all souls - day of the dead (sun and moon)

high above, on the roofs of the south london art gallery, is a sun and a moon in stucco. horsemouth is down south hiding out in the library during a break in work and planning to raid some charity shops later to kill time. sun and moon - he has been looking at a book on tarot to remind him of the ‘meaning’ of these cards (arcana 19 and 18).

the killing season progresses well (the one in which horsemouth kills time by working) - horsemouth is nearly at the end of the week that will take him halfway to christmas (sorry if he has a tendency to go on about this).

we have entered the difficult transition around the celtic quarter day following the autumn equinox - the dead come close, the sun grows cold. tuesday susan krauss is playing (horsemouth may go out and see that). today (and tomorrow) - the anniversary of the recordings used on live at the village vanguard (one of horsemouth’s favourite ever jazz albums). soon (perhaps) some metal.


horsemouth is grumpy - its midweek - he’s halfway to the end of the halfway week - all he has to do is keep his head down and not bite anyone (even in his dreams). on the plus side in addition being up some books (halcyonandon) he’s also up some recordings. the prize is helen 12 trees by charlie mariano (presumably named after hollywood actress helen twelvetrees who had a mega sad life, and very sad eyes apparently) - an awesome german jazz thing that not even jan hammer’s portamento keyboard solos can ruin - it features a great indian split reed instrument on parvati's dance - but the prize for best title goes to the awesome avoid the monkey year.

charlie mariano played on black saint and the sinner lady with charles mingus. horsemouth once saw him (at a pre-g-g talk) angrily berate the head of the arts council (when he was part of a barbara thompson band - albert mangelsdorf, volker kreigel, eberhard weber, john surman etc.). the head of the arts council wanted stories about mingus - charlie mariano declined to provide them (saying he was interested in what he was doing now), the head of the arts council threatened to cut their funding, the musicians pointed out it was the last gig of the tour and invited him to fuck off. (fair play thought the young horsemouth).

the album had a sad release history - the 200 promo copies were supposed to be posted to a bauhaus architect for distribution round the newspapers and critics, sadly they were all sent to the little town of bauhaus by mistake, the local smalltown jazz magazine reviewed it glowingly and offered the remaining 198 copies for sale...