Bryan & The Aardvarks - "Heroes of Make Believe"
-Working on a very old review draft, might as well start over. Upside, falling in love with a favorite album all over again.
Appropriately I think, all the talk about best albums of the year leads me to recall "best" albums of previous years. This was the album I bought for the guitar-playing nephew mentioned in a previous thread.
It seems that every dealer is conspiring to make us buy a new car.
@BT, before any major purchase, I recommend re-watching the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. Reminds me of the total power one wields over salesmen.
@Doofy, I would, but there's almost no time left. We're giving Hyundai one more chance before getting a Mazda (the choice between an old person's car and a middle-aged person's car).
Shopping for cars ranks somewhere below colonoscopy on my favorite activities list.
Late Christmas present arrived in the mail:
For this version Jarre dug out all the old analog instruments and re-recorded the whole work using current recording technology (the original was recorded with a low budget in a home studio on 8-track tape, and then went on to sell a mere 12 million copies). The content is near-indistinguishable from the original, but it does sound sharp. There's a 'live-in-the-studio' DVD too that looks really interesting.
It led me to this article, which I found very interesting. I was particularly struck by this comment from Jarre:
With sequencers you are working with patterns and blocks, so it was very interesting revisiting songs and realising that the process of not working with patterns is a totally different journey a totally different trip, really. I remembered that when I started to do electronic music I was obsessed I more or less forgot that obsession along the way about not having anything being repeated in exactly the same way. For me it was exactly the opposite attitude to that of Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and all those electronic bands who were doing something more robotic. I considered electronic music in a much more sensual, organic way, where nothing should be repeated.
So, on Oxygene nothing is repeated the same way. Each sound, even if appears to be the same, has a slightly different attack and release, and, as the sequences are being made by hand, by definition they are not exactly the same. Even the sounds of the drum machines were filtered in a very subtle way to give life inside the patterns.
.
I suspect that this particular feature (alongside of his compositional skills and melodic sensibility of course) is one significant part of what set the first couple of Jarre albums apart from an ocean of other electronic music, making them sound more like just music.
@thom, it's awesome. And I respond particularly strongly to this album. Bought it when I was 16 and had never heard anything quite like it. To this day it creates a magical world that I can lose myself in entirely.
It would interest me as well. I used to play synths in the eighties as they switched to digital.
Sitting in the dealership I am reminded of how oddly I approach language. I keep forgetting that affluence has a different meaning in English than French.
@BT, I think of that less as odd and more as normal multilingual experience. I very often find myself distracted in conversation by hearing etymologies or cognates that are no part of the speaker's intended meaning.
The article I linked is a very interesting read on the challenges of doing Oxygene live.
This video on youtube is one of the extras on the Jarre DVD, where he explains a little about each of his instruments. Unfortunately he fails to talk about the only one used in the performance that I had never seen before - a two foot long stick with a square cross-section and contact strips played by finger contact.
Now tearing myself away after a couple of hours of cosmic bliss, moving on to following BT's Steven Uccello trail - liking the one you posted and checking out some others he contributed to or recommended; this one is really nice so far:
Just a reminder, last day for this Christmas present: - "As a Christmas gift to our quiz participants and all other fans of Danish music, we have collected this year's 24 quiz calendar tracks which can be downloaded for free until 31st December. In total, this is more than 2 hours of music from Dacapo's most recent releases - chamber music, opera, choral works and much more.Take a listening tour through widely different sides of Danish music, or enjoy one piece at a time - and find the original album on our website if you are curious to hear more!"
You should follow Steve Lawson on Twitter. He's an insightful guy. Funny, too. Talks a lot about strategies for musicians to utilize modern tools to work for them. Big on the whole NYOP Bandcamp thing.
I believe he sells thumb drives of all (or most of) his music for pretty cheap.
One of Steve Uccelo's frequent collaborators. Shows the limits of bass playing, but I suspect that this would appeal more to instrumentalists than a general music audience.
@jonah, yes, I noticed the thumb drive - 24 albums for around $40. I'll do some more listening before contemplating $40, even if the quantity is high. I'll look for the twitter feed.
- "The 4th installment in our annual benefit compilation!
19 new, original holiday songs!
This year, all proceeds go to purchase mattresses for Amethyst House, an addiction recovery center in Bloomington, Indiana."
- Flannelgraph Records.
ETA: Q2 streaming: Stars of the Lid with the Wordless Music Orchestra - "On Tuesday, Dec. 17, Texas-founded, experimental ambient duo Stars of the Lid joined New York City's boundary-crossing Wordless Music Orchestra for a collaborative concert of intricate, drone-heavy minimalism. The concert took place at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and was recorded by Q2 Music"
Comments
Oskar Schonning - "The Violin"
-Featuring the bass clarinet of Nils Berg
Bryan & The Aardvarks - "Heroes of Make Believe"
-Working on a very old review draft, might as well start over. Upside, falling in love with a favorite album all over again.
Listen on bandcamp...
http://bryanandtheaardvarks.bandcamp.com/
Flying Saucer Attacks - Further
Via the Domino Drip. Always fun to discover a band from the mid 90s of which I was unaware.
Craig
Nice (should I call it) meditational jazz. NYOP
Appropriately I think, all the talk about best albums of the year leads me to recall "best" albums of previous years. This was the album I bought for the guitar-playing nephew mentioned in a previous thread.
@BT, before any major purchase, I recommend re-watching the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. Reminds me of the total power one wields over salesmen.
RIP.
Craig
- Mindblowing experimental/avantgarde stuff !
Late Christmas present arrived in the mail:
For this version Jarre dug out all the old analog instruments and re-recorded the whole work using current recording technology (the original was recorded with a low budget in a home studio on 8-track tape, and then went on to sell a mere 12 million copies). The content is near-indistinguishable from the original, but it does sound sharp. There's a 'live-in-the-studio' DVD too that looks really interesting.
It led me to this article, which I found very interesting. I was particularly struck by this comment from Jarre: .
I suspect that this particular feature (alongside of his compositional skills and melodic sensibility of course) is one significant part of what set the first couple of Jarre albums apart from an ocean of other electronic music, making them sound more like just music.
RIP. Oddly enough several of their songs kept creeping up on shuffle and I was planning on revisiting their albums today...
Sitting in the dealership I am reminded of how oddly I approach language. I keep forgetting that affluence has a different meaning in English than French.
The article I linked is a very interesting read on the challenges of doing Oxygene live.
- Not even close, but quite good.
ETA: correction, it's excellent !
Now tearing myself away after a couple of hours of cosmic bliss, moving on to following BT's Steven Uccello trail - liking the one you posted and checking out some others he contributed to or recommended; this one is really nice so far:
- "As a Christmas gift to our quiz participants and all other fans of Danish music, we have collected this year's 24 quiz calendar tracks which can be downloaded for free until 31st December. In total, this is more than 2 hours of music from Dacapo's most recent releases - chamber music, opera, choral works and much more.Take a listening tour through widely different sides of Danish music, or enjoy one piece at a time - and find the original album on our website if you are curious to hear more!"
You should follow Steve Lawson on Twitter. He's an insightful guy. Funny, too. Talks a lot about strategies for musicians to utilize modern tools to work for them. Big on the whole NYOP Bandcamp thing.
I believe he sells thumb drives of all (or most of) his music for pretty cheap.
One of Steve Uccelo's frequent collaborators. Shows the limits of bass playing, but I suspect that this would appeal more to instrumentalists than a general music audience.
NYOP jazz trios.
ETA: Q2 streaming:
Stars of the Lid with the Wordless Music Orchestra
- "On Tuesday, Dec. 17, Texas-founded, experimental ambient duo Stars of the Lid joined New York City's boundary-crossing Wordless Music Orchestra for a collaborative concert of intricate, drone-heavy minimalism. The concert took place at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and was recorded by Q2 Music"
ETA 2:
ETA: 3
Gorgeous ! - (the music, ofcourse . . .)
We have a new website! Grab a free a compilation now!
ETA: