Since there is just so much great music in my library and I’m so eager to share it with listeners, I recently decided to expand the show to four hours, beginning with tonight’s edition. This means twice the music, along with the opportunity to stretch out and feature some longer works in their entirety. Die Kunst Der Orgel, a live recording by Henry Cow from a live radio performance in 1978, is an astounding piece, three parts improvisation and one part composition, featured on tonight’s program in one unbroken 48-minute set. It comes from the amazing 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set which came out a couple years ago, available here. Tonight’s edition also featured a long piece by Frank Zappa, performed by The Mothers Of Invention in their greatest lineup as they appeared on Burnt Weeny Sandwich, one of the last albums they did together (released in 1969, after FZ had officially disbanded the group). And finally, I played a rare work by the contemporary 20th-Century classical composer Hans Werner Henze, entitled Essay On Pigs. This is one of Henze’s works that was released in the 1960s and 70s on the Deutsche Grammophon label, never reissued on CD. I originally heard this piece on a radio broadcast on WGBH-FM in Boston during the early 70s, and taped it off the air onto a cassette which I had for many years. Thanks to the amazing Avant Garde Project, this and other rare recordings of music by Henze and many other contemporary avant-garde composers of the late 20th-Century are once again available, digitized as uncompressed FLAC files transferred from the vinyl LPs with the utmost attention to audio fidelity, free to download along with extensive liner notes which have all been scanned and saved as PDF documents. This is a great resource for music of this ilk and era, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

And I rounded out the show with the usual diversity of contemporary sounds ranging from goth & post-punk to jazz dirge & fusion to orchestral soundtracks – including an exceedingly rare track by my favorite, Nature And Organisation (who I played on last week’s program).

Listen To The Podcast

The playlist gives artist name, song title, and album title (in that order). A space between lines of text indicates the break between sets where track announcements were made.

Playlist for Mindtrain 05 – 30 August 2011

• Wim Mertens – Maximizing The Audience – Maximizing The Audience

• Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention – The Little House I Used To Live In – Burnt Weenie Sandwich
• Spirit – Fresh Garbage – Spirit
• Pierre Henry – Souffle 2 – Le Voyage
• Eric Dolphy – Eclipse – Out There
• Bohren & Der Club Of Gore – Midnight Black Earth – Black Earth
• Eddie Henderson – Moussaka – Inside Out

• Henry Cow – Die Kunst Der Orgel: Bremen 1-5 / Erk Gah (Instrumental Extract), Parts 1 & 2 – 40th Anniversary Box: The Road, Vol. 8 (Bremen)

• James Ray And The Performance – Edie Sedgwick – Best Of James Ray’s Performance & Gangwar
• Nature And Organisation – A Dozen Winters Of Loneliness – A Dozen Summers Against The World
• Fovea Hex – Carol XXI:XII:X – Hail Hope!
• Tones On Tail – Lions – Pop
• Yo La Tengo – Demons – I Shot Andy Warhol (Original Soundtrack)
• Mazzy Star – Into Dust – So Tonight That I Might See
• Nurse With Wound – Bearded Lady – Large Ladies With Cake In The Oven
• Hans Werner Henze / Roy Hart, Philip Jones Brass Ensemble & The English Chamber Orchestra – Versuch Uber Schweine (Essay On Pigs), Parts I-V – The Henze Collection (Avant-Garde Project AGP64)
• Savage Republic – Film Noir – Tragic Figures

• Glenn Branca / Paul Daniel & The London Sinfonietta – Hadrian – The Belly Of An Architect (Original Soundtrack)
• Jonathan Bepler – Interlude Saline (Parts One & Two) – Cremaster 2 (Original Soundtrack)
• Pierrot Lunaire – Gudrun – Gudrun
• Little Annie – Diamonds Made Of Glass (Christoph Heemann Remix) – Diamonds Made Of Glass
• Steven Stapleton & Tony Wakeford – Walk The White Ghost / Lucifer Before Sunrise – Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish
• Christoph Heemann – Track 2 (Untitled) – The Rings Of Saturn
• The Pop Group – We Are Time – Y

• Fovea Hex – Lullaby XXI:XII:X – Hail Hope!