Search MusicWeb Here Custom Search     International mailing Up to 40% off

Searching Musicweb Monthly index Recordings of the Year Label index Masterwork index Series index Search engines Review Archive Classical Downloads Jazz Concerts Nostalgia Books Film music Resources Composer pages National discographies Online books Piano Trio Survey Gerard Hoffnung Arthur Butterworth's columns Philip Scowcroft's British light music collection Interviews Programme notes Other material Articles Seen & Heard Jazz reviews Message Board Announcements About Musicweb About Musicweb Contact Musicweb Contributors What they say about us Visitor stats Site Map

Founder: Len Mullenger

AVAILABILITY  North Pacific Music

Gary NOLAND (b.1957) Royal Oilworks Music Prelude in E minor Op.34 (1979 revised 1993) [3.44] Serial Lullaby Op.80/1 (2005) [5.41] Spray Taint Op.80/2 (2005) [7.24] Dog Duo Op.66 (2002) [3.41] Ragbones Op.11 (1977 revised 1988) [4.27] Grey Malignant Banks Op.80/3 (2005) [5.16] My Babe’s Gone Down To Do Her Glue Op.80/4 (2005) [6.32] Royal Oilworks Music Op.80/5 (2005) [5.17] Prelude and Zootrot Op.22 (1991) [2.47] Something Rotten Op.80/6 (2005) [4.52] Music is Dead: A Paradox in Fugue Op.53 (2001) [4.19] Dreadmill Op.37 (1994) [6.35] Deformed Fugue Op.17 (1977 Revised 1990) [1.51] Insurrection of the Office Slaves Op.80/7 (2005) [7.27] Psycho-Bacchanal Op.80/8 (2005) [3.54] All compositions performed by Gary Noland No recording details NORTH PACIFIC MUSIC NPM LD 024 [73.24]

A look at the head-note will alert you to Gary Noland’s very personal way with words. Not for Noland the lures either of Olympian detachment or lower case “significance.” No, Noland is full-on and takes few linguistic prisoners. Similarly with the booklet artwork, Noland’s own, which is an example of crazed Robert Crumb à L’Africaine. And his music is much the same, Deformed Fugue, his 1977 piece for harpsichord summoning up pretty nicely his compositional stance. This is an elixir brewed of Couperin and Rameau, Scott Joplin, Bach, free funk, free Jazz (Cecil Taylor?), the Fugue, and an unholy alliance of straight sounding neo-classicism and its subsequent assault by the forces of percussive militancy.   Noland may actually be a romantic but doesn’t want you to know. His Prelude is baroque-convincing though attended by some sour-ish off notes but he follows it with Serial Lullaby, a synthesiser-rich free funk piece that mocks its own title. Spray Taint gives us assaulted baroque, the percussion blizzards full of jazz offbeat and whoop-bang noises (plus telephone rings and disco inferno). He subjects Ragtime to the same souring procedures as he does to his off-note harpsichord baroque and evokes a drugs fix (in My Babe’s Gone Down To Do Her Glue) with some haywire free form. He writes a American fanfare for the title track and subjects it to anti-Bush assault by bird song and drum blister.   His quixotic sense extends to opus numbers – the bowels of Op.80 are scattered throughout the disc, and to instrumentation as well. I assume he makes all the noises, both pianistic and harpsichord synthesised and vocalised. He’s a veritable one-man band of off-kilter influences, the procedural repetition of which sometimes got me seriously down, though I did like his Swingle Sisters take-off on Music is Dead: A Paradox in Fugue. Jonathan Woolf    AVAILABILITY  North Pacific Music     We are currently offering in excess of 51,000 reviews Advertising on Musicweb Donate and keep us afloat   New Releases Nimbus Podcast Obtain 10% discount Special offer 50% off 15CDs £83 incl. postage Musicweb sells the following labels Acte Préalable (THE Polish label) Altus 10% off Atoll 10% off CRD 10% off Hallé 10% off Lyrita 10% off Nimbus 10% off Nimbus Alliance Prima voce 10% off Red Priest 10% off Retrospective 10% off Saydisc 10% off Sterling 10% off Follow us on Twitter Subscribe to our free weekly review listing sample Sample: See what you will get Editorial Board MusicWeb International Founding Editor    Rob Barnett Editor in Chief John Quinn Seen & Heard Editor Emeritus    Bill Kenny MusicWeb Webmaster    David Barker Postmaster Jonathan Woolf MusicWeb Founder    Len Mullenger

Return to Index

Reviews from previous months Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.