GNO Top 10 series - Dajuin YAO

by lawrence

Dajuin Yao 2004 Paris

Dajuin Yao is a polyartist/art historian/curator based in Berkeley/Taipei. He runs the label Post-Concrete and is responsible for the first large-scale experimental music festival in mainland China - Sounding Beijing 2003.

Dajuin’s personal page is here, his entry at Chinese New Ear is here.

DAJUIN YAO’S TOP TEN ALBUMS

# Miles Davis - Live/Evil

I must confess that I shoplifted my copy of this album from the local Yamaha dealership, and it was a Quadraphonic LP version (I still remember the gold, instead of red, labels on these Columbia SQ records and the slightly moldy smelling heavy album covers, with of course the amazing paintings by Mati Klarwein, especially his rendition of J. Edgar Hoover on the back cover). I was only a poor kid back then and it wasn’t that serious a crime, because I did pay for my “Bitches Brew,” which I got along with it. Come to think of it now, lifting a 12-inch double album was no small feat. But I thought a two-for-one deal was only fair, and nobody else in the country knew what the hell this was anyway. By the way, after listening to the recently released “Cellar Door Sessions,” I realized how Teo Macero cheated us big time with his heavy cutting and pasting in the original Live/Evil release version, but what a magnificient cheat! And, man, that narration by Conrad Roberts on “Inamorata” put in during post-production!

# Mahavishnu Orchestra - Visions of the Emerald Beyond

To be able to see it without hallucinogens. That’s what I call real vision.

# Jean-Claude Eloy - Gaku-no-Michi (1978)

When I first met Eloy in Taipei back in 1978, I wasn’t as impressed by his music (which I heard too little of then) as by his composure and his deep penetration into the realm of sound - a quality that I had encountered previously only in percussionist/composer Michael Ranta. I can never forget the image of Eloy raising his right arm up to the EQ controls and leaving it up there for about twenty-minutes, during his presentation of “Kama-Kala” for three orchestras and chorus. 26 years later, I brought Mr. Eloy and “Gaku-no-Michi” to Sounding Taipei 2004 for a magnificent 4-hour, 4-channel live diffusion concert. After I release his complete version of “Gaku-no-Michi” on four CDs, I’ll be able to die with no regrets.

# Keith Jarrett - Köln Concert

This music is so personal to me that I don’t even want to reflect on it now; and I probably will never play it again. But my on-the-spot, improvised English composition essay on this music did get me transferred successfully into the English department when I was about to be kicked out of the aeronautical engineering department. And by the way, I wrote the Chinese liner notes to probably the only pirate LP edition of “Köln Concert” manufactured in Asia.

# Santana - Welcome

One track title sums the whole album up perfectly: “Flame/Sky.”

# Circle - Paris Concert (Anthony Braxton, Chick Corea, Barry Altschul, Dave Holland; 1971)

Four top musicians in top shape, heading towards unknown beauty. The art of improvisation at its best.

# Nikhil Banerjee - Raag Malkauns - Live Concert Vol. 1 (Cchanda Dhara)

Totally still, yet totally agitated, at the same time. I’m lucky to have met Pandit Banerjee once in 1983.

# Karlheinz Stockhausen - Hymnen (1967)

It’s really not about the sounds, or how complex the inter-modulation techniques are. It’s the scale of that grand, humanistic vision.

# Arnold Schönberg - Verklärte Nacht (Karajan/Berliner Philharmonik version)

The version I heard was actually a pirated LP made by Yongfeng Records - cheap, scratchy recycled vinyl, and cheap, thin paper sleeves. But hell, it sure don’t matter. Also, no other performance version on earth can compare to this one by Herbert von!

# ЛЮБЭ - Песни о людях (Lyube - Songs of the People) (1997)

I didn’t think that truly great songs could still be written in this era, songs that achieve folk-song status as soon as they come out and can live on forever. I can never forget the state of disbelief I was in when I first heard the almost a cappella “Kostroma” (from another album, Polustanochki); I played it repeatedly for 5 or 6 times straight. Then I started playing these Russian gems on my ForeTaste Radio show (the name is a pun on “avant-garde music” in Chinese) around 2001 and a network of young Chinese fans simply went nuts over Lyube, DDT, Akvarium, Alla Pugacheva, Linda, Zemphira… And no doubt Lyube is everybody’s favorite. This is a big wide world that has been unfairly censored all these years by the Anglo-American music hegemony.

(GNO Top 10 series invites Chinese sound artists/experimental musicians to list music/albums that are either their personal favorites or have crucial influence on them as artists. By doing this, we try to present the Chinese aural art scene in the context of the global music ecology.)




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