Balearic Breakfast | Episode 107 | Suspended openings...

Worldwide FM broadcast the 107th episode of Balearic Breakfast on September 27th 2022.

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About this episode. – Time's duality is sometimes really frightening. While a life stops, while some people suffer the loss, other ones keep on living not aware of what just hapenned. And this situation, as we shall see in the listening experience, happens too on another level, in our everyday's lives, hence today's post enigmatic title...

When Colleen launched the request line for the 107th show of the series, we knew it was going to be a special one as we had to pay our respects to the great Pharoah Sanders, and, with our Captain preparing her next Loft Party, we knew we were going to experience, somehow, another deep show. We just didn't know how deep this one would be! Asour buddy Steve Clarke wrote: "Without doubt one of the best shows of all time this week, start with Pharaoh Sanders and ending with him too. Was going to request Risco Connection on the last one on @worldwide.fm but alas it got played here."

"This morning’s Balearic Breakfast is now up on Worldwide FM and my Mixcloud - and please don’t forget to follow me on Mixcloud or Twitch TV as I will continue Balearic Breakfast when Worldwide FM takes a pause :) Today’s show features a tribute to Pharaoh Sanders may he rest in peace. Thank you for the music.

Also music from Floating Points, Brian Jackson, Opolopo, Jura Soundsystem, Claremont 56, Coldcut, Mixmaster Morris and some Balearic and Loft classics.

Enjoy and please make your suggestions for next week’s show when I put up the request line on my socials this coming Saturday."

Listen back to the 107th episode of Balearic Breakfast:

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PLAYLIST

(2021) Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders – Promises: Movements 4 & 5

(1993) Coldcut – Autumn Leaves (Irresistible Force mix)

(1972) Joni Mitchell – Electricity

(1972) Annette Peacock – Pony

(1987) Herb Alpert – Pillow

(2021) Hillside – Walpole Days

(1985) Double – The Captain of her Heart

(1985) Change – Mutual Attraction

(1983) Tullio De Piscopo – Stop Bajon

(2022) Jura Soundsystem – Crystal Voyager

(2020) SAULT – Strong

(1991) The Rude Awakening – The Dip (5 Am Dipsco Mix)

(2022) Sandy Barber – I Think I’ll Do Some Steppin On My Own (Opolopo Rework)

() Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson – The Bottle (Live Version)

(1979) Risco Connection – Ain’t No Stopping Us Now (Version)

(1971) Pharoah Sanders – Astral Travelling

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THE LISTENING EXPERIENCE

Listening to older Balearic Breakfast episodes is always a great and moving experience. It seems there's always something to find there, and also, it's funny how you remember parts of some of these shows, like sentences Colleen said or songs you loved hearing back when you first listened to the episodes live or things that happened.

Intellectually speaking, this episode is exciting as it presents the idea of suspended openings. What does that mean? Well, first, it means, of course, suspended time, a thing that happens for instance, when someone passes away (not thinking at all about the great Pharoah Sanders here...), when everything stops and when everything possible suddenly disappears. An Idea I felt quite strongly when listening to Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders' Promises: Movements 4 & 5, for instance. Of course, with WorldWide FM pausing its activities, this first idea takes another meaning yet keeping its first intellectual meaning intact... This idea of hopes disappearing is very much present in the first part of the show, the lingering sadness proposed by Coldcut's Autumn leaves perfectly representing the void... We will find this theme in other songs too, yet on a more subjective level, such as in the third track, Joni Mitchell's Electricity. The song deals here with a somewhat problematic relationship.

To explicate ‘Electricity’ in the broadest of strokes, there’s a couple dealing with an electricity problem/outage which symbolizes their relationship. It’s all a mess (“She’s got all the wrong fuses and splices”; ”The masking tape tangles, It’s sticky and black”), and neither they together nor she alone can “fix it up too easy”. It’s a real, undeniable problem–the circuit just keeps shorting.

I'm sure you feel where I want to go here, this show is all about lost opportunities if you will. But not only! The title also refers to suspended moments in time, where everything reaches another dimension, letting us leave our everyday life. And this is very much the case with Annette Peacock's Pony.

Peacock's first solo album, I'm The One (RCA, 1972), offers blues ballads that are transfigured by dark and intimate premonitions. The ensemble (Tom Cosgrove on guitar, Stu Woods on bass, Rick Morotta on drums and Peacock on keyboards) is augmented with jazz luminaries such as Michael Moss on tenor sax, Barry Altschul on percussion and Airto Moreira on percussion. The players introduce themselves in the brief free jam that opens I'm the One, before Peacock intones the first of her torch blues ballads (Michael Garson on piano and organ). These are formidable exercises of self-contrition in which Peacock's voice 7 Days, Been & Gone, Blood (Paul Bley on synthesizer and piano, Glen Moore on bass), reaches shamanic degrees of intensity. Bley's keyboards provide a discrete but disorienting countercurrent to Peacock's tormented stream of consciousness. If the vocalist's performance is virtuoso, the arrangements engage her shizoid psyche with endless stylistic metamorphoses, from the funky rave-up of Pony (that enhances her dilated melisma) to the funereal fanfare of One Way (Garson on organ, and her best impersonation of Janis Joplin) to the guitar shuffle of Gesture Without Plot (Paul Bley on synthesizer and piano).

With the next three songs, we're touching another level of interpretation of today's post title, dealing with love, relationships and expectations, these songs perfectly embrace these almost unbearable and quite fearful Hopes and desires of a future we feel close but that might never happen yet (Herb Alpert's Pillow falls so greatly in the mix here!)... And even if Hillside's Walpole Days don't have lyrics, the song fits the theme so well you can picture a couple dancing with the man hoping the one he just found won't go away as dawn arrives... And this track made me think of another song I love to bits, Jojo by the great Boz Scaggs!

The culminating point of today's show arrives with the much beloved Captain of her heart, so perfectly embracing today's post title and today's episode's reality... And I am so grateful to Kurt Maloo for answering my few questions about the 1985 "Blue" album he recorded as the Swiss duo "Double" with the great Felix Haug.

Colleen keeps that suspended feeling very alive with the next songs, stepping up the tempo a bit with Change's Mutual Atraction, followed by Tullio De Piscopo's Stop Bajon (Colleen's mix is astoundingly perfect here, this is a WOW moment of today's episode for sure!) and Jura Soundsystem's Crystal Voyager. Yes, we're totally experiencing suspended openings here (do you Feel the third interpretation of today's post title?)... Laughs!

One last song deserves to be quoted here as it really helps grasp today's post title: Gill Scott-Heron's The Bottle in which Gil adresses how much Alcohol destroys the life of people it touches...

Ironically, one of the last songs played during this episode is the true and tested classic that is Risco Connection's Ain’t No Stopping Us Now (Version), well you should know by now why I wrote Ironically!

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COLLEEN'S PRESENTATION

Movements four and five of Promises by Floating Points with the late Pharoah Sanders who sadly passed to the next realm this past Saturday. The tenor saxophonist was encouraged to use the name Pharoah by Sun Ra who would often provide for him, house for him, feed him when Sanders was homeless in New York City. And then it was John Coltrane who took him under his wing as part of his band in 1965.

And the two saxophonists learned so much from one another and also Albert Eiler. And after John Coltrane's death, Sanders continued to work with his wife Alice, including on the album Journey and Satchitananda. And Sanders released a string of his own albums that bravely explored the boundless worlds of spiritual and free jazz.

And we just heard a couple movements from the last recording released in his lifetime from the critically acclaimed Promises in Collaboration with Floating Points. And we will pay our respects again later in the show. Good morning, Balearicans.

I hope you had a good weekend. I'm Colleen Cosmo Murphy, hosting your Balearic Breakfast until high noon here on World Wide FM. And greetings to all over my Mixcloud Live and Twitch TV.

Just a reminder that World Wide FM will be pausing and reassessing from the end of October. But I will continue Balearic Breakfast streaming live and then archiving on my Mixcloud and Twitch TV. So please be sure to follow me over there.

If you're in the Northern Hemisphere, you're probably starting to feel a crispness in the air, a little nip in the air, and witnessing the days growing shorter and the night times longer. And some of you have requested songs in keeping with this seasonal change. This one's a Balearic Breakfast favorite, but I don't mind giving it another spin, as it was requested by Alex Ali.

It's Mixmaster Morris' Irresistible Force remix of Coldcut's Autumn Leaves. The Brooklyn-born, California-raised, experimental artist and Moog pioneer, Annette Peacock with Pony. From her 1972 album, I'm the One, as requested by John Boakum, who wrote when he requested it, Peacock asked Bob Moog himself to let her have a prototype of a new modular system he had built.

And shortly after that, she'd be performing with it live, rooting her vocals through its modules to create an unsettling alien voice, and that was 1969. She was one of the first artists to ever synth her vocal. Of course, we heard the song from her 1972 LP, I'm the One.

Ahead of that, another 1972 song and album, this time from Joni Mitchell's fifth LP, For the Roses, much of which was a reflection upon her previous relationship with James Taylor, who had broken it off after he struck international fame. And then a few months later, he was with Carly Simon, who he later married. Mitchell was obviously heartbroken, and For the Roses documents some of this.

But Electricity, the song that we heard, was more about extolling the virtues of the quiet country life, as Mitchell had retreated to her own estate in Canada around that time. And thank you to Artur in Paris for requesting that. Now a lesser known song by American trumpet player and record label mogul Herb Alpert, as requested by Luis Amira Marquez Pazabon, three weeks in a row, so I got the hint, Luis, is from Alpert's 1987 album, Keep Your Eye on Me, which was co-produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, which is so interesting.

They were in the time with Morris Day, of course, tour with Prince. Actually, I saw them tour with Prince. Then they left to become one of the 80s best songwriting and production teams.

They work with the SOS band. Of course, Janet Jackson, Control was their big breakthrough. They worked with Alexander O'Neill.

And of course, they worked with Herb Alpert on this song, Pillow. A tried and true balleric classic that we have featured once before in the show, but it was time to give it another spin, as it was requested by Craig Murray. That was Swiss pop duo Double and their hit single, The Captain of Her Heart, from their first album, Blue, released in 1985, which also featured the quirkier Woman of the World, another track I really love, two balleric classics by Double.

I was actually wondering about the whereabouts of its members and found that Felix Hoge sadly passed away nearly 20 years ago now, and Kurt Malou carried on as a solo artist. Now, I always have a bunch of records lying around in the record room, a stack of records to listen to, and I'm always working my way through it, even though the pile seems to keep growing bigger and bigger. But I absolutely love the record that I played before that one.

It was by Hillside, which I've been playing quite a bit, having had it for a few months now. It's another one of the many projects of Claremont 56 label owner, Paul Mud Murphy, who we had up on Balleric Breakfast a while back, and we heard Walpole Days from last year's release, Sunday in June by Hillside. Now a request for George Miles for Change, a studio band that I absolutely adore.

Change recorded in Italy with founding producers Jacques Fred Petrus and Mauro Malavasi, and the act featured a revolving door of session musicians, which initially included Luther Vandross and Jocelyn Brown. But by the time they recorded this, their sixth album, Turn On Your Radio, they had already departed. And I can't say that this album received the best of reviews, but it did include this song as requested by George Miles.

Here are Change with Mutual Traction on Worldwide FM. Jura Sound System with Crystal Voyager from their album, Return to the Island, released last month on the label Isle of Jura, run by Kevin Griffiths. And we had Kevin up on the show a few months ago, so you may remember that Jura Sound System is his very own project.

And this is his debut, which was made in Australia during the height of the pandemic, influenced by the tropical bird songs heard in his Adelaide garden, and thanks to Simon also down under for requesting. And as we near our final weeks of Balearic Breakfast on Worldwide FM, some of you are asking for some of our Balearic Breakfast staples. So we heard another Balearic classic, this time from Italy and requested by Andy Stodden for Tullio d'Episcopo with Stop Bajon.

And I also want to dedicate that to my Italian family, the Last Note family, as we are holding our Last Note autumn party in Perugia this coming Saturday. If you want to join us and find out more, you can email infolasnote at gmail.com. Okay, you are listening to Clean Cosmo Murphy here on Balearic Breakfast on Worldwide FM. And you got to know that I just can't get enough of Salt.

And on Saturday night, I listened to Salt's last three albums all in a row. So I'm delighted that Greca Mack has requested this next song. Salt is super producer Inflo, who won an Ivor Novello for producing Little Sims Gray Matter.

He also produced her last album. He got a Mercury Prize for producing Michael Kiwanuka's album Kiwanuka, which was my favorite album of 2019. And he won Producer of the Year awards from both the Music Producers Guild and this year's BRIT Awards.

This is the opening song to Salt's 2020 LP, Untitled Rise. And it has a message that is really resonating with me right now. It's salt with strong.

Oh, boy, that song takes me back to the early days of house. The sample of Crown Heights Affair is the debut release on Newark, New Jersey label Kaleidoscope. And it was produced by Mark Mendoza under the name The Rude Awakening.

And this, his only single, The Dip, was released in 1991. Around the same time, David Mancuso reignited his weekly loft parties in his home in the East Village. And this song brings me right back to that dance floor on East Third Street.

That was the 5am Dipsco mix, as requested by Matt Raistrick, who is tantalizing us with his story to be Bitha over on my Mixcloud Live. So Matt, hope you're enjoying your Bitha. Sounds like you really are.

Thank you for that request. Now, Swedish producer Opo Lopo is quickly becoming one of my favorite reworkers and remixers. And I just love this rework that he did of Sandy Barber's, I think I'll do some stepping on my own, originally released on the singer Sandra Barber's only LP, The Best Is Yet to Come.

It was released in 1978, actually. And it was lovingly reissued by BBE a decade ago. But this rework is coming out on BBE next week with another, actually, I think it's this week now, the 30th of September.

Gosh, that's this week. We're almost in October now. It's unbelievable.

Anyways, it's coming out on vinyl on BBE this week with another mix by John Morales on the flip side. And thanks to Steve Wakeley for requesting this. Sandy Barber, I think I'll do some stepping on my own, the Opo Lopo rework on Balearic Breakfast.

I love that one. Sounds like I need a new copy, though. I was just working on that and realized the song was just about to end as I was trying to get a new copy of this one.

Risco Connection ain't no stopping us now going out to Manami House Record Store in New Zealand. Also sending that one out to David Mancuso's best friends, Elise and Donna and his nephews, Ricky and Mark, as there ain't no stopping us now. Ahead of that, a request from Katie Stringer for one of my favorite songs by Gil Scott, Aaron and Brian Jackson, The Bottle.

And how much do I love that live version? I remember picking it up when I lived in New York City on the Lower East Side at a local bodega. It just had a couple of boxes of random vinyl and I found that one sealed and also a white label promo, 12-inch single of Steve Miller, Bands Macho City. So yes, the vinyl guardian angels were looking down on me.

Oh my goodness, the time has run away with us. Thank you so much for joining me today on Boleric Breakfast here on World Wide FM. We'll be back next Tuesday.

The request line goes up this Saturday on my Instagram and Facebook, so be sure to follow me there and to make your requests. I'm going to leave you with one last Pharoah Sanders song. It's one of my favorites.

It's from his 1971 LP, Thumbie. It's astral traveling. Thanks so much for joining me and have a wonderful week.

And remember, just be Boleric!