Michael Nyman

The first Michael Nyman Band album originally released in 1981 – which includes the premier recording of ‘In Re Don Giovanni’ – this beautifully packaged CD re-issue includes two limited edition posters of the original UK and Japanese LP artwork. Critically acclaimed as Nyman’s trailblazing record that combined minimalist, experimentalist music and jazz improvisation for the first time, this album had only ever been available on the rarest of long-since deleted vinyl. Most of the music on Michael Nyman was material from the early films by Peter Greenaway such as “Bird Anthem” (Act Of God) and “Bird List Song” (The Falls). The album also includes his first concert work for the band, “In Re Don Giovanni” which was released as a single on Les Disques du Crepuscule (home of Cabaret Voltaire, Durutti Column and Josef K amongst others) under the title Mozart. The most ground-breaking track on Michael Nyman, however, is Waltz in F, a piece Nyman wrote for art students whilst teaching at Trent Polytechnic in 1977. Nyman subsequently commandeered two modern jazz improvisers, Evan Parker and Peter Brotzman, to “destroy” this piece. Ultimately, Parker and Brotzman ended up playing over and around ten separate tracks whilst Nyman and producer David Cunningham mixed in their Waltz.
This reissue of Michael Nyman’s second album from 1981 effectively his first with a Michael Nyman Band that included Alexander Balanescu and Roderick Skeaping has aged well. Its industriously cycling Anglo-minimalism, couched in strings and reeds, is redolent of early Peter Greenaway films: “Bird List Song” is lovely, silly and serious the same time, like the film for which it was written, The Falls. The serio-comic tone helps sustain the music’s appeal, compared to the joylessness of much American minimalism: this is music full of affirmative bustle, aware of its lurking pomposity, and not afraid to embrace the free-jazz squawks of Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann on “Waltz”. ***** –Independent,13/01/12Powerful, propulsive rhythms on bass guitar, strings and keyboards are held in check by bold-as-brass harmonic patterns, repeated in ever-increasing cycles. It still sounds as refreshingly new today as it did 30 years ago. –Gramophone,Apr’12