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LP
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RTD 014LP
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$24.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/4/2025
An unusual detour in the Robert Wyatt catalogue, Radio Experiment Rome was recorded in February 1981, when the ex-Soft Machine drummer had been invited to record some material in-progress for a radio broadcast. The tone of these sessions is characterized by a free-roaming experimentation, laying down eight-track recordings of vocals, piano, hi-hat, jaw harp and a variety of analogue tape effects. This is Wyatt unhinged and completely let loose from the agenda of proper album recording: there's no eye on a finished, commercially viable product here, and the scope of the project takes in jazzy soundscapes like "Heathens Have No Souls," exquisitely melodic piano pieces like "L'Albero Degli Zoccoli," vaudevillian vocal tuning experiment "Billie's Bounce" and the politicized rant-poem "Born Again Cretin," about the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. "I was invited to go for a week just to record the actual process of my working. Of things like that which I've seen, for example on painters, with the honorable exception of Picasso who worked on a piece of glass, people tend to cheat a bit and do an actual finished performance in front of the cameras. But I thought 'If they really want to see how I work before I know what I'm doing, then that's what they're going to get and if during that week something comes out of it, then it will do, but if it doesn't then that will be more honest.' I deliberately went in there and improvised what I was doing as well as how I did it. The point wasn't to have a finished result that could be listened to, the point was to see a process. It's only in retrospect that I can see that bits of some of them have some kind of coherence." Robert Wyatt recorded for Un Certo Discorso, a Rai Radiotre programme by Pasquale Santoli with Francesca Albini, Teresa De Santis, and Sabina Sacchi Rome, sala M, Centro di Produzione Radio Roma, February 16-20, 1981.
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LP
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CRP 201LP
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2013 release. Featuring significant contributions from his Soft Machine band mate Elton Dean, amongst others, The End Of An Ear is one of the more adventurous titles in Robert Wyatt's catalog. It's an album much more in line with the electronic jazz experimentation of Miles Davis, and the avant-garde, than the singer-songwriter material Wyatt would later be known for. Despite being a very serious record, Wyatt's playful nature and sense of humor still shine through. The End Of An Ear is an absolutely essential piece of the Canterbury prog scene and Wyatt's canon, lovingly reissued here on LP by Cherry Red Phonograph.
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CD
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MHCP 430CD
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Japanese reissue of the first (pre-accident) Robert Wyatt solo album, first issued in 1970 by CBS. 2004 digital remaster, packaged in mini-LP paper sleeve. At this point Wyatt was in between work with the Soft Machine and Matching Mole and was aided by the likes of Elton Dean (alto saxello), David Sinclair (organ), Mark Charig (cornet), Neville Whitehead (bass), Mark Ellidge (piano) & Cyril Ayers (percussion). Wyatt himself on drums, mouth, piano, organ. The album opens & closes with a baffling space-jazz 'cover' of Gil Evans' 'Las Vegas Tango' that is quite deep, and proceeds through various settings of psychedelic jazz, Gong-like jamming and free-style improv balladry. Very out, very good. Japanese liner notes. Also included is a Soft Machine, Matching Mole, Robert Wyatt family tree diagram in English.
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