“Never meet your heroes”. If Víkingur Ólafsson had followed this advice, this gem of an album would have never come into existence. Having loved the …
Víkingur Ólafsson ~ From Afar
Víkingur Ólafsson ~ From Afar
Jeff Gburek – Pharoah’s Tarot
Pharoah Sanders left this mortal coil on September 24, 2022, after leaving a stellar body of work and his influence on countless musicians including Jeff Gburek. The influence was profound, and you can hear it on this album, where the guitar glides into something free, not as in noisy free-jazz, but something free-floating, gentle, relaxing, almost heavenly. It certainly bears the stamp of his own work, and that of Sanders, but I hear also a touch of Sonny Sharrock in this mix as well.
This is experimental music that is gentle on the ear and on the mind.
Doc Wör Mirran – Second Try
Doc Wör Mirran got its start as a multi-disciplinary project out of Nürnberg, Germany in around 1985, and for nearly 40 years, the band have continued to produce strange, intriguing avant-garde rock and experimental music. From their Bandcamp site:
“Contrary to most compilations which compile the greatest hits of an artist, “Second Try” is a compilation that highlights the drumming talents of DWM’s drummer Stefan Schweiger. He compiled, edited and partially remixed this album himself of his favourite tracks, and added new sounds and samples to make some of the tracks quite different from the “normal versions”. Stefan also contributed the cover and label art for this, one of DWM’s more guitar and rock oriented releases.”
Uchylak – Astralia
Uchylak are a Polish group who have a rather retro sound, combining dark electro, techno, and even Electronic Body Music or hard beat into a very punchy, well-produced album.
I Have No Face – Feelings That Won’t Return
It pays to explore the myriad of free albums available on Bandcamp these days. Though there is a lot of garbage one has to sort through, you will always come up with a few gems during the day if you are persistent, and I Have No Face, a project out of Poland, turns out to be one of those.
This isn’t music per sé, but rather four wispy, ghostly, well-crafted tones that flow together pleasantly. It is ear candy – tasty, tasteful and a nice EP worth hearing.
Mikael Tariverdiev – Visions in Black & White
Mikael Tariverdiev was a Russian cinema and TV composer of Armenian extraction but raised Tbilisi, Georgia, a true man of the Soviet world. Though he was quoted as not particularly liking jazz, he was as good an improviser that Russia ever produced.
From the release’s Bandcamp page:
“Visions in Black and White is a collection of rare jazz and improvised themes by one of the greatest Russian film composers Mikael Tariverdiev (1931-1996). Transferred from the original tapes and beautifully remastered, these recordings manage to retain their original ambience and capture a master at work.
Originally composed for cinema and TV movies of the 1960s and 1970s, it centres on Mikael playing at the piano and keyboard. Many of the compositions can be described as jazz, a genre whose troubled story in the Soviet Union meant they probably would not have existed outside the context of a film score. But, as Vera Tariverdieva, Mikael’s wife, tells, it is probably more in accordance with his vision to hear them in the context of his life-long love of improvisation.
“Astoundingly, he said more than once that he wasn’t fond of jazz. This perplexed me, as he’d always been great at improvisation. Imagine my amazement then when I rummaged through one of our old closets and found a crumbling old tape. It was the score for the 1964 film ‘Until Tomorrow’. I played it. And the realisation came: not only had Mikael had been fond of jazz — no, he’d been an amazing jazz musician.” Vera Tariverdieva
The pieces here are an introduction to Mikael’s musical world. The tonality of individual tracks varies – they were transferred from original tapes of different eras and conditions that are kept in the Tariverdiev apartment in Moscow where Vera still lives and works.”
Wendy Carlos Demonstrates The Moog Modular Behind ‘Switched On Bach’
In this vintage BBC video, electronic music pioneer Wendy Carlos demonstrates the Moog modular synthesizer used in the creation of Switched On Bach.……
Wendy Carlos Demonstrates The Moog Modular Behind ‘Switched On Bach’
Ernesto Djédjé – Roi Du Ziglibithy (Limited Dance Edition Nr. 15)
Analog Africa released a disc of music from Ivory Coast legend Ernesto Djédjé recently, and it was rather eye-opening to see that even in a place as far away as Côte d’Ivoire, they had the same problems of so-called foreign influence getting in the way of local music, with Ernesto complaining about the Congolization of the local music scene. Djédjé more than remedied that situation with this burner of an album.
Various Artists – Let’s Stamp: 1950s Folk Dance Recordings from Bulgarian and Yugoslavian 78rpm Discs
The ever-reliable Canary Records out of Baltimore, Maryland, have released a compilation of Balkan 78 rpm shellacs with a lot of the artists being unidentified, but whose music is most assuredly from my home away from home.
Lucho Bermudez y su Orquesta – The Coastal Invasion
The ever-stunning Radio Martiko out of Belgium release an amazing collection of cumbia from Colombia’s greatest export, Lucho Bermudez. From the label’s Bandcamp release site:
Bermudez was a key figure who modernised the tropical music of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. At the beginning of the 20th century, this music was largely looked down on. Bermudez changed all that by injecting a modern, jazzy big band sound to the Afro-Colombian sounds from his native region.
The infectious Afro-Amerindian dance rhythms of Lucho Bermudez y su Orquesta took over the elite nightclubs of Bogota and Medellin and from there, his music spread all over Latin America. For many Colombians, the songs of Lucho Bermudez and his wife and starlet singer Matilde Diaz represent the sound of their nation.