As Holta-Polta plays in the Music Room, the Boy is messing around in what we call his 'Rick Wakeman'. It's a mauve, doughnut-shaped piece of moulded plastic with harness in the middle, to support him 'standing' as swivels to avail himself of the various toys embedded in the plastic: a rattle, a 'book' with pages in the shape of a butterfly, some shapes to press, a kind of manual fruit machine. And of course an electronic keyboard. The keyboard plays various animal noises from the buttons at the top, but the keys play snatches of Beethoven's Ninth and various other tunes that I don't recognise. One of them may be Journey to the Centre of the Earth for all I know.
And I wonder how much playing around Harmonia did before they reached the accommodation with their funky old synths that is recorded here? Stephen Iliffe's book, which I keep going on about, features pictures of a truly massive, but truly in-need-of-renovation, building in Forst where the boys presumably generated their own electricity in the morning and noodled around on their instruments in the afternoon. Or perhaps the music, and its realisation, arrived fully formed, courtesy of the Muse, after a group meditation.
If you put Live 1974 on while you're watching your son, or reading, or working, it's easy to let it burble on by without paying it any mind. But for the full experience, you need to listen the old-fashioned way. So last night, I turned off the light and put on the headphones, and made sure I could hear every cough on the recording. I realised how relatively little 'playing' is going on during the tracks. They set a programmed process going and then make modest tweaks to it as they go, listening to and responding to each other.
I guess (because it was only released in 2007, 33 years after it was recorded) that it kind of disproves my theory about the demise of live albums by trios. And it certainly sounds better than the reformed Harmonia did when I saw them last year.
 MusicBrainz entry for this albumWikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to none of this album at Last.fm |
Comments