The summer's finally here with longer and warmer days. The holidays are round the corner and please keep your music with you at all times and try to catch the live shows, concerts and festivals around the world during this lively season. I will not be around for 2 weeks so do check out my earlier posts if you miss me... Don't forget that music is one of the best ways to keep our spirits up!
As Lao Tzu once said;
“Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.”
And now here is our list for this weekend...
Marialy Pacheco - "El Manisero"
Isaac Gracie - "The Death of You & I"
Scott Walker - "Jackie"
Aux Animaux - "Phonophobia"
Omer Klein Trio - "Radio Mediteran"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
I get that stupid "What's your favorite song?" and "What's your favorite band?" questions all the time...I always reply back with different names at different times depending on who is asking or what mood I am in or what memories I want to recall by that very answer...I believe the last is the key to one's favorite anything be it music, food or place as it is highly personal and subjective hence cannot be judged by anyone. Yazoo is such a band for me, for the things that it reminds me in so many aspects.
Yazoo: Alison Moyet & Vince Clarke
So what makes Yazoo such a great band for me? Firstly they were a strange duo, more precisely a strange mix of two very different musicians. Vince Clarke, being an electronic music wizard and a tech buff and of course ex-member of Depeche Mode joined with Alison Moyet with a bluesy voice and a punk/rock background led the way to one of the greatest synth-pop bands ever.
The odd couple managed to create their unique sound that did not last for too long (they only recorded 2 albums in two consecutive years 1982 & 1983) and went on to their own paths due to personal disagreements which they both would put the blame on their lack of communication. Maybe being ephemeral was one of the things that made them so great , I have always wondered if their music would have made such an impact on me if they hadn't disbanded so early...Guess we'll never know.
"Only You" was their first single from their debut album "Upstairs at Eric's". Hear them perform it on the "Top of the Pops".
One other reason was that I was highly interested in the changing sound of the 80s that popularized the heavy use of synths, drum machines, vocoders and other electronic instruments. I had been captivated by the music of Kraftwerk when I was a teenager but they were really an exception (still are actually, one of the true pioneers of the genre) till Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Human League, New Order and others came onto the stage of synth-pop.
Yazoo's Debut Album: Upstairs at Eric's
Second and Last Album: You and Me Both
Both these albums had amazingly simple melodies combined with dark lyrics sang by an unconventional voice that made me fell in love with the music of Yazoo and I am sure there are millions of others sharing my sentiments of Yazoo still after 37 year they made their first single.
I will leave you with another great hit from Yazoo and even better with a short documentary on the story of the band that I keep watching over and over again.
Here is the 30th "weekend songs post" and that means a hefty 150 songs that I have tried to make you listen to. I always wonder what a song means to someone. Do most people get a similar feeling out of a song when they first hear it? I wish there was a way to find out...
I recently watched a great movie named "A Boy Called Sailboat" that tells the story of a boy writing a song for his grandmother on a ukulele he found somewhere. Do certain songs have magical powers in people's minds or hearts? Well the movie was much deeper than that and included a great deal of symbols and metaphors but I think I concentrated more on the healing power of music.
As Arnold Bennett once wrote on music;
“Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate. ”
And now, this week's list;
Sivert Høyem feat. Marie Munroe - "My Thieving Heart"
Jean-Benoît Dunckel & Jonathan Fitoussi - "Mirages"
Julia Biel - "Wasting Breath"
Sister Nancy - "Bam Bam"
Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln - Lonesome Lover
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
Friday night, we were blessed to see a great concert. A true pioneer who is 84 years young and his son illuminated our minds not only musically but philosophically as well.
Terry Riley on piano, melodica and keyboard, acclaimed by many as the true founder of minimalist music, together with his son Gyan on electric guitar built us a universe of sounds with structures from jazz, western art and Indian music (maybe even a piece with a Middle eastern maqam too).
Terry & Gyan Riley on stage
He has been a creative figure since the 60s and has influenced many artists including Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Le Monte Young and Michael Nyman to name a few. The famous Who song “Baba O’Riley” is derived from the combination of the song's philosophical and musical influences, Meher Baba (Indian Guru) and Terry Riley.
He is a multi-instrumentalist playing the piano, saxophone and Indian musical instruments. He has spent years in India as a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath (master of Indian classical singing).
The main characteristics of his works are heavy usage of innovative repetitions, tape music techniques and usage of electronics although he mostly preferred the piano during this concert.
Riley's famous overdubbed electronic album “A Rainbow in Curved Air” (recorded 1968) inspired many later developments in electronic music. You can listen to the full album on the below video.
As for this concert, father and son made a great duo and they combined a fluid exchange between improvisation and composition, between aspects of jazz, Eastern music and classical structure. Their chemistry during the concert was amazing and one could easily witness the true art of non-verbal communication between real talented musicians.
With this performance we were taken into a different dimension listening to them and watched amazing examples of musical gentleness and modesty within a duo.
We very much enjoyed a journey into the
world of Rileys and just believed the wisdom of the beard.
An excerpt from the concert
If you are further interested in Terry Riley's earlier works I would definitely suggest you to listen to his masterpiece "In C". His 1964 composition is one of the masterpieces of the minimalist music genre and has been played and recorded by various musicians with many different forms and instruments.
"In C"
The first performance of “In C” was given by Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros and Morton Subotnick. Its form was an innovation: The piece consists of 53 separate modules of roughly one measure apiece, each containing a different musical pattern. One performer beats a steady pulse of Cs on the piano to keep tempo. The others, in any number and on any instrument, perform these musical modules following a few loose guidelines, with the different musical modules interlocking in various ways as time goes on. If you check out on YouTube you may find many different versions of "In C".
At the end of the concert we did not forget to pay our tributes to Terry and Gyan Riley and of course managed to get a signed copy of their latest CD.
Here is this week's "5 weekend songs", being posted from Germany. Me and my couple of friends are visiting the synth fair "Superbooth" in Berlin this weekend. I am sure it will be a great experience for us and I will try to post something on this trip.
As Marcel Proust once wrote;
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but having new eyes.”
And here is this weekend's list;
Rammstein - "Radio"
Ephemerals - "You'll Never See Me Cry"
Kraftwerk - "Das Model"
Ute Lemper - "Ne Me Quitte Pas"
Bauhaus - "Bela Lugosi's Dead"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
A week already passed by and another "International Jazz Day" celebrated all over the world on the 30th of April. Even though I had clearly mentioned that this post series would not be dedicated to a specific genre or style or era, please bear with me only once a year for a full jazz weekend songs list. I read and hear a lot people saying that jazz is dying but in my opinion it really isn't the case if not the opposite. Jazz can never die; it can change its sound, structure, instrumentation and even principles but its philosophy is always there.
As Miles Davis once said;
“It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note – it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.”
