Free surprise mixtape from Busta and Tip. Hell yeah.
Oh, and apparently Beyonce just destroyed everyone's 'Best of' lists by releasing a surprise album. It's apparently amazing, but only on iTunes at $15.99.
BT - No, but it is stacked with contributors. Jay-Z, Blue Ivy herself, Drake, Frank Ocean, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Pharrell Williams, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Terius Nash and Hit-Boy, and Chairlift's Caroline Polachek.
It's also apparently a "multimedia" thing. Every song has a video that goes with it (that's ostensibly the reason for the ridiculous iTunes price). But, yes it is primarily about marketing.
Happiness is....spending the afternoon chatting on facebook with one of your favorite artists.
ETA, I'm told there should be a new Pjusk album in March. Yay!
Seeing so many lists suggesting this is pretty much the best release of 2013 in one of the genre-areas I most listen to, I an finally listening on spotify to see if my best-of list is all wrong. These might be words I have to eat later, but half way through, so far I am not getting it. It's OK, but at this point I'd say I still like Dropped Pianos better.
John Zorn - "The Mysteries"
-Follow-up recording of the trio of Bill Frisell, harpist Carol Emanuel, and Kenny Wollesen on vibes and bells. If you liked any of Zorn's Dreamers or Alhambra Love Songs ensembles, this one is for you (and me, too).
Review, if you're interested. I stream an album track.
- "Guitar and Drums is a split cassette from long-time collaborators Alex Durlak and Damian Valles. Each has created a series of experimental compositions using solely samples of the instruments they were best known for playing in their previous bands, as the title implies, guitar and drums respectively. . . . ."
Lucien Dubuis Trio & The Spacetet - "Design Your Future"
-Nifty jazz-rock fusion, with the jazz part being a raucous free jazz and the rock part being, well, kind the same thing. But Dubuis adds a string quartet to his sax trio format, and then things get strangely beautiful amid the furor. Not one of the best albums I've heard in 2013, but one I keep coming back to just because it sounds so different from other stuff I'm listening to.
Released on Unit Records out of Switzerland... a label that I keep finding cool music on these last few years, and who puts out a mildly disparate range of jazz and folk and classical. I guarantee that anybody who buys jazz based on my emu recs has at least one Unit Records release in their library.
The first couple times I saw the album appearing on the new releases list, my eyes kept telling me the album was titled "Design Your Furniture," which, justifiably, I ranked as one of the dumbest album titles of all time. I realized my mistake when I was checking urls against album titles/artist names for my original Jazz Picks column, but still to this day, I automatically begin typing 'furniture' when writing about this album. Amazing how those imprints never seem to fade from the surface of my brain. However, it does give me the opportunity to forgo with a 'cheers' and, instead, sign off with...
The Electrosound version from 2008: Astrowind - Fresh Wind In The Valley Of Dreams
"The albums title track, Wind on the Plain, has been named after Debussys Le Vent de la plaine. This is a tribute to the composer who has been an inspiration for ASTROWIND for a long time."
@GP: Oh, my! Actually, I am not surprised by the Freudian slip. The music conjured images of asceticism and flagellation when I first listened to it. The music isn't painful, but it comes from a distinct perspective of spirituality that I don't necessarily share.
Alan Blackman - "The Coastal Suite"
-Beautiful chamber jazz recording. Not on eMusic unfortunately. Stream a track on my site... http://www.birdistheworm.com/alan-blackman-the-coastal-suite/ ... There's also a decent promo video for the album, showing images of the paintings that Blackman associates with the different sections.
-Spiritual jazz with Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Jazz heavy influence. Spiritual and wild, cadences for dance, melodies like wildfire. Added bonus of Aruan Ortiz on piano.
#77 on mu 2013 list: - (Emusers link) - "Always the inventive sort, clarinetist Ben Goldberg has spent his career deconstructing forms of music, then rebuilding them into something new and visionary. On his 2013 release Unfold Ordinary Mind, Goldberg enlists players Ellery Eskelin and Rob Sudduth on tenor saxes, Ches Smith on drums and Nels Cline on guitar, and unleashes a series of avant-garde takes on something close to Motown groove."
Dave Sumner
#58 on mu 2013 list: - (Emusers link) Daniel Wohl - Corps Exquis - "The British composer Daniel Wohl's music is perennially dissolving before your ears. Whether it's a church organ, a hum of tremolo strings or some softly undulating synth arpeggios, his compositions are working on two levels simultaneously: At one, they are washing forward over you, soothing and enveloping. And on another, more furtive level, they are dissembling themselves on a subatomic level, little bits of organic sounds breaking off and swimming around in.."
Cinematic Orchestra - "The Cinematic Orchestra presents In Motion #1"
-Heavy on both elements listed in their name. A regular part of my early-morning listening routine.
Comments
Olivier Boge - "The World Begins Today"
Review coming soon.
Busta Rhymes & Q-Tip - The Abstract & The Dragon
Free surprise mixtape from Busta and Tip. Hell yeah.
Oh, and apparently Beyonce just destroyed everyone's 'Best of' lists by releasing a surprise album. It's apparently amazing, but only on iTunes at $15.99.
Craig
Bouncing around "best of" lists today.
See RIP thread.
Craig
Craig
Happiness is....spending the afternoon chatting on facebook with one of your favorite artists.
ETA, I'm told there should be a new Pjusk album in March. Yay!
Seeing so many lists suggesting this is pretty much the best release of 2013 in one of the genre-areas I most listen to, I an finally listening on spotify to see if my best-of list is all wrong. These might be words I have to eat later, but half way through, so far I am not getting it. It's OK, but at this point I'd say I still like Dropped Pianos better.
The Ashes of Piemonte - Datura Notes
Nice, but expensive!
John Zorn - "The Mysteries"
-Follow-up recording of the trio of Bill Frisell, harpist Carol Emanuel, and Kenny Wollesen on vibes and bells. If you liked any of Zorn's Dreamers or Alhambra Love Songs ensembles, this one is for you (and me, too).
Review, if you're interested. I stream an album track.
http://www.birdistheworm.com/john-zorn-the-mysteries/
- "Guitar and Drums is a split cassette from long-time collaborators Alex Durlak and Damian Valles. Each has created a series of experimental compositions using solely samples of the instruments they were best known for playing in their previous bands, as the title implies, guitar and drums respectively. . . . ."
NP:
- According to the other board, only available in urope . . .
Lucien Dubuis Trio & The Spacetet - "Design Your Future"
-Nifty jazz-rock fusion, with the jazz part being a raucous free jazz and the rock part being, well, kind the same thing. But Dubuis adds a string quartet to his sax trio format, and then things get strangely beautiful amid the furor. Not one of the best albums I've heard in 2013, but one I keep coming back to just because it sounds so different from other stuff I'm listening to.
Released on Unit Records out of Switzerland... a label that I keep finding cool music on these last few years, and who puts out a mildly disparate range of jazz and folk and classical. I guarantee that anybody who buys jazz based on my emu recs has at least one Unit Records release in their library.
There's a track streaming on my site...
http://www.birdistheworm.com/lucien-dubuis-trio-the-spacetet-design-your-future/
The first couple times I saw the album appearing on the new releases list, my eyes kept telling me the album was titled "Design Your Furniture," which, justifiably, I ranked as one of the dumbest album titles of all time. I realized my mistake when I was checking urls against album titles/artist names for my original Jazz Picks column, but still to this day, I automatically begin typing 'furniture' when writing about this album. Amazing how those imprints never seem to fade from the surface of my brain. However, it does give me the opportunity to forgo with a 'cheers' and, instead, sign off with...
/furniture
- Oh boy !
http://soundcloud.com/astrowind
Astrowind - Fresh Wind In The Valley Of Dreams
Alan Blackman - "The Coastal Suite"
-Beautiful chamber jazz recording. Not on eMusic unfortunately. Stream a track on my site... http://www.birdistheworm.com/alan-blackman-the-coastal-suite/ ... There's also a decent promo video for the album, showing images of the paintings that Blackman associates with the different sections.
Craig
Francisco Mora Catlett - "AfroHORN: Rare Metals"
-Spiritual jazz with Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Jazz heavy influence. Spiritual and wild, cadences for dance, melodies like wildfire. Added bonus of Aruan Ortiz on piano.
Review, plus embedded track...
http://www.birdistheworm.com/francisco-mora-catlett-afrohorn-rare-metal/
And if you want to skip the words and just go straight to the music, more to listen to on Soundcloud...
https://soundcloud.com/francisco-mora-catlett/sets/afrohorn
on a random music kick
- "Always the inventive sort, clarinetist Ben Goldberg has spent his career deconstructing forms of music, then rebuilding them into something new and visionary. On his 2013 release Unfold Ordinary Mind, Goldberg enlists players Ellery Eskelin and Rob Sudduth on tenor saxes, Ches Smith on drums and Nels Cline on guitar, and unleashes a series of avant-garde takes on something close to Motown groove."
Dave Sumner
Daniel Wohl - Corps Exquis
- "The British composer Daniel Wohl's music is perennially dissolving before your ears. Whether it's a church organ, a hum of tremolo strings or some softly undulating synth arpeggios, his compositions are working on two levels simultaneously: At one, they are washing forward over you, soothing and enveloping. And on another, more furtive level, they are dissembling themselves on a subatomic level, little bits of organic sounds breaking off and swimming around in.."
Cinematic Orchestra - "The Cinematic Orchestra presents In Motion #1"
-Heavy on both elements listed in their name. A regular part of my early-morning listening routine.
Listen on Soundcloud...
https://soundcloud.com/experimedia/the-cinematic-orchestra-in