363: I Eat the Sun and Drink the Rain, by Sven Helbig

Sven Helbig (Germany)
I Eat the Sun and Drink the Rain (2016)
10 tracks, 43 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Classical music has been used to complement and add melodic interest to electronic dance music since the latter genre’s beginnings – when you think of those epic, anthemic dance tracks, that classical sound is particularly strong, either from samples of big sweeping strings or the influence of the awe-inspiring impact of a huge symphony orchestra in full flight. The use of club music in classical styles, however, is explored much less often.

Composer Sven Helbig, in his work I Eat the Sun and Drink the Rain, brings electronics into his music in a way that complements the classical, rather than the other way around. The principle sound here is choral music, the voices contributed by the Vocalconsort Berlin. It’s a very old sound. The choir sing in reverential tones and the harmonies and counterpoint that are used are reminiscent of medieval music – mostly using wide open chords which occasionally drift into friction-filled dissonances with pleasing resolutions – but they do lean in subtly unorthodox directions now and again, showing the influence of modern art music and even jazz, but only in a way that benefits the overall atmosphere. Although Helbig himself wrote many of the texts that are sung throughout the work (in German), the sacred sound is made solid with the inclusion of the Kyrie and the Agnus Dei, both common elements of the sung Latin mass. The composition for choir alone is suitably beautiful, powerful and haunting.

So far, so classical. But Helbig’s work comes into its own with the use of live electronics, performed by the composer himself. The way he uses the electronic sounds is very similar to the way they’re used in house music, but the context in which they’re used gives those sounds a very different feel. He basically takes the exact opposite direction to club music: the beat is far from the main focus, to the degree that it is hardly present at all. Where a ‘beat’ is manifested, it’s a world away from four-to-the-floor kick and clap-snare; rather, it is a subdued, even shy, rhythm described by a crunchy synth hit of a similar quality to a bendir frame drum. Instead, the dance music makes itself heard in its texture the way its sounds and effects are layered up. A great example is in the track (or, in Helbig's terminology, ‘episode’) of ‘Kyrie’. The first sound heard is an electronic drone. The note provided by the drone stays consistent but its harmonic quality is ever-shifting. As the choir comes in with their overlapping lines, the drone seems to ‘pick up’ on the sound of their voices, and the reverb and delay effects fold those voices back into the drone so that it evolves throughout the piece. At points, it means that it is hard to distinguish whether you’re hearing human voice or synthesised tone.

This use of electronic sounds and influences from dance music in I Eat the Sun and Drink the Rain are so subtle that it seems strange to focus on, but it nevertheless defines the sound. Most of the time, the listener will probably be unaware of the impact of these elements – that’s the point, after all – but without them it would be such a completely different atmosphere, and probably one ‘lacking’ in some indiscernible way. To use any sonic element in such an all-important yet understated way is the sign of acute musical intelligence, and to marry classical and religious choral music with electronic dance music in such a way is absolutely fascinating and shows real, felt knowledge of both styles. If classical music has a raison d’être it must surely be to look into the past and future in equal measure – in this work, Sven Helbig captures that dual consciousness in the most satisfying way.

334: Cool Spring, by David Rothenberg, Bernhard Wöstheinrich and Jay Nicholas

David Rothenberg, Bernhard Wöstheinrich and Jay Nicholas (USA/Germany)
Cool Spring (2016)
5 tracks, 51 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

David Rothenberg’s music challenges the accepted – or, rather, assumed – definitions of what music is or can be. In fact, he goes further and adds questions about who or what musicians are or can be. Big themes, then. You can see why Rothenberg is not just an accomplished musician but a professor of philosophy at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Using his clarinets, a sharp mind for jazz and improvisatory music and, most importantly, an attentive and unfaltering ear, Rothenberg has plumbed new depths in research into non-human music. Over the past 15 years, he has released books, films, articles and albums about the music inherent in the lives of insects, marine mammals and birds, including creating majesterial, uncanny and ultimately ephemeral collaborations between himself and the animals, performing together on equal footings. I have been lucky enough to witness several performances by Rothenberg; by far the most memorable have been several occasions, from late night to early morning, where he created stunning improvised music with nightingales in the parks of Berlin, some of which have been captured in the recent album Nightingale Cities and film Nightingales in Berlin.

That was somewhat of a diversion. In Cool Spring, Rothenberg’s collaborators are a pair of sapient hominids like himself, electronicist Bernhard Wöstheinrich and bassist Jay Nicholas. The music is deep and intense while still managing to be relaxing in its own way; it’s chill-out that relieves parts of your mind and fully engages others. It does this as a combination of ambience, free jazz, broken downtempo beats, avant-garde, environmental sounds, spacey electronica and even hints at styles as varied as dubstep, folksong, classical. It’s surely art music in every sense of the term.

But even though this album is inescapably humanly organised sound, Rothenberg’s adventures into the sonics and songs of the animal kingdom are all over it. The most direct evidence is in some of Wöstheinrich’s samples of birds and insects, but the way Rothenberg approaches the clarinet, in his phrasing and his melodiousness, the way his lines flit and flirt with each other, obeying their own rhythmic rules but never clashing with the rest of the created aural environment. The whole flow of the pieces on this album, the shapes they trace and the stories their developments tell, is impacted by the natural world around us.

In all of his work, with humans or other animals, David Rothenberg creates in harmony with the sounds of our living planet, rather than operating above it, and is always compelling while he does it, be it in the medium of music, film or words.

106: The Bressingham Voigt

The Bressingham Voigt (1976)
13 tracks, 53 minutes
Stream or download on Archive.org

I think this is only one of two albums on the list that don’t actually have an ‘artist’ as such: all the music on this one is played by steam. To be more precise, it’s steam as pumped through a Voigt Ruth Model 35a 69-Keyless Band Organ, built in 1930. The organ was built in Germany, lived in Bressingham Gardens and Steam Museum for most of its time (hence the name), and was bought in 2002 by a collector in the Netherlands, where it still performs regularly.

The sound of the thing is really charming. There are loads of organ pipes of different timbres, including flutes, trompettes, oboes and strings, all with different types of tremolo available to them; there’s also a xylophone in there and a snare drum and some cymbals. And all of those are programmed into hole-punched reels – I can only imagine the amount of meticulous effort that goes into programming all that; unfortunately the name of the programmer has been lost to time. They’re not simple pieces either. The repertoire on this album is a mixture of mostly light classical pieces, Viennese waltzes, chamber dance styles and marches, mostly, although there are some outliers, such as a ‘Medley of 1954’ of some pop tunes of the day, including Hank William’s ‘Jambalaya On The Bayou’. It’s all so cheerful!

But let’s be honest, I didn’t stumble across this album out of the blue, or from a pre-existing love of mechanical music as such. No, it’s another video game soundtrack! The game Rollercoaster Tycoon from 1999* is a theme park building and management sim, and it’s one of the most perfect games of all time – it’s perfectly weighted, it’s challenging while still being incredibly relaxing and it has a wonderful aesthetic. It doesn’t have music of a soundtrack though, aside from a theme tune when you boot up the game and ambient noises of the theme park you’ve created. And that’s where this album comes in. The only music featured in the game itself is played whenever you have a merry-go-round going in your park. When it came to choosing what sounds the ride made, developer Chris Sawyer remembered an album in his dad’s record collection that would fit the bill; that was The Bressingham Voigt and so all the music in the game is just taken directly from this album.

Like the humongous dweeb that I am, when I learnt that the music from Rollercoaster Tycoon wasn’t just available as an album, but on an old vinyl from 1976, I had to get my hands on it. And I did! Pleasingly cheap too, from discogs, although now you can download it directly from Archive.org.

People have told me that they think it’s creepy – it reminds them of abandoned fairgrounds and killer clowns, they say – and I understand that a little bit, but for me it’s just too jolly! I guess it helps that it’s connected to hours and hours of Rollercoaster Tycoon in my head, but very little of the music that I listen to is so unabashedly light-hearted, so considering I’ve found some, I want to hold on to that. It’s just steam, a load of pipes and some really wholesome noises coming out of them. And if it doesn’t make you want to ride on a creaking wooden merry-go-round to feel the wind rushing through your Victorian pin-curls with one of those comically-sized lollipops in hand…well, maybe you had a bad experience with a clown when you were little, I dunno.

*It was actually released 20 years ago to the day that I’m writing this – cool!

059: Fiesta Songs, by Señor Coconut and his Orchestra

Señor Coconut and His Orchestra (Germany/Denmark)
Fiesta Songs (2003)
11 tracks, 44 minutes
Bandcamp • Spotify • iTunes

Uwe Schmidt is a man with a million aliases. Most of his musical guises are based on various types of electronica – techno, IDM, ambient – but after he moved to Santiago de Chile in the 1990s, he put together a Latin orchestra and added an extra alias to the pile, becoming Señor Coconut. His previous work brought an element of amusement to the proceedings, and his albums as Señor Coconut carried on that theme – the first big release under that name was a tribute to Kraftwerk, performed as if they were a traditional South American ensemble. Fiesta Songs dropped most of that ‘traditional’ ruse, but the musical humour is still there.

Most of the tracks on the album are covers of pop and rock music – ‘Smoke on the Water,’ ‘Riders on the Storm,’ ‘Beat It,’ ‘Oxygène, Part 2,’ that sort of thing – as if they were done by a New York-style salsa orchestra, and bringing other styles such as cha-cha-cha, mambo and bolero into the mix. So, you have an ensemble of mostly German and Danish musicians playing Latin music with a heavy wink and under a ridiculous name. Yes, it may be a little bit gimmicky, but who cares? It’s fun, and good! Bonus points for a couple of really cool tenor sax solos by [checks discogs.com] Thomas Hass scattered throughout.

Fiesta Songs isn’t entirely divorced from Schmidt/Coconut’s electronic roots. There are drum machines, programmed doodads and creative production on a couple of tracks, and even when there isn’t, there is sometimes some vague feeling of electronica in the way that percussion and horns are used. It’s most audible on the appropriately-titled ‘Electrolatino,’ one of only three original compositions on the album.

With this album, Señor Coconut y su conjunto create a combination that I love – light-hearted and humorous music, but played with high-level musicianship. It’s fun for all layers of the brain!

037: Come Out, by Roughcut

Roughcut feat. Sesco D. (Germany)
Come Out (1996)
13 tracks, 51 minutes
I can’t find anywhere to stream this. AllMusic comes closest (you can play previews of all the tracks) and you can buy the CD second-hand for cheap on Discogs. Alternatively, hit me up and I’ll sort you out.

This will be an interesting one to write, because I know basically nothing about the band Roughcut, or this album. Did they have any more albums? Did their members go on to do other things? No idea, and the internet doesn’t help much either. The group themselves appear to be from Germany, and it sounds like the featured vocalist, Sesco D., has released some reggae albums under the name Jah Sesco, but that’s as much as I can find. All very mysterious.

What I can tell you about is the music itself. The mid-1990s were the boom time for world dubtronica – that mix of electronica and dub with influences and samples from all sorts of music from all over the world pioneered by groups such as Transglobal Underground and Suns of Arqa. Come Out…uh, came out right in the middle of that, and it’s a great example of it. There’s lots of influence from Indian music all over the album, from tabla and sarangi samples to vaguely ethnic-sounding melodic noodling, but there’s also bits of jungle or Bulgarian singing or African drumming here and there. It’s all held together by dark techno synths and beats, chest-rattling dub bass and Sesco D.’s everpresent ragga-ish vocals.

It sounds a little dated nowadays, because it is. Its mid-90s origins are obvious, but listen in the right ambience and it’s a gas – early morning near the end of a party, you can take what you want from it: pump it loud and you can keep dancing till the sun’s back up; play it nice and low, and even the faster, more beat-heavy tracks can be strangely soothing.

This album – and Roughcut in general – is an interesting but basically unknown artefact of a scene right at the beginning of its heyday. If you can track it down, the music speaks for itself – which is good, because nothing else does. I’d love to learn more about this, so please get in touch if you’re in the know!