Cypress Version 13

I first heard the late string quartets of Beethoven in my teens, on a budget price LP on the French Musidisc label. I don’t remember much about the performances; one movement that sticks in my mind is the slow movement of Op. 127, which was played at an expansive tempo, and took around twenty minutes. However I do remember the liner-notes, which were obviously translated by someone for whom English was not their first language.

The latest CD from composer Jay Cloidt features the premiere studio recordings of two ambitious and diverse works for string quartet, Spectral Evidence and eleven windows, performed by the Cypress String Quartet. Spectral Evidence begins with a straightforward performance of the first two minutes of the Mozart quartet (No. 14 in G, K. 387).

The classical conductor Ulrich SOMMERLATTE was more than sixty years old when he fell in love with Progressive rock. Not unlike a certain Eduard ARTEMIEV, who followed a similar path at the same time in the Soviet Union, our man decided to offer his great knowledge to the popular music of that era. Today reissued by the Musea label, "Sad Cypress" has been recorded in 1979 with the help of the Master's son on keyboards, a guitarist-singer, a drummer and a flautist-bassist. The result, as one could expect, is a superb symphonic rock, precious and refined, full of fineness and harmonic tricks. The influences range from GENESIS (above all) to YES, CAMEL and GENTLE GIANT. Add to this that the CD reissue includes four bonus tracks, recorded between 1983 and 1987.

On September 28th, ever-blunted hip-hop pioneers Cypress Hill will return with Elephants on Acid, their ninth album and first in eight years. The dank, fuzz-infused, acid-rock-inspired LP will be the first produced entirely by Muggs, the sonic architect behind landmarks like 1991’s Cypress Hill and 1993’s Black Sunday, since 2001.