Alice Coltrane / Hamza El Din / Brian Eno / Robert Fripp / Keith Jarrett / Augustus Pablo / Sun Ra / Mike Ratledge / Terry Riley / Erik Satie / Booker T / Robert Wyatt / and pure instinct...
Morgan's Organ is the title of an ongoing series of monthly solo improvisation concerts performed by Japan-based British keyboardist Morgan Fisher since November 2003 at a club called Superdeluxe in Tokyo, Japan. The improvisations have evolved into two long continuous pieces of about 40-60 minutes in length, accompanied by slide shows of Morgan's abstract photography and/or selections from his avant-garde video collection.
All the concerts have been recorded and the first five are now available as downloads on iTunes, Amazon.com and other sites - the rest will be made available gradually.
The instruments Morgan plays are generally vintage analogue instruments, some extremely rare and up to 50 years old. As well as organs they include electric pianos, synthesizers, lo-fi circuit-bent samplers, drum machines, accordions, melodicas, bells and whistles, bird calls, percussion, and Morgan's voice. Almost the only digital equipment used are the delays and looping devices which allow Morgan to create rich, sometimes orchestral or even choral layers of sound which can be further manipulated in real time.
The purpose of this website is to do what cannot be done at iTunes and similar websites: offer longer samples of the music, provide information and photographs relating to the concerts and the instruments, and invite discussion of the music.
More information about the ongoing concerts can be found at www.super-deluxe.com
Here is a short biography - more information about Morgan can be found at www.morgan-fisher.com
Morgan Fisher was born in London, England, on January 1st, 1950.
1966 - 1970: played the organ with soul / pop band The Soul Survivors, who in 1967 were renamed The Love Affair. They had a number one hit in 1968 with "Everlasting Love".
1972 - 1973: formed progressive rock band Morgan, with singer Tim Staffell (the vocalist with the band Smile, who later became Queen). Recorded two albums and a solo album "Ivories".
1973 - 1976: after a brief liaison with Third Ear Band, joined seminal British rock band, Mott the Hoople, whose biggest hit "All The Young Dudes" was written and produced by David Bowie. The band later became Mott, after singer Ian Hunter left; then with the addition of vocalist John Fiddler from Medicine Head it was renamed British Lions.
1978: set up a home studio and recorded, by himself, the Hybrid Kids album, an experimental/parody/art-punk covers album. A sequel entitled Claws soon followed.
1980: conceived and produced the unique Miniatures album (51 one-minute tracks by Robert Fripp, Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, The Pretenders, XTC, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Robert Wyatt, The Damned etc). A sequel was released in 2000. Also recorded his first ambient album, Slow Music, with sax supremo Lol Coxhill.
1982: played with Queen on their 1982 tour of Europe, then took a long break from music and travelled in India and the USA.
1985: moved to Japan, where continued to make ambient and improvised music, and evolved a style of abstract photography he calls Light Painting. Japanese artists he has worked with include Yoko Ono, Dip in the Pool, The Boom, Heat Wave, Kina Shoukichi, Kokoo, Haruomi Hosono of Yellow Magic Orchestra.
2005: collaborated with Austrian musician Hans-Joachim Roedelius (of Cluster and Harmonia) on the ambient album Neverless.
2006: Performed with The Minus 5 and Robyn Hitchcock. Composed music for "A Zen Life", Michael Goldberg's documentary film on D. T. Suzuki, the renowned Zen scholar.
2007: Arranged and sang on a Soft Machine track for the Delta Saxophone Quartet, England's leading contemporary saxophone quartet. Two exhibitions of light paintings in Tokyo.
Hi and thanks for the friendship! Here’s a video from a tour in March-April. In an attempt to merge traditions of improvisation in Vietnamese and contemporary Western culture, this is a performance of Tu Dai Oán, a traditional Vietnamese song. In this performance with Thanh Thuy (playing the dan tranh), Stefan Östersjö (playing 10-string guitar) and Henrik Frisk (laptop), this traditional tune is overlapped with free improvisation with electronics. The performance is from a Scandinavian tour in spring 2009 with The Six Tones, a Swedish/Vietnamese project merging traditional and experimental music. The video was recorded at Atalante in Gothenburg by Niklas Rydén. Stay in touch, all best!/The Six Tones
Hello there, we are a Post Rock/Electronica band from Cairo, Egypt. Our debut album "Marching Stickmen" is now available FOR FREE on our page. Please check us out and feel free to download our album ;)
Welcome to Billy's Bunker (Music Reviews)! It's been busy in the Bunker.
The latest review is Adrian Belew's "Side Two," which CD is good evidence that brother Adrian has become a full bodied 21st Century composer with a syntax of instrumental meaning from the chrysalis of Nuevo Metal born.
Adrian Belew "Side Two" ~ 21st Century composition from the chrysalis of Nuevo Metal born . . .
Hello Morgan, and thanks!...your music and pictures gives me a feeling of a never ending and maybe not even a precise beginning,hm exiting!? So here's some translated guitar cords from me! Greetings/Eric
Glad you like it, but I won't take credit for it. It's a photo I found from flickr. com. I call it the "lonely sea shell", rather symbolizing my life at this point in time.
But thanks for the compliment, the photographer captured the depth. That's why I like it so much.
