The Stylophone

 On a snowy weekend my thoughts drifted back to boyhood playthings.

I had a lot of fun making all manner of "weird" music with improvised instruments and creating effects using tape recordings that were manipulated but this a Stylophone was really where it was at in the late 1960's and early 1970's before cheap Casio keyboards were the thing to have.

These - this one is a type 350's - were the upper range of models with more features and well to right for the stylus which you played the metal keys with.

Most of us had the small 'pocket' - did our shorts have that big a pocket? - versions that run off batteries popularized by the now disgraced presenter, artist and singer Rolf Harris to which an instructional record was included as you tried to transpose popular tunes into forms you could play yourself.

I had endless fun with it surviving two house moves with it living in chesterdraws for a long time although I'm not sure if the early transistors were still okay as some go into self destruct mode.

Strangely enough in this century they have made a bit of comeback  with fans of early all analogue sounds in an era where many digital keyboards synthesize the sounds of real keyboard instruments. 

Classical Music on sacd 17 - Beethoven

As is my want on this blog I do sometimes talk about music rather more than on the second blog to the point of having a series of entries I add to.

Beethoven was mentioned here in January 2018 this very week with the mention of older set of recordings reissued  but however good or notable the playing on it was there's no getting away from the improvements in recording in sixty odd years.

Thus I was on the lookout for a really good modern set of his symphonies where upon I found this set recorded between 2004 and 2008 in a inexpensive super audio cd box set by the acclaimed Scandinavia label Bis.

Performing Beethoven is controversial today some with taking issue with any modern instruments preferring period ones and sometimes adopting so-called Historically Informed Performance ideals and those who still hold with the late Victorian "Big Band" style with a lot more players adding more "umph".

This set takes a middle course using modern instruments but in a smaller scale for works whose earlier ones have more in common with Schubert and Mozart's but adding the odd vibrato.

I find this does help to de-clutter the sound not always helped on some older recordings by the acoustics of the venue so you here more of each note being played and here it has a freshness to it I hadn't experienced since buying André Cluyten's symphony cycle on EMI as a boy but with excellent modern sound.

The Pastoral symphony is well done taking a leisurely alert spring stroll through the countryside rather than either a brisk walk as in Herbert von Karajan's 1963 set or sounding 'plodding'. 

This was always the strong point of Cluyten's set for EMI of the same era - he just got it right.

I hadn't got around to doing anything about getting a sacd set of the Piano Concertos bring reliant on my remastered regular DG cds of Wilhelm Kempff's mid 1960's stereo set.

In October of last year Chandos, the Essex, England label issued a new three sacd set by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet playing he piano and directing the orchestra.

I feel a more chamber music style of playing fits these rather poetic works allowing you to focus more on the score following the music and this set received universal praise upon issue  to which I would agree with.

Technically it sounds really clear taking full advantage of what this format can offer and like the other set is in both stereo for regular cd and sacd layers and for those whose equipment can handle it, surround sound on sacd.

These two box sets have provide me with a renewed appreciation of Beethoven's music being hugely enjoyable and should provide me with much pleasure for a long time.

I also got this disc of two of his sonatas's the pianist of the moment,Yevgeny Sudbin.

The Brr art edition

This last week we had something like proper Winter weather with temperatures below minus 2 degrees c during the day in a week when everything has been dominated by Covid-19 with the majority of children off school.

This coupled with several heavy snow showers created ideal conditions for them to go gathering up snow seeing several while sat outside traversing our road, rolling it into the shapes required for a snowman's head and body while being inventive with additional decorations.

It was a pure delight to hear the excited voices at work building a imaginary world from snow with their minds free from other concerns and this is a great example of their work taken obviously in situ.

Ian Dury

I think the first order of business on the original blog is to wish everyone following it a very happy New Year where we hope everyone can be in a better place than we are at present.

It is a cold and very icy morning up here so I'm indoors today which isn't my idea of fun but spinning something rather good.

Ian Dury who was born in 1942 in Harrow, Middlesex and died in 2000 in Upminster, Essex was pretty much god like with me for being a disabled singer/songwriter who wasn't afraid to say what he felt and didn't feel being being disabled, in his instance contracting polio at age seven meant he was sexless.

He could and was ahem colourful in his use of language at the time but the rhyming slang he deployed was musical so chunks would float over peoples heads and in co-writing Spasticus Autisticus in 1981 said what many of us were disabled felt about being treated by charities paraded in our finest to raise funds but ultimately not understood or enabled by society to use our abilities.

That was banned by the BBC but we all approved of its message.😊

On October 16th, a new compilation was issued of his songs, a longer cd and this rather nice twenty track lp version that is a joy to listen to with such classic songs as What a Waste, Wake Up And Make Love With Me, Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, I'm Partial To Your Abracadabra and Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick.

There's something satisfying about holding an album of the seven inch records you owned and placing it on your stereo to play each of its four sides, something we did back then as we played records mainly even though I taped mine for use in boarding school.

Getting this recently and playing it is just great.