motel de moka

I have vocal tunes but I don’t really feel ready yet to do them fully,” he says with typical modesty and diffidence. “I did one ’pon the album ‘Earth Rightful Ruler’ but I’m not really ready to go into vocal — I want to catch certain practices and vibes first. - Augustus Pablo

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” ‘08 Summer Texture exercise No.1 ”

01. Augustus Pablo - Cassava Piece
Original Rockers (Greensleeves, 1979)
02. Luiz Bonfá - Manha De Carnaval (Morning Of Carnaval)
Orfeu Negro (1959)
03. The Ramsey Lewis Trio - Song For My Father
The ‘In’ Crowd [Live] (The Entertainers, ?)
04. Gilberto gil - Procissao
Tropicália Essentials (Hip-O Records, 1999)
05. Andy Palacio & the Garifuna Collective - Weyu Lárigi Weyu (Day by Day)
Wátina (Cumbancha, 2007)
06. Lotek Hi-Fi - Ram Dancehall Featuring Earl J
Mixed Blessings (Big Dada Records, 2005)

note: Various mix of dub and Brazilian rhythm, mainly about downtempo and beatmatch exercise. Something lite, with hip-hop and weekend in mind. It comes with limited dynamic but happy toe tapping tempo. An odd blues mix but fun. Enjoy. I’ll do electronic next.

see also : The Rise and Demise of the Oil epoch, As American As It Gets
image: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], [1 - 4]

Photo: haimtov

LE BEAU: The eldest of the three brothers wrestled with Charles, the duke’s wrestler. Immediately, Charles threw the brother, breaking three of his ribs; it’s not likely he will survive. Chares did the same to the second brother, and the third. They’re lying over there, and the poor old man, their father, weeps so piteously over them that the whole audience has joined him in grieving.
ROSALIND: Oh, dear!
TOUCHSTONE: But tell me, monsieur-what sport are the ladies missing?
LE BEAU: Why, the one I just told you about.
TOUCHSTONE: Men must be getting wiser every day; that’s the first time I’ve heard that rib-breaking was appropriate entertainment for ladies.
CELIA: Me too, I swear.
ROSALIND: Doesn’t anyone else want to see this, and hear breath wheezing out from broken ribs? Does anyone else love rib breaking? Shall we go watch this wrestling, cousin?

William Shakespeare - As You Like It

01. Ane Brun - To Let Myself Go
A Temporary Dive (V2 North America / 2006)
02. Ani Di Franco - Swim
Educated Guess (Righteous Babe / 2004)
03. Damien Rice - Cannonball
O (Vector Recordings / 2003)
04. Emiliana Torrini - Sunny Road
Fisherman’s Woman (Rough Trade Us / 2006)
05. Emiliana Torrini - Sunny Road Manasseh Mix
Luftkastellet, Vol. 3 (Music for Dreams / 2006)

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Photo: Elpidro

The Traitè introduced the famous explanatory fiction of the sentient statue was later highly vulnerable to the physiologists, but it well served Condillac as a paradigm to demonstrate how an individual organism might acquire faculties. The statue itself represents man’s perfect organic structure; were it depicted, it would doubtless appear with the regular and harmonious proportions and the generalized physiognomy characteristic of neoclassical beauty. It signified in Condillac’s exposition the universal organic substratum and sensorium, which was the endowment of all men and which provided the foundation and seat of all mental powers. As the exposition opens, the senses of the statue are described as “asleep”, and hence the “soul” which later animates the statue is conceived as totally lacking in “ideas”. It has by definition never been penetrated by any sense impression. In its course the text proceeds to awaken and unlock the sleeping senses one by one, beginning with smell as the sense which contributes least to human knowledge. Progressively step by step tries to demonstrate how from simple sense experiences alone (like the smell of a rose), the soul in the statue would acquire its full complement of desire and passions, and the faculties of memory, association, judgement, etc.

Michael Donnelly - Managing the Mind

01. Wynton Marsalis - Canon In D
(Portrait of Wynton Marsalis)

02. Bach - Aria De La Suite N°3
(Classical chillout lounge / 2006)

03. Ennio Morricone - Piano Piano
(The legend of 1900 / 1999)

04. Michael Nyman - The Heart Asks Pleasure First
(The piano / 2004)

05. Jethro Tull - Bourée
(A little light music / 2006)

06. Giovanni Allevi - Come Sei Veramente
(No concept / 2005)

07. Yann Tiersen - Le Matin
(Amelie / 2001)

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Image: Untitled by Teun Hocks. Prints available here.

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“I tried to make an image about desire and about the strange feeling that something is missing, although everything seems so peaceful and romantic.”

~ Teun Hocks ~

It is probably no secret by now that I am often attracted to art – whether it’s music, film, photography or any other form of art – that in some way tries to express the feeling that Hocks describes in the quote above. Artists who are looking for that strange ambiguous sentiment that both our memories and expectations can often give us. Maybe a certain longing for something we don’t know or fully understand yet. In this particular image Dutch photographer, painter and performer Teun Hocks subtly creates this feeling with a combination of surrealistic colours and a carefully composed scenery showing a man sitting with his loyal dog and staring into the distance while playing on what appears to be a flute. To create these images Hocks sketches often absurd one-man stories and uses those as a blueprint to further complete the image by photographing himself against a painted backdrop and painting in oil on top of the resulting print. With this technique he creates a world completely his own, with the distinctive aesthetics and absurdist humour of his painted photographs also often reminding me of Swedish film director Roy Andersson.

What I particularly like about this image is that unlike most of his other work its surrealistic nature doesn’t alienate us but instead creates a peaceful and familiar scenery. An environment that despite of its surrealistic colours and strange formation of clouds instantly feels comfortable and trusted. I’ve tried to translate this sentiment and the feeling that Teun Hocks describes in the quote above into the playlist. Although not featured in this playlist I have taken its title from Vikki Jackman’s breathtaking debut album on Faraway Press as it fits so well with the theme of this image. The playlist is based on a selection of mostly strings and piano oriented tracks. Most notably the centrepiece of the list provided here by Hungarian composer Mihály Víg - a long-time collaborator of filmmaker Béla Tarr – creates the mood that I was looking for. The rest of the list further explores that theme with Sala-Arhimo’s saxophone adding some variation and a surrealistic touch and our daydream abruptly ending with Morita Doji’s enticingly lush composition.

1. Okkyung Lee - Sky
   Nihm (Tzadik, 2005)
2. The Valerie Project - Tree of Life
   The Valerie Project (Drag City, 2007)
3. Mihály Víg - Werckmeister Harmóniák - Öreg
   Filmzenék Tarr Béla Filmjeihez (Bahia, 2001)
4. Norma Winstone - Distance
   Distances (ECM, 2008)
5. Eluvium - After Nature
   Copia (Temporary Residence, 2007)
6. Sala-Arhimo - Ilmestys
   Pelko Pois (Time-Lag, 2006)
7. Cloaks - Improvisation for Guitar and Piano
   Serene (Students of Decay, 2008)
8. Bleeding Heart Narrative - As If Yearning Was All and More Than Enough
   All That Was Missing We Never Had in the World (Tartaruga, 2008)
9. Morita Doji - You are Trembling
   A Boy (Polydor, 1977)

Stream playlist
Download playlist

Previously featured in this series:
- Is There a Way Out to Paradise?

“It’s what you all been waitin’ for ain’t it? They can’t stand it, they want something new. So let’s get re-acquainted.”

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Mid-Air Tape Loop Dance Party
(Tape Loop EP/ 2008)
Prefuse 73 Pagina Dos
(Prefuse 73 Reads the Books E.P./ 2005)
Mid-Air Complex Admittance
(Mid-Air/ 2007)
RJD2 Chicken-Bone Circuit
(Dead Ringer/ 2002)
Mid-Air Mirror Mirror
(Mid-Air/ 2007)
Daedelus Pursed Lips Reply
(Invention/ 2002)
Mid-Air A Thousand Atomic Fireballs
(Unreleased)

Note(s): So there’s been some feigning for new, fresh tracks. Jungle is a tough MdM beat to make work, but with enough tenacity the rewards outweigh the struggle. Mid-Air takes jungle back to the roots and doesn’t let the “electronic” aspect of the genre overshadow the organic foundational focus of the sub-genre. Chris Harbach’s contribution to the greater jungle is a product that finds its roots in an urban experimental sound, works its way up through a solid trunk of jazz/hip-hop/funk, and branches off touching upon ambient, acid, trip-hop, and “electronica”, the fruits of which are best savored chilled and — even in the midst of the gritty and grainy samples — fresh. Essentially, as one put it, Mid-Air is “Too fast, too slow, too noisy, too melodic, too old skool, and way too ahead of his time,” (in all the right ways); that, as always, is for you to decide. So, intertwined with the linchpin artist’s works are a few third-party complementary sounds to guide you through the sonic landscape. Enjoi.

Photo Credit: Eugenio Recuenco
Mid-Air: MySpace, Official Site

The sinners stand as though enchanted, their faces lifted. A path has opened in the darkness, a promise has been made, evidence has been presented: all will be saved, no explanations necessary—the magical dark-blue abyss, raised above us by nameless artists, speaks for itself, sings in a wordless language. The blue flows down toward the garlands of fruit and leaves.… Everything disappears, but again and again the lights flash on, the fête is endless, and any minute now the angels will begin to sing. Let there be light! - Tatyana Tolstaya, See the Other Side

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” Three Summer list. No.1. Melodrama ”

01. Antonio Vivaldi - Il Bajazet (Il Tamerlano) / Act 2 - Anch’il mar par che sommerga
Cecilia Bartoli - The Vivaldi Album / Il Giardino Armonico (1999)
02. The Mekons - Dickie Chalkie And Nobby
Natural (Quarter Stick, 2007)
03. Uzeda - Steam, Rain & Other Stuff
Stella (Touch and Go, 2007)
04. Blonde Redhead - Harmony
La Mia Vita Violenta (Smells Like Records, 1995)
05. J.S. Bach - BWV 803 Duetto
Vol. 6 (CD16) Organ Works XVI ()
06. Cheval de Frise - deux nappes ductiles
Cheval de Frise (Frenetic Records, 2003)
07. Antonio Vivaldi - L’Orlando Finto Pazzo / Act 3 - Qual favellar?…Anderò, volerò, griderò
Cecilia Bartoli - The Vivaldi Album / Il Giardino Armonico (1999)

note: Late spring early summer mood. This actually is an old list consisting mainly baroque pieces that I tweak and make it to more head bopping beat. (So it’s really a modern pop rhythm constructed using various styles.) I like the odd mood the list gives, sort of ultra cosmopolitan texture of an old city, say Rome. Maybe I’ll go tired of mixing post-rock with baroque soon. but right now they are infinitely amusing to me. I like the tension. So this is the first list in summer head bopping, euro oriented sound. enjoy.

And everybody. Please welcome two new MdM posters: Jungle (he is from Italy) and stclown (he is from UK)

image: La Primavera, “Allegory of Spring”, Sandro Botticelli. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Images: Ana Ventura.

My thumb is embarking on a great adventure. ‘Don’t go, please,’ say the fingers. They try to hold him down. Here comes a black limousine with a velied woman in the back seat, but noone at the wheel. When it stops, she takes a pair of gold scissors out of her purse and snips the thumb off. We are off to Chicago with her using the bloody stump of my thumb to paint her lips.

- Charles Simic, excerpt from ‘The world doesn’t end’.

Giacinto Scelsi - Ave Maria
(Natura Renovatur / 2006)
Carlos Paredes - Cancão Verdes Anos
(Guitarra Portuguesa / 1989)
Tape - Moth wings
(Luminarium / 2008)
Stella Chiweshe - Kasahwa
(Ambuya? / 1975)
Larkin Grimm - the last tree
(The last tree / 2006)
Arvo Part - Berliner Messe - Agnus Dei
(Te Deum / 1993)
Paavoharju - Tuoksu Tarttu Meihin
(Laulu Laakson Kukista / 2008)
A Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra - Built then Burn
(Born into trouble as the sparks fly upward / 2001)

note: Fuck your zen garden. Get your feet in the water. Get your feet in the mud. Let’s crash all our planes in the river. Let’s build strange and radiant machines at this jericho waiting to fall.

See also: My blood is clean Pt. 1 & Pt. 2.