"What's this ear?". A Glen Sweeney and Paul Minns short interview on an old issue of Disc & Music Echo.

I've just found in the Web an old copy of "Disc & Music Echo", the British magazine born in the Fifties.

In this issue (April 22, 1972) there's a short interview with Glen Sweeney and Paul Minns about the "Macbeth" recordings.

Nothing of particularly revelatory, but it's interesting for some little known details of that experience, most of all for the relation with filmmaker Roman Polanski.

Also, here there's the proof that Stanley Kubrick was interested into involving the band for the soundtrack of his masterpiece "Clockwork Orange", even if different than the usual Glen's memory. 

In fact, Glen told: "I heard that Stanley Kubrick was thinking of doing the science fiction  novel "Dune". It's a fantastic book, vaguely Eastern and right up our street. However, even if he does do it, we had a bit of a run-in with Stanley, so I don't know how we'd stand. He wanted us to do something  for "Clockwork Orange" for free. We said no chance, but it turned out all he wanted to use was our second album "Air". It was to be played through the scene  in which someone turns sadistic. It has been rumoured that several people have gone mad after hearing that album!"

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

Others reviews about TEB's Esoteric reissues.

A review about "Macbeth" reissue by Kevin Bryan is published on "Messenger" at https://www.messengernewspapers.co.uk/leisure/music_reviews/17446560.music-reviews/

Here's the text:
"Third Ear Band, "Music From Macbeth" (Esoteric/Cherry Red) - This challenging outfit were one of the more cerebral signings to EMI's prog-rock imprint, Harvest Records, when it began operations in 1969, and this absorbing package focusses attention on the music that they created for the soundtrack of Roman Polanski's typically controversial adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy "Macbeth" three years later. The evocative and eerie contents draw on elements of Indian music, early electronic fare and jazz, expanded here with the welcome addition of four hitherto unreleased tracks recorded by the band during the early seventies." 
 

On December 17th, 2018, not-profit webzine "Musique Machine" published a very long review on "Third Ear Band 1970-1971" at https://www.musiquemachine.com/reviews/reviews_template.php?id=7047

On the "musical exploration guide" "Popgruppen" (actually a blog) Michael Bjorn writes a very good review about "Elements 1970-1971" titled "Vastly expanded 'Third Ear Band' fries your mind" at   https://popgruppen.com/2019/02/25/vastly-expanded-third-ear-band-fries-your-mind/

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

Music from Macbeth: just "medieval music"?

Kendra Preston Leonard is the author of an old essay titled "Shakespeare, Madness, and Music. Scoring Insanity in Cinematic Adaptations", published in 2009 by the Scarecrow Press Inc. 

At page 84 she writes: "Polanski's employment of the Third Ear Band - an innovative London-based collective that drew from numerous traditions, including Renaissance forms and instrumentation, Indian ragas, and electric strings - led to the development of a soundtrack that included reasonably accurate attempts at period-appropriate accompaniments for the film. Julie Sanders asserts that this period-approximate music is used to "lull audiences into a false position of comfort [which collapses] as the camera pans out to the hostile environment in which the film is set, but this is not the only reading of the use of this music. Indeed, the relationship between the music, the settings in which it is used, and its link to Lady Macbeth create a framework around her in which she is a highly sympathetic character."

Polanski with Francesca Annis (Lady Macbeth).

"Strings, both plucked and bowed, recorders, oboes, drums, and folklike vocals not only place the film in time and location but also address the scale of the events and characters involved in them: there are no sweeping orchestral motifs or twentieth-century dissonances here to indicate the morality or lack thereof  of the Macbeths, but instead a soundscape that reminds the audience of the brutality and still-developing cultural and ethical codes and expectations of a pre- or early-Christian Scotland. The script indicates that Polanski and his co-author, cultural critic Kenneth Tynan, put considerable thought into the use of music and musical style in the film. Their cues marking the entrance and exit of music - even noting the duration of the music - are explicit and deliberate. Polanski and Tynan write music cues for Lady Macbeth more than any other single character; music serves as a prologue and postlude to her texts above all other speeches and scenes, with one remarkable exception: her sleepwalking scene." 

William Shakespeare

And later (page 85): "(...) During Macbeth's journey to Duncan's chamber (2.1.44) in which he imagines or hallucinates a dagger pointing the way, the music provided by the Third Ear Band has little in common with the earlier lute and drum dances; instead, it is reminiscent of Gyorgy Ligeti's chamber music. Using tremolo strings in high registers, sharp accent at seemingly random intervals, repeated phrases, the accompaniment for this scene "squeaks and gibbers", buzzing as Macbeth tried to steel himself for the task ahead. As he actually commits the murder, the same music is used again, but integrated with period instruments and percussions to create an atmosphere of adrenaline-filled terror and expectation. Lack of a tonal centre or an easily understood structure makes the music an aural counterpart to Macbeth's uncertain actions and emotions."

 

Macbeth (Jon Finch) and Lady Macbeth (Francesca Annis).

This is an interesting statement because usually, we read about TEB's Macbeth soundtrack that it is "medieval music" or, as Polanski's biographer Christopher Sandford wrote: "(...) the music of Third Ear Band, in the words of the press release 'achieving a degree of ethnic fusion of Indian, medieval, gypsy, Middle Eastern, electronic, jazz, trance and folk' (if not all in the same song)..." ("Polanski", Century-London 2007); but I think it is a kind of avant-garde chamber music and the reference to Gyorgy Ligeti is very pertinent because some tracks of the TEB's soundtrack seem inspired by the German composer. 
Apart "Fleance", that Sweeney and Minns didn't like it, and some few dances ("Inverness: The Preparation", "The Banquet", "Court Dance", "Groom's Dance", "Bear Baiting") based on harmonic elements taken from  (a revisited) ancient music, the most of the tracks are twentieth-century atonal compositions related to the  tradition of composers as like Berg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoenberg, Ligeti; or to free jazz or to minimalist music.

"Macbeth"'s electric guitarist and composer Denny Bridges writes me that "in reference to the music for Macbeth; as in every aspect of the band's music, we were influenced by many, many composers, musicians and musical forms from exotic parts of the world and from the ancient past too. We applied many of those influences to Macbeth but some scenes of the movie did dictate that we had to be traditional. I took the melody and chords for "Fleance's Song" from a song I had composed before I joined the band. I used just a small part of that song because the stanzas we had been given to work with were very short. I used the line "Oh your two eyes will slay me suddenly" to repeat at the end of the 'verse' as a sort of refrain. Could anything be more contrived? The Groom's Dance was based around a riff on electric 12 string guitar I had (heavily influenced by The Byrds) but with the rhythm of a jig imposed upon it. I suppose it's just a matter of opinion for that to be dismissed as just medieval. For the incidental music for the film, of course, we could be much freer."

I asked him, can you be more specific about the sources the Band used to listen to and influenced the music in that period?
"It is very difficult, if not impossible, to answer that question. For "Macbeth" each scene required a different approach.
Further to my previous comments on the music for Macbeth; Lady Macbeth's theme required at first a 'traditional' melody which then had to get darker and threatening as the piece progressed. To that purpose, I suppose we applied the influences of, for example, Schoenberg as you suggest. The witches theme is inspired by a scale of notes fewer than modern western music typical of eastern or ancient cultures. This could be a real scale or one that we imagined but, hopefully, should portray weirdness and evil to the listener.
We were sharing between us and listening to a lot of music all the time. Absorbing those influence just by osmosis would have flavoured what we did for Macbeth and all our other music.
I can't be more specific than that..."

However, whatever can be said about the sources, for modus operandi and musical references, "Macbeth" soundtrack was an innovative record for that time, still so actual and vivid.

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

Italian magazine "Rumore" reviews "Macbeth"...

Italian journalist Alessandro Besselva Averame reviews "Macbeth" remastered CD on the last issue of rock magazine "Rumore" (# 326 - March 2019).

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

Other reviews on the TEB on the Web...

Here's below some other reviews about TEB's remastered editions found in the Web:

The Reprobate: "Polanski’s Macbeth And The Third Ear Band’s Dark Folk Soundtrack" by Daz Lawrence at https://reprobatepress.com/2019/01/21/polanskis-macbeth-and-the-third-ear-bands-dark-folk-soundtrack/

 

Music Street Journal: a review about "Elements 1970-1971" by Gary Hill at http://www.musicstreetjournal.com/index_cdreviews_display.cfm?id=106634
 

Rythmes Croises Webzine: a review about "Elements" and "Macbeth" (in French) at https://www.rythmes-croises.org/remasterisations-esoteriques-pour-third-ear-band/



Please note another very interesting old article about Polanski's "Macbeth" and the Third Ear Band:

The Criterion Collection: "Third Ear Band's psychedelic alchemy in Macbeth" by Glen Kenny (2014) at https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3387-third-ear-band-s-psychedelic-alchemy-in-macbeth 

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

Denny Bridges about the three unrealised "Macbeth" tracks.

News from our friend Denny Bridges, the guitar player of TEB on "Macbeth" and for "The Dragon Wakes" sessions, now coming back to live in Somerset, England.

Discussing again the idea to release the unrealised tracks recorded at Balham in February 1971, he writes to me about the three unrealised tracks the TEB recorded at the Trident Studios on December 5th, 1970, months before the beginning of the recordings at the Air Studios for the Polanski's soundtrack.

With his proverbial precision and clearness, he reveals:

Polanski shooting the movie

"The tracks "Court Dance", "Groom's Dance" and "Fleance" needed to be recorded in advance of the filming of Macbeth. The dances needed to be choreographed and taught to the actors. Also, the role of Fleance was decided, at least in part, by how well the boy sang the song. Well done young Keith Chegwin!

A departure from the way TEB functioned of course; the song I wrote and I presented the defined melody and chords to the band so that was all set in stone. Its not surprising that all and any takes of the song sound the same although probably, after some run-throughs, there was just the one take. As for the dances, in advance of the recording date, we improvised at the rehearsal studio in Balham until we came up with a framework that fitted the description of the dances. We then went into the studio and, as per usual, improvised the pieces afresh using the framework we had from the rehearsals until we got the best take. So that's what the Trident recordings probably are - us trying different approaches. All three pieces are used in the movie and on the album."

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

A review about "Music from Macbeth" on "The Recoup" webzine.

Joseph Kyle reviews TEB's "Music from Macbeth" on "The Recoup" - "a reader-supported, advertising-free music and popular culture website" - at https://therecoup.com/2019/01/22/third-ear-band-music-from-macbeth-esoteric/

Joseph Kyle
January 22nd, 2019

"Film director Roman Polanski worked through the pain of the Manson Family murders in a most unique manner: making a film. Not just any film, though; he took on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, one of the greatest tragedies of all time. Released in 1972, Macbeth is a naturally dark and disturbing production made all the more thought-provoking through subtle and not-so-subtle allusions to the murders. A dark production requires an equally dark score, and British progressive collective third ear band were selected to do the job. Esoteric’s recent reissue of the score indicates Polanski made the right choice.

Third Ear Band came to be in the late 1960s and made a name for themselves as a top notch live act known for blending classical and medieval instrumentation with modern rock sounds and improvisation. Prior to being recruited by Polanski, the troupe had seen some success for their score of the 1970 score of the film Abelard and Heloise, so the group was eager for more soundtrack work. Seeing the opportunity to experiment, they approached Polanski with a request: they wanted to record a live, improvised score as opposed to a preplanned composition. Such a move was bold for a big budget production, but one that the filmmakers accepted. Polanski, however, took an active role in this soundtrack, attending sessions and making sure the band had to visual stimulation needed.

Music From Macbeth is a dark, dreary, and disturbing album, one that perfectly fit the soundtrack. Consisting of sixteen pieces, the album ebbs and flows as one continuous whole, and with many of the pieces being less than two minutes long, it’s not an album to be taken piecemeal. At times the music is so dissonant and harsh—the mixture of medieval instruments and modern technology when together like oil and water—listening can be difficult. Music From Macbeth’s overture sets that standard from the get-go, but yet the cacophony can be oddly appealing, such as on “The Banquet” and “Court Dance.” Then there’s “Fleance,” which is sung by the actor Keith Chegwin, and is based on a poem by Chaucer. It’s a beautiful ballad, and though it breaks up the flow of the atmospherics, it feels oddly out of place; unsurprisingly, the band did not care for it, as it felt disjointed from the rest of the album.
Macbeth was a flop, but it remains a fascinating and difficult work of art. Its soundtrack is no different; it is a complex, dense work of dark and foreboding compositions that can try the patience of even the most steadfast listener. Still, approached as a wholeMusic From Macbeth is nothing less than an interesting and compelling musical artifact."

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

An interview with Andrew King on "Uncut" magazine on line.

After a four pages review about the "TEB" remastered editions on the last issue (February 2019), "Uncut" journalist Tom Pinnock collected some opinions by Blackhill manager Andrew King about Glen Sweeney and the band on the Blog section of the Web magazine (HERE).

Here's the very interesting interview (where Andrew King finally changes his opinions on the band)...

The Third Ear Band remembered: “Glen thought it was very good PR for us to be heavily involved in the druids”
Tom Pinnock

January 11, 2019


Manager and producer Andrew King recalls the strange world of Glen Sweeney 

In a recent Uncut, I wrote about a couple of excellent deluxe reissues from a group that, despite the endless reassessment of the past, still remain obscure – the Third Ear Band. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, however, they were quite the sensation, outselling many other artists on the Harvest label, and supporting the Stones and Blind Faith in Hyde Park. Delightfully, their mix of improvised and otherwordly cello, violin, percussion and oboe still sounds strange in 2019, as you might discover if you track down a copy of their new Elements CD boxset on Cherry Red. As fascinating as their eerie music, though, is their incredible story, involving druids from Dorking, working for Roman Polanski, alchemy and an unlikely Egyptian sojourn during the Second World War for leader and percussionist Glen Sweeney.
The band’s manager and producer Andrew King explains more below – and you can track down the Uncut featuring my four-page Third Ear Band review, and New Order on the cover, until January 18th.

The Third Ear Band sold pretty well at the time, didn’t they?
"They sold better than almost any of the funny things we did on Harvest, apart from maybe Edgar Broughton. For instance, they always sold more than Kevin Ayers, which surprised me. They were pretty unique, I must say. I did listen to a bit the other day; it’s quite extraordinary. They were very strange. Glen Sweeney, good lord, what a guy."

How did they go down live?
"People never got up and started jumping around when they played, because it was the other way – it was more Quaaludes than speed – but they did go down well, yes. There was a small and devoted band [of fans] which gradually grew."

They seemed to be into all the countercultural interests of the era – drugs, mysticism…
"…and the concept of the drone – every hippie thing under the sun could be connected to it, one way or another. The whole aura around them was, I think, a manifestation of what Glen wanted. I think he controlled it – it’s hard to say how. Maybe he did it instinctively. The third ear, the whole mystic thing, he had it sussed."

He sounds a bit like a cult leader.
"Yeah, he was. The band was very much not a cult, though, it was very much four individuals, and he wasn’t seen as a spiritual leader, but he could be quite bossy. He was a lot older than anybody else – allegedly he had taken part in the Second World War, which makes him 20 years older than me. My favourite [of his war stories], which might be completely fictitious, is that he bailed out of an aeroplane over Cairo, floated down in a parachute, landed by the side of a swimming pool surrounded by half a dozen rich Egyptian ladies, and stayed there being looked after by them until the end of the war. "

What do you remember about the sessions for the second Elements LP?
"Allegedly they were completely off their heads on acid, but I naively didn’t realise it. I don’t remember them being any stranger than anybody else around that time, but maybe they were tripping away, a lot of people were. I would say it was all completely improvised. Glen might have a rhythm on his drums to start it going. All the Third Ear Band stuff was done in Studio 3 at Abbey Road. The engineers were very discreet and well behaved, but I did sense that they wondered, “What the fuck’s going on here? What the fuck’s all this about?”"

They played some big gigs – with Al Stewart, with the Stones at Hyde Park…
"[Blackhill] were quite ruthless – if someone had got a tour, we’d stick one of our other bands on it. And when we were doing the concerts in Hyde Park we’d stick all our bands on. I remember on the morning of the Stones concert, Paul Buckmaster phoned me up and said [poshly], “Andrew, what do you think I should wear? Should I wear a dark suit?”"

Ursula Smith was an important part of the second album. What was she like?
"She was a pretty good cellist. I think she’s still married to Steve Pank, who was the roadie. He famously once drove 40 miles the wrong way down the M1 with the band in the back. Steve was a legend for getting lost, always. It’s a miracle they ever got to any gigs at all with him driving. "

If there was a lead instrument, it was surely Paul Minns’ oboe.
"Paul Minns was a pretty extraordinary bloke – I say he’s the John Coltrane of the oboe, I think it’s quite amazing what he plays. There’s nothing to compare it with, his improvisations, I think they’re brilliant, utterly brilliant. Because of the way the reed’s constructed in oboes, you can make incredible noises with it."

What do you remember of their performance on Glastonbury Tor?
"That was really funny – straight out of Monty Python. Glen thought it was very good PR for us to be heavily involved in the druids, so for some solstice or another, or an equinox, we went down there and the druids all showed up and we walked up to the top of Glastonbury Tor. Marching up the hill, Glen was probably complaining about his leg… yeah, it was a war wound. He made out it was anyway. The druids did whatever druids do, sort of moved around and shook their robes and what have you, and the Third Ear Band played, and then we went down again and had a roast lamb and two veg lunch with them. I always remember, we went through all that crazy druid stuff, then they all suddenly turned out to be quantity surveyors from Dorking."

Were they serious about alchemy and magick?
"They were very good musicians; I don’t think they gave a shit about alchemy one way or another. I think they all thought they’d found a way to make some great music and they were going to have a go at it, and they did. Looking back at it now we can laugh at some of the hippie excesses, as they look to us now, but at the same it was very serious stuff. The music doesn’t sound dated at all, that’s the thing."

How did they come to be involved in Macbeth?
"Through one of Polanski’s producers, Hercules Bellvile, he was a nice chap. It was a great experience for everyone, going down to Shepperton in Polanski’s huge Rolls-Royce. It was very exciting. Polanski was just so bright and so smart, he was always 10 paces ahead of anybody. He knew more about everything – he knew every technical thing backwards, he knew exactly what he was trying to do."

It really was the perfect film for them to soundtrack.
"There’s something magic about the Third Ear Band. You don’t realise it at the time, then it’s hard to pin down years later, but there was something special there, there really was."

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

Glen Sweeney's tribute book finished, ready to be published.

My tribute-book to the art and genius of Glen Sweeney (and the Third Ear Band) is now finished and it's ready to be published.

Talent graphic Martin Cook (who made the last three TEB's cds for Gonzo) is working on it, full of pictures and stuff about the glorious Glen & TEB's history.

Just to give you a little taste of it, here below you can read a funny short memory from rock alternative musician Morgan Fisher (who played for a short period with the TEB in 1973) that is included on the book:

"My (probably record-breakingly) short stint as synth player with the Third Ear Band included just two radio shows and one concert, in the spring of 1973, before I was whisked off on a USA tour by Mott the Hoople. So I had little time to get to know the Band personally. Paul seemed rather distant and quiet, but Mike and Glen were open, chatty and friendly from the beginning. Nobody said it, but I assumed Glen was “in charge” as he visited my house in Finchley (north London) a couple of times to discuss their musical approach with me; it was always a real pleasure to sit and have a cuppa tea and a cozy chat with him. 

I was familiar with the Band’s recordings, and especially impressed that they had, two years before, made the music for (and even appeared in) Polanski’s “Macbeth.” While chatting on that subject, I asked Glen about the London premiere of the film - who was there, and how they dressed for the occasion. Were the Band expected to adhere to the usual tuxedo and black tie formula? 

Glen’s answer: “Yeah, man - would you believe they insisted we dress like that? So naturally I had to do something freaky as some sort of protest, right?” 

“Sure. What did you come up with?” 

“I dyed me hair bright green!” 

“Nice one, Glen! More tea?”

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

Audiobook of "Macbeth" with TEB's music realised soon?

Marc Adler wrote me saying he's recording an audiobook of "Macbeth", and he'd love to use music from Third Ear Band's score for 1972 Roman Polanski's film. 

He said it's his favorite shakespearean production and asked me some about copyrights questions...

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

Antonello Cresti on the Third Ear Band (from his latest book).

Here's the excerpt about the Third Ear Band taken from Antonello Cresti's last book titled "Solchi Sperimentali" (with kind permission of the publisher):

"It's difficult today, after so many years, to render the Power of Spreading Out made by the Third Ear Band. The impact of their first album, and, at-large of all their music, even if a non-mass heritage, can be defined as 'erupting'; it's not important which categories one can use to value it. If with a limited view we could consider this band just as the inventor of the world music, as the union of stimula coming from different times and places, we would appoint to these artists a very considerable place in the young music's history; but watching this closer, just considering the fact  Rock world had started  in a more or less calligraphic way to watch most of all to the East, we'd discover that in the Third Ear Band there's nothing of esotheric or descriptive. So their music is pure sound  philosophy translated in action: here, their raga becomes a method for improvising, the conceptual universe is that syncretic of the more radical and educated English hippie movement. Even if integrally instrumental, TEB's music perfectly communicates a climax where interests for Eastern philosophies, pagan traditions recovered, countercultures, drugs... was welding together. It's a music of experience that the band plays in "Alchemy", where any details is functional for involving the listener in a different way to conceive the sound: Glen Sweeney & C. break the rock and folk tradition for watching to where? Surely it's not the jazz the landscape where they move, and it can be surely traced references to the contemporary music and the barbaric music, but we would hurt to the band's originality: their power was to go to the nucleus of the music communication.

Under this view, the tunes included in their first album (and even more in their second published in 1970) seem very hard to understand, but this is just an appearance because their aim is that to communicate beyond all limits of the aestethics and even the rational. From this point of view is hard to imagine a music can be more spiritual than this... Surely also the form, charaterised by an acoustic ensemble with strings, boe and percussion, and the severely circular form of compositions, or this capability to evoke dance movements in a so essential way, are traits that made the Third Ear Band music an unescapable reference for any record collection of 'Elsewhere'. But the more terrific thing about this music is the several meanings under of it.

Their first wonderful, apocalyptic album shows more caught up moments, while "Third Ear Band" is oriented to the suite with its four tunes dedicated to the natural elements. Maybe the only one "softening" is in the "MacBeth" music, composed for the Roman Polanski's movie (1972), where we can find more traditionally descriptive arrangements, reverberating medieval music with the use, even if moderate, of typical rock instruments.

One could hazard Third Ear Band's short existence was the most radical experience in the British underground: also in the period of their last reunion, happened between the end of '80's and the beginning of '90's, their music seemed to come from other depth of thought than the new age.

Glen Sweeney, this minimalist of the percussive art, passed away around ten years ago, in silence, as like he had always lived. With him we have lost one of the greatest voice of the first  British Esoteric Wave, that that was near to thinkers as John Michell and others...".

A psychedelic Antonello Cresti with his new book.

(Italian version)
"E’ difficile resocontare oggi, a distanza di tanti anni, la Potenza della operazione di “spalancamento” operata dalla Third Ear Band. L’impatto del loro primo album, e, in generale, di tutta la loro musica, per quanto patrimonio non di massa, non può non essere definito come deflagrante, quali che siano le categorie che intendiamo utilizzare per compierne una valutazione; se, in maniera riduzionistica, ci limitassimo ad immaginare questo ensemble come inventore della world music, intesa come unione di una serie di stimoli provenienti da tempi e da spazi diverse, già affideremmo a questi artisti un posto di assoluto rilievo nella storia della musica giovane, ma a ben vedere, considerando che il mondo del rock già aveva cominciato a guardare in maniera più o meno calligrafica soprattutto ad Oriente, ci accorgeremo che nella Third Ear Band non c’è nulla che sia descrittivo, esotico. Ecco allora che la musica espressa da questa formazione è pura filosofia del suono tradotta in azione: il raga diviene un metodo di approccio per improvvisare, l’universo concettuale è quello sincretico dell’ala più colta e radicale del movimento hippie inglese. Anche se interamente strumentale la musica della Third Ear Band comunica perfettamente un clima in cui andavano saldandosi interesse per le filosofie orientali, recupero della tradizioni pagana autoctona, controcultura, droghe… E’ musica esperienziale quella di “Alchemy”, nella quale ogni dettaglio è funzionale a coinvolgere l’ascoltatore in una diverso modo di intendere la materia sonora: Glen Sweeney e compagni rompono apparentemente con la tradizione del rock e del folk per guardare dove? Non è certo il jazz il panorama sin troppo irreggimentato in cui si muovono e i riferimenti alla musica contemporanea, alla musica barbarica certamente possono esser rintracciati, ma ci sembrerebbe quasi di fare un torto alla originalità del gruppo la cui forza sta nell’arrivare intuitivamente al nucleo inscindibile della comunicazione musicale. In questo senso i brani che compongono il loro lavoro di esordio (e ancor più compiutamente quelli inseriti nell’omonimo album del 1970) appaiono difficili, ardui da comprendere, ma appunto si tratta solo di “apparenza” poiché l’intento è quello di comunicare fuori dalle gabbie dell’estetico o addirittura del razionale. Da questo punto di vista è difficile immaginare una musica che, nel suo andamento primigenio, sia più spirituale di questa… Certamente anche la forma, dall’organico in acustico suddiviso tra archi, oboe e percussioni, alla forma rigorosamente circolare delle composizioni, alla capacità di evocare movimenti di danza in maniera così essenziale, sono tutte caratteristiche che rendono la Third Ear Band un riferimento ineludibile per ogni discoteca dell’altrove, ma ciò che è ancora più terremotante è, come abbiamo detto, la lunga serie di significati che agiscono sotto la corteccia formale di questa musica.

L’esordio, bellissimo e apocalittico, predilige ancora episodi più conchiusi, mentre “Third Ear Band” guarda alla suite, con quattro brani dedicati agli elementi naturali. Unico “ammorbidimento”, forse, nelle musiche per il “Macbeth” filmico di Polanski (1972), in cui vengono accolti elementi di arrangiamento più tradizionalmente descrittivi, dal richiamo alla musica medievale, all’utilizzo, per quanto discreto, di strumenti cari al rock.

Verrebbe da azzardare che nella loro breve parabola la Third Ear Band è stata l’operazione più radicale emersa dall’underground britannico: anche al tempo della loro reunion, avvenuta tra la fine degli anni ottanta e i primi anni novanta, la loro arte, in piena epoca new age, sembravano provenire da altre profondità di pensiero.

Glen Sweeney, questo minimalista dell’arte percussiva, ci ha lasciati circa dieci anni fa, in silenzio, come sempre aveva vissuto. Con lui se ne è andata una delle grandi voci della prima ondata della Britannia Esoterica, quella affine a pensatori come John Michell e altri…".

(Riprodotto per gentile concessione dell'editore. Tutti i diritti riservati) 

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

"Third Ear Band’s Psychedelic Alchemy in Macbeth" by Glenn Kenny.

A remarkable essay of analysis on TEB's "Macbeth" music has come in last December by Glenn Kenny (critic at http://www.rogerebert.com/) published on The Criterion Collection Web site at http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3387-third-ear-band-s-psychedelic-alchemy-in-macbeth

Here's the original text of it:

 

“We were just in London, clubbing, all those things people did in the ’60s in the middle of London,” British actor Francesca Annis recalls, in an interview on the new Criterion release of Macbeth, of “crossing paths” with director Roman Polanski in the days when the Polish-born director was launching his career in the West with the still-galvanizing thriller Repulsion. “Clubbing” in London in the ’60s arguably had more cultural significance than you find in contemporary nightlife. Nightclubs were also cultural laboratories of a sort, in which musicians and other performers, sometimes with psychedelic assistance, sought to expand the borders charted by the likes of the Beatles and the Stones. The scene at London’s UFO Club, for instance, yielded experimenters both obscure and, in some cases, eventually monumental, like Pink Floyd, the Soft Machine, and an aggregation that would eventually be known as Third Ear Band—which in 1971 would provide the score for Polanski’s chilling Macbeth.

The murder of Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, and their unborn child in the summer of 1969 was in fact the second traumatic loss Polanski had suffered that year; in April, his longtime friend and collaborator Krzysztof Komeda had died after sustaining head injuries several months earlier. Macbeth was the first film Polanski made after these tragedies, and only the second without Komeda’s participation. (American jazz musician Chico Hamilton’s score for Repulsion is often mistaken for Komeda’s work, which in itself says a little something about varieties of cultural cross-pollination.) Contemporary accounts claim that Polanski, back in Europe after a U.S. filmmaking sojourn that had seen him complete the remarkably successful Rosemary’s Baby, was told of the band by an acquaintance who had worked with them on their soundtrack for an obscure animated German television film, Abelard and Heloise.

Writing of Third Ear in his excellent account of British folk-rock in the ’60s, "Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music", Rob Young notes that the group “sculpted an esoteric chamber music from acoustic elements,” yielding “incantational songs—without words, a ritualistic consort music.” Ritualistic is a significant word here; in Polanski’s film, one of the most appalling and memorable set pieces is the witches’ sabbath, and the movie’s many murders are depicted almost as fever-dream rites. Young quotes founding member Glen Sweeney, the group’s percussionist (he played a variety of hand drums), thusly: “I called the music alchemical because it was produced by repetition.” For the recording of the music soundtrack, Sweeney and oboe/recorder player Paul Minns, another founding member, were joined by cellist/bassist Paul Buckmaster (a classically trained musician who was also doing string arrangements for Elton John in this period, and who would later collaborate with Miles Davis), violinist and electronics player Simon House (later of the sci-fi psychedelic madhouse Hawkwind), and guitarist Denim Bridges, and they improvised the score at London’s Air Studios while looking at black-and-white rushes of the film. The full results of their efforts are collected on the album "Music from Macbeth", a bracing record that presents an experience pointedly different from that of the film . . . but just as breathtaking and sometimes harrowing.

There’s a hypnotic effect created via the alchemical repetition: not just in the rhythms of Sweeney’s hand drumming but in the motifs Minns spins out on his wind instruments. In the early ’60s, the British guitarist Davey Graham had taken his interest in Moroccan music and applied it to a new guitar tuning that went on to influence such players as Bert Jansch and Jimmy Page. The repetitions inherent in some forms of Western modal music—old British folk songs, for instance—seemed to find an affinity in the drones of Indian ragas. The tonal limitations of early electronic instruments, such as the VCS3 synthesizer played by House on the Macbeth soundtrack, lend themselves to a certain form of musical minimalism. The consonances implicit in these musical forms that were largely considered culturally discrete give Third Ear Band’s music for Macbeth an uncannily old-world feel, in that it evokes an atmosphere in which certain ideas of “difference” had not yet been fully formed. This feeling of a kind of antiquity prevails even when the electronic instruments in the band’s array are foregrounded. Hence, nothing in the score for Polanski’s film seems overtly anachronistic: it all fits into the sometimes verdant, sometimes blighted, always eerie and enigmatic world where the filmmaker sets the bloody action.

But Polanski uses the music sparingly in the movie, and sometimes remixes it ruthlessly. For the scene in which Macbeth (Jon Finch) seems compelled by a floating dagger to undertake the murder of Duncan, Third Ear Band recorded a track (titled “Dagger and Death” on their album) on which a repeating single-stab guitar note (like something out of a slo-mo version of the psych-rock hit of a few years earlier “Pictures of Matchstick Men”) is underscored by moans from violin, recorder, and even what sounds like a bowed percussion instrument; two minutes into the track, Sweeney’s hand drum comes flurrying in, whipping up a small frenzy that drops out as suddenly as it began. For its use in the film, though, Polanski just about mutes all the instruments save the guitar, the stinging note synchronized to the floating dagger as it first tempts, and then leads, Macbeth, drawing him down the hall to commit his first foul deed. It is with the stabbing of Duncan that the hand-drum section of the piece is heard, to great effect. In other scenes, such as Macbeth’s consultation with Lady Macbeth at the well where they both ineffectually try to wash the blood from their hands, Polanski keeps the music at the brink of audibility. When Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost, the violin swells from a larger piece of music are dropped into the soundtrack percussively.

In "Electric Eden", Young says that Third Ear Band’s “arcane, absorbing music stands as one of several unexplored lanes leading away from the psychedelic garden that remains neglected and overgrown.” It’s true that very few of the musicians who came in their wake attempted anything as ambitious as this group did. But they were influential. The soundtracks that the German group Popol Vuh created for Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath Of God and Fitzcarraldo would be unimaginable without the precedent of what Third Ear Band did in Macbeth (and in fact, Herzog used a Third Ear song on the soundtrack of his Fata Morgana). Such works exerted considerable power over musicians such as Gary Lucas, the alchemical guitar wizard who co-composed Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” and “Mojo Pin” and who recently unveiled a new guitar score for James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein. Lucas recalls visiting Glen Sweeney in London in 1973 and being presented a copy of the Macbeth script, the front page of which was embossed with a simulated-blood thumbprint! Sweeney himself passed away in 2005.

This six-minute track, “Overture/The Beach,” as it appears on Third Ear Band’s "Music from Macbeth", illustrates the atmospheric, improvisation-based method that gave Polanski a wide range of aural options to mix into the film’s actual audio track:

Here, Polanski uses the band’s percussive “stabs” on a guitar string to give hallucinatory dimension to the vision of a floating dagger that coaxes him to murder, which he does to a flurry of almost panicked-sounding hand drumming, discordant cello moans, and more pointed guitar shrieks.

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

New 4K digital restored edition of Roman Polanski's "Macbeth" out soon.

 

A brand new 4K digital restored edition of Roman Polanski's "Macbeth", approved by the film ditector, will be published on next 23 September 2014 in DVD and Blu-Ray versions by The Criterion Collection (http://www.criterion.com/).

With a brand new cover designed by Sarah Habibi, this edition will show these  very interesting materials:

"Toil and Trouble: Making “Macbeth": a new documentary featuring interviews with Polanski, producer Andrew Braunsberg, assistant executive producer Victor Lownes, and actors Francesca Annis and Martin Shaw;
"Polanski Meets Macbeth", a 1971 documentary by Frank Simon featuring rare footage of the film’s cast and crew at work;
Interview with coscreenwriter Kenneth Tynan from a 1971 episode of "The Dick Cavett Show";
“Two Macbeths”, a segment from a 1972 episode of the British television series "Aquarius" featuring Polanski and theater director Peter Coe;
Original trailers;
An essay by critic Terrence Rafferty. 

Even if with very high prices ($ 29.95 the DVD, $ 39.95 the Blu-Ray), this rendition seems the so-called definitive one, maybe with some things related to the Third Ear Band...

Read the official sheet here

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