| Author | Message | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
The truth of taste. I am more interested in albums than individual songs. And the album has to work as a fixture; it must suit my kitchen routines. Recently bought ... Arcade Fire: ok but a bit purile. Wilco: better, more subtle. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Recently imbibed albums: Nektar - Down to Earth - 70s prog from Englishmen in Germany with occasional cameos from Bob Calvert pretending to be German. Not as good as it sounds. Electric Wizard - Dopethrone - brutal! | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
I heard "Begin to Hope" by Regina Spector - but despite the 5-star treatment on Amazon, it quickly turns into not-very-interesting songs by someone who's heard far too much Kate Bush/Bjork/Tori Amos for their own good. But Big Things round here just now include : "All Fires" by Swan Lake - http://www.last.fm/music/Swan+Lake/_/All+Fires and "My Autumn's Done Come" by Lee Hazelwood. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
>>Arcade Fire: ok but a bit purile. I'm with you there, MJP. I was pretty disappointed in their new album. Couldn't even get the whole way through it. I've been enjoying the National's new album, Boxer, enormously though. I think they're the best working band in America right now. Shearwater has also been doing it for me. Palo Santo (both versions) are worth a listen. Also, a little ways back I finally managed to get my hands on a Cathal Coughlan album. I forget who recommended him, but thanks! I like. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"None more black!" http://www.thelocal.se/7650/ | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
I think I mentioned Cathal Coughlan. Which did you get? I'm currently playing Alasdair Robert's The Amber Gatherers heavily, as well as stuff by Badgerlore and Six Organs Of Admittance. | ||
| arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 |
Playing Péz "samurai spirit" and Niņo Josele "Peace" Also new cds by Arnaldo Antunes and Carlinhos Brown. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
So the AR album's good? Found the murder ballads one a bit too dirge-like for my taste... | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
>>So the AR album's good? Yes, much more up-beat. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Groovy... Difficult to be more down-beat, tho'! | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Alex, I got Foburg. If you have any other recommendations up that alley, do let me know. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Just grooving to Mount Vernon Arts Lab... groovy weird shit and best album title ever - 'The Seance at Hobs Lane'. What Foburg? | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
>>Alex, I got Foburg. If you have any other recommendations up that alley, do let me know. Nearest to that would be Grand Necropolitan, Coughlan's first solo album after Fatima Mansions (but I don't think it's in print). The two albums after that (Black River Falls and The Sky's Awful Blue) are both excellent, and fairly restrained. You might have detected a hint of unease in Foburg - if you want to hear that unease in all its filthy fury, check out Fatima Mansions, in particular Valhalla Avenue and Lost In The Former West. Oh, damn, they're all essential. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
And here's another reason to love Cathal Coughlan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak72EKbZZmo | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
My own Cathal nominations are a long way from YouTube: "Pink Skinned Man" and "People Just Want to Dream" by Microdisney. Live version of the second here: http://www.bubbyworld.com/microdisney/microdisneyi ndex.htm | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
dave, I bought The National's single. Listening to it a few times it seems good. One thing though it sticks in the head like a burr. The drumming reminds me of Pere Ubu's B-side Gripless on their Story of My Life remastered CD. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Alex, Martin: thanks a bunch. I'd have never heard of this stuff if not for you.  MJP, what songs are on the single? The tunes do stick with you, I agree. When it comes to their stuff, there's always somehting in there that you hear for the first time only after having listened to it many, many times. The drummer is so good, isn't he? | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Lee Hazelwood, RIP. Remember him this way: "My son called me from Las Vegas once and said: "Pops you've got to get yourself down here. There's a girl in a club doing a cover of 'These Boots Are Made for Walking'". I said, why the fuck do I have to get on a flight from Phoenix to Las Vegas to see someone do a crappy version of one of Nancy's tunes that I wrote? And he said, "Yeah, but dad, you've never seen it done with a girl playing piano with her breasts." http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/observermusic/2007/08/ lee_hazlewood.html | ||
| arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 |
I am listening to Luciana Souza Brazilian duets. Great voice. Strong on feelings. File under quiet brazilian music. Great for the summertime. | ||
| arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 |
Iīve just got The nationalīs new album boxer. Brilliant. Thanks again for the tip, Dave. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
At the moment I am listening to the old guys. Springsteen, The Eagles, Don Henley. If you listen to the last two albums together, Long Road Out of Eden and Henley's Inside Job, they form an intense and passionate expression of concern about the planet and environment. Quite remarkable. However perhaps Henley's best song is about the suicide of a friend, Dammit Rose. Henley is an interesting combination, Hollywood glamour and individualist at the same time. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Arturo, I'm glad you're liking The National. They're one of my favorites. Right now though, I'm hating my iPod. 90% of the stuff on it just doesn't do much for me anymore. A tune will come on and I'll think "Why did I used to like this so much". Secretly I suspect that I know why I liked most of the stuff though, I just don't like that I used to like it. And I think that I should have better taste. Too much time spent in the music scene narrowed my taste to the point of absurdity and, now that I have some perspective, i find myself very far behind the curve. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Dave: I don't know there *is* a curve any more! | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Fair point, Martin. Sadly, the magic is deflated. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Personally, 2007 was marked by some great gigs here in Oxford: John Cale (twice in one day), Harold Budd, and an amazing two hours of Patti Smith. Otherwise, I was left peering at YouTube footage of Amy Winehouse or Led Zeppelin and wondering - why do they bother? | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
Best album of the year: Alasdair Roberts - The Amber Gatherers Single of the year: Cardiacs, Ditzy Scene Gig of the year: a tie, between Cardiacs and a gig I did on a church Merry Christmas everyone | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Yes, Happy Christmas! And if you're still stuck for that awkward, last minute present: http://www.coolgadgets.org/top-15-weird-gadgets-yo u-never-thought-existed/ No. 10 over here, please. Though I think the traveller's t-shirt is genius, too! | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I thought the new Kings of Leon pretty good. Also The National. A Merry Christmas to all. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
And some Christmas songs - the good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP_WH4heId4 - the guilty pleasure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NmdFgFyhnk - and the - Yes. Well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udOzxYX7Tnk | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
And then there was: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2-XIauB37U&feature =related Oh boy. Oh boy, oh boy ... "Dogs begin to bark. Hounds begin to howl..." | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I am enjoying Pink Floyd's Meddle and Obscured by Clouds albums. I am thinking of getting Atom Heart Mother too. The later albums (Dark Side of the Moon etc) are dynamically impressive, even compulsive as listening experiences, but too disconnected for my taste. Pink Floyd at this stage seems to have disappeared into 'Pink Floyd' and then ''Pink Floyd'' and so on in angst-ridden oblivion not relevant to anyone in the actual world. That is probably why dinosaur rock became so unfashionable generally I think. Money started to replace perspective. But I do like the early albums. The initial Fleetwood Mac similarly. The two groups seem to be blues-based guitar in origin from which was built a kind of after the blues guitar pop - which is to say a music without any basis in anything other than sixties radio wave. Something like that. The other thing is that Radiohead remind me of them, even down to veering off into experimental work like Amnesiac as though in direct imitation of Pink Floyd's career with Atom Heart Mother. The parallel is not exact, but I think Pink Floyd created the blueprint: inventing a music at once serious and yet without cultural context, a music in which the context is almost painfully self-invented. Eno says somewhere that each of his albums is not about anything but a sense of "This is where I am at", whatever that might happen to mean. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Picked up the Floyd Live in Pompeii DVD. I am not generally a fan of Floyd after the Barrett era, and this DVD has done nothing to change that opinion. I do however find it an interesting document about the development of popular experimental music during that era. There are a few good nerd-porn moments, with vintage echoes and synths (an EMS Synthi!) and a the interviews reveal a sense of denial. They constantly stress that, in spite of the amount of equipment they use, *they* are using the machines rather than the machines using them. They can't get away from themselves as musicians in the egoistic (small e) sense. And yes, there's something affectless and a little absent at the heart of the band - not unlike Radiohead. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Still listening to David Torn's Prezens album a lot. Probably the best thing I heard last year, and certainly the best album from 2007 - I only bought two: http://www.myspace.com/prezens Also: Jean Michel Jarre's first two albums Oxygene & Equinoxe. Jarre is less impressive as a synth wizard than Vangelis, not as glacially primary as Kraftwerk, and perhaps it's just the vintage synths but it's getting quite a few spins here. Also, also: The Thing's Action Jazz album, Kosmos, three CDs of British Library field recordings of rural Indian music... I even listened to some Big Block 454 the other day. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
New Big Block 454 album just at mixing stage. Expect to be mithered about it when finished. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Fantastic news! Also also also: new Entropy Circus album finally ready after almost four years. More soon! | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Hey ho hoo ha! I'll keep out a listening ear. Pink Floyd again, Obscured by Clouds is so full of the feel of the early 70s ... I have never seen the film it is supposed to be the soundtrack of but I suppose that is the same. The DVD release of all the old 70s tv programs, such as UFO, creates the same sense. I watch an episode and as I pad round my flat - which was built in the 60s - I feel that I am back at that time. I find myself revisiting everything I used to do, same old books, films, music, to see what I think of it now. The forgotten UFO series is a masterpiece of design despite being as silly as can be. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
UFO isn't forgotten in my house. But it certainly reminds me how disappointed I am in the future. The future in UFO was depressingly like the present it predicted. We need more hover cars and ray guns. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
Anyway, pop music - I've been loving The Bairns by Rachel Unthank and the Winterset. It's folk, but done different, and refreshingly geordie-like. Beautifully moving album. | ||
| arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 |
Hi all, Listening to the steve reid essemble Daaxar and to The Nationalīs boxer. Fake empire is for me the best of last yearīs crop of singles.( Thanks again for the tip,dave) | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
I like this a lot: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ballads-Book-Various-Artis ts/dp/B000MMLMTE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=gateway&qid= 1200567667&sr=8-1 - No prizes for spotting the riff here, though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syjjvxAh4uY | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I am still enjoying listening to Pink Floyd's early works. Ummagumma is a terrific listening experience, very 1 Million Years BC. Amazing what they got away with back then, the uncommercial, experimental to the point of self-indulgent discovering that was going on into the infinitely psychedelic. They have always struck me as having a talent for extended compositional work ... But I am still wary of approaching DSOTM (bit like LOTRs in music) - their later work I have always avoided like poison. But I am having a hard time resisting taking a look. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
Try Wish You Were Here or Animals first, MJP. More extended pieces on them. Don't, whatever you do, be tempted to try The Wall next. Thanks for reminding me about Ummagumma, though. I've just ordered it. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
'Wish You Were Here' is lovely, tho' my favourite Floyd album is probably 'Relics', just for 'See Emily Play' - magnificent song. Isn't there an alt mix of 'Interstellar Overdrive' on it as well, come to think of it? Right now, grooving to 'Apache' and feeling like I'm in an Odeon Cinema in the late 70s, waiting for the main feature... | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Oh and - io said: >> the best album from 2007 - I only bought two What was the other one? | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
The other was Kosmos by Kosmos: http://www.myspace.com/kosmostheband I also acquired a copy of Om's Pilgrimage album. I didn't buy that but I would have. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
Al - my local cinema still plays Hank Marvin tunes. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Cool! Somehow that seems like absolutely the best place to listen to him. Hmm, don't know Kosmos but the Om album is fantastic. Have been inspired to extend 'Bass Odyssey' by it. It now documents every major myth cycle's version of the apocalypse in a four hour live bass / spoken word extravaganza. As yet only the neighbours cat has witnessed it in its entirety. The cat seems to be hiding from me now so I don't know what it thought of it. Moved on from Hank to Miles Davis 'Dark Magus' - ferocious metal jazz! Just right for a gloomy Friday in Acton... | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Well, maybe we can include it in our forthcoming two man power trio. After my nine-part epic of cosmological autowah infoldings, of course BTW: how does the name Sardaukar grab you? Too Frank Herbert? | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Not Orphan Grinder? Tssk... It's quite Frank Herbert, but it's quite funky. You Sarda, me Ukar? I will ponder... | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Enjoying the free streams of Alec Empire's new album. 1000 Eyes is particularly good in a Lou Reedish manner. In genuine danger of buying this. http://eat-your-heart-out.com/eyho.html | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
J P Harvey's new work, White Chalk. Not one to listen to as a matter of routine (my favourite musics) but lyrical and unsettling. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Lovely stuff, I thought, too. I got a burn of that and the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss cd, and have been playing it to death. Also, this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL4mywCOJXA | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
The Red Crayola's 60s classic, 'Parable of Arable Lands' - awesome garage rock combined with 60 odd lunatics making strange random noises. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH09xbhOs_8 | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Been listening to Zali's new one. Nano Gate. Nand Gate. I like the love song on it especially. To be released as a single? Also, la Dusseldorf's Individuellos: a kind of riposte to Kraftwerk's impersonality. A truly great album. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Glad you're enjoying it. Is there a love song in there? I guess "What Are We Going To Do For Lunch?" is almost there. But it has become disjointed and fixated on a few gestures of lifestyle coupledom - all consumer goods and property ownership as easy as Sunday morning. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Maybe that is what gives it its resonance. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Sounds very Ballard when described like that. Having strange images of Ballard on tour... 'Helloooo Shepperton!!!' etc | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
What was that line from Annie Hall? "Sex with you is really a Kafkaesque experience!" | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Strangely enough Kafka's own experience of sex looks to have been quite the opposite. Such as in the scene behind the bar in the pub in The Castle: K loses himself to its mystery in a pool of beer and spit. Kafkaesque: I think this needs clarifying: Kafka can't experience his own form of sex. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Indeed. There was always that gatekeeper who kept Franz from the door designed expressly for his own use. His love life wasn't really tabloid fodder, either - "I Slept With Insect Man - Prague Pensioner's Strange Claim." No, we won't be seeing that. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Now that is Kafkaesque, isn't it? Kafka is the one thing in the world about which/whom it is certain that we can't say he is Kafkaesque. Such as in: "There is a very Kafkaesque-looking character sitting at that table." | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
An interesting philosophical/semantic point: if you're sui generis, you can't be likened to yourself. Or can you? | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
So are the rest of us like Kafka whereas Kafka is (or was) Kafka? And thus a Kafkaesque character would almost be an everyman. Every man apart from K. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
In a Dickian Universe Dick's dinkum isn't Dickian. This actually relates to Russell's paradox. Thus: a barber who barbers only those who don't barber themselves, if he barbers himself doesn't fall into the class of those he barbers. Gottlob Frege, the great German mathematical logicist, greeted this news with despair. His carefully construct foundation for mathematics was destroyed at a single blow! | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
But - but - If a window-cleaner cleans his own windows, he's still a window-cleaner. I'm sure Kafka never thought of himself as "Kafkaesque," though; or is that a different logical nexus? | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I should be doing something else, but nonetheless. I thought we had discussed this before. If something were to be used as the standard for measuring kilograms, that object would be the one thing about which it could not be said that it weighed one kilogram. Similarly: the concept 'red' is not itself red. And so on. Language games are our handle on infinity: each concept central to any given game introduces a limit to what has none (as with the infinity of colours - or even of a colour: for a particular colour is itself an infinity of course; (the sensation is ideally restored to us by art; for it is that sense of infinity which is otherwise lost to us in our mundane use of the game that we recover).) What has no limit is conceived in such a way as to appear its opposite: so that it appears that infinity is impossible. To come back to la Dusseldorf, and Individuellos ... they present us with the inverse of Kraftwerk's abstract of that. Where Kraftwerk discover infinity in 'the general' (the machine) la Dusseldorf explore it in the particular: as in Sentimental, home! | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
But, hey - let's rock! http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/books/theresaword. html "As my words join Ray's notes we hope you feel it ... You can buy our art but it isn't for sale. SPANK ME WITH A ROSE (DEEP MUD MEDLEY) is throbbing, insistent and pounding." Well, it would be, wouldn't it? Then again, anyone who helped compose "Celebration of the Lizard" must have some sort of genetic immunity to embarrassment. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
Get yer lovely downloads. http://www.eggcityradio.com Talking Heads early demos, Hawkwind live, early Kraftwerk live (sounding like Neu!), Duul live... | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
What occurs to me is that those two Dusseldorf groups (Kraftwerk and Neu!/la Dusseldorf) represent music in search of a subject. The traditonal pop music music is the love song: that is the cliche explored, with greater or lesser consciousness. In the case of Kraftwerk the love song becomes a song to a place eg Neon Lights. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Neither group has a subject. One can argue this obvious point. But, to take Kraftwerk's case, this is how the subject is discovered, too; that is, the subject emerges from the means that the search for it uses, which is the technology. It is a kind of bootstraps inheritance. (I am often struck by this; of how in the case of groups like say The Cure or of figures like Iggy Pop that it is the fact of being a pop group or pop personality that provides them with the material that they want to sing about. So which comes first: they themselves as a group or that subject-matter?) Indeterminate subject-matter: in place of common sense we have this elected self-invention: a self invention in which original understanding is possible simply because it is self-originated: infinity takes over: "a harmonization of elements toward an independent, calm-dynamic, and dynamic-calm entity. The composition can only be complete if movement is met by counter-movement or if a solution of kinetic infinity has been found." (Paul Klee) In Kraftwerk the kinetic infinity is obvious. One only has to listen to Trans-Europe Express or Aero Dynamik to understand that discovery. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
By the way, Martin. We are not talking of a window cleaner cleaning his own windows being a window cleaner, but of a window cleaner who - let's suppose - is legally defined in his job by the criteria that he should clean only the windows of those who can't clean their own windows cleaning his own windows. Once he does that legally he stops being a window cleaner. Gosh, that should be obvious! | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Gosh, well, it is! | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
*George Formby explodes* | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
With La Dusseldorf's eponymous album the subject is the place: Dusseldorf. One day I'm going to count how many times the word appears on the album. In fact, apart from the word "zeit", there are few other words on the album. So with this particular example the subject is place and time. Neu! are more difficult to pin down. There's something of a kinetic obsession in there again but also as with yr Klee quote something of a calm-dynamic. Things are either fast or dead slow (often backgrounded by found sounds of jet planes in calm skies) and even within the motion the optimistic major key harmonies take on chordal architectonic structures. (Yes, I'm sorry!) In the few places where there are words, such as can be made out, they seem to refer to the city and its aggression, but as utopian myth. Contrast with The Specials, Joy Division and punk. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
What interests me is the self-referential aspect: la Dusseldorf originate their own city, which is not Dusseldorf, but 'Dusseldorf', if you like, on the album "la Dusseldorf". To repeat with variations. Just suppose: la Crikey live in Crikey - where else - but in singing about Crikey do not sing about Crikey literally but 'Crikey' - the place where *they* as opposed to anyone else live. If I lived in Crikey the album would NOT be about where I lived. Just as when I cross London Bridge it is not my Thames that flows softly but Eliot's. I can only imagine Eliot's Thames which exists entirely somewhere else and is not even in Eliot's world either. When pop person NN sings about sex, drugs and rock and roll he sings about the life that singing about sex drugs and rock and roll has brought him, events which if he hadn't sung about them wouldn't have occured. He is singing because of the song. The song originates from the singing of it: since its originator becomes other than himself, like the window cleaner who because he is defined by the fact that he cleans only others' windows ceases to exist when he cleans his own. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Today's Independent has an obituary for Klaus Dinger. He died in March apparently. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"The way you wear your hat The way you sip your tea The memory of all that - No, they can't take that away from me." But let me put it another way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1QQLRF79-k | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Klaus did not die in vain. Obviously. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJAsOd0WWPE | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
For anyone interested at the top left hand side of David Byrne's blog there is a link to some Wired articles - survival strategies; DB interviews Thom Yorke, Eno and other stuff. Also a couple of songs. Byrne cites five different strategies for song publication; from total dependency on a record company to self publishing. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Good news for me anyway: a new Randy Newman album in a couple of days. AND a new David Byrne / Brian Eno album, Everything that Happens Will Happen Today. Yesterday Only Exists in the Present. A bridge to Tomorrow must be built so the join must be here and now which means tomorrow is somewhere into Today EVEN IF YOU CAN'T FIND IT. (That last bit is by me. They aren't that silly.) | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Newman reviewed: http://uncut.co.uk/music/randy_newman/reviews/1192 4 | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Nice to see you around again Martin. A good review! Newman makes American silliness palatable, in this case, he argues I think in at least one song something to the effect that life under Bush is GOOD!!! (yo'old bat!) introducing irony and pathos into truly funny songs, songs that can make you laugh each time you hear them. On the other album, I generally like Eno's work, and Byrne's, but have been dismayed at the musical direction Byrne has been taking with orchestration. Really I thought it made his last album slack lyrically. He needs strong rhythm based stuff, as on Lazy. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Nice to be back, MJP. I love Newman - but he does have some *really* dedicated fans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGd6nNPyeaw | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Mm, I'm in my office so have the sound off. Another great recent release is Ry Cooder's I, Flathead. I am really enjoying it. That and Radiohead's In Rainbows, which I have grown to like. I think their basic subject matter is infinity. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Other nice grooves around here: Richard Thompson covering "See My Friends" and Kathryn Williams's smoky version of "In a Broken Dream." | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
- And this old favourite: probably the most wistful song ever written about London, apart from "Waterloo Sunset" - and a great exercise in miminal lyrics: "Rossmore Road" by Barry Andrews (in download box): http://www.myspace.com/barryandrewsmusic "All humming now ..." | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"- And I'm the Indian of the band." Not any more: http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/music/338 93539.html?elr=KArksD:aDyaEP:kD:aUnOiP3UiacyKUU | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Thin pickings in pop world parts for me. I can't seem to find music to listen to which exists in adaquate quantities. It might have something to do with my ignorance. I'm having to trawl through old or oldish groups who I never listened to first time round to see if any of it stands up. First up is Muse and their Muscle Museum song, which I like. Are their records any good as a whole? I have bought two as an experiment along with an Interpol CD. How poor things are getting when I find myself looking at the Cure again! Their new ep is quite good, that and the new Kings of Leon album ... | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
Pop music is doing very little for me, too. However I was pleased to find Tom Verlaine's excellent Dreamtime re-released on CD, and I'm enjoying that. My other current fave rave is Fischer-Dieskau and Moore's recording of Der Wintereisse. Lovely stuff. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Interpol's Our Love to Admire is ok. Emphatic, loud simplified rhythms, with an extravagant feel production and lyrics that work. Once you get used to the singer's delivery, which is harsh, clipped, late Joy Division-esque: sometimes the music is an almost exact copy of Closer. It is high-flown romantic and maybe affecting. Especially like Pioneer to the Falls and Resting My Chemistry. It is a kind of Joy Division-lite by way of New York not Manchester. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I have just received notification from Amazon that the CD re-release of Verlaine's The Wonder has been cancelled - again! What on earth is going on with this? I suspect that some sort of contractual tangle must be holding things up. I can't believe Verlaine is being infinitely fastidious in its remastering and isn't quite yet satisfied with the results ... | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"Pillow" - one of my favourite songs. Did they ever get around to re-mastering his first album, with "Breakin' in My Heart" on it? | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
Well I've got it on CD, but it's not a remaster. That would be good. As for The Wonder, it's not my favourite of his but it would be good to have. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Thinking outside the box of celery, I think the album I admire most of Verlaine's solo work is Flashlight. He seems to construct a world of his own in which an endlessly guitar-inflected jamboree of musical angles and angular music shines with the polish of words that one can almost but not quite get the hang of. What is the meaning of that lyric A Scientist Writes ... Dear Julia, for example? | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
Scientist writes... what a winter track that is, and you're right it's a great album. I believe the lyrics are about someone who is so scientific in his thinking that he's unable to express the terrible passion he feels for Julia, but he's trying. He really wants to say 'I love you' but all that comes out is a request for his coat. Very sad. Reminds me of one of the stories in David Means' Assorted Fire Events. | ||
| dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 |
Just been watching Alex's gig with the Arch. of Cant., and was reminded how much I love Directing Hand at the moment: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=us er.viewprofile&friendID=229367805 Their version of "Down in Yon Forest" from the Singing Knives compilation is highly recommended: http://www.singingknivesrecords.co.uk/singmoon.htm l Live in Sheffield: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTuoQ3RiKtU | ||
| dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 |
This might be a little more representative: http://www.last.fm/music/Directing+Hand They mix free improv with very dark folk, drums + voice plus some harmonium. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
I bought Songs From The Red House. I like it very much. Incidentally, that performance in the church was a much toned-down and old-people friendly version of what I'm doing these days. Similar, but I use loops, drones, noises and kitchen utensils. Album on its way, once I sort out the bleeding awful mess my life has just become  | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Alex - what's happening? You okay? | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
My lovely, much adored partner has run headlong into a Biblically-proportioned mid-life cisis (the women call it a 'transition') and needs 'space to get her head together'. As Dylan Moran put it, 'isn't it funny that when people say they want some space the amount of space they need corresponds exactly to the amount of space you occupy?' So, just when I thought I was settled and happy I find myself about to move out of my home for the last 7 years and into a rented flat. Hoorah! The funny thing about this - God forbid any of you should experience it - is that even though she might as well be following a script about how to have a mid-life crisis, even down to the cliched speeches, she can't see it herself, and I can't prevent it. So it's game on now, where I have to try and detatch my heart, and she has to work on herself and hopefully come back to me, ideally without having an affiair (which is also in the script). Bloody 48-year-old teenagers, I tells yer... Still, I'll get to write more music, and I'm buying the sodding Landrover Defender I always wanted but wasn't allowed to have. Fuck it. Sorry for the unburdening, chaps. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Huge hugs and a virtual bottle of whisky, my friend: the woman I most loved decided to have our "crisis" much earlier in life. I was left with a handful of emotional shorthand she decided was no longer legible, my chargrilled heart, and a worrying identification with Morrissey's lyrics. No easy solution, either: but I was set on the road to recovery by a good friend who listened to my troubles, then grinned and said: "Sounds terrible. Still - fuck 'em all, eh?" Indeed. Anyway, you're far from alone! | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
Thanks Martin. Incidentally, my daughter is at D'overbroeck's College at the moment, so I might well look you up on one of my visits, and we can turn that virtual bottle into a real one, eh? | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
You bet, Alex - my pleasure! | ||
| dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 |
Hugs from here too Alex. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Not forgetting: http://fortscotch.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/tali sker_b_original_1.jpg | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Sorry to hear about that, Alex. Something similar happened to another friend of mine, but his partner isn't even out of her twenties yet. He's moved into a Bloomsbury garrett with his modular synth. Poor chap. That's both of you. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
Well today I have just bought a bright yellow ex-RAF landrover. What fun! | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Jolly good show. My own experience with the women I know, is that I sometimes or I often have to work like a dog to keep things on an even keel, usually for no reward but pleasantries. Still it can be quite pleasant. As a rule they are infinitely more sensible than I am. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
All the best to you Alex, by the way. I am now going to lower the tone of this thread once again, and, once again, mention pop music. I like a certain poppiness. Advance guard music, but also that unreal haze of commerce called pop: the sort of stuff that turns up afterwards. Dare one mention The Killers; even Coldplay? Ok so we live in an imperfect world. I wouldn't be surprised if Coldplay is one of io's banned words, like 'fut-bal'. No? No! His vigilance has slipped. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Ah, me ... http://www.lemmymovie.com/ | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
The Stooges' Ron Ashton obituary last week: obviously a shock for all concerned. It prompted me to buy The Weirdness, a refreshing change from The Killers and The Cure: back to basics; it's like putting on a comfortable pair of old slippers. |