Showing posts with label Reflections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reflections. Show all posts

Monday, May 30, 2016

Addict Culture review on Red to Red

We're blushing from the long and very nice review on our Joxfield ProjeX & Ryoko Ono album "Red to Red".
As I don't speak French I tried a Google translation of it and it seems ok, still nice words.
ThanX a lot, Addict Culture!
*****
That's when it overcomes its codes and limitations that music is often the most exciting. And that's mostly when it merges into a cultural melting pot that currents appear that the new unfold.
joxfield & ryoko ono
Joxfield Projex & Ryoko Ono released this year an album that stands out from its references. Everything starts under auspices of the least hostile recalling Merzbow and sonic walls, and electro and repetitive rhythm gives almost to stomp. Certainly, the contours of the disc does not call for the Dance Floor, but we are surprised to think of some old guards of the new wave. Soon, this rhythmic smoky and cold decor like a forgotten corridor leads you into a troubling world.
If the rhythm obviously did not want to dispose of its binary structure, the background to it, continues to evolve, to move, crawl into languor. The saxophonist Ryoko Ono appeared after a few minutes, but does not provide for much heat to the decor. The saxophone is suffering for a long time a cutesy image systematically synonymous with popular and dripping theatrics of good feelings. It would still forget too quickly the big names that have passed through the history of this instrument, especially in jazz.
Imagine Coltrane and Dolphy at a summit with the most electro of Nine Inch Nails and Yellow Swans. Ryoko Ono deals welts this heartbreaking music billowing over you constantly, like an Indian round that never ends.
Red Red To which gives its name to the endless march album for an unknown destination but with the conviction that the answer is at the end of the trip. Then comes Unexplored Territories, second title of this album which has only two.
Here, the path and the landscape surrounding it are completely different. In fact, impossible to know where one is. The references are the same, but the removal of a rhythmic changes the whole gives and withdraws this valuable and solid music both the little railing she had. If in the first half, the disc was structured, repetitive, here everything explodes.
Abandoned lyricism wave, jagged perimeter security, tablecloths become twisted, overlapping, and electronic sounds narcotic vapors gradually add bravery shots a free jazz saxophone. This is all the uniqueness of the album: a saxophone free sometimes hysterical, ecstatic, and the slow sounds that dry slowly, flirting here with Tangerine Dream and others uninviting ambient references.
The assembly is covered with strange noisy ocean waves that evoke waves revenantes no water, no more than carting sand for fine relief worldwide. Within minutes, all the construction work of the first face is wiped out in favor of dull and gloomy colors, leading you into a fascinating and faded atmosphere.
The sounds that roll and burrow the hollow recesses retire one by one and not let some sound tracks, taught here and there, while enhancing the feeling of abandonment, loneliness, facing a record that poses an atmosphere in the same way that music and that raises questions for 40 minutes wonder: Where am I?

http://addict-culture.com/joxfield-projex-ryoko-ono/

Saturday, June 16, 2012

And don't forget...


...Yep, don't forget, today's Bloomsday!








































JJ & The 1st Edition of THE Book.

Bloomsday is the day on which James Joyce mighty masterpiece Ulysses is set in Dublin, on 16th of June 1904.
So, all of you (or the few of you?) who haven't been there, in the book, just go get it, read it, the avant garde of bookishness. Once there you'll never come back again...
O'

NOW some time for vacation (see previous post)

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

What's Up, John?




- I have no sponsorship at all, not backed up by some record companies and are therefore forced to personally ensure that the economic part circuit, which is a heavier work than you might think. But if you refuse to sell your soul the long way is the only way to go.


From a John Lydon interview on PiL in Nya Upplagan (New Issue), May 7th 2012.
Could have been about Joxfield, as well as many other Hard working "free" artists

O'

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Shit Bloody Shit ! ! ! - Thomas is Dead ! ! !

Not only being legendary co-founder of Träd Gräs & Stenar, Thomas Mera Gartz was also a masterful wizzard with the rhythm sticks, one of our favourite psych-trance-space-rock percussionists ever. A couple of years ago TG & S unexpectedly lost their bass-player Torbjörn Abelli and today I did get the news that Thomas unexpectedly as well has past away, getting rapidly ill on Saturday, dying on Sunday. It's big loss not only for family and close relatives, but also to the music world, especially his band-mates who recently re-established TG & S, trying to get something together after the death of Torbjörn. There was music that had to be played. What will happen now? I saw the "new" band some months ago and I was stunned. With no disrespect, but they were better than ever. TMG & Joxfield? It's mentioned on this blog the 12th of April, the Self-Unit version featuring TMG's percussion constructions. http://oaxofjoxfield.blogspot.se/2012/04/unique-rarity-joxfield-projex-guested.html Less than three weeks ago I wrote him a mail regarding thoughts about re-establishing our collaboration. I knew he was busy with new TG&S music and didn't expect any quick answer, but nevertheless he had written some nice words about our music to me and I thought his playing to our music would be The Right Thing! This didn't happen, will never... R.I.P. Mighty Thomas! O & Y

Monday, March 19, 2012

171588



We're getting close to three years since our first free download releases, "Bits 'n' Pieces # 1 - 13" and "Picnic", both released by Clinical Archives on 5th of April 2009 with download source from Internet Archive.
Since then our nine albums have been downloaded 171.588 times. Quite a few... The BIG hit is "Shimmering Mah No 1" with more than 35.000 downloads.

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=joxfield%20projex

O'

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Monkees & Merzbow


When people ask me what music I like I use to say "Monkees, Merzbow, whatever.."
Davy died today in cardiac arrest, only 66 years old. The Daydream Believer has dreamt his last dream - RIP!

But, Merzbow lives on - HURRAY!!!!


O'

Friday, January 6, 2012

Reflections on Keith Tippett's Ark, Fire! Orchestra & Stuff



13 days since Christmas Eve, the Christmas tree still looks great, not a needle on the floor.
Sitting by the kitchen table, writing some diary notes, looking out trough the window, the sky is all blue, it looks a bit cold outside, no snow, but a beautiful winter day in this normally rainy city.
The music that recently has been played is the 2LP version of Keith Tippett's Ark "Frames - Music for an Imaginary Film", a FANTASTIC album with as well FANTASTIC players (Keith Tippett, Stan Tracey, Elton Dean, Trevor Watts, Brian Smith, Larry Stabbins, Marc Charig, Henry Lowther, Dave Amis, Nick Evans, Maggie Nicols, Julie Tippetts, Steve Levin, Rod Skeaping, Phil Wachsmann, Geoffry Wharton, Alexandra Robbins, Tim Cramer, Peter Kowald, Harry Miller, Louis Moholy, Frank Perry - Homage to all of them!). Jazz (or "jazz?") composition can't be much better than this. It invites to improvisation and collective joy.
But the reflection goes: Why are there so few of them, these compositions for big ensembles? And I'm not talking Big Band jazz. Ok, it might be a matter of time, money and lots of grey hair (for the composer/director), but nevertheless, why are there so few of them?
Do I have any answer? Of course not.

Which brings me to next Fridays event at Fylkingen, Stockholm, where Fire! Orchestra will bring something to us. The core of Fire! (Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling & Andreas Werlin) will lead (or maybe like Miles did, Directions by...) an ensemble of about 30 people coming from highly skilled improvisation, jazz, psych, etc scene of Sweden.
Where to put the expectations? Well, maybe a bit unfair to the involved (they're only humans, aren't they?), but the expactations might be a bit sky high, or at least close to the tree tops, the star of the Christmas tree, or where you put it yourself... Whatever it will be, I hope they record it.
And the two bums of Joxfield will be sitting there in the audience...
http://www.fylkingen.se/node/1556

O'