circle dragon-alignments that set pulse and pattern to both enrich and 

 reveal the very chaos of nature; and Ursula is Water - she flows, she sparkles and she thunders in the depths of the unfathomable abyss. At least that's how I see it anyway.

Oh, and I forgot to mention New Forecasts, featuring Ursula on Sybilic Violin by way of pure Revelation, as the best of it remains, eternally...".

Follow Sedayne at:

http://ploughmyth.blogspot.com/ 
http://soundcloud.com/rapunzel-and-sedayne
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rapunzel-and-Sedayne/217002238319466

                                                        Sedayne - "Mr. Fox's Equinox" (March 2012)
no©2012 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first) 

TEB music on Spotify platform.

At the moment available just in some countries (UK, USA, Sweden, Spain, France, Finland, Norway and Netherlands), this new Web juke-box (with millions of tracks to listen) "comes in all shapes and sizes, available for your PC, Mac, home audio system and mobile phone". As they promises: "Wherever you go, your music follows you".

Very easy to start, just download and install Spotify (at http://www.spotify.com/int/), then search the tracks you like...

Some are the Third Ear Band records available:

TEB's Top Gear radio session recorded on July 27th, 1969 ("Hyde Park Raga", "Druid" and "Ghetto Raga"), Glen Sweeney's Hydrogen Jukebox (published in 1991), the quite horrible "The Magus" (2004) and the absolutely terrific "Alchemy" (1969) and the Elements album (1970).

no©2012 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

An interview with Italian musician Fabio Zuffanti that 'demixed' on July 2000 the TEB "Elements" album.

As written on a past file in this Archive (http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/02/italian-musician-fabio-zuffanti-demixed.html), Italian musician Fabio Zuffanti recorded on July 2000 a 'demixed' version of the Third Ear Band "Elements" album.

Zuffanti is playing & recording music from 1994, solo and with some other bands, producing an huge amount of interesting music (check at his site http://www.zuffantiprojects.com/).

Because this Archive intend to document all the things related to the Third Ear Band, we think it's important to interview him about that experience, investigating on the process of 'demixing' that old wonderful tracks.

Fabio Zuffanti (2011)

When (and how) your interest for the Third Ear Band is born?

"My knowledge of music comes from my brother's records collection and dates back to my childhood. Among the records I remember a copy of "Music from Macbeth". Sure, I was too young at that time, but I remembered that music afterward as something of strange and magic, fixed in my mind even in my teen years. In that period, around the end of '80's, I remember I read a beautiful retrospective about the TEB on "Rockerilla" (an Italian rock magazine) and from there I wished to deepen the knowledge of the group. In those days  reissues of old albums was circulating in the shops and I bought a copy of "Third Ear Band" being enchanted. At that point I got all their (scant) discography. Frankly, I wasn't interested into the band reunion, happening just in that period, because I was totally involved in their arcane works recorded in the Sixties/Seventies. Anyway, after that I've listened to all the new recordings and the archive stuffs too".

What about the idea to "demix" the "Elements" album?

"It was just a very impulsive thing, without counts. One day, while I was listening to the "Elements" album, I wished to go deep into the music and try to get his core for expanding some traits of it. I wanted to build from that tunes something more dilated that started from the elements to achieve something more wide and visionary. I feel TEB compositions as tied to something of very hearthly, as it's normal for a description of elements characterizing our existence on this planet. I've tried to do it much more abstract, making such as a mix between the sciamanic TEB world and my artistic 'Enonian' (i.e. Brian Eno music) influence...".

The album recorded in 200

Can you explain us the concept of "demixed"? What do you mean exactly?

"I told you it before. It means to go deep in a tune. I like to think about a white hot core and from there to expand everything to outside, making it to grow and picking out some aspects rather than others. While for 'remix' I mean a different disposition of tracks, for 'demix' I mean something more emotional and specific. It goes to the core of creation, explodes it and then reconnects all the pieces...".

Which is the technical process of it?

"I did the work 11 years ago and I didn't have so much technology at the time - just a programme called Cool Edit. Using it I've imported all the four tracks from the original CD and sometimes I've expanded and delayed the tunes with  the time stretch, making everything became slower, out-of-focus and foggy; in some cases I've selected one element that it seemed to me topical for about the composition and I've rebuild the tune using just that kind of fragment. On everything I used a wide amount of delay, reverberations and echoes because I was interested, as I told before, to lend to the music a state of trance, more abstract as regards the original TEB tunes". 

What do you think about the TEB work? How did it contribute to your musical research?

"As a listener of the band I just think all the best. TEB is a really magical and alchemical group and it reflects into the music some medieval depictions where alchemy tried to reveal an inner and fantastic side of reality. For myself, this visual element is very very important; all the artists I love are those let me imagine arcane and timeless world.
On the level of my musical research, apart that experiment to 'demix' their music, I don't think to have ever take back in my compositions all the love I feel for the TEB atmosphere. Maybe because I've always worked on more 'rational' areas of composition and I've never worked on open structures and based on improvisation as Sweeney & co. did".

Is it possible you'll work on other TEB compositions in the future?
"I don't think at the moment, but I've got an old dream, to form an ensemble for playing a kind of music between TEB and "Hosianna Mantra"'s Popol Vuh. I know one day I'll do it, but I don't know when...". 


Download and enjoy the TEB "Elements" demixed album at http://www.zuffantiprojects.com/spirals/thirdearbanddemixed.htm

no©2011 Luca Ferrari