motel de moka

Yesterday morning enormous the moon hung low on the ocean,
Round and yellow-rose in the glow of dawn;
The night-herons flapping home wore dawn on their wings. Today
Black is the ocean, black and sulphur the sky,
And white seas leap. I honestly do not know which day is more
beautiful.
-Robinson Jeffers, Their Beauty Has More Meaning (via JSchneider)

“Gambari Pour Madame Sankare”

Ali Farka Toure - Gambari Pour Madame Sankare
(Savane , 2006)

Venetian Snares - This Bitter Earth
(Moonglow / This Bitter Earth 7″, 2004)

The Innocence Mission - Love That Boy
(We Walked In Song, 2007)

Sunn 0))) & Boris - NLT
(Altar, 2006)

Wilco - Jesus, Etc.
(Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, 2002)

The Velvet Underground - Some Kinda Love
(The Velvet Underground, 1969)

The Skatalites - Dragon Weapon
(Guns of Navarone, The Best of, 2003)

Note: Late winter list. It’s slightly more melancholic and quieter than I would have want it, but I am trying this new IDM/folks/rock combo. It is almost impossible to get IDM to jibe together softly before, so this is my first try. In the list: Ali Farka Toure, excellent album, and The Innocence Missons new album, worth checking out. Both are delicate. The rest are classic.

image: mel-pin.

As always I’m rather slow to pick up on new releases in the first few months of the new year. Usually it takes me about 3 months to recover from my regular December shopping extravaganza and the accompanying year-end-list routines. This year seems to be no exception. The last two months I’ve been listening mostly to all those sweet releases that came popping up at the end of 2006. There are however a couple of clear favorites amongst the 2007 releases that I did hear so far. But first let me post something about my favorite 2006 release that came just to late to find a place in my 2006 top 25, Green Blues by MV & EE with the Bummer Road.

MV & EE with the Bummer Road
Their “Green Blues” album on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label was somewhat awkwardly distributed which made it quite impossible to be enlisted on many end-of-year lists. It is however a stunning release and quite possibly the best MV & EE work yet.

MV & EE with the Bummer Road - East Mountain Joint

Now this song is nowhere near representative for the rest of the album I must admit, but its sheer folky, funkiness is quite possibly the most addicting tune I’ve come across in a while. The rest of the album is much druggier, just what you would expect from Matt Valentine, only better. And who else could come up with lyrics like “I inhaled a vortex last night”….?

MV & EE with the Bummer Road - Big Deal

This song is pretty much what the record is about for me. Incredibly freehearted psychedelic folk with soaring guitars. You do not need drugs to get high with this music.

Richard Youngs & Tirath Singh Nirmala
Now on to 2007! And staying with the folkier stuff, this is a great collab on the Canadian HP Cycle label. Somewhat in tune with one of my last year’s favorites, from Youngs, Neilson and Galbraith. Only this one is much folkier. Aquarius Records aptly describes their music as “perfectly blissful and bucolic primal forest ambience”.

Richard Youngs & Tirath Singh Nirmala - Untitled #5

This song is simply perfection. For me it could go on endlessly, trapped in the swirling stream of meditative melodies, the hypnotic clapping and Richard Youngs’ distinctive voice. This is wonderful stuff; let’s hope 2007 will bring more like this.

Aaron Martin & Machinefabriek
Two of my last year’s favorite artists decided to start 2007 off with a spectacular collaboration entitled “Cello Recycling”. This project was initiated to create a piece that will be playing non-stop for two months at a gallery in the Netherlands called Lokaal 01. The music comes soaring over our heads and floats through the room with an ominous and threatening presence. Aaron Martin laid down some cello recordings which Rutger Zuydervelt (a.k.a. Machinefabriek) used and transformed into a completely new composition, hence the title. It might just be my favorite Machinefabriek work till date.

Aaron Martin & Machinefabriek - Cello Recycling

And if you aren’t yet familiar with Aaron Martin’s solo work you should definitely check out his debut album on the Australian label Preservation released last year. Also one of those records that reached me too late to be incorporated in my year-end-list, but definitely amongst my favorites right now.

Aaron Martin - Karl Rove
Aaron Martin - The Ducks Are Just Sleeping

Slightly recalling the work of The Books, Aaron Martin manages to make incredibly personal and reflective music that still comes off as being playful and humorous. He builds his music through layered loops and thereby creates a collage of many instruments and samples. His songs have a very melancholic feel that gracefully swirl into dreamy and wistful imagery. Also check out the other tunes on his myspace page.

Die Schachtel - Zeit series
Not an artist but instead an Italian label that instantly blew me off my feet and started off 2007 with two remarkable additions to their Zeit series (the first one was released in 2006). Die Schachtel is a great electronics label which focuses on electronic avant-garde music and the sound-art scene, of the period 1960-1980, but with the Zeit series they focus on more contemporary Italian electro-acoustic music. All three editions so far of the series so far were mastered by non other than Giuseppe Ielasi.

Zeit 1: A – Track 3
Zeit 2: Angelo Petronella – Tratto 2
Zeit 3: Christa Pfangen – I’m Leaving

Great design on all three releases that perfectly blends in with the music. These are all very rich yet subtle and refreshing releases, each focusing on different elements. The drumming especially on the Christa Pfangen album and the use of field recordings by Angelo Petronella are outstanding. Great series already with hopefully much more releases to come in the rest of 2007.

Richmond Fontaine
Something totally different from the music already listed above, Richmond Fontaine are “the filet of the neighborhood“ when it comes to contemporary alt-country. Again with this new album “Thirteen Cities” they’ve impressed me with a strong and varied collection of songs that manages to take their trademark sound to a new place.

Richmond Fontaine - $87 And A guilty Conscience That Gets Worse The Longer I Go
Richmond Fontaine - Capsized

Ken Booth - artibella
The velvet shadows - dubbin an wailin
Bob Marley & the Wailers - kaya
Scientist - quasar
African Roots - mystic dub (via)
Burning spear - red, gold & green
Val Bennett - the russians are coming (take five) (via)
The heptones - cool rasta

Todos en Europa. En Montpellier o en Barcelona. Nos engañaron con la primavera. Calladitos. Esperando a que el sol cambie su color.

Photograph: Marcos Lopez.
See Also: Melchior Fiyah Sound System.

Apparently you all liked my last balkanish/jazzy/swingy/big bandish post, so I’ve decided to spread some more of the joy now that I’ve got the time, how ’bout it?I just love jazz… and Big Band… and Swing.. and Balkan music… there’s just something SO special in those rockin’ tunes that just makes me wanna stand up and imagine I can dance!… I wish I could dance to swing music, you know? like a pro, with all the swirlin’ and twirlin’ and jumpin’ and jivin’…

Well.. I hope this post can get you all dancing once again.

<*)))><

Jazzy/Big Bandish:

+ Milt Buckner - The Beast
+Les Gam’s - Attention! Accident
+Louis Prima - Closer to the bone (Flaca esta va para ti!)
+Peggy Lee - I’m a Woman (.m4a)
+The Rat Pack - Guys and dolls
+Duke Ellington Orchestra & Count Basie Orchestra - Jumpin’ At The Woodside (Alternative Take)

Balkanish/Turkish Rockish:

+Shantel - Sadagora Hot Dub
+Shantel - Dunarea
+Duman - Hayati Yasa (.m4a)
+Goran Bregovic & Giorgos Ntalaras- Sou Axize Mia Agkalia
+2/5bz - Karabesk

Your earlier records had a lot of tension …
Makino: Angry. And now it’s sad. [Laughs]
Amedeo: It’s when the anger doesn’t come out, there’s sadness.
Makino: Tension builds up too much, and you think you’re sad, but you’re actually really angry. I was told that once.
Amedeo: It’s a hard question to answer, because we can never think of writing a happy song or writing a poppy song. We attempt to.
Makino: We can’t afford to censor anything that comes out. Anything that comes out, we hang onto it.
Amedeo: We’ve tried to say, “Let’s write a song in a major key,” and we’ve managed a couple of things but it doesn’t really happen.
Makino: Things started to look very different to me. I started to look at a butterfly and saw it as something miserable. I felt the burden of being a butterfly. - Blonde Redhead, Magnet Magazine interview.

What do you make of the revival of instrumental music? It hasn’t been since the Sixties that instrumental music was so popular.

“There is certainly a changing climate, but, honestly, the main reason for us was that none of us was interested in singing. I can see that people have been bombarded with vocal rock music over the last decades and that, at least some of them, are craving for something different. The rock idol is still the dominant image, but there exists an audience which is looking for something different. People who are interested in us for the most part are either people who are interested in underground bands (and there really is a lot of underground rock music where people are trying to do things that are experimental in so many different forms) or people who are interested in jazz music and hip hop and whatever, where a lot of new ideas are emerging. Of course, we don’t fit in the stereotypes of the typical mainstream rock and roll audience.” - Tortoise, interview with Scaruffi for TNT release.

“Blonde Redhead - 23”

01. Blonde Redhead - Missile
(In An Expression of the Inexpressible, 1998)
02. Tortoise - TNT
(TNT, 1998)
03. Blonde Redhead - 23
(23, 2007)
04. Chris Brokaw - King Ferdinand Tournament
(Red Cities, 2002)
05. Blonde Redhead - Futurism 2
(Live, Louisville, KY 07.21.99)
06. Pere Ubu - Ubu Dance Party
(Dub Housing, 1978)
07. Chiyoko Yoshida - monsters
(Cinematic, 2001)
08. Lustmord - Dream of the Dead Name
(Paradise Disowned, 1984)

note: A night post-rock list with Blonde Redhead. They are about to release new album 23. I like their previous Misery is butterfly album, with strange mix of IDM and art rock. With 23, Blonde Redhead is returning to their earlier style but with much bigger sound and less angular and the ever present element of Sonic Youth echos deep inside their music. Overall it’s an interesting album worth checking.

see also: Blonde Redhead, Tortoise. Post-rock. Also, if you like this type of texture see sxsw 2007 (a.New Gen.)

Image: BR, evinsky

I’ve been wanting to post for the last couple of days, but I just haven’t been able to find the time, things have been hectic as usual, and I’ve been a teensy bit absent unfortunately.

These last days I’ve been obsessively and compulsively been listening to balkan, big band and swing music non-stop, I really do mean non-stop!
A couple of weeks ago I received a DVD that my good friend Funda sent to me with 2.3Gb in music, pure balkan and swing music, for that I decide to dedicate this post to you Funda *kissy kissy*!

So im tired… I went to bed at 6am to wake up at 7.30am… I ended up waking up at 8.15am…which made my way to Uni total chaos… I woke up in a jolt, threw on whatever was on my bathroom floor, RAN to my car, broke about 2 dozen traffic laws, parked my car in a not so orthodox way if you know what I mean, RAN all across campus and arrived just in time for my 8.30am class… I mean, how cool is that? *giggle*

So I hope this post tickles your fancy!

Jazzy, Big Bandish and Swingy:

+ Dean Martin - Ain’t That A Kick In The Head
+ Claude Bolling & Stephane Grappelli - Crazy Rythm
+ Sam Butera - The Boulevard Of Broken Dreams Fever
+ Louis Prima - Just A Gigolo, I Ain’t Got Nobody
+ Gitte Hænning - Jeg Snakker Med Mig Selv
Balkanish and Turkish Rock:

+ Shantel - Borino Oro
+ Duman - Rüyanda görsen inanma
+ Candan Erçetín - Bir Dalda Iki Kiraz / Sallasana Sallasana
+ Goran Bregovic & Giorgos Ntalaras - Pou Na Sai Twra, Anna
+ Istanbul Calling - Baba Cay

Image: Gianluca Petrella by redart

PRELUDE: Little Mole Krtek: Ahoj!

art: Roy de Forest

1. Thai Elephant Orchestra - Somneuk & Four Elephants
2. The High Llamas - The Goat Looks On
3. Kaada - Birds Of Prey
4. Martes martes - Mertens At Night
5. Brian Eno & Robert Wyatt - Flies
6. Volcano The Bear - Lily And The Sparrows
7. Pied de Poule - Boum!
8. Andrew Chalk - Old Hive
9. Stephen Vitiello - 9 Out Of 10

note: Thai Elephant Orchestra, the members of the band are of course elephants…