The United States Of america

Personnel: GERRY BLAKE keyb'ds, vcls A RICHARD FREEMAN gtr A MIKE HUESTIS drms, perc A JERRY RITCHEY bs A STEVE WOODS vcls, perc A

ALBUM: 1(A) GREETINGS FROM U.S. OF A. (Mercury SR 61312) 1970

Probably a Californian group, their album is an efficient mixture of psych and prog with good guitars and keyboards and in the same vein as English groups a la Spooky Tooth. The album came housed in a "Post Card like" sleeve.

(Stephane Rebeschini)

The United States of America

Personnel: JOSEPH BYRD electric harp, keyb'ds A B C DOROTHY MOSKOWITZ vcls A B C MICHAEL AGNELLO A STU BROTMAN bs A GORDON MARRON electric violin B RAND FORBES bs B CRAIG WOODSON drms, perc B

ALBUMS: 1(A) THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Columbia CBS 9614) Mar. 1968 181

NB. (1) reissued on Edsel (ED 233) 1987 and also reissued on CD (Edsel EDCD 541) 1997. There was also a 1992 Sony CD reissue with two bonus tracks.

As Joe Byrd (and The Field Hippies): 1 THE AMERICAN METAPHYSICAL CIRCUS (Columbia CBS 7317) 1969

NB: (1) reissued on CD (One Way A-26792) 1996.

Joe Byrd, who master-minded this group of experimental Californian musicians, was born in Louisville, Kentucky. He is a descendant of the famous Byrd family of Virginia and he grew up in Tucson, Arizona. During high school years, he played in country-and-western and pop music bands, but by the time he entered the University of Arizona he had begun playing vibes with a jazz group.

After graduation, Byrd received Stanford University's Sollnit Fellowship for graduate study composition. But Byrd chose to split for New York, where he had already begun listening to electronic music and meeting far-out Berkeley composers.. While there, he worked as a conductor, arranger, teacher and assistant to critic-composer Virgil Thompson. It was during this era that he developed his interest in experimental music and his works were often performed abroad.

Influenced by events in California in the late sixties, he decided to quit New York and head for the University of California at Los Angeles. Here he worked as a teaching assistant, also finding time to study acoustics, psychology and Indian music. He eventually dropped out of UCLA to work full-time on his musical enterprises, putting together The United States Of America, whose other main asset was vocalist (and Byrd's ex-girlfriend) Dorothy Moskowitz, who possessed possibly one of the most attractive singing voices in rock. Other original members included political radical Michael Agnello and bassist Stu Brotman but both left before the band signed to Columbia with Brotman joining Kaleidoscope.

The group's sole album was erratic but often brilliant, with Byrd and Moskowitz writing most of the music and lyrics between them. Opening track, The American Metaphysical Circus parodied Sergeant Pepper and the unusual, but commercial I Won't Leave My Wooden Wife For You, Sugar became well known here in England by virtue of its inclusion on the CBS compilation The Rock Machine Turns You On.

Overall the album was one of the most successful attempts to marry experimental electronic music, with rock lyrics. Instruments used included a Durrett synthesizer and Tom Oberheim's ring modulator, an electic violin and an unfretted bass. The beauty of the lyrics was matched by the excellence of Moskowitz's voice on tracks like Cloud Song and Love Song For The Dead Che.

Other tracks like The Garden Of Earthly Delights, which was also included on The Psychedellc Dream compilation and Coming Down appear drug-inspired:

'Poisonous gardens, lethal and sweet Venomous blossoms Choleric fruit deadly to eat Violet nightshades, innocent bloom Omnivorous orchids Cautiously wait, hungrily loom You will find them in her eyes, In her eyes, In her eyes' (from Garden Of Earthly Delights)

I think it's over now, I think it's ending I think it's over now, I think it's ending A thought of coloured clouds all high above my head A trip that doesn't need a ticket or a bed And everything is smelling sweeter than the rose' (from Coming Down)

The album is a minor collectors' item but has also been reissued. It climbed as high as No. 181 in the U.S. Album Charts when it was first released. The cover was originally planned to be an American flag dripping with blood but, understandably, Columbia bailed out of the idea.

Live, the band played an exact reproduction of the album but had trouble getting suitable gigs. One, in which they were paired with The Troggs, was an unmitigated disaster and they also had an ill-tempered coupling with The Velvet Underground (in fact, after leaving the Velvets, Nico tried to join the USA). In addition, tension between bandmembers was rife, with Byrd, who the album's producer David Rubinson describes as "one of the most insane examples of control freak that I've, to this day, ever experienced", attempting fruitlessly to dictate policy to the other strong personalities in the band. Every rehearsal became, in Byrd's words, "group therapy". When three of them were busted for marijuana at a gig in Orange County, California, only Byrd and Moskowitz remained and they soon split into two factions with each leading their own group.

After the group split, Byrd made a further album with a bunch of 12 musicians called The Field Hippies. Although not as successful as The USA album, this was a strange voyage into the world of mystical and quasi-religious music. Once again he found three female vocalists - Susan de Lange, Victoria Bond and Christie Thompson - with seductive voices. The lyrics often paralleled themes on the earlier album.

'Waitin' to die for the seventeenth time Etched on a mirror in the back of your mind Trapped on a mountain nobody can climb You can't ever come down...' (from You Can't Ever Come Down)

Susan de Lange's beautiful rendering of Moonsong-Peloc paralleled the Cloud Song on the earlier album. Victoria's beautiful Patriot's Lullaby was in similar vein, but unfortunately most of the material on side 2 failed to again the same standard.

Today, Joe Byrd is a recognised composer and arranger who plays electronic music, organ, electric harpsichord and, occasionally, calliope. In 1975 he released a synthesizer albums, Yankee Trancendoodle and followed this with Xmas Yet To Come in 1980.

Compilation appearances include: The Garden Of Earthly Delights on Psychedelic Dream: A Collection of '60s Euphoria (Dble LP

Rock groups are supposed to be hatched in garages and inner-city lofts, not the upper reaches of academia. That wasn't going to stop Joseph Byrd, experimental composer and ethnomusicologist from the UCLA New Music Workshop, from devising a plan in 1967 to approach rock'n'roll from the opposite direction.

Byrd, who had frequented avant-garde circles since hanging around with Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, and Virgil Thomson in the early '60s, used the United States of America to bring cutting-edge electronics, Indian music, and "serious" composition into psychedelic rock and roll. The group's sole, self-titled album in 1968 was a tour de force (though not without its flaws) of experimental rock that blended surprisingly melodic sensibilities with unnerving blasts of primitive synthesizers and lyrics that could range from misty romanticism to hard-edged irony. For the relatively few who heard it, the record was a signpost to the future with its collision of rock and classical elements, although the material crackled with a tension that reflected the United States of America itself in the late '60s.

By mid-1968, the grand experiment was over. Conflicting egos, a drug bust, and commercial pressures all contributed to a rapid split. The United States of America may have had their roots in the halls of higher learning, but ultimately they were prey to the same kind of mundane tensions that broke the spirit of many a band that lived and died on the streets.

From the time Byrd founded the band in Los Angeles with colleague Michael Agnello, says singer Dorothy Moskowitz, "group dynamics were never a strong point in the USA." Moskowitz, Byrd's ex-girlfriend, had a background in writing and performing for musical theater. She moved from New York to California to join the group and, as she puts it, provide "the requisite schmaltz." Bassist Stu Brotman, once of the stunningly eclectic L.A. psychedelic group Kaleidoscope, was also an early member.

But he and Agnello were gone by the time the group began recording for Columbia. Agnello, a radical sort, was arguing with Byrd over leadership of the band, and not sure the act should even be signing to a record label in the first place. "When you ask why the group broke up, well, why did the group even record after it broke it up?" points out Moskowitz.

Yet the lineup that cohered for the album brought impressive credentials to the table. Electric violinist Gordon Marron expanded the instrument's parameters with a divider that could raiser or lower it an octave, as well as tape echo units and ring modulators. Rand Forbes played an unfretted electric bass, and drummer Craig Woodson would tinker with his sound in unusual ways, attaching contact microphones to his set and suspending slinkies from cymbals to get a musique-concrete effect. Ed Bogas added organ, piano, and calliope.

Most of the material was penned by Byrd and Moskowitz, the latter of whose alto delivered the lyrics -- which are alternately evocative and foreboding -- with a cool precision reminiscent of an icier Grace Slick. Byrd was chiefly responsible for the electronic textures that would provide the album with its most distinguishing characteristics. This was 1968, remember, when synthesizers had rarely been employed on rock records. What Byrd crafted were not simulations of strings and horns, but exhilarating, frightening swoops and bleeps that lent a fierce crunch to the faster numbers, and a beguiling serenity to the ballads. Byrd had crucial help in his endeavors from Richard Durrett, who designed the Durrett electronic music synthesizer used by the band, and from Tom Oberheim, who pioneered the use of the ring modulator employed by the USA. Nico, Moskowitz has recalled, tried unsuccessfully to join the band, after leaving the Velvet Underground.

Add to this mix a fascination with modal playing and Indian music. Byrd and Moskowitz were serious students of North and South Indian music, and had already made little-known contributions to a Folkways LP of Indian music by Gayathri Rajapur and Harihar Rao, recorded in 1965. Country Joe & the Fish, the Doors, and others were opening the gates for modal playing in rock and roll, and the USA were one of the first ones through; Frank Zappa had also opened the possibilities for incorporating ideas from contemporary composition into a rock format. And then there was Byrd's application of concepts from Charles Ives, which simulated marching bands moving from opposite sides of the stereo spectrum...

Was it all too much to fit into one album? "As a whole, the album does not have a coherent, unified vision," declares Moskowitz, who now lives near Oakland, California, where she composes music for both adult and children's theatrical events in the San Francisco Bay area. "Joe had vision, but by hiring all these interesting people, it had to be diluted. Everybody had to have their say. I'm told that someone took the album to Apple Records. The Beatles listened to it and asked, 'Which is the band?' If you listen to each song, it's almost like a variety show.

"Today you would say, it's a cultural blending of avant-garde music, of elements of Indian music. If you asked me back then, I'm not sure what we were doing. That might have been the basic charm of the group. We were charting territory for which their were no names."

Recording the electronics in particular proved a challenge for both the band and their producer, David Rubinson, who remembers, "The ring modulator and the volt-control oscillators and voltage control filters -- they didn't come in a set, like they did in a Moog. You had to build each one -- which they did -- and actually hard-wire them together. It was an eight-track album. So all that synthesized stuff was painstakingly layered in, sound by sound, one oscillator at a time. Now you may get a bank of oscillators and you can run six, eight, twelve of them in a row, and make all kinds of wonderful waves, shapes, and it can be very complicated. But at that time, it was not possible.

"It had one oscillator, one ring modulator, one voltage control filter -- that's it. It looked funny. It was like aluminum boxes, little knobs sticking out, and patch cords. And it was very exciting to me, because it was a marriage of a lot of what was happening in what people called classical music at the time. When people think about what Steve Reich was doing then, and Terry Riley was doing then, and what Joe Byrd was doing then, it was very, very similar in different areas."

Aside from the even more obscure San Francisco group Fifty Foot Hose, the United States were virtually alone in their attempts to combine psychedelic rock with cutting-edge electronics. The very fact that the equipment was so primitive, however, lent a spontaneous resonance and warmth that has rarely been achieved by subsequent synthesizer technology. Listen to "Hard Coming Love," for instance, where the oscillations seem to be launching into outer space from an Olympian-sized swimming pool. Moskowitz's voice was also run through electronic filtering at times to give it a particularly eerie quality.

In Dorothy's opinion, "Synthesizers in those days were so unpredictable -- that was part of their appeal. You didn't know what was going to happen! So you'd turn on the volume -- you'd get a 'squawk,' or you might get a 'bleep.' It didn't really matter, so long as you were playing in rhythm. And that was very exciting. So you'd go 'bling, bling,' and that became part of the rhythm track. Nowadays, you can pretty much pre-program the precise 'ping' or 'click' you want. Back then, the limited technology didn't allow for the kind of options we have now.

"In the mid-'60s, a synthesizer was considered an instrument on its own terms, not a means of duplicating the sound of something else. It expanded the palette and gave the music a dangerous edge. It certainly did lend a richness."

Columbia balked at a plan to use an album cover of, in Rubinson's words, a flag with blood dripping from it (Moskowitz doesn't remember the illustration as being quite so blatantly anti-Establishment). The LP was eventually issued with more standard band photographs, in a plain manila wrapper with a stamp that declared, "United States of America -- Top Secret." Onstage, according to Rubinson, the band "reproduced the album exactly." So when it came time to go on the road and bring the USA to the real USA, playing the music was not the chief problem. The greater problem was finding a sympathetic audience for such an unusual act.

At such venues as Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery, the band felt in their element. It wasn't as easy playing for audiences that expected out-and-out rock and roll, like the one that gave the group the thumbs-down on an ill-fated pairing with the Troggs. The USA also played once with the Velvet Underground, which seemed like a more copacetic match, although Moskowitz has related how the Velvets knocked over the USA's amplifiers as they were going offstage.

Tensions within the group escalated into a backstage fistfight between Byrd and Marron at one of their most high-profile gigs (at New York's Fillmore East). "Joe Byrd was one of the most insane examples of control freak that I've, to this day, ever experienced," observes Rubinson. "At that time, I was in my twenties, and I wasn't the easiest person in the world to get along with either, I guess. But he was really bizarre, and a very, very difficult person to deal with. So there were constant personality conflicts in and among the band. People quitting, people getting replaced, arguments, yelling about intonation, and so forth. They were very talented people, and I don't think they liked being dictated to. But he had a vision of what he wanted."

The final straw, as far as the lineup from the first album was concerned, was at a gig in Orange County, California, in which three of the members were busted for marijuana, leaving Joe and Dorothy to complete the show with help from the support act. And Rubinson didn't like the direction in which the United States of America were going.

"The band started off as a completely revolutionary, anti-authority, nihilistic group. Whatever they wore, whatever they wanted to do, it was the opposite of patriotic. It was supposed to be an anarchist kind of group, to do everything possible to rub the wrong way. To take no conventions seriously. They became less anarchistic and less different, and submitted material which was kind of ordinary."

In a letter to Richard Kostelanetz that was reprinted in Kostelanetz's book The Fillmore East, Byrd states that he started the band "as an avant-garde political/musical rock group," with the intention of combining electronic sound, musical/political radicalism, and performance art. "The idea was to create a radical experience. It didn't succeed. For one thing, I had assembled too many personalities; every rehearsal became group therapy. A band that wants to succeed needs a single, mutually acceptable identity. I tried to do it democratically, and it was not successful."

Moskowitz offers a different perspective on the clash between Byrd and Rubinson: "[David] didn't like the fact that Joe hired studio horn players, and that we all of a sudden lost our pure sound. He thought we were attempting a slickness, and he didn't like it. I didn't care either way, because the original album had syrupy movie theme music, if you notice. To me, the intent of the US of A was to pull from different genres. That was the excitement. If Byrd wanted to use horn players doing Motown licks -- no problem!

"But Joe heard him grumbling. And his response was, 'Let's get rid of Rubinson.' Although I didn't agree with David aesthetically, I felt loyal to him. He was, after all, the one who had put us on the map. Joe might have been well-advised to step back and ask, 'What would you rather I do here?' But no, there was this arrogant angry reaction between the two of them."

The US of A split into two factions, one being Joe Byrd & the Field Hippies. Moskowitz' group was, in her words, "a very mild-mannered, non-electric band. Too mild." When the Field Hippies recorded their only LP for Columbia -- which was a rather uninspired effort with the odd tune that was obviously aiming for a USA-type feel -- there was one last chance to reunite the Byrd-Moskowitz partnership.

"I got a call about three months later, after the breakup from Joe's producer," says Dorothy. She remembers being told, "'The instrumentation is wonderful, the songs are great, the singers are not [that good]. And we listened to your demo, and the singing is really nice, but the people you put together are just sub-standard. Why don't you come back, and work again together?'

"I was too angry. I was too leery. I had been with Joe romantically in the early '60s, and I had been with him professionally in the mid-'60s, and I was tired of dealing with tension and being the moderator. I was on his side aesthetically. I was not very happy with the way he conducted his personal affairs. In terms of fame and fortune, it might have been the wrong decision. But the fact that I'm sitting here in this lovely suburban house, with a fine family..." She pauses, and smiles. "I guess I'm glad I got away from it, more or less intact."

Recommended Recording:

The United States of America(1968, Columbia/Legacy). Now on CD with two extra cuts, this remains one of avant-rock's greatest moments. But not at the expense of good songs, whether driving rockers ("Hard Coming Love," "Garden of Earthly Delights") or ethereal ballads ("Clouds," "Where is Yesterday," and the wonderfully titled "Love Song For the Dead Che").

Fuzz, Acid & Flowers: American Garage, Psychedelic & Hippie Rock 1964- 1975, edited by Vernon Johnson

http://www.bor derlinebooks.com/us6070s/fuzz.html

I love I Love Music.

yeah... it's pretty much acknowledged that one of things that binded broadcast early on was a huge love for US of A and that whole scene. it's not like us of a is the only band or set of musicians to sound like that in that time period.

i've had the original LP for a while... great stuff. got this for the bonus stuff and was equally pleased, even tho some of it is just reworkings.

m.

The second side of the Field Hippies record is absolutely fucking DIRE

i thought i'd gone unnoticed. i swear it wasn't me who stole off with the microwave, however

I'd like to get my hands on the extended reissue by means fair or foul and would love to hear the Byrd album and some Silver Apples - I'm on a massive psych tip this summer and I'm fiending.

Fuckers.

Isn't it also supposed to be a concept album about some dystopian future?

The first album is such a wonderful record to throw on during an overcast day.

Never heard the s/t album until right now -- holy crap, this stuff is amazing.

It is! And this thread just learned me there's a reissue with 10 new songs o_O

Some of them are alternate versions of songs on the original album. The 20-song reissue is on Spotify.

'The Garden Of Earthly Delights' = wonderful. I love this record.

Long time USA fan here.

My fave by them (which is a different style from most of their stuff) is this Beatle-esque track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L11Mh5kSOnc

Great album, sometimes 60s psych doesn't translate well to the LP format but this is strong pretty much all of the way through

Very short lived band, you can see how long the recording line-up lasted from looking at the dates of the bonus material on the Sundazed cd.

That Sundazed cd comes with better sound than the older Edsel version. Plus the bonus tracks. Doesn't have the lyrics printed as earlier versions did, but does have an interview with Byrd.

I'm not as familiar with the Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies recording but I think the s/t USA is pretty essential in its Sundazed version.

Oh & I kept getting tracks from the White Noise lp an Electrical Storm popping up on random on my walkman, not knowing who it was and thinking it sounded a lot like them so that might be a close parallel if you're looking for similar music.

Fifty Foot Hose from San Francisco were kind of similar, too.

45 years old today and still sounding psychedelic.

Album of early Joseph Byrd compositions was reviewed in the last issue of Wire, anyone mentioned it on ILM?

was listening to early 70's country joe album yesterday and i never noticed that dorothy is on it. great record. paris sessions.

Teriffic record here.

yes. especially love "Love Song For The Dead Che"

Yah that song almost feels like it was written for the stage or something...

Where's the rest of it though?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdJyyJmLTns

Today on @aquadrunkard Transmissions: psychedelic pioneer Dorothy Moskowitz of United States of America joins me to discuss her apocalyptic @tsq2 LP Under An Endless Sky, counter culture history, thoughts on Broadcast’s Trish Keenan, and more.

Listen: https://t.co/11KJoW9T42 pic.twitter.com/lZdrXMBBNc

— Jason P. Woodbury (@jasonpwoodbury) March 8, 2023

Just started this listening to this interview with Dorothy Moskowitz and surprised to hear she was a big fan of Broadcast.

From Tompkins Square Records thread---I should have thought to post it on this 'un as well:

Dorothy Moskowitz & The United States of Alchemy - Under an Endless Sky - Available via Tompkins Square - March 17, 2023
Under An Endless Sky represents the interchange that took place between electronic composer Francesco Paolo Paladino, composer and writer Luca Chino Ferrari, and the legendary Dorothy Moskowitz, an icon of underground culture who broke all kinds of new ground as a member of The United States of America. Led by the charismatic composer Joseph Byrd, the band released their lone eponymous album on Columbia Records in 1968. It has taken on a mythic status that has grown through the years, sampled by Diplo and Mac Miller and widely acknowledged as a visionary psychedelic classic.
Francesco Paolo Paladino, an avant-garde Italian composer contacted Dorothy, inviting her to sing on some of his compositions. When she heard his 2021 CD release of Barene & Other Works, she recognized that they shared a similarly experimental point of view and she accepted his invitation. Paladino is known for his collaborations with Martyn Bates, Allison O'Donnell, Simon Fisher Turner, and other world-renowned contemporary composers, as well as his own sought-after 1985 debut LP Doublings and Silences Volume 1.

Francesco has long collaborated with Italian writer Luca Chino Ferrari, author of biographies of Nick Drake, Third Ear Band, Captain Beefheart, Tim Buckley and Syd Barrett. He submitted lyrics to Dorothy and together they began a profound and unique collaboration on the adaptation of lyrics to music, delving into words and meanings, phonetic properties and their singability. “Lyrics that have the audacity to deal with complex themes of human existence, real philosophical cutaways that look at reality and question it, often without offering answers,” says Ferrari.

Moskowitz's extraordinary voice and modal melodies float over Paladino's magical musical textures. There are no guitars, bass, drums or other technological devilry, but only virtual sounds (sometimes without even keyboards) upon which are grafted some acoustic interventions: violins and violas, woodwinds and percussion entrusted to excellent musicians such as Italians Riccardo Sinigaglia, Angelo Contini, Stefano Scala, Trio Cavallazzi and Gino Ape, and English folker Sean Breadin.

Recommended If You Like : Late-stage Marianne Faithfull, Mercury Rev, Terry Riley, Flaming Lips, Italian electronic music, The United States of America.

Also RIYL:Laser Pace - Granfalloon (Takoma - 1974) Wow!

https://tompkinssquare.bandcamp.com/album/under-an-endless-sky

anyone else listen to this? i was pretty impressed by the 22-minute title track, with moskowitz doing some marianne faithfull-style singing over a gorgeous orchestral drone. but after that i didn't have the energy to check out the rest of the album (yet)

Dorothy Moskowitz & The United States of Alchemy is hailed via WIRE, MOJO, UNCUT, The New Yorker and many more.

** Bay Area & Friends of Bay Area ! Dorothy will be signing copies of her new album, and your vintage copies of The United States of America's 1968 Columbia Records debut LP : Saturday April 8, 1-3pm, Mars Record Shop, Oakland

"Moskowitz breaks the celestial-ocean surface in the 22-minute title
piece with warm, melodic logic, in corkscrew-lullaby arcs. Six shorter pieces evoke her haunted caroling and moonwalk balladry in the original USA – and make you hope she has phone messages waiting from Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips."
★ ★ ★ ★ - David Fricke, MOJO

Damn I'd like to go to that signing! Never did get Joe Byrd & The Field Hippies or his Yankee Transcendoodle or Country Joe's Paris album incl. Dorothy, but still have my high school copy of The United States of America---I may have read a review, but prob the cover, with her looking awesomely poised and the guys like A-V geeks/me, tipped the scales.

high school copy of orig. LP, that is, don't have the CD w bonus tracks.

I had previously heard the two Northern Picture Library covers of "Love Song for the Dead Che" but today while searching on YouTube, I learned that there was a contemporaneous (1969) jazz cover of it by Phil Woods - according to the credits, Herbie Hancock plays piano on the Woods album ("Round Trip") with that track (but I'm not sure if Hancock specifically is on that track).

Thanks, had never heard of that version!
Aquarium Drunkard interviews Dorothy Moskowitz (and Tompkins Square says she'll chat w fans via TS Bandcamp on July 15)

o quote album art master and AD visual guru D. Norsen: “Dorothy Moskowitz might not be a household name but was a musician on two of the headiest albums I know: 1967’s Vocal And Instrumental Ragas From South India on Folkways and 1968’s United States of America on CBS.”
Moskowitz is our guest this week on Transmissions. She joins us to discuss not only the pioneering psychedelia she made in the past with collaborators like Joe Byrd and Country Joe, but also her brand new album, coming out soon from Tompkins Square. It’s called Under the Endless Sky, and it’s credited to Dorothy Moskowitz & The United States of Alchemy. Working with Italian electronic composer Francesco Paolo Paladino and composer and writer Luca Chino Ferrari, it represents a new vision from the 83 year old artist, at once apocalyptic, vivid, and transcendent.

Aquarium Drunkard interviews Dorothy Moskowitz (and Tompkins Square says she'll chat w fans via TS Bandcamp on July 15)

oh tompkins square, gotcha. i misread acronyms sometimes.

Wow!

Most unexpected return of 2023?

Italian electronic composer Francesco Paolo Paladino

omg omg omg so psyched

Haven’t listened to the original album since Mrs. Redd hid it on me long ago, sounding great now. Hearing a kinship with Hair OBC or however you acronym it.

whoa, this is what i hoped would happen every time i've clicked on the thread with all the maps

Lol

nice

1967’s Vocal And Instrumental Ragas From South India on Folkways

listen carefully and you'll hear joe byrd sampling a short piece from that on the field hippies album

https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/interviews/dorothy-moskowitz-i-wanted-to-be-in-the-mainstream-but-it-couldnt-happen-142024/

Seems to already be available for streaming? Listening to it right now.

this is great

Yeah, Na posted link upthread, here tis again: https://tompkinssquare.bandcamp.com/album/under-an-endless-sky
Tompkins Square is vary generous with many of their releases!

This is so cool, reminds me a lot of Battiato's Sulle Corde Di Aries. It's such a treat to hear her voice again.

I haven't followed Paladino very much since his Doubling Riders days, I need to catch up

wait a second it was MOSKOWITZ who did the voiceover on "Cracks"? that's kind of a legendary sesame street bit, one of those things that people only had hazy, terrifying childhood memories of for a long time

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2592522591_10.jpg

Tompkins Square is pleased to release “Rising to Eternity,” written and produced by singer/songwriter Dorothy Moskowitz. The album follows her acclaimed April 2023 release,' Under An Endless Sky."

Moskowitz is an icon of underground culture who broke all kinds of new ground as a member of The United States of America. Led by the charismatic composer Joseph Byrd, the band released their lone eponymous album on Columbia Records in 1968. It has taken on a mythic status that has grown through the years, sampled by Diplo and Mac Miller and widely acknowledged as a visionary psychedelic classic.

"Rising To Eternity" is a musical reverie about the WEBB Telescope, launched on Christmas Day of 2021. The telescope enables a more detailed exploration of the early universe than has ever been feasible before. The album will be released on Christmas Day of 2023 to commemorate the event.

When asked what impelled her to consider a telescope as the subject of an album, Dorothy said:

“I felt the Webb launch to be like the “moonwalk” of this century, only with our hopelessly ravaged society, no one has the heart or stomach to celebrate anything at all. It began with an instrumental tribute, but the more I wrote, the more free-form fantasy took hold. I included a life form that emerges without light or water, I explored unnamed dimensions inhabiting dark matter, and scored unlikely dialogues between forces of creation and destruction. I think that an event of this magnitude sparks peoples’ imagination if they know about it and I’d like people to know about it."

It’s her first solo album, but also features work by artists with whom she’s recently collaborated such as composer Peter Olof Fransson, and writers Tim Lucas and Luca Chino Ferrari. Her daughter, vocalist Melissa Falarski, contributes back up on several cuts and there is also a track by sound sculptor Larnie Fox. To her pastiche of electronica, Dorothy has added live recordings of her live piano and viola and has incorporated drone washes from NASA archival recordings.

credits
releases December 25, 2023

Advance track, pre-order info:
https://tompkinssquare.bandcamp.com/album/rising-to-eternity

bump. Posted late, dunno how many people have seen this.

new record from Moskowitz:

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2938539149_10.jpg

Following the instantly sold out Afterlife 7" EP at the end of 2023, we are pleased to present the full Afterlife album by influential vocalist, musician & songwriter Dorothy Moskowitz (United States Of America / United States Of Alchemy) & producer Retep Folo a.k.a. Peter Olof Fransson (Reportage / The Owl Report).

Fans of 1960's psychedelia, early 1970's experimental rock &
eco-conceptual electronics will find plenty to savour amongst the 14 tracks on this finely crafted album. Utilising an array of vintage instruments, Peter conjures avant-garde chorales & strange mantras bound in slabs of fuzz guitar, whimsical keyboards, jagged synths & menacing percussion. With Dorothy contributing voices, words & additional music together they have produced an album layered in arcane sound, mystical wisdom & urgent prophecy.

Dorothy explored some of these themes on the legendary United States of America album back in 1967, an enduring psych classic & major influence on artists such as Broadcast, Stereolab & Portishead. With Peter's meticulous production bringing these far-reaching sounds and ideas full circle, The Afterlife is a heady mix that manages to acknowledge the past whilst contemplating humanity's uncertain future.

Comparable to the sonic worlds of Mort Garson, Bruce Haack, Alessandro Alessandroni, Alain Goraguer, David Axelrod, Franco Battiato, Maria Monti, Brigitte Fontaine & Areski, The Afterlife is a heartfelt paean to nature's self-regulating cycles & our fragile planet.

https://buriedtreasure.bandcamp.com/album/the-afterlife