(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Don Falcone, originally a poet performer from Pennsylvania but relocated in San
Francisco at the beginning of the 1980s, was a member of
Thessalonians, as
well as the original Melting Euphoria.
In 1995 Falcone started a solo project called Spaceship Eyes.
The line-up for Kamarupa (Noh Poetry, 1997) was Falcone (all keyboards),
Gary Parra (percussion), Karen Anderson (percussion).
The compositions feed on a concotion of acid-rock, progressive-rock, ambient
and new age music. The texture is either dramatically layered or continuously
changing.
Storm Of Cleopatra's tribal effect is actually an accretion of
percussions engaged in African polyrhithms, electronic gurgles a` la Gong,
and a hypnotic funky riff in the vein of Byrne & Eno (which briefly mutates into a reggae hiccup).
The longest track at ten minutes, Kamarupa is a symphonic poem set to
a middle eastern tempo in a manner reminiscent of early Pink Floyd; which
evolves into a surreal dance in a King Crimson vein, which, wrapped with
slowly revolving drones, evolves into a majestic ceremonial coda.
Crafted From Wood (nine minutes) is a sequence of variations on a
zany leimotiv.
The interplay between electronics and percussions is daring.
Granny Gurtn's Mysterious Space Needle (eight minutes) is a slow-motion
avantgarde piece which would have shone on Pink Floyd's Ummagumma.
Minimalism weds Buddhist drumming on Tribal Roots.
Falcone's keyboard lines have inherited the spookiness of Allen Ravenstine's
synthesizers, the fresco-like quality of Klaus Schulze and the fluidity of
jazz-rock.
Several tracks sound like demonstrations of Falcone's technique:
dadaistic vignettes such as Satori;
experiments on rhythm such as March Madness , which weaves together
a funky line and a dub line;
post-modern essays such as Pegasus,
which deconstructs a pastoral melody through sampling and scratching;
fairy tales such as Chameleon Sighting, which has the dynamics of a film soundtrack.
The album is a marvelous display of post-psychedelic music in the age of electronica.
Truth in the Eyes of a Spaceship (Hypnotic, 1998), the second
Spaceship Eyes album,
featured ex-Hawkwind member Harvey Bainbridge, the dj Freaky Chakra,
and other distinguished members of San Francisco's avantgarde.
Falcone's ambition was to wed the worlds of electronica and progressive-rock
with drum'n'bass.
The jazzy keyboard licks of Mind The Alien are a reminder of Falcone's
talent, but, generally speaking, the tracks are orgies of sampling and
scratching over more or less driving rhythms. Not much is left of Spaceship
Eyes' original program. The most representative tracks here
(Drum'n'Smoke, Dreaming Without The Right Side,
Fresh Cheebahcabra) gallop at breakneck, dizzy tempos and layer mountains
of creative noises. Falcone indulges, at best, in an art/science of timbres.
After so much drum'n'bass, the wildly energetic, tribal profusion of
Roanoke and the raga mutation of The Great Yew Hedge
come as a relief.
The album represents a significant innovation in the drum'n'bass genre,
but a regression from Kamarupa's genial potpourri.
In 1998 Falcone also started an ethno-ambient project, the all-instrumental
Quiet Celebration (Gazul, 2000),
that features Edward Huson on tabla, Ashley Adams on contrabass,
John Purves on sax and flute.
The album contains ten impressionistic pieces that straddle the border between
futuristic electronica, Brian Eno's ambient vignettes and Jon Hassell's
primitivism.
The cross-pollination can be infectious:
Salmon mixes jazzy sax, Middle-Eastern flute, African percussion and
cosmic synth washes.
Magenta integrates exotic and chamber elements while keeping them
separate (the former mainly represented by percussion, the latter by
strings and contrabass).
Coal is a manic, cacophonous minimalist piece that has all instruments
play a pattern, while Ivory is nocturnal jazz in a Middle-Eastern limbo.
The eight-minute percussion-less
Amber is an evocative form of avantgarde: the mechanical patterns
of the keyboards and the horns recall industrial and minimalist music,
but dropped into a nebula of flute lines and assorted drones.
Another highlight is Indigo, which again disposes of the percussion
and sets the romantic soliloquy of a sax in a slow-motion maelstrom of
electronic melodies.
The element of psychosis is made explicit when a multitude of reverbed saxophone
notes blend in the deforming mirror of Peru.
Falcone's electronic keyboards often play second fiddle to the
contrabass and the horns. As these instruments carry the leitmotif,
the electronics and the percussions sustain the tension.
This could well be Falcone's most impeccable recording. Each atmosphere is
carefully crafted, and the multiform style never breaks down into discordant
textures. On the contrary, each piece is a clockwork of metabolism.
This is as organic as music can get.
In 1999 Falcone launched Grindlestone, with Doug Erickson;
an ambient dub project named Reverbia, with Jerry Jeter;
and a sample-based project, Alien Heat.
Falcone then resurrected Spirits Burning. Spirits Burning was one of his first
San Francisco bands, for which Falcone played bass and keyboards.
New Worlds By Design (Gazul, 1999)
boasts a walhalla of alternative rock, including
Daevid Allen of Gong, Malcolm Mooney of Can,
Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, Thomas Grenas of Pressurehead,
The tracks are relatively shorter and are played at a much faster tempo.
Some employ vocals. There is no unifying factor, just a quest for new sounds
at the border between Falcone's old psychedelic world and the new world of
ambient, techno and electronica.
Solar Campfires pushes drum'n'bass to its epileptic consequences,
while the keyboards sustain mechanical patterns in the vein of
industrial music and doodle in the vein of Morton Subotnick's electronic
dadaism.
By Design detonates the electronic fabric with a bluesy, hard-rock riff
which develops into a full-fledged, dense and pounding, Hawkwind-style,
space-rock suite.
The horror riff that propels Arcturus,
the pow-wow dance of Triquetrium Delight,
the techno torpedo of Avatar 444,
not to mention Suicide-like trenodies and free-form noise suites, are the
highlights of a diverse collection that, with a little more self-control,
could have rivaled Brian Eno's Before And After Science for
the digital generation.
The futuristic drama and personal tour de force of
The Ticking Of Science (13 minutes) recapitulates
the album's anarchic, capricious approach.
This is an unfocused work, a half-baked work of high art, an experiment
that does not have a sense
of direction, or possibly a mere collection of cues for future albums.
The new Spaceship Eyes' CD, Of Cosmic Repercussions (Hypnotic, 2000)
will come out in October.
Gazul Records and Noh Poetry Records will release Quiet Celebration
on Sept 7.
This Californian quartet consists of Don Falcone (synth, udu), Ashley
Adams (contrabass), John Purves (woodwinds) and Edward Huson (tabla).
Reflections In A Radio Shower (Gazul, 2001), credited to Spirits Burning,
includes contributions from Daevid Allen, Robert Calvert (posthumously), Don Xaliman (Melodic Energy Commission), members of ST 37, Mushroom, etc.
Fireclan is the trio of Don Falcone, Mychael Merritt and Luis Davila.
Sunrise to Sunset (Noh Poetry, 2004) is an exercise in reinventing
prog-rock for the post-ambient generation.
It opens with a fluent space-rock number, Electric Sunrise, and closes
with the hypnotic percussive jam of Acoustic Sunset.
In between, it runs the gamut from the virulent minimalism of
Sudden Mist to the
melodramatic theme of Winds of Sorrow
to the eerie soundscape of Faces in The Terrain.
The longest track, Cliff of Fate, fuses these techniques and coins
a kind of impressionistic drama, that delivers both the natural power and the
psychological tension of the scene.
Weird Biscuit Teatime "DJDDAY" (Voiceprint, 2005)
Gothic Ships (Noh Poetry, 2006) is a collaboration with Steve Palmer.
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