Revisiting John Sangster's Lord of the Rings LPs.

        When discussing The Hobbit Suite record two years ago, I offhandedly described John Sangster’s Lord of the Rings LPs as too ‘trad-jazzy’ for my tastes. I have been revisiting a few of these albums of late – prompted in part from reading Sangster’s autobiography Seeing The Rafters (1988) – and I’ve gotten new insights into the man’s work that have caused a revision in my thinking on these albums.

Sangster’s Tolkien-themed series of albums comprised, The Hobbit Suite (1973), Lord of the Rings (1975), Lord of the Rings Vol. 2 (1976), Double Vibes: Hobbit (1977), Lord of the Rings Vol 3. (1977) and Landscapes of Middle Earth (1978). All of these were double LPs released on EMI apart from the two hobbit records which were single LPs released on local jazz label Swaggie. The EMI records have all been excellently remastered and re-released on CD by Move Records. Swaggie have remastered and re-released The Hobbit Suite and selections from Double Vibes which features the aforementioned album plus four songs from the latter title. (Given the paucity of reissues of Australian jazz recordings from the sixties and seventies, this may provide some indication of the esteem in which these records are still held by people in the local music industry.)

The Hobbit Suite was apparently quite a spontaneous recording with a small ensemble and most of the tracks are first takes. After the success of this record Sangster was emboldened to try more ambitious arrangements for the new music he was writing and went to a major label that could support his vision. These records feature expanded brass and string sections in addition to the core jazz band.

For the past year or so I have been thoroughly listening to the first two LOTR albums and The Hobbit Suite which preceded them. (I haven’t heard LOTR Vol 3. or Landscapes of Middle Earth at all – and I won’t do for quite some time. Sangster died in 1995, his musical output was finite and I’ve got to make this stuff last.)

Firstly, despite the aesthetics of the cover art and the song titles being allusions to Tolkien at face value, Sangster’s autobiography makes clear that these records too, are autobiographies. His life, in musical form. For example, the ‘Knockabout Trolls’ from The Hobbit Suite? Those ‘trolls’ are Sango and Sluggsy AKA his mate, drummer Len Barnard, doubling on washboard out the front of the band! And as for the stoned laughter and banter in the background of Longbottom Leaf from LOTR Vol 2. well, let’s just say that they may well have been method-acting. Legolas et al may hail from Middle Earth, but the bird calls in the field recordings on these albums are clearly from natives of the New South Wales temperate forests, near Sangster’s home of Sydney.

In addition to these coded titles, the music itself represents the myriad of styles that Sangster has played in, beginning in the burgeoning Australian jazz scene of the forties. From his book: “If you want a musical autobiography, it's all there in the Lord of the Rings albums. A crazed montage of all the jazz (and other) idioms I've been involved with during my life. All the musics I love are in there; some plainly stated, some distorted and disguised a little bit the way memories sometimes go."

My dismissive description of the LOTR records as merely ‘trad jazz’ is just plain wrong; these records encompass a ridiculous range of music from within and without the jazz scene, such as old-style trad, ragtime, be-bop, big-band/swing, blues, film music, avant garde and musique concrète. The fact that the first LOTR record has a track like Uncle Gandalf Needs You followed immediately by Ents And Entwives is a feat of juxtaposition that shows how ballsy Sangster really was. Sangster worshipped old greats like Bix Beiderbecke and Ellington, but he was equally a fan of experimental icons like Sun Ra, Moondog and Xenakis and all these influences coexist on these discs.

I’m glad I persevered with these records as these are superb examples of Sangster’s work and are significant albums, not just for Australian jazz, but Australian music in general. Is it too much to hope that one day Sangster’s music will see a resurgence amongst the hipsters and the Oz music bourgeois alike, and Sango himself celebrated as an unheralded genius? I really hope so. Australians are famously unwilling to revere their own as cultural figures worth praising, but a talent like John Sangster must transcend this and take a rightful place in the antipodean cultural canon alongside the likes of Barry Humphries or Charles Blackman. On yer Sango. 

Lord, Why? - The Cambrian Explosion

This is the second single from The Cambrian Explosion's album release Marine Theology. Yes, this is a song from my own band and I'd very much like you to hear it. On this one, we grind out some garage gospel with an arsenal of vintage and modern instrumentation, including flute and cümbüş.

The lyrics recount a lament from a protagonist attempting to reconcile the existence of fossils, dinosaurs and other natural phenomena with a fundamentalist belief system. Lord, why'd you leave the shells on the mountaintop?

You can download this song for free on our Bandcamp page.

A Wave In The Ocean - The Cambrian Explosion

A Wave In The Ocean is lovely vocal pop number with an overall middle-eastern fusion style, accented by the Turkish oud. (To be more precise, a cümbüş.) It's the first single from Marine Theology, an oceanic theme album from my band, The Cambrian Explosion. I realise this is a little outside of my usual brief for this blog, but this is music of which I am extremely proud and would like to share with as many people as possible. Let me know what you think, and please pass this on to musical fellow travelers if this is your kind of thing.

Nature Songs - Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service (1978)

 Although I was brought up in Victoria - Australia's southernmost mainland state and a long way from tropical Queensland - this record of environmentally themed children's tunes reminds me of my childhood. My family's particular jam was the classic Feathers, Fur or Fin by Don Spencer, but there must be a whole world of Australian ecological kid's music out there to discover. Due to the incredible natural heritage we've inherited, environmental education is often given a high priority in Australian schools, even at the earliest levels. And as all educators know, there's no more effective route to data retention than singing along to a catchy, upbeat tune strummed on a guitar.

Although a lot of these tracks are folky, three chord guitar-based numbers, there is plenty of inventiveness in the execution of these Nature Songs. I'm The Spider is rendered as a weird, glammy stomp with a delay pedal guitar solo. Marsupial's instructive lyrics about our unique native mammals are delivered via kind-of-rapping backed by indigenous didgeridoo and rhythm sticks.



The lyrical content is occasionally a little ham-fisted, but overall fun and informative and not afraid to touch on environmental issues that might seem too obscure for kids. What songwriter today would have the balls to write an entire song about decomposition for a children's audience with lines like: I decided to look closer, I bent down on my knee, I saw some fruiting bodies of the bracket fungi. Looking even closer, I saw some fibrous threads, fungi have no roots so use hyphae instead? Or an entire song about coral polyps or epiphytes?

The record is divided by the two sides; side one is the dry side featuring songs about life on land, side two is the wet side (from The Polyp Song onward), featuring songs about life in the water.

Label: Private
Released: 1978

Players: Brian Mackness - words and music.
Sandy Pollard - lead vocals and harmony, six and twelve string acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, flute, descant recorder, alto recorder, sopranino recorder, autoharp, glockenspiel, percussion and sound production.
Laurie Stone - mandolin, technical  advice, sound mixing and production.
Steve Errey - sound recording.
Jacky Nisbet - vocals and harmonies.
Keth Ross - banjo.
Mick Walker - blues harp.
Darryl Boyd, Jason Boyd and Leanne Mash - narration, vocals.
Sam Bun'tarrawuy - didgeridoo.
John Guillot, Robyn Kreis - percussion.
Brian Mackness - sound production.
Peter Ogilvie - bird call recordings.
Amanda Hadley, Melinda (Lindy) Hadley, Gregory Hadley, Gregory Mash, Tony Rasmussen, Stuart Mash, Kathryn Mash - vocals.

Engineered by Laurie Stone at Multi Media Studios, Spring Hill, Brisbane.

Mediafire.

I'm selling a couple of Libaek singles on eBay.

If anyone's interested I'm selling some singles on eBay, amongst them, a few Libaek records: the Thatcherie single from the Inner Space soundtrack, the Boney Title Theme single from the Boney soundtrack and the Andy Sundstrom Northern Territory single composed and produced by Libaek and previously featured on this blog. I've also got a bunch of 7" singles released by Secret Chiefs 3 in 2007 and a Ween single from White Pepper, if you're into those sorts of things.

Field recording from old Oceania: A Souvenir of Fiji - Tamavua Village Singers (197?)

Due to their proximity, there are a lot of folk recordings from the islands of the Pacific to be found in Australian charity and secondhand shops. Some of them are great; many are forgettable. I really like this EP because it’s a field recording of the performers in their traditional setting. It was recorded in a bure (a Fijian wood and straw hut) in Tamavua by one James Siers. You can hear the crickets buzzing in the background and it has genuinely captured a certain sound and place. 

This is also an interesting recording as in addition to four traditional Fijian compositions there is a rendition of Twelfth Street Rag, an old Tin Pan Alley standard. The aforementioned tune is played with hacky gusto by the guitarist - or is it a ukelele? - without any accompaniment by the vocalists. 



I wanted to create a new label for categorising recordings from this part of the world. I assumed that Fiji would be in Polynesia, but it is in fact part of Melanesia along with New Guinea and associated islands. I’ve since ran with Oceania which is the most all encompassing term for this region, although this also apparently includes Australia. (I don’t think this inclusion makes for a particularly meaningful term. Australia is too culturally overbearing to be included in the more modest nations of the Pacific and should probably be left out of any such definitions.)

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Incidentally, this record was released by Hibiscus Records, a subsidiary of Kiwi Records. I am very interested in any releases from either of these labels, both of which specialised in indigenous musics, field recordings and other wonderfully esoteric materials from Oceania and New Zealand respectively.

Label: Hibiscus Records
Released: I really have no idea. Probably 1970s.
Players: Samu Loki
Malakai Niubasaga
Semesa Lewai
Aca Tomasi
Bulewa Vilitati

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A beautiful sixties Greek soundtrack: Hellespontus - Stavros Xarcharkos (1966)

This is a classy set of original Greek folk music from 1966 composed by Stavros Xarcharkos. The dominant presence of the bouzouki on most tracks lends the album a strong Greek, traditional feel, but there is a welcome addition of unorthodox tones for this style of music such as electric guitar and glockenspiel. As the liner notes say, Xarcharkos has a ‘talent for blending unusual instrumentation with the warm melancholy of beautiful songs’. There’s a lot of range here, from slow, spooky bazouki numbers such as Horos Tou Sakaina - which when I first heard it, I was sure was the source material for Secret Chief’s 3’s Ship Of Fools* - to fast, odd-metred folk dances like Fos Tis Avgis and Ipomoni.

This LP was originally released in 1966, but was reissued in 1972 when one of the tunes was appropriated as the theme song to the successful BBC drama series The Lotus Eaters. It is from this reissue that this rip was made, which I was fortunate enough to find at the Phillip Island Vinnies Store.

*It's probably not.

Label: EMI

Released: Originally 1966, this reissue sometime after 1972.

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