Winds of War And Peace

Among the wave of brass rock groups that embraced the rock world from 68 until 71 or 72, Warm Dust was a late-comer, but quickly became one of the most interesting and progressive group of the genre. The sextet developed a solid psych-laced progressive brass rock, lead by the twin sax players of Alan Solomon (also KB) and John Surguy (also guitar) and featuring future Mike Rutherford and Steve Hackett acolyte Paul Carrack…

There is no string quartet that has ever been written that can compare length and diversity with Terry Riley's Salome Dances for Peace. Morton Feldman has written a longer one, but it is confined to his brilliant field of notational relationships and open tonal spaces. Riley's magnum opus, which dwarfs Beethoven's longest quartet by three, is a collection of so many different kinds of music, many of which had never been in string quartet form before and even more of which would – or should – never be rubbing up against one another in the same construct. Riley is a musical polymath, interested in music from all periods and cultures: there are trace elements of jazz and blues up against Indian classical music, North African Berber folk melodies, Native American ceremonial music, South American shamanistic power melodies – and many more. The reason they are brought together in this way is for the telling of an allegorical story. In Riley's re-examining Salome's place in history, he finds a way to redeem both her and the world through her talent.

Essential: a masterpiece of prog rock music
Second album from this English brass rock band, that was a bit the answer to Chicago Transit authority mixed with some Caravan and some Dutch/Holland Solution. Actually it is interesting to note that England had The Greatest Show On Earth, If and Warm Dust (and to a lesser extent Colosseum) to answer to American’s giants of brass rock (which automatically induced a jazz feel without being the typical jazz-rock): Blood Sweat & Tears, Chicago, Electric Flag and The Flock.

The Aeolus issue of Bob van Asperen's Krieg und Frieden (War and Peace) is a rather unusual survey in several ways. The central theme of this is tied to the two major conflicts in continental Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the 80 Years War and the 30 Years War, both of which were ultimately resolved by the Westphalian Peace Accord of 1648. Generally when we think of the so-called battle pieces of olden times it brings up memories of music that is rather arcane and none too challenging – thundering, repeated major triads with a rolling tremolo in the bass.