motel de moka

…

L’ora e dispiegata nella neve
come un lenzuolo al vento.
L’ora senza fondamento,
che ha spento il prima e il dopo.
L’ora che ha cancellato ogni cominciamento

Stanno soli nell’ora il cavallo e l’albero.
Stanno da sempre nella neve.

- Antonio Prete, un cavallo nella neve.

Terje Rypdall - if mountains could sing
(If mountains could sing, 1994)
Moonspell - lua d’ inverno
(Wolfheart, 1995)
Balanescu Quartet - mountain call
(Maria t, 2005)
The durutti column - sketch for winter
(The return of the durutti column, 1979)
Japanese Seizure Robots - alone in a crowded room (extended version)
(unreleased)
Century of Airplanes - Zither Mcpheerson
(Travel in any direction, 2006)

Image: Josie Maran.

…
a meld quivers close to you, a lyric steam
of cold-pressed algae and dreaming driftwood.
From your throat, a voice unties, mythic bulbs
and whirlpool fingers, that beat in a wave
from some radio, resonating this scene
to one hundreds of years since, allusive

and having just begun your unseen
elements. Soon, a love song will outweigh
you, and split between your surrounding streams.

- Jessica Schneider , Sister Ophelia.

“The Last of the Romantic. 2 a.m.”

01. Frederic Chopin - Prelude in E minor op.28 no.4
02. Maurice Ravel - Gespart de la nuit (scarbo) (web)
03. J.S. Bach - Concerto No.5 for Piano and Orchestra in A Major
04. Krzysztof Penderecki - Miniatury No.3 (web)
05. Sergei Prokofiev - Sonata for Violin and Piano No.1 F Minor Op.80 (Andante) (web)
06. Alfred Schnittke - Piano Quintet (Moderato Pastolare) (web)
07. Osvaldo Golijov - K’varat
08. Scarlatti - Sonata in B Minor
09. Sergei Prokoviev - Visions Fugitives Op.22

note: An end of the year list with moderns I like, my continuing project trying to figure out the magic of pieces from turn of the century. One thing attracks me the most is how each pieces being interpreted as such with absolute control of timing to create tone and sound texture. Martha Argerich (Gespart de la nuit, Scarlatti’s Sonata) is still my hero in this regard. I also have to admit I still can’t forgo lyrical melodies. They makes music sweet. Prokofiev has some of the sweetest lyrics every laid on paper for Piano work. (Visions Fugitives) It’s a practical 2.m. list, part of traveling series. I hope it works. Cheers.

image credit: “the garden of my dreams… ” by strange_me

Has anybody noticed how traveling becomes tediously numbing lately? The wait, the search, more wait, the unease feeling. Instead of movement and destination, it becomes a slow moving nightmare, a bureaucratic mess of first order. This playlist is for everybody who travels. Instead of stagnation, it convey gentle rythm, promise of exciting places and futurism. It is how I imagined airport waiting lounge should be. I hope I can make traveling slightly more fun while waiting in an airport somewhere. Play it in soft volume for best effect.

Happy holiday.

“We Wish You a Good Trip”

01. DJ Pulse and the Jazz Cartel - Street Player
02. United Future Organization - United Future Airlines
03. Twiss Up Firm - 1999 Dub
04. Air - Universal Traveler
05. Air - Venus
06. Ursula 1000 - Mr. Hrundi’s Holiday (Karminsky mix)
07. Les Baxter - Tropicando

image: Kaddy

I was planning on publishing my list a few weeks ago but I kept having second thoughts and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything (useless as I’ll inevitably miss something) and also because I find making best-of lists as a masturbatory exercise rather than an objective piece of work. But on the other hand, when honest, making this type of lists is a love statement for the records and the artists behind them and the desire to have their music reaching out to other people.

Another thing itching me is that there’s will always be an album you didn’t know existed until the year after its release or one you come back to find it’s amazing after initially writing it off. Case in this list are the white birch’s “come up for air” and lindstrom & prins thomas’ s/t, two albums that were originally released on the last weeks of 2005… I guess that makes my list a bit of a sham, though the white birch record was released originally on Glitterhouse records and got an official US release on Rune Grammofon this April where the cover art and the tracklist was modified - I’ve also seen many sites listing the Lindstrom & prins thomas as a 2006 release so I want to think this one was reissued around February or March. This would partially justify my inclusion of both albums.

Just before I start I want to direct you to the running monster list of best of’s at largehearted boy where you will surely find something that’ll you’ll fancy and also to two of the most interesting lists I’ve read: Artforum’s 2006 picks selected by Matmos and Christina Kubisch the end of year articles at Dusted Magazine and Other music’s 2006 year end recap which covers a lot of music - I haven’t heard around 75% of the records listed in these ones which either means they’re all pretentious blokes or that after all this months, I’ve been reading the wrong people.

Ah yes, before I forget I also published a Top 12 Contemporary music albums 2005-2006 list back on July based on diverse reviews rather than my own personal taste that you might want to read. I still don’t know if some of the other motel member’s will be writing their personal “best of 2006″ lists but I’m pretty positive judging on the music they’ve been putting up that they had far more interesting and pleasing things rounding their ears this year, stay tuned. Now, without further ado, here are some of the best things I heard this year:

12. The knife - silent shout (Rabid)
MP3: One hit
MP3: Forest Families
I will be lying to myself if I excluded this album from the list as on the first months of the year “silent shout” kept haunting my stereo day and night non-stop- The magic wore off on the following months and I stopped listening to it with the same frequency but still “silent shout” contains one of the most ornately strange and addictive music I heard this year. And what’s more important, with this album the knife have found their trademark sound making their music immensily creepier but, ironically, at the same time more beautiful drawing the listener completely into the twisted little world they’ve created.

11. Mahogany - Connectivity! (Darla)
MP3: Domino Ladder beta (Robin Guthrie rework)
MP3: My bed is my castle
There were many records attempting at the shoegaze/dreampop sound this year but none of them were as bright and celestial as “Connectivity!”. If you like dream pop, this album is a must.

10. Fujiya & Miyagi - transparent things (Tirk)
MP3: Cassetesingle
MP3: Transparent things
Unfortunately coming in at a mere 35 minutes, “transparent things” mimics krautrock metronomic rhythms and post-disco guitars for one of the freshest and most welcome debuts of the year albeit a very short one leaving me to expect great things from this Brighton trio in the future.

9. Bill Wells & Maher Shalal Hash Baz - Osaka Bridge (Karaoke Kalk)
MP3: Liquorice tics
Osaka Bridge finds Scotland jazzman, Bill Wells and Japan’s willfully amateur Maher Shalal Hash Baz band crafting a sunny vision of pop music’s past that makes you think at moments you’re listening to some sort of wonderful Beach boys or Belle and Sebastian jazz session. Without doubt the most genuinely joyful record of the year.

8. Pattern is movement/Scott Solter - canonic (Hometapes)
MP3: In Glasstone
MP3: In Tapegrass
Using nothing but analog equipment, Scott Solter takes Pattern is movement’s album “Stowaway” (on which he takes production credits) to create a completely different piece of music which he entitled “Canonic”. Exquisitely packaged as it has become usual with the always caring hometapes label, this is one of the most amazing remix albums I’ve heard in a long time, Scott Solter splits whole chunks of the original work off, distorting, re-ordering, changing tempos, density and adding ghost rhythms with the intention of obfuscating and at the same time giving a whole new different light at the source material. This should be taken as the benchmark on how to do proper remix albums.

7. Nobody & the mystic chords of memory - tree coloured see (Mush)
MP3: Walk in the afterlight
MP3: The seed
Probably one of the most overlooked albums of the year. I’m honestly surprised the blogosphere didn’t embrace “tree coloured see” as one of the most delightful albums of the year as it really takes one listen to realize what a wonderful work this is. “Tree coloured see” finds LA-based psychedelic hip-hop (?) producer, Nobody teaming up with folk-popsters Mystic Chords of Memory to craft a subconcious state of sound somewhere in between the Byrds and Stereolab with a pair of winks to shoegazers. Lovely.

6. Islands - return to the sea (Equator)
MP3: Volcanoes
Rising from the ashes of Unicorns (great band if I may add), Islands crafted one of the most irresistible sun-kissed indie-pop albums of the year while delivering a gently threatening feeling through the destructive and at times ridiculous imagery of their lyrics. Return to the sea is a disturbingly fun tribute to the timeless sound of great pop music that begs for repeated listens.

5. The white birch - come up for air (Rune Grammofon)
MP3: We are not the ones
Soundwise, “come up for air” is one of the most staggering releases I heard this year. Vocally, Ola Fløttum’s baritonic and drowsy voice fits wonderfully the soundscape, the delicate arrangements kept luring me towards the speakers in awe and the lushproduction in charge by Helge Sten (Deathprod) is attentive to detail giving space for every sound to breathe through making the record sound surreal on a very basic, physical level. The combined effect is a powerhouse of melancholy and beauty.

4. Grails - the black tar prophecies Vol’s 1, 2 & 3 (Important)
MP3: Erosion Blues
MP3: Smokey room
A massive and solid record by a mysterious collective from Portland. Grails make instrumental music influenced equally by folk psychedelia, ambient, doom metal and jazzy improvisations but rest assured, their music has something that so many others are lacking and that’s the emotional connection that makes each track a personal experience for the listener.

3. Lindstrom & Prins Thomas - s/t (Eskimo)
MP3: Claudja
MP3: En dag i mai
Squeaky fret work, midtempo rhythms, dreamy guitar lines, sweet mélanges of synth fills and rich layers of overdubs are the main ingredients that took this nordic magicians holding tightly the kosmiche crown to make me throw off my shirt their way. I confess it: I’m biased by my love for this record as the one that opened my eyes to the cosmic/beardo disco scene, a genre that has no doubt passed its “consume by” date, but this is good music, irrespective of trend.

2. Destroyer - Rubies (Merge)
MP3: Painter in your pocket
MP3: Watercolours in the ocean
Mike Powell on his review for Rubies on Stylus stated: “Destroyer is for people who feel let down by the gap between indie rock in theory -challenging, exciting- and in practice -bloated, tiresome-”, if he’s right then I’m compelled to accept I have become a premature greying indie rock fan as I found “Rubies” to be the most pleasant and polished album I heard this year and ultimely a record that makes music for me seem exciting again. The chamber rock arrangements while not technically challenging, are quite poignant, layering melody upon melody and the pop-hooks are pristine enough for Dan Bejar to rant with his usual insight without ever compromising the energy and the beauty of it all. Too irresistable for my mere troubled words.

1. Liars - drum’s not dead (Mute)
MP3: The wrong coat for you Mt. Heart attack
MP3: Drum gets a glimpse
A very unlikely nominee for the best album of the year given its inaccessibility and mixed opinions yet “Drum’s not dead” was the first album I bought this year that I was genuinely excited about and it will be a while again before I find another one with the same propulsive energy, intractable ambition and infectuos enthusiasm as this one. Couched in the concept of two competing elements, Drum and Mt. Heart Attack, the album is a meticulously recorded praise to rhythm constantly pushing forward from a blurring haze of drones and noise-scapes. “Drum’s not dead” is the most intense and violently beautiful rock record you will hear this year.

A couple of months ago I was watching a documentary about a Dutch artist still unknown to me at that time. Ever since seeing this documentary I’ve been fascinated by his work and his life. Bas Jan Ader, born in the Netherlands in 1942, was a performance artist, filmmaker and photographer who lived in Los Angeles for most of his career. His work was obsessed with sadness, searching, loss and falling. For example, one of his more well-known works is a film called “I’m too sad to tell you” (1971) in which he simply cries in front of the camera. This sense of sadness and loss is maybe best portrayed by one of his writings:

“The sea, the land, the artist has with great sadness known they too will be no more.”

In Search of the Miraculous
Bas Jan Ader, 1975

Ader was a romanticist and he fully dedicated his life to his art and his ongoing search for acknowledgement. But practically everything he did, failed in one way or another. He constantly disappointed himself and almost seemed to make fun of that fact all throughout his work, still without ever losing his sincerity. For instance, not only did he appear to re-enact melodrama by simply crying in front of a camera but he also printed stills from that film as postcards for people to mail to others. This fine line between what is real and what is manipulated without losing sincerity is where my fascination with Ader lies. It was not so much his work itself that was significant but more the relationship between his life and his art. He was the subject of his own art and was exploring the boundaries between them.

Although he was part of the Los Angeles art scene from 1963 to 1975, he has left us very little work and extraordinarily enough most of it was actually made in just one weekend. In 1975 Ader started his last work of performance art. He attempted to cross the Atlantic alone in a small sailing-boat. This work was the second part of a planned trilogy called “In Search of the Miraculous”. His plan was to document and exhibition his journey through film, photography and diaries. He never reaches his destination. Three weeks after he left shore, radio contact broke and Ader disappeared without a trace. His body has never been found but his boat was recovered heavily damaged six months later.

What really struck me about Ader was his ongoing search. It was as if he wanted to express a certain feeling or emotion but never quite managed to find the right words or images. No matter how many times he failed or how misunderstood he was, he was always determined to share his own unique vision.

In some way the life and work of Bas Jan Ader moved me the same way as Arthur Russell’s music did. I was startled at first to realize this but soon it seemed like a natural comparison. Arthur Russell, born in 1952 in Oskaloosa, Iowa, was a classically trained cellist and composer with a background in Indian classical music. He performed with artists like Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass but in addition he was a disco artist making upbeat dance and pop music. Throughout his musical career he seemed obsessed with reverb and echo. No matter how diversely his music may appear on first encounter, there is always the distinct shadow of Arthur himself towering over his work. He had the ability to create a unique, musical effect that was completely undetermined by genre or structure.

Arthur Russell
Photo: Tom Lee/Audika Records LLC

Bas Jan Ader and Arthur Russell, both developing their signature trademarks throughout the early 70s, shared their passionate search for new ways of expression. Constantly looking for the most effective way of articulating a certain feeling or emotion through art. Both were unconventional in every way they approached their search and came up with efforts that were ungraspable for others at that time, yet to themselves seemed like the only natural thing to do. Bas Jan Ader felt that he would find what he was looking for on his own at the middle of the Atlantic. Arthur Russell envisioned a 48-hour musical cycle which was to accompany the art of Yuko Nonomura and started recording “Instrumentals”. Unfortunately he never managed to finish this project. Whatever both were trying to express, they would try anything to do so as effectively as possible.

Once said about Arthur Russell and which I think is fitting for both him and Ader:
“His songs were so personal that it seems as though he simply vanished into his music.”

Two of my favourite works of Arthur Russell come from his albums “First Thought Best Thought” (which documents fractured pieces of the above mentioned “Instrumentals”) and “Another Thought”. “Instrumentals 1” is, as one would expect considering his ambitions for this project, a piece that could run into eternity. An elegant and constantly moving piece that recalls the shimmering and transparent glow of a bright, early morning. “A Little Lost” is where Arthur Russell uses his distinctive voice and cello to portray a feeling of sadness yet with a cheerful wink, again recalling some of the work of Bas Jan Ader.

Arthur Russell - Instrumentals Vol. 1
(First Thought Best Thought, 2006)

Arthur Russell - A Little Lost
(Another Thought, 1994)

Sadly, in 1992 Arthur Russell died of AIDS. And although he was getting some reasonable attention throughout his career in different environments, it is only now with several compilations and reissues being released that he is slowly getting the acknowledgement he actually deserves. Yet another thing he seems to have in common with Bas Jan Ader. In 2007 a documentary will be released about the remarkable life of Arthur Russell. There’s a link to the teaser trailer at the bottom of this post.

After all, twenty-five minutes dedicated to both artists:

1. Philip Glass – Violin Concerto: II
2. Loren Connors – Along the Way
3. Geoff Mullen – Untitled 2
4. Hisato Higuchi – Himitsu
5. Arthur Russell – Our Last Night Together
6. Machinefabriek – Blaadjes in Plaats van Sneeuw

Upcoming Arthur Russell Documentary
Teaser trailer

 

 Today, I would like to share with you all a couple of warm and cozy songs, perfect for the winter contemplation of falling orange leaves… like the ones I can see from my window this very instant.

Lars Wiik and the Laughing River - There is Nothing
Melodium - My Xylophone Loves Me
Elliot Smith - Needle in the Hay
Maia Hirasawa - Roseline
Feist - Lonely Lonely
Kelly De Martino - Bumblebees

Bonus Tracks:
Dear Euphoria - Glorious Laughter
Dios - The Uncertainty

PS: Next time, I’ll post something a little bit more up-beat, I promise :P… thing is, I’ve lately been caught in this warm music obsession… you know how I can get with these obsessions… right Squashed? *giggle*

Image: Shelter of Beauty by Andy Kehoe

Well, December has come and with it the strange feeling I always get in the wintertime. I’ve always felt there was something magical about winter, I don’t know… maybe it’s my inner-child that comes afloat, or something, but winter has always had a special place in my heart. Of course, now, Christmas is not what it used to be, now that I know that Santa Claus dosen’t exist and that my eyes are open to all of the family feuds I sometimes wish I could go back in time and live in the bliss of childhood ignorance. But it’s actually not that bad, winter has transformed for me, it’s magical in a whole different way… I believe there is no better musical expression to what I’m feeling right now than soft warm jazz. Come winter, and I feel in love, I feel sensitive and even a bit mellancholic, it all melts in a big and bubbling mess of sensuality and distress. I hope I can convey the same feeling with these songs… so… here they are… I hope you can get wrapped up in the same intoxicating jazzy feel I am in right now. 

Madeleine Peyroux - Blue Alert
Miles Davis - I Thought About You
Hadouk Trio - Suave Corridor
Skip James - Devil Got My Woman (.m4a)
The Drift - Invisible Cities
Muzykoterapia - Love Haunting
Sara Kamin - At Last
Duke Ellington - Black and Tan Fantasy
J Hassell, G Arreguin, J Muho - Amsterdam Blue (Cortege)

Bonus Tracks:
R. Crumb And His Cheap Suit Serenaders - My Girl’s Pussy (.m4a)
The Zombies - Summertime

 Image: The Beautiful Betty Page

.no one understands the way you do.

~*~

secret [black sessions] :: emilie simon

 purple :: crustation

 cat people :: cujo

 see through you :: flunk

 your the oscillator :: bent

turquoise hexagon sun :: boards of canada

art by kukula