China - Vangelis

Track list:

1. Chung Kuo
2. The Long March
3. The Dragon
4. The Plum Blossom
5. The Tao of Love
6. The Little Fete
7. Yin & Yang
8. Himalaya
9. Summit

Running time: 41 minutes
Released: 1979

Time for some music older than I am. At some point in the early/mid 2000s I decided to buy up a load of Vangelis albums to explore his work further. I had always loved the Blade Runner soundtrack, and had some things beyond that already, but acquired to fill in gaps. I don't recall ever spending much time or attention on the things I picked up though. China was one of these.

The opening sounds remind me not of Asia, but of helicopters and dystopian sci-fi or cyberpunk. That feeling is enforced further by the tinny electronic notes that carry the first semblance of tune. I rather like the dated darkness, very much of a kind with the Blade Runner score. I suspect this is not going to last as a theme throughout the disc but we'll see. A more recognisible oriental influence is not far behind this opening salvo - whilst still flavoured by our artist's penchant for synths, the patterns are instantly calling the region to mind. Stereotypical sounds, able to be thus because they are, presumably based on enough genuine material to take root.

My player categorises this as "New Age"; how quaint. I get it, but really? Hippy-ish? Akin to crystal healing and tie-dye?  OK, so now it is me being unfair with stereotype. Deliberately and to make that point.

As an aside, it occurs to me that Blade Runner is probably now the most oft-referenced post that I have made or have to make at this stage. I wouldn't be surprised if it remains so at the point I either finish, or more likely give up on, this endeavor.

After a pleasing predominantly keyboard piece we get a more urgent, insistent number, synth pulses evoking lasers, quick tight repeating notes bringing a tension, and a high pitched bell-like sounding of an alarm. I suppose it could represent the dangers of a dragon, but it doesn't evoke that very strongly in my view. Oddly the vision I get is some garish, epileptic-fit-inducing intro sequence to an anime show. But that is just me being mean with caricature and stereotype again. On the record, we get back to some more typical sounds, but they morph into a weird cross between synth prog-rock and a curtailed (I initially typed castrated for some reason) loop cut from a western classical composition.

It bears saying that most of these pieces are short, skipping by quickly and easily. There is one 10 minute plus epic on here, but only 2 more are over 5 minutes and there are a few below three. This makes the New Age tag even less of a genuine thing for me. This isn't pretentious and overlong, it isn't all out there, they are shorter, more purposeful compositions. Sure they have an odd tint to them with the waw and the synthesised sounds but they have a heart and soul, too. I am finding them rather enjoyable, though the sudden voice interposing itself over The Little Fete feels out of place and unwelcome. It is in English, spoken with a strong accent. It doesn't destroy the beauty of the simple background arrangement but it does rather dampen my enjoyment of the piece until I adjust to it a few sentences later.

There is a nice twang to the bassy sounds in Yin & Yang which follows, at least initially. I think I see the point, the aim, of the album in this tune. Reverence to an idea, but whilst still fundamentally producing a Vangelis record, marrying up the influences of Chinese composition to the synth wizardry and electronic sensibilities of the composer. Somewhere in there I lost my attention for a second, reading banning notices (other people's not mine) on a webforum. Silly me. Not what I am here for. In the meantime the epic has started, Himalaya.

It sounds like this will have a slow build, I hope that it delivers a climax somewhere, because there is nothing (well, not very much) more frustrating than a long piece with time to build that settles instead for an elongated and unfulfilled tension instead. The early exchanges remind me of 1492: Conquest of Paradise though committed to record a decade and more earlier. It rumbles along with a steady rhythmic structure, a dark overall tone and top end themes that fade in and out. The most piano-like of them is actually really nice, but some of the other layers up there I am less keen on. Almost 7 minutes in, and I do not feel that it is building. This is no crescendo, alas. The music is pleasant enough, and as I start to type something about it stagnating, some louder, more Blade Runner-esque electronics cut in. It's great that they arrived, but it was a little sudden, rather than building organically to the volume and focus. They go again pretty quickly.

I think that last paragraph pretty much works as a generalisation of the composite Vangelis record from my perspective. A lot of good or nice elements, overall very pleasant, but ultimately frustrating in a number of cases - content to meander along, and light on lasting impact. Blade Runner is a notable exception in this, and I think on balance that is down to the fact we have visuals to pair it with - visuals that can be called to mind when hearing the soundtrack again. If that sounds like I am being down on things... well, no. I rather like what I have heard over the last 40 minutes. I just also feel pangs of disappointment that these compositions didn't quite deliver a lasting impression as strong as they might have done.

8:30 - Weather Report

Track List:

1. Black Market
2. Teen Town
3. A Remark You Made
4. Slang
5. In A Silent Way
6. Birdland
7. Thanks For The Memory
8. Badia/Boogie Woogie Waltz Medley
9. 8:30
10. Brown Street
11. The Orphan
12. Sightseeing

Runtime: 71 minutes
Released: 1979

The first album in this library released before I was born, and a primarily live one to boot. My copy (which came in a big bundle of jazz remasters) seems to be missing Scarlett Woman. That might be to do with total running time and getting the album onto a CD but it seems a little odd.

I have hardly listened to any off the jazz discs I got in the collection when I picked this up, and that is remiss of me. However I feel that a lot of older music does not really stand up under a modern appreciation: only the best media transcends its time and we see that with badly dated films all the time. Black Market's spangly sound makes me think that I might be right to worry for this.,  Fusion is nothing if not of its time. A specific reaction to and progression from the jazz and electric roots it draws from. As I type, I seem to have encountered the obligatory saxophone solo. I hate the culture of "every player needs their solo" that seems pervasive in jazz; often it will strike in the middle of what is otherwise a fantastic collective piece and (for me) completely ruin the mood. It doesn't seem from first impressions that Weather Report left that staple out. Darn it.

I am noticing that long tracks make this enterprise harder. They are great when you get into them and lose yourself in 9 minutes of musical magic, because the time flies by before you notice. However when their impression is not so strong, and I am trying to actively listen, capture and comment, I find myself with an awful lot of time to think about what I am writing... which probably makes the result less organic and less interesting. I quite like Teen Town though. It is funky enough to keep me nodding my head and look forward to the listens of Stanley Clarke albums later should I keep going to "S" (that will be years away if so). It is also busy enough over the bass to draw me in. Do like.

I do not remember where I got my start in jazz. I remember my parents had Brubeck's Time Out (also due to appear much later in the billing) and I think i must have fallen for it then. Miles Davis cemented it; Kind of Blue appeared on so many seminal album lists that I picked up a copy in my teens and my jazz library grew from there. I find it interesting that I managed to do this, because in many ways jazz suffers from the same problems as classical in terms of accessibility and good purchasing decisions go - a direct result of the lack of mainstream media attention. I struggle to find new interesting jazz purchases to this day, but yet I managed to build up a reasonable library of stuff - from classics to contemporaries, though admittedly the odd box set (like this came in) helped there.

I like that A Remark You Made changes the tone completely - slower, softer, smoother. It is not in itself massively interesting, but it speaks to variation which is a positive. Slang is back to the funkier end of things but in a sparse kind of way that I can approve of. The album is growing on me.


As I try to sit back with my beer (Hook Norton Brewery's Twelve Days - their Christmas ale, but apparently my case will not keep long enough!) and listen, my mind wanders... today should have been a day of social gaming... online Bloodbowl in the league I play in followed by in person boardgames. They both fell through and I'm not too sad about that. Instead I got to play some more Divinity: Original Sin co-op with a friend, and whilst the game is getting more frustrating (imitating all sorts of bad GMing) it's good to spend time with T before I go see him in Stockholm in a couple of weeks; its 10 years since we last met up. Also been X-Comming again just days after I threw my controller in disgust. PC is less prone to suddenly putting me somewhere I did not want to be. I mention all this, because it is also what freed me up to do this listen; had I been out this afternoon as originally planned, I doubt I would be here with a pre-dinner drink to pay attention to this album which I am definitely now liking more than I was expecting to. Sure, some of the sounds are a little cheesy for a 2014 ear but there is love there... you can hear it in the crowd's applause.

I have hit a slow number. I wish I had a snack; I have not yet eaten this evening and the sedate pace of the current work has me thinking about dinner... chorizo burgers, tender-stem broccoli and whatever else I can scrape together to go with. I'm running low on food choices; with a west-facing kitchen it is not pleasant cooking in the full evening sun (a problem that will go away soon, now the evenings are shortening noticeably) so I have taken to sandwiches and the like. I am out of bread though, and in need of a proper meal. Shopping can wait; I have enough to cobble up a tasty accompaniment. The middle of this disc is a little here-and-there, a bit of this, bit of that. It does not feel like it hangs together well.

Wow. The title track starts oddly - a pastiche of folk music, a radio announcer with a British accent and a noisy mess - before it gives way to something more recognisable and reasonable, only to end before it really began. Man, the 70s must have been weird.

I am in the home straight now - Brown Street is the last long one. Pleasant enough I guess, but the bass/percussion combo puts me in mind of a bored wedding disco band rather than musicians enjoying their jobs. Cross that with a hint of pre-Faltermeyer synth heroics (seriously, it is only a step away from Beverley Hills Cop in places, or is that me projecting?) and it leaves me confused. I have to say that (hyperbolically speaking) what sounds like synth-derived steel drums is probably one of the worst sins of the electronic age. I am into the non-live tracks and they have less energy than the live ones. I think I am ready for the listen to end before the disc has run out... I have dinner to get, after all.

Here we go then, last track. Sightseeing should, generally, be a pleasant experience and, for me, a sedate one. The track is not sedate enough for the name. I do not really have any more to add, and now neither do Weather Report... so we meander to an unfulfilling end, just like the album. Seriously - go listen to Sightseeing then tell me you think that is a good end to an hour-plus long ouevre.