Favourite Cuneiform Albums?

[Trane]

OK, for the category A that I specified above (I exclude the bands I mention in the reissue category, despite their being 1st release on Cuneiform >> so don't expect UZ or Present here)

Miriodor- Avanti (or Jonglerie)
Guapo - 5 Suns
Thinking Plague - In Extremis
NeBeLNeST - debut
Djm Karet - A Night For Baku

jokers:
Deus Ex Machina - Cinque
Forgas BP - Axe Du Fou
Happy Family - Toscco

4. John Surman NDR workshop (flashpoint)
5. Soft Machine, NDR workshop
6. Soft Machine, Grides
7. Harry Miller, Isipingo
9. Gilgamesh, Arriving Twice
10. Michael Gibbs, Back in the Days
11. Graham Coliier, Workpoints

Well, that's damned close to my top 5/7 category B section (Broadcasts and archivals), but I will include PDP's Camere-Zimmer-Rooms in there as well (though I tend to think of it as a legit album, more than an archival release
That Graham Collier double album Workpoints has been spining in the car for months


For the reissue category:

Anything UZ >> With UZed as my fave (though it's not a reissue, AFAIK)
Most Present albums >> with Le Poison as my fave
A few Heldon/Pinhas albums
Some of the Hopper/Dean albums
the Muffins debut album

[SteveSly]

Tough Call, but I will go with:
Guapo – 5 Suns
Djam Karet – Burning The Hard City
Djam Karet – Live At Orion
Far Corner – Far Corner
Gosta Berlings Saga - Their most recent (I can’t remember the title)

Steve Sly

[Mister Triscuits]

Would love to know which it was; if it is one of my favorites, I'll break my rule and confirm....

Hate to admit. It was As the World Grits.

[NogbadTheBad]

Oh Wow this is going to be tough but I'll give it a go

Top 10 (no order)
Cheer-Accident - Fear Draws Misfortune
Miriodor - Avanti!
Univers Zero - Ceux Du Dehors
Guapo - 5 Suns
Ahvak - s/t
Thinking Plague - In Extremis
Uz Jsme Doma - Caves
Forgas Band Phenomena - L'Ax Du Fou
U Totem - Strange Attractor
Present - Triskaidekaphobie / Le poison qui rend fou



Though I pretty much love everything - Univers Zero, Hamster Theater, Present, Thinking Plague, Kerman-related, Guapo, Forgas, Cheer-Accident, Miriodor, Alec Redfearn, Radio Massacre International, Djam Karet, Far Corner

I'm also exploring a lot more of Cuneiforms Jazz side though its still early.

[zombywoof]

You're talking about perhaps my favorite record label, so I can't possibly choose. I will take the opportunity to ask what the proper pronunciation of "Ceux du Dehors" is... Up until this point, I've referred to it in conversation as "that great album I can't pronounce..." :-)

[Hobo Chang Ba]

Hmm...idk years that well so I'll just give a general top 5:

SM - Noisette
U Totem - S/t
Guapo - 5 Suns
Present - Triskaidekaphobie / Le poison qui rend fou
The Muffins - Open City

Honorable mentions:
UZ - mostly everything, but I'll choose Heresie
Heldon - ditto, but I'll choose Un Reve...
Miriodor - Elastic Juggling
Ahvak - S/t
Doctor Nerve - ditto UZ here too...but I'll pick Out To Bomb.../AO as my choice.

[Steve F.]

Hate to admit. It was As the World Grits.

Laugh.

Funny.

Well....I adored Grits, and they were a giant influence on me during a very formative time of my development of interest in 'out' and 'difficult' music, and doing that album made me happy for multiple reasons, including getting to know those folks just a little bit and getting their music out (sadly, also, just a little bit) to people beyond the DC area.

But, truthfully, that album isn't quite in my personal top 10 of albums we've released in terms of strictly THE MUSIC ITSELF, although I have huge nostalgic fits of joy whenever I happen to hear it.

[Steve F.]

what the proper pronunciation of "Ceux du Dehors"

I'm not good at phonetics, but it is:

sou (like soup without the "p")
du (with the u pronounced very short)
deh-oar

It translates literally as Those From the Outside, but it means "The Outsiders".

[chalkpie]

Shit, this was harder than I thought.

1) Ceux du Dehors
2) Guapo - 5 Suns
3) Ahvak - s/t
4) Rich Woodson - Control and Resistance (seriously one of the most amazing albums I have ever heard still)
5) Thinking Plague - In Extremis

Suck on this, Les.

[zombywoof]

I'm not good at phonetics, but it is:

sou (like soup without the "p")
du (with the u pronounced very short)
deh-oar

It translates literally as Those From the Outside, but it means "The Outsiders".

Thanks, Steve! I'm sure all of my friends will now be blown away by my impeccable pronunciation... :-)

[nosebone]

Hate to admit. It was As the World Grits.

Yes, yes, yes.

I was so enthralled with this recording many years ago that I tracked down Tom Wright ( guitar, violin) and let him know.

[Zeuhlmate]

Ceux du Dehors

http://translate.google.com/#fr/en/Ceux%20du%20Dehors

There is a loudspeaker button - press it, and a female voice will pronounce it.

[Trane]

I will take the opportunity to ask what the proper pronunciation of "Ceux du Dehors" is... Up until this point, I've referred to it in conversation as "that great album I can't pronounce..." :-)

I'm not good at phonetics, but it is:

sou (like soup without the "p")
du (with the u pronounced very short)
deh-oar

It translates literally as Those From the Outside, but it means "The Outsiders".

Don't agree with the "soup" pronounciation of "ceux" (that album was anything but a soup, anyway ), but the rest is OK

"eu" is difficult to find its english equivalent, but this damn close to the letter E as you learn it in the french alphabet pronounciation. It's almlost pronouced as a longer version the french demonstrative article "ce" (singular od "ces")... the X is only there because of the plural and is never pronounced


BTW, Steve, as an aside, because your soup example: The closest one could find in English the prounciation of the letter E in french would be as in supper (as in Supper's Ready) where both vowels are pronounced as the french E, >> which is funny because it means souper in French (the meal were soup was served)

Ceux du Dehors

http://translate.google.com/#fr/en/Ceux%20du%20Dehors

There is a loudspeaker button - press it, and a female voice will pronounce it.

Yup, this is perfect

[adewolf]

Frank, good to see you starting threads.
I can't think of a Cuneiform album I don't like.

[arturs]

Nice to see Rich Woodson popping up on a few lists. He didn't make mine because I limited myself to 5, but if I had listed 10 (or even 7) he would have been on mine too.
It might just be my favorite "rehearsal intensive" disc of all time.

The clip below is from his 2nd (not Cuneiform) disc but it largely hoes the same row.

[jkelman]

I started throwing together a list, and these were all on there:



Except 1 of the Yo's is on Shanachie.

Oops, of course you're right...but my fave is on Cuneiform

[Udi Koomran]

Glad to see Guapo Ahvak Cheer Accident Rich Woodson getting multiple mentions
Hughscore Delta Flora is a bit underrated

[Scrotum Scissor]

Rich Woodson - Control and Resistance (seriously one of the most amazing albums I have ever heard still)

I'm very, very glad to see the love for this completely staggering release. Although probably somewhat closer to "contemporary jazz based on the principles of aleatoric modern classical" than anything directly "rock", Woodson was highly influenced by artists like Zappa and Watchtower when he created this. I don't think I ever heard an album which to this degree succeeded in merging the serenely melodic with the otherworldly intricate, and expressed with such a sense of understaded finesse, careful detail and attention to dynamic texture. There's literally something happening on multiple levels at each second of the composed meter here, rendering it all the more sublime when they finally let go and venture into both improv and circular patterns in that lengthy closing track.

I absolutely adore this album, which incidentally also was the first time I got to hear the inimitable John Hollenbeck.

[Steve F.]

Rich Woodson - Control and Resistance (seriously one of the most amazing albums I have ever heard still)

I'm very, very glad to see the love for this completely staggering release. <snip>

The demos were better....

really!

[gregory]

U Totem s/t
Miriodor - s/t
Hugh Hopper Hopper Tunity Box

[Scrotum Scissor]

The demos were better.... really!

In that case I'm - er - glad I never heard them...

[Baribrotzer]

I also have and enjoy the Rich Woodson - my copy actually came from France, because one of the vendors at the RIO Festival happened to have it. Good music, if a tough and extremely dense listen.

Steve has said, from what I remember, that it was the worst-selling Cuneiform release ever. I can see why that might be the case: In terms of content, it amounts to avant-prog shading into modern classical music. But it sounds far more like jazz - yes, there's rock guitar, but otherwise it involves two saxes, upright bass, and a jazz drummer playing light, skittering patterns on a small kit. And so I suspect that the jazz fans tended to pass on it because of the minutely composed and mostly non-improvised material, and the avant-proggers tended to pass on it because of the jazz-like sound.

On a certain meta-level, it reminds me of Magma - not in sounding like them, for it does not, but in possibly following a related methodology: A jazz critic once remarked that jazz composers tend to follow up on the ideas of their improvising contemporaries, write them down, and codify them. Ellington built on the innovations of the Swing Era players, for example, while Mingus and Monk drew upon the innovations of be-bop. And even though the sound of his music comes mostly from rock, Christian Vander has a similar relationship to John Coltrane; his huge extended pieces draw directly upon the repeating vamps of Coltrane's modal period, and less directly, tried to evoke the transcendent feel of J.C.'s solos with endlessly-building vocal ensembles. So you could say that Woodson might have built upon free jazz: that, inspired by the sound of it, he composes music with many of the same characteristics - in particular, the multiple melodic lines meshing and splitting and crossing in an ever-shifting multitonal polyphony.

It also reminds me a little of Robert F. Graettinger - both in its extreme musical density, and in that it is music that isn't really jazz, but is greatly inspired by jazz.

[Steve F.]

Steve has said, from what I remember, that it was the worst-selling Cuneiform release ever.

Steve has never said that.

It's also not true.

[Hobo Chang Ba]

Count me in as another fan of R Woodson. A true wonderment that it was scored as it was to sound like it does.

I will admit though...I think I prefer The Nail....

[Scrotum Scissor]

And so I suspect that the jazz fans tended to pass on it because of the minutely composed and mostly non-improvised material, and the avant-proggers tended to pass on it because of the jazz-like sound.

Well, this certainly was my experience back on its release when I played it to buddies of mine who were either the one or the other; I even remember a guy leaving in a provoked frenzy during a sit-through listening/drinking binge when I had this album running. He was a drummer, and I happened to ask him how on earth he would have approached this music from the angle of that specific instrument (although much of the percussion line here obviously was as strictly formatted as the rest of the chart).

The only other release I know of where the concept mildly resembles that of Rich Woodson's on Control & Resistance, is the Junk Genius project by Ben Goldberg, Trevor Dunn etc. - and even they employed a lot more improv than the Ellipsis group. Funnily enough, the drummer I mentioned was a huge T. Dunn all-eater, prompting me to wonder whether he hadn't really reflected on the possibility that Junk Genius were mainly going through extreme notations and in fact not merely free-playing.