Dorothy Moskowitz & The United States of Alchemy | Under An Endless Sky (2023)

Under An Endless Sky represents the interchange that took place between electronic composer Francesco Paolo Paladino, composer and writer Luca Chino Ferrari, and the legendary Dorothy Moskowitz, an icon of underground culture who broke all kinds of new ground as a member of The United States of America. Led by the charismatic composer Joseph Byrd, the band released their lone eponymous album on Columbia Records in 1968. It has taken on a mythic status that has grown through the years, sampled by Diplo and Mac Miller and widely acknowledged as a visionary psychedelic classic. Francesco Paolo Paladino, an avant-garde Italian composer contacted Dorothy, inviting her to sing on some of his compositions. When she heard his 2021 CD release of “Barene & Other Works,” she recognized… Tompkins Square

Dorothy Moskowitz & The United States of Alchemy: Under An Endless Sky

…that they shared a similarly experimental point of view and she accepted his invitation. Paladino is known for his collaborations with Martyn Bates, Allison O’Donnell, Simon Fisher Turner, and other world-renowned contemporary composers, as well as his own sought-after 1985 debut LP Doublings and Silences Volume 1. Francesco has long collaborated with Italian writer Luca Chino Ferrari, author of biographies of Nick Drake, Third Ear Band, Captain Beefheart, Tim Buckley and Syd Barrett, among others. He submitted lyrics to Dorothy and together they began a profound and unique collaboration on the adaptation of lyrics to music, delving into words and meanings, phonetic properties and their singability. ” Lyrics that have the audacity to deal with complex themes of human existence, real philosophical cutaways that look at reality and question it, often without offering answers, ” says Ferrari. Moskowitz’s extraordinary voice and modal melodies float over Paladino’s magical musical textures. There are no guitars, bass, drums or other technological devilry, but only virtual sounds (sometimes without even keyboards) upon which are grafted some acoustic interventions: violins and violas, woodwinds and percussion entrusted to excellent musicians such as Italians Riccardo Sinigaglia, Angelo Contini, Stefano Scala, Trio Cavallazzi and Gino Ape, and English folker Sean Breadin. Tompkins Square

When the pioneering experimental rock group The United States Of America split acrimoniously in the spring of 1968, they had only been going for a year – but such was their impact, those 12 months would come to define the life of the band’s singer Dorothy Moskowitz. “We probably would have lasted another two or three years,” says Moskowitz, a sharp and sassy 82, over Zoom from her home in Piedmont, California. “There was new music coming and we knew how to put it out there. We’d all gotten more charismatic on stage as well. When we first started we were quite stiff – artsy-fartsy students from UCLA – but we’d loosened up a lot.” UNCUT

To quote album art master and AD visual guru D. Norsen: “Dorothy Moskowitz might not be a household name but was a musician on two of the headiest albums I know: 1967’s Vocal And Instrumental Ragas From South India on Folkways and 1968’s United States of America on CBS.”
Moskowitz is our guest this week on Transmissions. She joins us to discuss not only the pioneering psychedelia she made in the past with collaborators like Joe Byrd and Country Joe, but also her brand new album, coming out soon from Tompkins Square. It’s called Under the Endless Sky, and it’s credited to Dorothy Moskowitz & The United States of Alchemy. Aquarium Drunkard

Dorothy Moskowitz is an American singer and songwriter, who was most notably a lead vocalist in the experimental rock band the United States of America. Moskowitz and the band, though not too commercially successful, produced some of the earliest examples of electronic rock. Dorothy had worked with Byrd earlier. They met in New York in 1963 and began a relationship. The first album they worked together was the “Time-Life Treasury of Christmas Music,” released in 1963. Later that year, the two moved to California to enroll in UCLA. It was there that she played on an album produced by Byrd for Folkways, featuring Gayathri Rajapur and Harihar Rao and released in 1965. blues.gr

CD EDITION:

Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.51 x 4.84 x 0.12 inches; 1.41 Ounces
Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Tompkins Square
Original Release Date ‏ : ‎ 2023
Label ‏ : ‎ Tompkins Square
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BSR2SP4C
Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ USA
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1