How Roberto Musci's "Mosaic" is going?

Asking Roberto Musci how his great tribute to the Third Ear Band is going, he replied me: "I haven't news about my record, but going around in the Internet I've read some good reviews on English and Japanese sites".

Here below there are some pages I've found:

http://www.blogfoolk.com/2016/12/roberto-musci-mosaic-tribute-to-third.html (in Italian)
http://www.waysidemusic.com/Music-Products/Third-Ear-Band-Roberto-Musci-Mosaic__25-USD-CD-HST411.aspx (in English)
http://www.thirdear.co.jp/SHOP/PYEUT008.html (in Japanese)
http://diskunion.net/progre/ct/detail/XATW-00140760 (In Japanese)

Roberto's tribute to Our Holy Band is one of the more intriguing and creative project I've ever listened to. Ghettoraga Archive is proud to have support this record since the very first stages of its creation process...

 no©2017 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)     

Roberto Musci's video tribute to the Third Ear Band!

Titled "Mosaic", this below is a beautiful tribute our friend Roberto Musci dedicated to the Third Ear Band based on his personal reinterpretation of the old classics recently published  by Gonzo Multimedia.

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

"Mosaic", Roberto Musci's tribute to the Third Ear Band. A short review.

Out on June 17th, 2016, published by Rob Ayling's Gonzo Multimedia, is now available Roberto Musci's tribute to the Third Ear Band. Titled "Mosaic", it consists of twelve tracks composed by Musci and played by himself using various kind of instruments as Plunderphonics, tibetan bells, flute, guitar, synth, hand drums, percussion, organ.

At a very first listening, the album is an amazing surprise because, albeit these are new compositions, the listener 'feel' the old fascinating mood of the band, even if totally renewed and rivisited.

Musci adopted for the album John Oswald's technique of composition and recording based on Plunderphonics, "using samples from their cds, filtered with effects and with “cut and paste technique", I created some songs" (from an interview with Musci).

And thus we have old TEB' tunes reborn at a new life: it's really amazing and beautiful listening to legendary tracks as "Ghetto Raga", "Mosaic", "Air", "Druid One", "Egyptian Book of the Dead" or "The Beach" dressed with a new suit.

The grafts of original TEB single sequences of sound work perfectly in this new texture because they seem rightly coherent and natural in this new soundscape. Not a simply juxtaposition of quotations of music, but as for a film editing  we have here sequences of old and new music totally integrated.
Some compositions are very astonishing: my favourite one is "The Beach", a 5 minutes of sinister, disquieting tune with a funeral cadence after an opening debussyan atmosphere...

Believe me, through the years I've listened to many attempts to tribute and/or compose (music inspired by) the glorious, unique sound of the TEB, but this is the real first time we have an album where Sweeney, Minns, Coff and Smith seem to come back for playing their awesome music again!

ROBERTO MUSCI WEB REFERENCES:
A sampler of the album ("Ghetto Raga") at  https://soundcloud.com/roberto-musci
Musci's personal Web site: http://www.rmusci.com/

OTHER STUFF ABOUT ROBERTO MUSCI IN GHETTORAGA ARCHIVE:
An interview with  Roberto on the Third Ear Band is at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2015/09/italian-composer-roberto-musci-talks.html
A file where Roberto explains his project is at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2015/11/italian-avant-garde-composer-roberto.html

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

Roberto Musci's tribute to the Third Ear Band out in June!

The announced tribute to the Third Ear Band composed and played by Italian avantgarde composer ROBERTO MUSCI will be published by Gonzo Multimedia on June 17th, 2016. Titled "Mosaic", the intriguing project is based on the use of plunderphonics (a technique taken by Roberto from John  Oswald); it will offer to the listeners a new rendition of some tunes from the TEB's repertoire.

I listened to them in advance and I was really amazed by the nature of the music in a true TEB spirit...

Here below you can see the cover of the CD scheduled by Gonzo at the page of their Web site http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/product_details/15936

 

Roberto says that "doing this CD it was a strange thing. It happened in a very simple and spontaneous way (probably because my music is so influenced by the TEB's one). It has been as I was the fifth member of the quartet, playing with them; this experience gave me a great joy and a huge pleasure...".
You can listen to a sampler of "Area Three" from the album HERE!
 
An interview with  Roberto on the Third Ear Band is at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2015/09/italian-composer-roberto-musci-talks.html
A file where Roberto explains his very original project is at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2015/11/italian-avant-garde-composer-roberto.html

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

Italian avant-garde composer Roberto Musci makes a tribute to the Third Ear Band.

Italian musician and composer Roberto Musci composed and recorded a tribute to the Third Ear Band based on original samplers of the band. 

Titled "Mosaic" it's actually a 'mosaic' of tracks build on various excerpts from original tracks of the Thirds, pieces as "Ghetto Raga", "Mosaic", "Air", "Druid One"..., treated with an original, innovative technique called "Plunderphonics".

Roberto explains the thing in this way: "This project is a musical tribute to the Third Ear Band ; it is not  a cover of their music  (it would be impossible, unnecessary and ridiculous), but music closely related and inspired by their art.
In recent years I have worked with Chris Cuttler in a project of Plunderphonics (ie: to sample music of a group to create new songs very close to the original music but different) . I have collaborated on a CD publishing by Recommended Records UK, dedicated to the music of Art Bears ("The Art Box" double and quadruple with the original music of the group and plunderphonics. In the CDs there are also songs made by Jon Rose, Otomo Yoshide, John Oswald, The Residents, Fred Frith). With this technique I’d like to create my own personal tribute to the Third Ear Band and using samples from their cds, filtered with effects and with “cut and paste technique", I created some songs".

 

Considering the interest of Rob Ayling for the project, Roberto has asked Gonzo Multimedia to realise a record from it. We will see what will happen. 
I have had the honour to listen to it and I think it's one of the best reworking of the Third Ear Band's ouvre...

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)   

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)