This artifact of mystical power has recently arrived at my house. You can bet it didn’t stay sealed in the shrink wrap for long. It’s on the turntable now. These guys were so far ahead of their time it’s unbelievable #HugoLargo #vinyl

Hugo Largo – _Huge Large And Electric (1984-1991)_

https://missingpiecerecords.bandcamp.com/album/huge-large-and-electric-hugo-largo-1984-1991

Today, we’re continuing our 6 Degrees game with The List (see Part 1 here). And, again, because we’re doing a bit of a Prince-theme and will be timing the end of this series (Part 8) to land on the (8th) anniversary of him leaving us (April 21), we’ll be picking out some fun Prince-connections in/below each set.

Okay, here we go, carrying on from where we left off last time, i.e., the Medicine Singers’ self-titled album…

6 Degrees of Separation: Maja Ratkje to R.E.M.

Maja Ratkje – Voice (list number 221)
>> One of the collaborators on the Medicine Singers album from Part 1 is Ikue Mori, who has also collaborated with Maja Ratkje. Ratkje also appears on a 5+ hour-long Norwegian tribute to Prince compilation with…

Ulver – Shadows Of The Sun (188)
…Ulver. Christian Fennesz (or, “Fennesz”), who appears on this Ulver album, also collaborated a number of times (e.g., here) with…

Jim O’Rourke – I’m Happy, And I’m Singing, And A 1, 2, 3, 4 (226)
…Jim O’Rourke, who, from 1999 to 2005, was in…

Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation (835)
…Sonic Youth, whose Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo were at some point in the Glenn Branca Ensemble, as was Tim Sommer who then formed…

Hugo Largo – Mettle (116)
…Hugo Largo, whose first album was produced by…

R.E.M. – Automatic For The People (290)
…Michael Stipe of R.E.M. <<

Prince 6

Though we don’t have a Prince album in today’s list, here are some fun connections the above artists have to The Purple One:

• As mentioned above, there’s a 5.5 hour long compilation featuring Norwegian artists (including Maja Ratkje and Ulver) from a wide variety of genres covering Prince! Put out in 2008, this 5-CD box set, called Shockadelica: 50th Anniversary Tribute To The Artist Known As Prince, was released in honour of Prince’s 50th birthday, and was limited to 5000 copies. Available digitally: Songwhip.
  • Maja Ratkje’s contribution, which is the 1st song on the compilation, is a cover of “Solo” from Prince’s Come album.
  • Ulver’s contribution is a cover of “Thieves in the Temple” from Prince’s Graffiti Bridge album.
• R.E.M. recorded their Out of Time album at Prince’s Paisley Park (Youtube).
• R.E.M. and Prince were both on Warner Brothers around the same time. In a 2016 interview on Alec Baldwin’s “Here’s The Thing” podcast, Michael Stipe mentioned that, because R.E.M. owned their own masters when at WB but Prince didn’t, Prince “always hated me for that”.
• From an interview between supermodel Helena Christensen and Michael Stipe:
  • HC: “If you could save one song in the world from being turned into a ringtone, which would song would you choose?”
  • MS: “Probably ‘Purple Rain’ by Prince, because that would sound absolutely horrible as a ring tone.”
• Prince’s Lovesexy album came out the same year as Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation: 1988.

Tune in on Saturday for Part 3, to see how we get from R.E.M. to Tagaq!

https://1001otheralbums.com/2024/04/11/6-degrees-of-separation-part-2/

#1001OtherAlbums #6DegreesOfSeparation #ChristianFennesz #HugoLargo #IkueMori #JimORourke #LeeRanaldo #MajaRatkje #MedicineSingers #MichaelStipe #Prince #REM #SonicYouth #ThurstonMoore #TimSommer #Ulver

[This guest post was written by arratoon about number 116 on The List; the album was also submitted by arratoon.]

When they came to public attention in the late eighties, New York four-piece Hugo Largo didn’t sound like anyone else making music at that time, or before. The band was made up of two bass players, Tim Sommer and Adam Peacock, electric violinist Hahn Rowe, whose drones and languorous washes offered a backdrop for the swooping vocals of singer Mimi Goese.

Coming out of the New York underground scene – Sommer had played in the Glenn Branca Ensemble – their first album, Drum, had been produced by Michael Stipe of REM. (On that band’s Green tour he would sing the Hugo Largo track Harpers, a capella, as an encore.) Drum was taut and artsy, a spiky minimalist wonder. Brian Eno signed them to his Opal label.

Mettle, the follow-up, is a beautifully woozy, hazy confection. On the eight tracks that make up this record the songs are never anything short of spellbinding. “That turtle could be a rock in disguise, fooling everyone…” sings Mimi on album opener Turtle Song, unsettling the listener from the off. Both basses swing upwards, in and out, clashing and complementing each other, while Rowe’s violin swoops and soars. “In a puff of smoke I leave reality…” sings Mimi on Martha, as the basses and violin cushion the listener in a warm mist. On other tracks, such as Halfway Knowing, which sounds like the heat of summer, Mimi’s voice is gymnastic, leaping and falling. She trained as a dancer, which influenced the way she sang, she told Louder Than War in 2017. Four Brothers is layered thick with swirling patterns; Ohio is secretive and inviting, Mimi quietly singing a list of Japanese words – “These are the words I know in Japanese”; Jungle Jim’s stillness is elevated by its high and low bass patterns, and Mimi soaring to increasingly high notes.

Two albums was all Hugo Largo had in them; personal issues, as so often, put paid to any further work. Sommer left, and further recordings that might or might not have made up a third album were never officially released, although they did appear in an online leak a few years ago. There’s an excellent 1987 live show from Maxwell’s in Hoboken on YouTube. The band’s music is not on streaming services but there’s talk about both albums being rereleased with extra tracks, so we can only hope. In the meantime, both albums can be picked up secondhand relatively cheaply.

Rowe has scored music for films, and Mimi released a superb solo album, Soak, on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label, including a haunting version of Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun, and has made a series of acclaimed albums with trumpeter Ben Neill.

But more than 35 years since Hugo Largo released a record, Mettle stands as testament to a band who still sound resolutely individual, wonderfully themselves.

• Youtube: Hugo Largo – Mettle
• Discogs: Hugo Largo – Mettle

[Alt text for accompanying image: The album artwork is a collage of two images repeated in blue/black and black/white, one image being a round metal object of some sort, the other being a beluga whale with its head facing up. The band name is printed in the top right corner in white font, and the album name is across the middle of the cover.]

https://1001otheralbums.com/2024/03/14/hugo-largo-mettle-1989-us/

#1001OtherAlbums #1980s #artRock #avantgarde #HugoLargo #MimiGoese #TimSommer