Bush Theme/Lonely Australian Landscape - Sven Libaek (1966)

Here's another gem from Urban Bowerbird favourite Sven Libaek. These two tunes are taken from the nature documentary soundtrack Nature Walkabout, however these are quite different versions to the tracks that appear on the LP. These versions are shorter and have faster tempos than the album versions and a few changes in orchestration and arrangement. The two tracks also seem to be played by a more stripped-down version of Sven's usual ensemble - there are no saxophone, flute or trumpet parts, just piano, guitar, bass, vibes and harmonica on Bush Theme. I am unsure why different versions of these songs were released on the single - is this a standard practice? I have a 7" single from Libaek's Inner Space soundtrack (Thatcherie/Sounds Of The Deep) and it contains exactly the same versions as featured on the LP. Weird.

I always felt that Bush Theme was one of the weaker tracks on Nature Walkabout and I think the increase in tempo and the concision of this arrangement improves it immeasurably. Lonely Australian Landscape on the other hand is one of my favourite of Sven's compositions and I like it even better with this pacing and arrangement. It takes what is already a great melody and gives it an incredible urgency and energy.

Label: Festival
Released: 1966 (I assume; that's when the Nature Walkabout soundtrack was released.)
Players: Unsure, but here's an educated guess: Sven Libaek - piano 

George Golla - guitar
John Sangster - vibes, percussion
Ed Gaston - bass
Derek Fairbrass - drums
Richard Brooks - harmonica

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Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - Incredible Penguins (1985)

Here's a concept: I'm going to share a piece of music which I really don't like. Think of it as an act of vigilance on my part, as I don't want to ever be doomed to repeat the kind of history which is represented by this release by the Incredible Penguins. This is a benefit single released in '85 by a number of actual and semi Aussie musical celebrities in the aid of the Little Penguin (Eudyptula minor). Allow me to outline the crimes committed by this single:

1. The abysmal artwork and title of the band. What the hell were they thinking? Is that snow in the background? Little Penguins are native to the southern coast of Australia and coastal New Zealand - they live on beaches, not snow. Then again, it does perfectly compliment the slap-dash attitude exuded by the single as a whole.

2. And speaking of slap-dash, what's with the choice of song? They've taken a very well known cover (which was rereleased after Lennon's murder only five years earlier), which was probably good for sales, but what has the song got to do with penguins? What's worse is that in order to create some kind of relevance from the song choice, they play samples over the outro of politicians talking about the Falklands War! What the hell does that have to do with the plight of this native Australian penguin species?

3. The musicians involved in making this record were frankly, pretty uninspiring. This single was the brainchild of Aussie music industry legend Molly Meldrum, who I would have thought could have assembled a pretty impressive mob of musos, particularly during his heyday in the eighties. Instead we get Angry Anderson and Brian Mannix! Granted, Meldrum also got Colin Hay, John Farnham and Bob Geldoff (who during this era evidently got involved with absolutely any charity single that would have him) but they are swamped by a chorus of no name Aussie singers and the Hare Krishna Chorus(?).

4. After you've handed over your hard-earned cash to help out the penguins, what sort of value do you get with this single? An extended version, a radio mix and an instrumental mix of the same song which was already done ten times better on the original - the listenability potential is just overwhelming.

5. Maybe this is going to sound like a weird complaint, but the Little Penguin isn't even endangered (and as far as I'm aware, wasn't categorised as such when this was recorded). Don't get me wrong, any money going towards the conservation of native species is great, but there are loads of other less well-known bird species in this country that could have done with the sort of financial boost that this recording would have brought in - such as the insanely endangered Orange-bellied Parrot. One can't help but think that the Little Penguin was chosen as an easy animal to identify with regardless of other potentially more pressing conservation issues at the time.

Basically, this recording feels like a soulless, vapid enterprise entered into by people who may well have had their hearts in the right place but ended up creating something so pointless and tacky, that it's no wonder that no one (and I mean no one) plays or has even heard of this recording today. It's hard to avoid being reminded of the brilliance of the Simpsons and their own vapid celebrity benefit single We're Sending Our Love Down The Well.

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The Birds Around Us - Gould League of New South Wales (197?)

Here is number three in my series of posts on Australian bird call recordings. This one is an LP and from a slightly later era than the last two - it must have been recorded before 1977 as this was the year that the narrator, Alec Chisolm, died. The recordings were compiled by the Gould League of New South Wales which is an environmental education body that seemed to be a part of every Australian's schooling in the generation before mine. The Gould League isn't really active these days, but they really seemed to be a significant force in raising awareness of conservation issues in the sixties, seventies and eighties. The first side of the LP features the calls of many native birds with Chisolm's narration, whereas the second side is pure uninterrupted bird call recordings.

Label: Columbia/EMI

Released: 197?

Players: Alec Chisolm - narrator

Peter Roberts & Roger Golding - recordists

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The Australian Kookaburra - Peter Bruce (196?)

Here is another bird call EP by Peter Bruce, focusing on another of Australia's iconic bird species, the Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae). The Kookaburra is one of our most recognisable and well-known bird species due mainly to its extremely distinctive laughing call and its tendency to live in close proximity to humans. Although this EP was recorded by Bruce (who's amusing narrative style I remarked upon in my post on his Lyrebird EP) this time the narration is done by Richard Davies - one of those old-style announcer types who has that curious accent that fuses the classic Australian tone with that of the British private school. The first side of the record describes the calls and habits of the Kookaburra, referring to the indigenous folklore surrounding the bird and its place in the Aboriginal dreamtime stories. The second side is a mix tape of native bird species - Grey Butcherbird (Cracticus torquatus), Grey Shrikethrush (Colluricincla harmonica), Australian Magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen), Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (Cacatua galleria) and Boobook Owl (Ninox novaeseelandiae). Unlike the showcasing of the mimicry on Bruce's Lyrebird EP, no prior knowledge of Australian birds is needed to enjoy this set of field recordings.

Now, if you'll forgive a little self-indulgence, my own musical ensemble, The Cambrian Explosion, used the B-side of this EP as a sample for a track from our last album The Forgotten Music of Felix Ookean - a tribute to the Australian nature documentary soundtracks of the sixties and seventies. In the song, Those Bushranging Birds Of The Bush, we have taken the sample in its entirety and scored each call like different scenes in a documentary - have a listen.

Label: Columbia, produced by Geoffrey Jackson.

Released: 196?

Players: Peter Bruce - recordist and script writer

Richard Davies - narrator

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The Superb Lyrebird - Peter Bruce (196?)

I'm a musician and a zoologist, and I've always had trouble trying to work out where and how these two disciplines can interconnect. However, there have always been those who shared those twin interests and this where we get the field of bioacoustics - the study of the music made by animals. There seems to have been an assumption many years ago that Australian birds were musically inferior to the songbirds of Europe - probably due to the squawking, screaming calls of the ubiquitous native parrots and some of the more inharmonious honeyeater species. Despite this, or possibly because of this slight to their native fauna, early  Australians developed a patriotic pride in  the unique musicality of their native bird-life and much was written praising them. (Even while others were introducing European bird species such as Blackbirds to remind them of the birdsong of the old country). Obviously, audio recording was the best way to show off and share these unique soundscapes and back in the old days many vinyl recordings were released in this vein.

I was lucky enough to find two Australian bird call EPs both on the Columbia record label in an op-shop in Laverton. The first such record I would like to share is The Superb Lyrebird (Australia's Forest Singer) by wildlife recordist Peter Bruce, recorded, by the looks of it, sometime during the early sixties although no date is indicated. The Superb Lyrebird is very well-known for its extraordinary mimicry and this was something that was recognised and celebrated soon after Europeans became familiar with this bird. Superb Lyrebirds (Menura novaehollandiae) are found along the edge of south-eastern Australia in temperate forests and woodland. They are incredibly distinctive as they are large ground-dwelling birds that can measure up to 1m, including their tail. This huge fan-shaped tail is made up of two large outer feathers surrounded by wispy, light feathers in between. 

Peter Bruce provides us with narration on the habits of these birds interspersed with examples of their talent for mimicry. Bruce has an amusingly languid and descriptive tone but he is clearly very familiar with his subject and was responsible for the field recordings themselves. It must be said, that it certainly helps to be familiar with Australian bird calls to really appreciate these sorts of records - after all, how impressive is the Lyrebird's spot-on impression of a Gang-gang Cockatoo if you don't know what the hell a Gang-gang Cockatoo is? Regardless, there is something fascinating about listening to these sorts of recordings and imagining the world that Bruce is describing, where Lyrebirds are always calling and there's a friendly narrator to guide you through the Australian bush when it was a little more pristine than it is today.

Label: Columbia

Released: 196? (Bruce recorded an LP of Lyrebird recordings for Smithsonian Folkways in 1966, and it seems likely that this was EP was recorded at around the same time.)

Players: Peter Bruce - recordist and narrator

David Corke - writer of commentary

Superb Lyrebird - vocals

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À L'Olympia - Alan Stivell (1972)

I found this LP in an op-shop and had no idea who Alan Stivell was or what sort of music he might play, but on the back cover were seemingly random phrases written in French: 'Futurisme', 'Diversité des cultures', 'Progressive-folk', 'Celtic pop-music', 'Monde technologique' and so on - it seemed like it would be interesting enough to gamble $10 on. It certainly was. This album is in fact, a live recording by Alan Stivell at the Olympia theatre in Paris from 1972. Stivell was responsible for something of a renaissance in the Celtic folk music of Brittany and interest in the Celtic harp generally during the seventies. This performance combines this traditional folk music with elements of rock and prog very effectively on this LP using harp, acoustic and electric guitar, dulcimer, banjo, violin, organ, drums, percussion, electric bass and bombarde, a traditional French reed instrument in the oboe family. Most tracks feature Stivells distinctive vocals (in French and English) and are traditional tunes that he has arranged for his band. For a live disc, the sound is excellent, although the crowd noise in between tracks is positively deafening, but I guess they were just really into it! I know I would have been - it sounds like an incredible gig. The first side is a mellow set which showcases the more folky material whereas the second side brings out the more contemporary rock influences. Although the first side is a great listen, I prefer the more folk-rock fusion tracks from the B side such as the instrumental 'Pop Plinn' which combines rocking guitar lines with a Celtic harp breakdown and a bombarde solo (the crowd goes nuts for the latter). The circular melody of 'Tri Martolod' and it's contemporary sounding beat make this another highlight of side two along with the closer 'Suite Sudarmoricaine' which starts with a flute-driven section but then quickly segues into a upbeat seventies rock song with a very catchy wordless chorus allowing even us non-Francophones to sing along.

Label: Polydor

Released: 1972

Players: Alan Stivell - Celtic harp

Gabriel Yacoub - guitare, dulcimer, banjo

Rene Werneer - fiddle

Pascal Stive - orgue

Gerard Levasseur - basse

Henri Delagarde - violoncelle, flute, bombarde

Dan Ar Bras - guitare électrique

Michel Santangeli - batterie

Serj Parayre - percussions

Mikael Klec'h - flute, bombarde

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Discoveries Underwater - Howard J. Davidson (1988)

Everybody loves underwater soundtracks. This obscure, but well-loved genre has become very popular amongst record collectors, culminating in the veneration of records like Sven Libaek's Inner Space which was reissued in 2008. This album is from a different era from most of the popular underwater soundtracks, but it's an interesting and atmospheric listen nonetheless. The soundtrack is scored for an eighties documentary series on underwater archaeology, so ambient synths and slowly layered soundscapes are the natural choice for the subject matter. Where this sort of approach could so easily turn into a snooze-fest of glacial synthesiser, Davidson's material seems to more aligned with the Vangelis school of awesome synth soundtracks. Many of the themes are written in unconventional time signatures, but the composer's ability to make electronic music sound organic means that the listener barely perceives this deviation to the norm. Davidson is also able to incorporate live instruments into his electronic soundscapes to great effect such as cello in 'Aqua Sub Aqua' and guitar in 'Atocha'. The subtlety and depth that Davidson achieves with only synthesisers allows the live instruments to join in without jarring or sounding out of place. Overall, this album feels to me more like an ambient concept album than a television soundtrack and it is a piece that I find myself listening to a lot.

Label: BBC Records

Released: 1988

Players: Howard J. Davidson - synthesisers etc.

Hugh McDowell - cello

Phil Palmer - guitar

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