Aug 28: Who is the sky? - coming to cinemas

A cross-posting from my Geography in/on Film blog.

I was very pleased to hear last night that David Byrne's current tour has been filmed. It continues the tradition when Jonathan Demme made 'Stop Making Sense' and Spike Lee filmed his 'American Utopia' tour.

This concert, that I saw in March at the Hammersmith Apollo was the best of the year (so far) and a tremendous visual spectacle.

The film is being made by Brady Corbet: director of 'The Brutalist' and has been shot in 70mm film... this is going to be awesome.

Image: Alan Parkinson

Aug 21: Life during Wartime

Via Instagram I came across a piece in FarOut magazine investigating the song that Talking Heads released in 1979.

Aug 8: American Utopia.

I went to see this film on Wednesday when it received a special new 4K restoration screening "for one day only" at cinemas around the UK.

This was the film of a 2018 Broadway run of concerts/performances given by David Byrne. It was released in 2020 and directed by Spike Lee.

There were obviously comparisons to be made with the recent "Who is the Sky?" tour, which I saw earlier in the year at the Hammersmith Apollo (and which was excellent...

It was staged more simply with chains as the backdrop, and worked better as a result. There were fewer Talking Heads songs, and alternative choices of music, and different musicians and dancers.

One of the stand out songs was an acapella performance of  'One Fine Day', written with Brian Eno.

Apr 18: Guest blogger Carl Lee #12: Brian Eno's ambient cover art

The 12th in a series of posts from Carl Lee.

The musical landscapes of Brian Eno’s cover art

A close friend used to have all four-album covers of Brian Eno’s ambient music series framed reverentially in smooth beech and hung as art in his living room. 

Music for Airports (1979), The Plateaux of Mirror (with Harold Budd 1980), Day of Radiance (with Laraaji 1980), and On Land (1982) all share a cover art theme of partial map representations with a topographically knowing nod to pop art. 

Hung in sequence on a wall the album covers were as striking and as artistic as the music they represent.

It is probably not possible for a single recording to be acknowledged as the starting point for a whole musical genre but ‘Ambient 1 Music For Airports’ comes some way to achieving that feat. Although it certainly was not the first ‘ambient music’, it was the first record to specifically adopt the label ‘ambient music’.

Brian Eno had started exploring abstract electronica in his 1975 album ‘Discreet Music’ before moving onto work with Talking Heads and producing their ground breaking albums ‘More Songs about Buildings and Food (1978), ‘Fear of Music (1979) and ‘Remain in Light’ (1980)’’, a trilogy that sound-tracked my late teenage years. 

As a teenager, ambient music was as unfathomable as penguins trying to grasp jazz, it simply was not on my radar until I got an ‘in’ with the Brian Eno/David Byrne genre busting, or is that genre defining, I’m not quite sure which even now, ‘My Life in The Bush of Ghosts’ (1981). 

Here's the track 'Regiment':

Producer, Associated Performer, Composer: Brian Eno 

Producer, Associated Performer, Composer: David Byrne 

Drums, Associated Performer: Chris Frantz 

Bass Guitar, Associated Performer: Busta Cherry Jones 

Associated Performer, Drums: David van Tieghem 

Associated Performer, Voice: Dunya Yusin

This was an album that employed samples of radio shows, sermons, an exorcism, chanting of the Qu’ran, cawing rooks and the voice of Lebanese singer Samira Tewfik. Few albums have had to fend off so many lawsuits, offending as it did both some Christians and some Muslims. Its initial critical reception was mixed but not from me - now I had to explore everything that Eno had made, and that included his ambient work.

It was whilst in Berlin producing David Bowie’s Low album in 1977 that Eno started work on ‘Music for Airports’ and he added parts that were looped from Robert Wyatt on piano and the avant-garde jazz guitarist Fred Frith, who I once saw in the 1980s in an upstairs room of a pub in Sheffield with three men and a dog. 

Wyatt and Frith were both involved with Mike Oldfield early in his career too... more on Oldfield throughout the blog.

Although musicians contributed, Eno stated that machines predominantly made the album. In this it was a precursor for a whole direction for the creation of music to go in and this found further expression in the manic chop and paste rhythmic assemblage that ‘My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts’ became.

Music for Airports is a wandering, rather aimless piece of music whose tone is set by piano motifs that are arrhythmic and with melody barely hinted at. 

Eno describes his ambient music as something that “is intended to induce calm and a space to think”, he has also referred to it as “music to resign you to the possibility of death” which doesn’t appear to be the ideal music to listen to in an airport waiting room.

 


What ‘Music for Airports’ does not do is demand active attention and in that it has a lineage back to ‘Musique d’ameublement’ (Furniture Music), the phrase given by French composer and pianist Erik Satie (1866-1925) to his sparse piano motif led minimalist compositions. 

Satie’s work, instantly recognizable, a century after his death, were an influence on the young Brian Eno and that is both acknowledged by Eno himself and is straight-forward to recognize when listened to side by side. Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 is perhaps the most widely known of his short works.

 


Which brings us back to the cover-art of Eno’s quartet of ambient albums. 

A representation of the abstract landscapes that the music inside conjures with. 

A melancholic air of beauty is all round, a grey day of scudding clouds and intermittent drizzle is evoked, a beauty that is sometimes so under-stated that it is hard to see, something that the cartographic suggestions give possibility to. 

Or maybe that’s just the geographer in me. 

And quite striking on a living room wall.

Carl Lee is retired but was a lecturer at The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, taught A level Geography for 20 years at Sheffield College, is the author of five books about geography and has a PhD in economic geography. He has been nuts about music since buying his first single in 1973: 10cc’s 'Rubber Bullets' if you were wondering.

Mar 9: Psycho Killer at 50

A new video for the classic Talking Heads track 'Psycho Killer' was released late last year.

This was played by David Byrne at his live shows on the current tour which I was privileged to see at the Hammersmith Apollo.

This is also the 150th post on the blog.

Mar 5: David Byrne

Last night, was a wonderful experience down in London. After months of waiting, it was time for my son and I to use our tickets to see David Byrne's current concert tour. 

I last saw him playing live over 30 years ago, at Cambridge Corn Exchange, when he played a mix of his own solo songs and some Talking Heads classics.

Image: Alan Parkinson

After a day in London taking in some exhibitions and other activities we headed for Hammersmith and down to the Rutland Arms for pre-show meal - a nice Saharan dust enhanced sunset was taking shape and the riverside pubs were busy.

The show was wonderful. It was all about joy and love, and storytelling... and the choreography of the band and the imaginative staging of each track was excellent.

David Byrne's tour is called 'Who is the Sky?' (who is this guy?)

The Hammersmith Apollo (as I shall continue to call it) was packed, and after the first half an hour or so, people were up dancing. The energy was infectious and the audience's response to the music, the political asides and humour was up there with the loudest audiences I've heard... If you get the chance to see it then take it.

Luckily most people respected the request at the start by David Byrne to 'be present' and limit the videoing and photography.

Videos shot on a phone never capture the full impact of a show like this, and the sound is always terrible compared to the careful mix. The bass and lighting on this track: "Once in a Lifetime" were particularly memorable...

Lyrics referencing groundwater hydrology...

And here's a shot of mine, towards the end of 'Life during Wartime'... another Talking Heads classic, which featured lots of images and videos of ICE and the response to them...

Image: Alan Parkinson

Check out these wonderful images from Burat Cingi here... these really capture the show brilliantly...

And this performance of another geographically themed song on the concept of place...