Episode 6

Listen Here
1. Nucleus — "Song for the Bearded Lady" (from We'll Talk About It Later, 1970)

2. 801 — "East of Asteroid" (live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 1976-09-03, from 801 Live)

3. Matching Mole — "Gloria Gloom" (from Matching Mole's Little Red Record, 1972)

4. Robert Wyatt — "5 Black Notes and 1 White Note" (from Ruth is Stranger Than Richard, 1975)

5. Eno — "Kurt's Rejoinder" (from Before and After Science, 1977)

6. Syd Arthur — "Pulse" (from Moving World EP, 2011)

7. Caravan — "Derek's Long Thing" (unreleased track, available on For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night 2001 CD remaster)

8. Caravan — "The Love in Your Eye" [excerpt] (from Waterloo Lily, 1972)

9. Acid Mothers Gong — "Hari Balmy Bom Rif" (from Live in Nagoya, 2006)

10. Lapis Lazuli — "Triton Gnast" (online release, 2010)

11. Soft Machine – "Neo-Caliban Grides" → "All White" → "Slightly All the Time" → "Drop" (live in Germany, autumn 1971, available on Drop, 2008)

12. Kevin Ayers — "Two Goes Into Four" (live at the Rainbow Theatre, London, 1974-06-01, from June 1, 1974)

13. Lady June's Linguistic Leprosy — "Tunion" (from Lady June's Linguistic Leprosy, 1974)

14. Eno — "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More" (from Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), 1974)

15. Egg — "Wind Quartet I" (from The Civil Surface, 1974)

16. Robert Wyatt — "Alfib" → "Alfie" (from Rock Bottom, 1974)

17. Miroslav Vitouš — "Epilogue" (from Infinite Search, 1969)

17. Robert Wyatt — "Out of the Blue" (from Comicopera, 2007)

18. Eno — "1/1" (from Ambient 1: Music for Airports, 1978)

19. Kevin Ayers and Brian Eno — untitled piano improvisation (live on London's Capitol Radio, August 1974)

[voiceover ambience: Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy — "Four Ever Rainbow", (from Rainbow Dome Musick, 1979)]

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From pennyblackmusic.co.uk profile of Robert Wyatt:

Perhaps the most significant collaboration between Wyatt and Eno though was the ground-breaking Music for Airports. Eno had mentioned the idea of creating soothing airport music to Wyatt previously but Wyatt was also roped into the sessions at Basing Street studios with Wyatt also getting an co-writing credit on the opening track '1/1'. Wyatt’s role, largely, though was to play spontaneously on the piano. "Brian just sort of got me to improvise at the piano for a while and chose what to use later," Wyatt recalled. "I was surprised and delighted with his use of what I did — how he created a sustained mood. I didn’t know what he would do with what I’d played. I think the results were brilliant, pure Brian: great stuff!"

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Robert Wyatt on working with Eno on Shleep album (from WLTV interview):

"I was once asked about Brian: 'What's it like working with one of the great cerebral intellects of modern culture?' . It made me laugh a bit, because what working with Brian is actually like being two children in a little play-pit. His pleasure in working the studio is so innocent and childlike — still — and that's really what's so enjoyable.

He's so enthusiastic — he kind of bounces around from one piece of machinery to another, quite the opposite of me. I'm very intimidated by the machines, and he loves them and feels at home with all of them. And he came quite early on in the session, and it was a great help to me, and I think also it was very exciting for Jamie, the engineer, to have someone with that amount of knowledge, just showing what could be done in the studio."

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Pierro Scaruffi on Rock Bottom: "...one of rock music's supreme masterpieces, a veritable transfiguration of both rock and jazz. Its pieces straddle the unlikely border between an intense religious hymn and a childish nursery rhyme. Along that imaginary line, Wyatt carved a deep trench of emotional outpouring, where happiness, sorrow, faith and resignation found a metaphysical unity. The astounding originality of that masterpiece, and its well-crafted flow of consciousness, were never matched by Wyatt's later releases."

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From Robert Wyatt's "My Top Ten", Let It Rock magazine, January 1975:

"4. 'Epilogue' by Miroslav Vitouš, from the album Infinite Search. Miroslav Vitous is technically in a class with Barre Philips, Stanley Clarke and Barry Guy. But as composer of music for the bass he is my favourite since Charlie Haden. Maybe his slavic origins have something to do with his particular melodic inclinations. On Infinite Search, the double bass — an instrument usually used in a subservient role — is the group's 'lead' instrument. The group — Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Jack de Johnette and Joe Henderson — support Miroslav's lines with the accuracy, speed and imagination you associate with a first-class tennis match. Although the individual musicians are accustomed to working together in a live context, they are also accustomed to drowning out double-bassists, on the expedient premise that the loud instruments lead, the quiet follow. The recording studio can liberate musicians from this 'hierarchy by volume'. In this case, the effect of such energetic players pulling their punches to leave space for Miroslav to set the direction in each piece creates a fine, translucent texture, like a spider's web. Tennis matches, spider's webs — the whole world in a song, what more can you ask?"