Quintessence of Old Wave (fluteation device) (11 of 11)

Did you see what I did there?

"mantras which we use which are word combinations, we get the audience to participate and speak back to us and this elevates consciousness and what we try is to actually raise up the vibrations of the audience and ourselves to a more God-intoxicated state"

I lump Quintessence mentally with Jade Warrior  - and not just because both were on Island. 

I am surprised Jade Warrior have not been rediscovered during this whole rehabilitation of New Age and edge-of-ambient Fourth World-ism that is ongoing. Perhaps the musicianship is just too obtrusive. 

Ah well, looky here

".... Floating World (1974), a complex concept set themed around the Japanese philosophy of Ukiyo, with the songs revolving around two interrelated and interlaced series of compositions. According to AllMusic, ts "sheer diversity of sounds and moods, the constant clash or gentle intermingling of Eastern and Western styles, and the set's glittering atmospheres made Floating World an undeniable masterpiece". The band's foray into what would later be labelled world and ambient music came parallel to that of Brian Eno, who described Floating World as an "important album"

Mind you, it's not all floaty flutey stuff - "Snake", on Last Autumn's Dream, is fierce and raw with a really gnarly guitar texture. 

I was thinking there was something affinitive in Jade Warrior's all-gates-open worldy-influenced sound / approach to the Traffic-and-solo-members diaspora of the '70s (one of  the non-original members of Traffic, Rebop Kwaku Baah, would join twilight Can in fact). 

Well, it seems that Steve Winwood played some role in with Jade Warrior's getting picked up by Island, after their Vertigo run of albums came to an end. Winwood also contributed moog and piano to Waves.

Somewhere I have an Antilles sampler from mid-decade, full of this sort of drawing-on-influences-beyond-rock-beyond-the-West-even vibe - the drift + discovery post-psychedelic thing that punk abruptly brought to a rude terminus. 

It's this one -  actually from 1977, so already slipped behind the times

This kind of thing - very flutey actually. Winwoodwindy.  

Jade Warrior are still going on and in fact put out an album last year. 

I also vaguely associate Quintessence and Jade Warrior with Osibisa  - perhaps more for the record artwork than the music itself. 

Jade Warrior did have a production company association with a different Afro-rock band, Assegai

I suppose the common thread here is looking outside the West for musical and spiritual nourishment (albeit in the case of Osibisa, it's musicians from outside the West bringing their vibes into  Anglophonospheric rock).

The kind of traffic - and Traffic - abruptly ended by punk, which recentered the flux around a purist core of rock.

Only for similarly sort of pangloba impulses to creep back just a few years later in post-punk and industrial - Pop Group, 23 Skidoo, The Slits to an extent.... Poly Styrene and Lora Logic after X Ray Spex .....   mostly inflected in a mock-tribal way. 

Another common thread (meaning the Old Wavey horizon-widening music) is the flute (flute nowhere to be heard in the postpunk versions of same, I don't think).

Which reminds me: I've been hatching as counterfactual in which the flute supplants the electric guitar as rock's dominant instrument. 

The gist of it starts with the fact that Kraftwerk was initially a Florian Schneider-led venture, and the focal instrument was Florian's flute. The line-up was fluctuating, with Schneider the only constant. Not long after the first album came out Ralf Hutter left the band for eight months. For a moment there, Kraftwerk was Schneider plus Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother, but no Hutter. 

The turning point in my alternative history is that Giorgio Moroder somehow gets to hear ‘Ruckzuck’, a tune on the first album that's propelled by a raspingly percussive flute-riff, with Schneider's overblowing creating a gritty, distorted, rock-like feel. He is blown away by this and goes to meet them, and manages to persuade Schneider and co to simplify and restructure the tune so that it works as a dance track for the discotheque crowd. During this process, the motorik beat that Neu! developed in our world becomes integrated with the Giorgio-sculpted Kraftwerk sound. The combination is electrifying.

Released as a single, "Ruckzuck" becomes a smash hit worldwide - a bit like a flute-powered "Spirit in the Sky". Teenyboppers are stomping to the maddening flute-riffage down the discotheque.

Moroder formally joins Kraftwerk and with his pop instincts merged with the Neu!-that-never-was's rhythm drive, the group score a series of follow-up hit singles. A craze erupts across the world for the flute as riff-rhythm engine rather than wafty sophisto-texture. Kids drop the electric guitar and pick up flutes -  also clarinets and oboes and bassoons and piccolos. 

On the second Kraftwerk album, Florian & Giorgio, the first side is taken up with six tautly focused and hooky songss. But side two is taken up with a  23 minute side-long expansion of "Rucksuck" -  sort of  "In A Gadda Da Vidda’ meets “Love To Love You Baby”.  Moroder has experimental, ambient-leaning tendencies latent within the hit-chasing commercialism, as can be seen by our timeline's Moroder solo album Einzelgänger, which is not far off things Cluster were doing, or indeed side 2 of Autobahn.

This allows flute-rock to become more just a teenybop novelty craze - it wins over the heads too. John Peel plays the album's second side 3 times in a row on Top Gear. 

There is a reorientation amongst various existing groups.

Jethro Tull are already working along these lines but get pulled in a more populist direction, jumping into the chart fray with a series of hits. 

The balance of power in Hawkwind tilts in flavor of the flute. The band rename themselves Hawkwoodwind.  ‘Silver Machine’ becomes an electric flute / bassoon monster and actually does even better in the charts, hitting #1 and staying there for four weeks. 

A bitter power struggle takes place within the fledgling Roxy Music, causing Bryan Ferry to quit in a fit of pique. Andy Mackay becomes the dominant figure and the group are reoriented around an oboe and clarinet frontline, with Eno processing the instruments.  In tribute to the inspiration from Kraftwerk, Mackay renames the group Ruckzuck Musik. 

Mike Oldfield recasts Tubular Bells as a woodwinds dominated project.

Pete Frampton abandons guitar and learns the flute and oboe, combining them with talk box, with huge commercial success. 

Meanwhile Bob Moog rethinks his instrument and instead of a keyboard interface devises a blow-through-a-tube interface.

Does this mean that the Old Wave, bolstered by the electrification of classical-music instruments (violin, cello, etc as well as woodwinds) and the consequent necessary premium placed on virtuosity and technique, lasts forever? Or would New Wave, focused around the reclamation of the electric guitar, happen anyway? 

Perhaps Andre 3000 and his record somehow leaked through from the parallel universe where popular music went down the flute path?