Listen to the music of a metallic nightmare

"This is music of a metallic nightmare" wrote a reviewer of the music of Alexander Mosolov. Born in Kiev in 1900 Mosolov wrote "socialist realist" music in the USSR during the 1920s including the work recorded on the shellac 78 above which is variously described as coming from A Symphony of Machines or a ballet called Steel. More information from the excellent webrarian.co.uk or listen online to the record here.


The "B-side" of the disc features a work evocatively titles "the Dnieper Water Power Station". This is scored mainly for percussion and celebrates the building in 1932 of what was the largest single hydro-electric plant in Europe on the Dnieper River in Ukraine. The composer is Yuli Meytus who was born in 1903 in Elisavetgrad. Again more at webrarian.co.uk and listen online to the music of a water power station here.


Many thanks to prolific 'path finder' Walt Santner for uncovering the musical gems, enjoy more of Walt's research here.
Images from Davno.ru. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Eat your heart out RIAA

Everywhere else it is doom and gloom in the record industry. But here is one retailer giving the thumbs up. He runs a market stall in the Jemaa el Fna in Marrakech and official figures show that more than 90% of CDs and DVDs sold in Morocco are pirated, with an industry spokesman saying "every artistic endeavour is affected". Based on my recent visit I would put the piracy rate higher; during nine days in the country I did not see a single legitimate CD on sale. But then, even the BBC gives permission for file sharing for personal use.


Now playing - music of the gnawa communities found in the southern areas of Morocco. The repetitive rhythms and looping riffs of gnawa that are the signature sound of evening in the Jemaa el Fna originated in black African religous rituals and trance and are provided by drums and the gimbri, the long-necked lute seen on the label above, supplemented by iron castanets called karakeb. Hypnotic stuff, but I'm afraid my CD (above) the from the Société Chamusic of Marrakesh label is a pirate copy, legitimate discs were simply unobtainable. What does one do? At least YouTube has some interesting material and Amazon France has a range of non-pirated CDs.

Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Is this a record?

CDs just seem to get shorter. After 48 minutes from the Kronos Quartet yesterday comes a new Deutsche Grammophon full price release today of Mikhail Pletnev playing Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto which lasts for 38 minutes. But neither match the Wergo CD of Stockhausen's Kontakte I wrote about here which plays for just 34 minutes 56 seconds. Is that a record? Or is it an MP3 file?

More music and mathematics here.
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Hip hop rhythms through sound proof glass

The background rumble of trains on the London Underground passing beneath the hall can be heard on several of the great classical recordings made in the Kingsway Hall in the 1960s and 70s. I was reminded of this when recording the interview for my recent David Munrow on the record programme as I could hear the 21st century equivalent of Underground trains in the form of low frequency hip hop rhythms coming through the 'soundproof' window from the adjacent studio at Future Radio. I decided to ignore the breakthrough as it was not too obtrusive, and I was also mindful of the numerous potentially degrading links in the distribution chain that the programme would go through before reaching the final listener.

But I was still thinking analogue, and had seriously underestimated the resilience of programme content in the digital domain. When I listened to the broadcast of the interview live from the audio stream on KEF monitor quality speakers at home the breakthrough could be heard, although it certainly didn't detract from a very interesting programme. More surprisingly the hip hop rhythms can also be heard on the podcast of the interview, despite a multi-stage distribution chain and the file using the 'intermediate' iTunes encoding sampling rate of 44kHz and mp3 bit rate of 256kbps to contain download time.

That distant hip hop beat highlights the new challenges posed by digital distribution. I have already written here about the difficulties associated with webcasting classical recordings with wide dynamic ranges. This problem was brought home again while working on this Sunday's Elisabeth Lutyens programme with James Weeks. When Lutyens specifies ppp Exaudi directed by James Weeks sing ppp, and NMC's recording engineer Andrew Post digitised that ppp. Exactly as it should be, until listeners switch off when the broadcast/webcast programme content is submerged under background noise. The same problem was experienced when testing the audio stream for the complete Inner Cities webcast. I mentioned this to pianist Daan Vandewalle who replied that the reason why some passages were very quiet on his recording was because he played them very quietly!

In rock music compression is increasingly being applied to reduce the dynamic range of recordings, despite the wide signal to noise ratio made available by digital technologies. Compression gives recordings more impact by making them sound louder, and that sells product as the marketing men say. But a backlash against the excessive use of compression has begun with the creation of the website Turn Me Up who summarise their aims as follows:

Turn Me Up!™ is a non-profit music industry organization campaigning to give artists back the choice to release more dynamic records. To be clear, it's not our goal to discourage loud records; they are, of course, a valid choice for many artists. We simply want to make the choice for a more dynamic record an option for artists.

Today, artists generally feel they have to master their records to be as loud as everybody else's. This certainly works for many artists. However, there are many other artists who feel their music would be better served by a more dynamic record, but who don't feel like that option is available to them.

This all comes down to the moment a consumer hears a record, and the fear that if the record is more dynamic, the consumer won't know to just turn up the volume. This is an understandable concern, and one Turn Me Up! is working to resolve.

You can hear (or perhaps not hear) Lutyens' ppp writing on Future Radio this Sunday Jan 13. There is no hip hop background but listeners with high quality speakers may hear the door of the adjacent studio closing a couple of times. The following Sunday the opening of the 1995 recording of Luigi Dallapiccola's Canti di prigionia performed by Ensemble InterContemporain and the New London Chamber Choir will also test the signal to noise ratio of the whole digital distribution chain.

Hip hop accompaniment and doors slamming regardless, I am very grateful to Future Radio for allowing me to use programme time as a sonic sandbox. They have also been extraordinarily helpful in tweaking the audio stream quality to accomodate the extremes of dynamic range found in contemporary music, and the dreaded silence detector is currently off. Norfolk, UK is becoming something of a hotspot in the recording world, and a state of the art rock studio has just opened a few miles from where I live in rural Norfolk. Leeders Farm recording studios are close to where Sir Malcolm Arnold spent the last years of his life. Which allows me to back link to a relevant post which brings together the different worlds of rock and classical music.

Header photo is NOT the Future Radio studio! It is Castle Sound in Scotland, which, I am sure, doesn't suffer from sonic breakthrough, although those speakers may cause the engineer to go deaf instead. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk.

MP3 downloads are a real windup

Here is the perfect Christmas present to compliment those downloads from the DG Web Shop. A windup media player for MP3 files and much more.

Now check out another ethical and musical Christmas present.
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Move over iPhone - here comes vinyl

"The format was supposed to have been badly wounded by the introduction of CDs and killed off completely by the ipod-generation that bought music online. But in a rare case of cheerful news for the record labels, the latest phenomenon in a notoriously fickle industry is one nobody dared predict: a vinyl revival. Latest figures show a big jump in vinyl sales in the first half of this year, confirming the anecdotal evidence from specialist shops throughout the UK.

"It comes as sales of CD singles continue to slide - and it is not being driven by technophobic middle-aged consumers. Teenagers and students are developing a taste for records and are turning away from the clinical method of downloading music on to an MP3 player.

"The data, released by the UK's industry group BPI, shows that 7in vinyl sales were up 13% in the first half, with the White Stripes' Icky Thump the best seller.Two-thirds of all singles in the UK now come out on in the 7in format, with sales topping 1m. Though still a far cry from vinyl's heyday in 1979, when Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes alone sold that number and the total vinyl singles market was 89m, the latest sales are still up more than fivefold in five years.

"For record stores, the resurgence has meant a move from racks of vintage Rolling Stones and Beatles releases to brand new singles and younger buyers. "The student population seem to be loving the 7in," says Stuart Smith, who runs Seismic Records in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. He sells 300-600 records a week and is preparing to launch an online store. "I'm still not sure about the MP3 generation. You can have a full hard drive and nothing to show for it. Record collections are very personal. You can view into a person's soul really," he says.

The extract above is from today's Guardian. And the header photo is a view into my soul. It was taken a few minutes ago and shows an LP from Deutsche Grammophon's 1973 Schoenberg, Berg and Webern orchestral set playing on my Thorens TD125. This Second Viennese School overview was played by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan, and, to my knowledge, has never made it onto CD complete, although I have the 'highlights' CD that was compiled from it in 1999. (Listen to brief audio samples here)

Producer of the set for DG was Hans Weber with Tonmeister Günter Hermanns. The Berg Drei Orchesterstücke Op. 6 was recorded in Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin, all the other works were captured in the Philharmonie. The vinyl pressings are out of DG's top drawer. Mine are still pristine, and sound absolutely magnificent. For audiophiles the rest of my replay system is an Audio-Technica AT-F3/OCC moving coil phono cartridge, SME Series lllS tone arm, Arcam Alpha 10 integrated amplifier, Sennheiser HD 580 headphones, and B&W Nautilus 803 speakers.

The lavish booklet that came with the DG set can be seen in my photo. It includes a serious analysis of each work, wonderful full page photos of the composers, and a biography of Karajan that takes hagiography to an Olympic level. Special mention should me made of the cover design by Hartmut Pfeiffer. (Is that the same Hartmut Pfeiffer who is credited as one of the conductors on DG's Stravinsky overview?). The cover graphic becomes a work of art on the 12" by 12" LP box. When reduced to a 4.5" by 4.5" CD liner it becomes as disposable as an MP3 file.

Karajan's lush 1973 interpretations of these Second Viennese School classics, and DG's 'spot-lit' microphone technique, are completely out of step with today's minimalist zeitgeist. But these vinyl LPs provide a window into my musical soul, and they challenged, educated and inspired me when I bought them back in the early 1970s.

As I took the DG LP of Schoenberg's Orchestervariationen Op. 31 off the turntable I switched the Arcam amplifier over to the tuner and saw into the musical soul of BBC Radio 3. Rob Cowan was challenging, educating and inspiring listeners with an orchestral arrangement of April in Paris.

More riches from my Thorens TD125 here.
Photo copyright On An Overgrown Path. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk