Simon House – { feuilleton }

An early illustration by Burne Hogarth from Federal Illustrator, Winter 1931–1932, credited to the artist’s original name, Bernard Spinoza Ginsburg. (Via)

• RIP Simon House, a musician whose death was announced in the same week as news of a remixed edition of Hall Of The Mountain Grill by Hawkwind, the first of the group’s albums to feature House on violin and keyboards. House’s keyboards made a considerable difference to Hawkwind’s sound, expanding the range of their songwriting; the melodramatic scale of Assault And Battery/The Golden Void wouldn’t have been possible without those massed Mellotrons. Post-Hawkwind it was House’s violin that was sought after during his time as a session musician, on songs like Yassassin by David Bowie, and Talking Drum by Japan. He’s also one of the musicians credited on Thomas Dolby’s biggest hit, She Blinded Me With Science (violin again), although his contribution there is easy to mistake for a synthesizer.

• “We did want the name to be weighty and metal-related because it is a kind of a metal band. So what is heavy and what is metal: that was the answer.” Hildur Gudnadóttir talking about Osmium, an experimental quartet comprising Gudnadóttir with James Ginzburg, Rully Shabara and Sam Slater.

• At Criterion: Stephanie Zacharek on Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, films from a time “when delighting audiences meant more than catering to the predetermined whims of a dogged fandom”.

• The week in maps: At Public Domain Review, Bernard Sleigh’s Anciente Mappe of Fairyland (ca. 1920 edition); at Nautilus, the first maps of the Earth’s magnetic field.

• The eleventh installment of Smoky Man’s exploration of The Bumper Book of Magic has been posted (in Italian) at (quasi), and in English at Alan Moore World.

• Not on any map: Mark Valentine describes the time he tried to buy a phantom island from the Hudson’s Bay Company.

• At Colossal: “In surreal portraits, Rafael Silveira tends to the garden of consciousness“.

• New music: Osmium by Osmium, and Along The Wind Spear by Survey Channel.

• Anne Billson chooses Anjelica Huston’s ten best roles.

• Owls in Towels

• Five Owls (1970) by Canned Heat | Night Owl (1996) by System 7 | Owls And Flowers (2006) by Belbury Poly

Cherry Red Records this month reissues the first three albums by the unique and wonderful Third Ear Band. I like CDs, and I especially like having them collected into boxes with Japanese-style facsimile sleeves, so this collection is irresistible. The group’s first two albums, Alchemy (1969) and Third Ear Band (1970), still sound timeless despite being products of their time, with the track you’d most expect to sound dated, Ghetto Raga, being free of sitars or Indian pastiche. Third Ear Band music is a kind of improvised folk, predominantly the product of oboe, violin and percussion, which sounds like something the group might have tuned into when they were playing for Druids at ancient sites (Stone Circle and Druid One are further track titles). The first two albums also have the additional attraction for this listener of a heavy emphasis on medieval mysticism, from the Atalanta Fugiens illustration by Matthäus Merian on the cover of Alchemy, and the symbols and astrological diagrams that fill out the inside cover of the second album, to the titles of that album which continue the alchemical theme: Air, Earth, Fire and Water. The group also borrowed some graphics from Aubrey Beardsley when they issued their musical manifesto in 1969.

Music From Macbeth (1972) is constrained in comparison to the albums that precede it, being subservient to Roman Polanski’s feature film, although there’s more music here than was used in the film. It’s also closer to rock music in places, with occasional fuzzed guitar, a Mellotron, and rumbles from a VCS 3 synthesizer played by a future member of Hawkwind, Simon House. The cover painting by Roger Dean isn’t one of his best. In Views Dean complains that Polanski “got the imagery wrong” for the scenes with the witches, a comment I’ve never understood. Polanski’s film is a naturalistic interpretation of the play which is well-served by the Third Ear Band’s drones and medievalisms. Incidentally, I’m sure the phrase “music for people with three ears” was used on a Harvest records press ad but if it was I’ve been unable to find any evidence of it. Anyone out there know the source?

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Night’s black agents
• Atalanta Fugiens

Tag: Simon House

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Music for people with three ears