For my ears, Silvestre Revueltas‘ Homenaje A Federico García Lorca is the finest piece of classical music to come out of Mexico in the 20th Century.
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We have the tremendous pleasure of announcing three new albums by composer Jeff Gburek. The first album is in collaboration with his partner Karolina Ossowska, who plays violin, ocarina and kalimba on this release. Gburek performs on zither, mandolin, miniature bandura and something called a blue-sky instrument, something new to me. The music is quiet, thoughtful, and meditative. It was a relaxing experience hearing Jeff’s and Karolina’s interplay. The next release deals with shortwave radio sounds. This is in keeping with the best of experimental music, where one lets the noises speak for themselves. Jeff states: Flux and Permittivity is…
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Though long out-of-print, this album screams for a proper reissue. The album combines a fine jazz quartet with Yamamoto’s sublime shakuhachi playing. The personnel on this album were: Bass – Gary Peacock Drums – Hiroshi Murakami Piano – Masabumi Kikuchi Shakuhachi [Bamboo-Flute] – Hōzan Yamamoto
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Coagulant hail from Uruguay, a country not known for a deep experimental music scene. This release, however, should attract attention to those who enjoyed those ritualistic post-Industrial music cassettes of the 1980s. There’s a heavy B-movie soundtrack vibe to this release mixed with electroacoustic music. Quite enjoyable.
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Lagas Turmales is a producer out of Monterrey, Mexico who produce a quiet, droning, monochrome ambient music. It’s lack of dynamics is precisely how ambient music should sound to me, if we’re talking about a purist definition of the genre. This is warm, rippling ambient music worth relaxing to. One could say it would fit in well as part of a Tarkovsky soundtrack. This is a project I’d like to know more about. Transitory Tapes is responsible for releasing this intriguing album.
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1000 Plateaux is the debut record by Hiiro Issiki, a Japanese composer. I don’t find too much information on Issiki’s background, but this record is a musical chimera, sprouting patterns and shapes at will, yet maintaining cohesion, and in many parts, beauty. What a stunning piece of work this is! Respect goes to Bedouin Records out of Bangkok, Thailand, for releasing this album. It’s motivation to explore their catalogue further.
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While I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day too seriously (traveling and lack of a suitable mate at this time will do that), and adding that Eastern Orthodox don’t celebrate the venerable Saint’s day until July 30, I do want to wish my friends and the kind readers who show up here a lovely day with your partner. A bit of Roberta Flack singing Ewan MacColl’s masterpiece, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, should set the mood for the day nicely. Tell me these words wouldn’t make your lover swoon: The first time ever I saw your face I thought…
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NPR does a great disservice comparing Tunisian singer Emel’s voice to Björk. There’s absolutely no comparison, and I say this as someone who likes Björk’s work a lot. Emel is simply a better singer. Her album, The Tunis Diaries, is something closer to the Portuguese band Madredeus, whose singer, Teresa Salgueiro, Emel bares some vocal resemblance to. The production is sparse, and it works perfectly for this album. She also does a great rendition of David Bowie’s, The Man Who Sold The World, which you can hear below. Remarkable.
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I had a good friend whom I worked with at a record shop in Los Angeles called Dana, who was probably 20 years my senior or so, and he was always amazed at how I managed to retain so much information at a young age (I was 23 when I met him) about prog, psych and other weird musics. I told him it was simple – I had family who liked weird things, and I bought Audion Magazine quarterly without fail for many years. I’m very happy to see the Freeman Brothers, who are responsible for this magazine and Ultima…
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A legend has passed. Return To Forever was my gateway drug to 70s jazz fusion, opening the door to discovering the band bearing the same name, Miles Davis at the peak of his powers (at least for my taste), the majesty of Weather Report, and delving back into Chick Corea’s back catalog. Corea died of a rare form of cancer at the age of 79. May his memory be eternal.