The other day I was indulging in some old XTC videos when I suddenly saw Richard Branson smiling up at me. That man is EVERYWHERE.
Also, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with an experimental instrument called the Daxophone, invented by Hans Reichel, which is a bowed wooden tongue that sounds creepily human (all the audio in the first clip comes from the daxophone – no human voices). The first is just audio from Bart Hopkin’s book, Gravikords, Whirlies, and Pyrophones. Don’t buy this book without getting the CD – Amazon has it as a book and as a CD. The second video is a little clip of Hans playing it live. The third is a sweet little intro video by Jon Sonnenberg of the band Travelogue. In the process of nursing my daxophonephilia, I have come to really like Travelogue (Plastiq Musiq label).
That early XTC stuff is fine, but I don’t think they got really good until they made English Settlement.
I can’t remember what it’s called, but somewhere in Portland (I think) I have a copy of Hans Reichel’s Daxophone opera that FMP put out. I found it a rough listen at that length, but in excerpts it’s super-interesting. Haven’t tried it in, like, ten years though, so my opinion could be full of the wronging mists of history.
Yeah I don’t know about an entire Opera on that thing – sounds like you can’t really keep it in tune. Neat though – I love that one guy’s collection of tongues.
Hadn’t thought about XTC in a while but just a couple of days before this post, one of my facebook friends changed his status to “…is making plans for Nigel.” Brought a smile to my face as did this video. I remember Skylarking floored me and then I discovered the Dukes of Stratosphere, love their guitar work there. Got some great little noodlings in that Generals and Majors song too.