Wyclef Jean - The preacher's son

A few years ago in late afternoon I got an sms from my father: please turn on the amplifier , I'm taking home some black music which rocks. That was this album. He arrived home and we immediately put it in the cd player, and the deep sounds filled the room. Wyclef Jean moved into our life...

... and he's still with us, especially when we want to do some loudness, hear some black rhythms and cool music. He presents this album by the following words:


In the history of the world, something significant happens every 2000 years. Behold the testimony of time, behold the music of the next millenium, behold the revelations of "The Preacher's Son". The date of my birth, October 17th, marks the date of the death the Haitian revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines. This link to such a profound and powerful man has helped me to understand that I too can be a revolutionary, that I too can use the tools and gifts that I have been given to affect change in the world. This is my tribute. And your invitation. Welcome to "THE PREACHER'S SON".


And yes, this album is created carefully, taking attention to its little elements as well. As Steve Harvey tells us in the intro, it is soothing, it's grooving, it is the truth, it's old, it's new, it's for everybody. 

Every song is a little world, with many singing voices, dense arrangement, deep basses, awesome rhythms and melodies. Many musicians participated in the making of this album, for example: Missy Elliott, Carlos Santana, Sharissa... and the result is a colourful, interesting bunch of songs. Songs about love (I am your doctor, Baby), memories (Class reunion), our future (Next generation), and so on.

I'm your chiropractor

Please lay down on a sofa

And let me massage your back

So I can tell you what's wrong...

Don't forget to check The carnival also by him, with the awesome and never-again-repeatable Guantanamera, and visit his website, where you can watch the concert videos addressed to twitter and facebook.

I am your doctor:

Isaac Hayes - Black Moses

I've been thinking what the next post will be about, and one of the possibilities was Black Moses by Isaac Hayes. The only thing which kept me back was that I've posted two albums by him recently, and this act will decrease the colourful style of this blog. But I kept thinking and the melodies came into my head again and again, and thought: now is the time when this album takes real effect on me, so this time has to be the most suitable time for it.

The first song sets the atmosphere well. It's an atmosphere which emotional, romantic, but never gets sloppy. Amongst the three albums I own (the other two are Hot buttered soul and Shaft) on this one he sings the most time. His velvety, deep singing voice is an elementary factor in his songs. These songs are well arranged, and his voice is ... by female background voices, which sound really cool. The best vocals are in the second track, (They long to be) Close to you. It's a new interpretation of the song which was written in 1963, but the most famous version of it is by The carpenters. Why do birds suddenly appear, every time when you are near? What he did with this song is similar to what he did with Walk on by on Hot buttered soul. A wholly new interpretation which you listen to and the original song is only a little part of it. A brand new performance, but rather a brand new song. I can't imagine how can it be missing from the cover versions of it at Wikipedia. The singing melody has also changed a little, and I think it's even better.

On this album every song is a little single world. They are rather long, so there's time show resolutions, and creating emphasis. For example, in the song mentioned previously, or in the first song, Never can say goodbye as they start the refrain again and again, the song doesn't want to stop. There are more examples of this re-start mood on the album. In A brand new me, the lyrics makes the same. This is my same old coat... and my same old shoes... I was a same old me... and so on, the repeat of the lines create the emphasis well.

It's a 2 cd album and in 2009 Stax released an awesome version of it. As you open the digipack, as you opened the lp, you get a cross-shaped form with large images of Isaac, and a long booklet with additional images. That's my best cd edition I've ever had. See the image below.

Never can say goodbye:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKKVIEZPTYk

(They long to be) Close to you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlaA5fkAa-o

The 100th! Isaac Hayes - Hot buttered soul

This is the hundredth post in this blog. I'm very happy - though I haven't posted often recently, the blog continuously exists in my mind.

For the 100th rendez-vous I felt I had to choose something which really deserves this place. It's something like when on my birthday I listened to this album. For me, that hour was the celebration, an hour just for me, my own little celebration. And why did I choose this album? It has a lot of reasons. That time this album and music was quite new for me and I was just being introduced to it. The meeting gave a lot of inspiration. There are songs in our - or at least in my, but I really think in everyone's - life which can totally change our music preferences. The songs have heard earlier will sound differently, and you'll long for that new kind of music. In my case, it was the introduction of soul by Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes which made this. And as a result, now I think differently about music.

So that was the first reason, that new effect. And I had to choose a song which is in celebratory mood, at least a little bit. I don't really like way too grandiose things. The first, famous Walk on by is from that celebratory type. It can even call tears in my eye sometimes, which is a rare effect in my life. It's long, it's expressive, it's cool. Starts in a loud way and suddenly gets minimal and those elements of black music such as the inimitable rhythm appear. With the low amount of lyrics it's really effective - the string section do reach your soul.

The fewer songs an album contain, the more their importance will be: here you hear only 4 songs, so every one is equivalent. Hyperbolicsyllablicsequedalymistyc can really wake you up and I was delighted when I heard it in the movie Brooklyn's finest this year. After its improvisative and loud end, One woman creates a romantic atmosphere. And in the end By the time I get to Phoenix does something experimental. The first half of the song is a storytelling by Hayes, with a monotonic pattern in the background. The story is about the power of love. And then, slowly the music appears and nicely closes the album.

Walk on by (single version):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5tqAbrZeX0

One woman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWv4xEsgY48

Read about Shaft!

Quincy Jones - You've got it bad girl

If the standard says it might as well be spring, I'll say it might as well be summer - at least here, in Budapest, where I live. Spring has arrived very quickly and everything started to live again.

I've known this album for approximately one year. It gave me some very fine moments and also inspiration to my own music. As we could get used to it Quincy adapts movie themes and the songs are supported by clever and cool arrangements. Summer in the city is the slow-midtempo intro song which gives the album a fine start. It broadcasts something warm, something mysterious which remains at least until the half of the album. There something happens, the arrangement becomes wilder, somehow harder and funkier. It is Stevie Wonder's Superstition which changes the mood. But my favourite song is Tribute to A.F. which starts with a perfect daydreaming-melody and evolves into a very nice and loose music with cosy lyrics. To sum up, it's the second best album of Quincy's behind Smackwater Jack. And the harmonica player is not else as Toots Thielemans.

Daydreaming and I'm thinking of you
Daydreaming and I'm thinking of you
Hey baby let's get away let's go somewhere far...

Summer in the city (Lovin' Spoonful):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWXcjYNZais

Summer in the city (Quincy Jones):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd9wMHKMj6E

Tribute to A.F.:

Eberhard Weber Colours - Little movements

Music is somehow more than other arts. I think it's the most undescribable kind of art, that's what we talked about with my friend approximately a week ago. When you hear one of your favourite music, you don't just say "it's really, really cool", but you feel something, something of fullness, which effect is "the world cannot be so dark as I see it in other moments". Somehow everything gets to its right place. And it's a fantastic power of this art.

Eberhard Weber's Little movement album did the same with me this morning. As the sun shined into the room at the middle of the day, in the silent deepness of the moveless winter, the room has been filled with something... some kind of new atmosphere. The most exciting thing on this album is the piano-flute melody in the first piece, The last stage of a long journey. It has an extremely strange nostalgic and expressive effect, which I hear and say "that's something for which it's worth to live". And it's a serious sentence, I think. After it, Bali has a repetitive mood, again with beautiful melodies.

Little movements is unfortunately out of press, so it's a rarity and hard to get. eBay can help you, if you want an original one, but the rarity has its price as well. And, as ice on the cake, it has a very nice cover, designed by Maja Weber.

Eberhard Weber made many albums for ECM, many with his keyboardist cooperate Rainer Brüninghaus (read about one of his albums, Continuum). They can make very expressive and qualitative things together.

Let's find something more amongst old lps.

Read about another ECM album, Meredith Monk - Dolmen music, and a commendation about few ECM albums.

Visit http://www.ecmrecords.com/

Jimmy Smith - Christmas cookin'

There are some albums which we listen to almost only on one day in a year, for example on Christmas day. Christmas cookin' - a nice black-mood title for a sweet, loose album. I use this word in the following way: the songs are played in the possible maximum loosy way. They just float, keep us calm and hunt for joy - yes, we can feel that this music is a result of some kind of happines and feeling good-mood. This happiness is paired with the silence and deepening of Christmas. Just to mention the most famous ones: Jingle bells, Silent night, Greensleeves. Silent night, like other songs on this album got a serious, celebrational frame, and after the start the songs bravely change to joy in one moment - provided by Jimmy's singing melodies.

Greensleeves is a traditional English song which can be found even in the 16th century literature memories. There's a legend about that it was written by Henry VIII for his lover and future queen consort Anne Boleyn. Boleyn allegedly rejected King Henry's attempts to seduce her and this rejection may be referred to in the song when the writer's love "cast me off discourteously". There is, however, no available evidence that King Henry did in fact compose "Greensleeves", which is probably Elizabethan in origin and based on an Italian style of composition that did not reach England until after his death. You can hear it on the following albums, too: John Coltrane - Africa/brass, Kenny Burrell - Guitar forms.

Baby, it's cold outside is an American pop duet composed by Frank Loesser. In the vocal version the female voice in the song is called "The Mouse" and the male "The Wolf." The lyrics consist of his attempts to convince her to stay with him at the end of a date; her indecisive protests reveal that although she feels obligated to go home, she is tempted to stay, partially because, as the title suggests, "It's cold outside.".

Read about the song God rest ye merry gentlemen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_rest_you_merry,_gentlemen

Jingle bells:

Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes - Renaissance

Let me stay at the previous topic, because now I don't have to wait for a long time to have a real own flat. One night, on the day before yesterday, I was listening to this album, the lights were low in my room, and I got in a loose mood. Music which was produced by afro-americans usually has this sort of effect. In that mood, I continued my imagination in my mind, about that I have a big room, with big windows - with a great view to the city. If these parameters were true and the music were playing in the night, I won't long for anything else at that actual moment.

This album from 1977 can quickly pick you out from the greyness of weekdays and can create an exotic atmosphere around you. You'll feel that you're inside the music. Seven songs, famous pieces by Lonnie (don't get confused, there's an other Lonnie Smith - without Liston, he was a jazz organ player), but the album isn't too long. As I listened to other albums I realized that there are some well-known tracks by him which always repeat on the albums, except few other - shortly, one song can be heared on more albums.

When I saw its cover for the first time, I thank immediately that it must be... something cool, extraordinary, or something "very". The cover shows a whole attitude to life. I talked about the afro-american airiness: this pairs with a deep singing voice which flows ahead with the music. By its exciting arrangement these two make a culturally/musically notable event. His soft, phased and distorted elektrik piano sounds, the clanking bells, the brass section, which don't want to be loud, the rhythmic percussion patterns and a lot more keeps our attention alive very well. There's no more to say... Exotic. Transcendental. Standing high on the hill.

Space lady:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvBv2xxKtb4

A song of love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFzJPK2sPyo

Starlight and you:

Rainer Brüninghaus - Continuum

It's a real rarity. It's hard to get it. An album by ECM Records, which unfortunately stopped manufacturing it more than 10 years ago. So this is a reportage from the past, also because its really special atmosphere.

Rainer Brüninghaus is a German pianist/keyboardist whose name could be familiar by some ECM albums, for example his other album, Freigeweht, or Eberhard Weber - Silent feet / Little movements / Yellow fields or Jan Garbarek - Visible word / I took up the runes, etc.

Then, in the September of 1983 with trumpeter Markus Stockhausen they created something which became an unknown value of art. His piano melodies and Stockhausen's trumpet voice suit to each other well, and make an airy distant sound. The album was recorded by the trio, but often it's only Rainer and Markus, and Rainer don't play just on piano, he uses other synthetizers, for example pads, too. A real unique piece, and just because of this, it's hard to describe it... you know, there are a few albums which we know and can't describe, because its oddities. Maybe you have to look at the cover: the distant city lights, vivid movements in the night, flowing into rays, meandering ahead in time and space, to reach the unknown future, with its uncertainity and doubtfulness. As I was listening to this album last night in the silence of my room, I imagined a view like the cover which can be seen from my window, from a high skyscraper at night. There's a huge silence around me, I can't hear the distant, low noise from outside, but I can see the slowly moving lights. As I look down in fiction and listen to the music, I also get touched by the past, and the future. The past by its real passed-by fact and faintly depressing nostalgia, and the future by those mentioned things before. One of my dreams is a view like that image. So I don't wait for longer, I send you the second track on the album, Stille, which means silence. In the first half, listening to the contemplative and strange piano sounds, the cover is getting more and more alive in my mind. Later, as the whole trio forms, they can pick us out from time and space, and take us to... the continuum.

Stille:

Pet Shop Boys - Yes

"a fantastic, wide-ranging pop record"

The ever-changing, developing but always remaining-the-same Pet Shop Boys' new record is Yes - another great title amongst their one-word titled albums. They have been always creative to describe an album with one word, and now, hearing it (and as well being an old fan of them) I got interested immediately.

I have acquainted it only now notwithstanding it was released on the 23th of March. It flew to me straightly from Shanghai, and as a European, it was pleasant to see some splinter of the far-east culture: see the nice stamps on the picture below.

As this new effective cover shows eleven colours, the album contains eleven songs, and the whole album is a flow of the hit-category tracks. Starting with the also well titled Love etc. which has also became a single and got a video, the album gets a cool inception. As we go on, and hear the catchy melodies, the two English guys show their familiar palatial, dense arrangements and sometimes clearer, emotional parts, for ex. in Vulnerable or The way it used to be. Did you see me coming has also became a single. But my special favourite is Building a wall, it has a some kind of dynamic pulling ahead. I love the concert version: as the wall collapses, it's very effective, I wish they came to Hungary again. This year they are having the Pandemonium Tour, reaching Russia, Germany, UK, USA, Argentina and so on. As now they have so many songs, to organize a concert in a given time is getting harder and harder, so they often plays songs together, let it be older or the newest, great feelings mix. See more videos in the related section.

They also released an exclusive eleven pieces lp-packet, with each song on one lp by its one colour of eleven, so you can put them in the right form to get the pipe from the cover on your floor.

Here you can listen to the whole album:
http://music.aol.co.uk/music-news/pet-shop-boys-first-listen-of/article/20090317123709990001

Love etc.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYR_L0AZNQw

(You need more...

than a Gerhard Richter hanging on your wall)

Did you see me coming

Pandemonium/Can you forgive her?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0CzHjWlzOQ

Love etc./Building a wall/Go west:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQX4jrdu5ng

Sophie Zelmani - Love affair

The softest and most fragile singing voice I've ever heard is Sophie Zelmani's. She's a Swedish singer-songwriter, and kept to be one of the world's shiest stars. After releasing her first album, she claimed that she won't give any interviews or concerts. Of course, things happened differently.

Love affair from 2003, with an autumn-feeling cool photograph cover, is a sensitive, beautiful and melancholic world. And sometimes it isn't happy and isn't sad, just something between these. September tears, the first song, like an intro introduces us this kind of music where the feelings are the most important. The pleasant acoustic arrangement is perfectly matched to Sophie's thin voice in the whole album, and because of that it isn't a loud music, we can hear clearly the little parts of her voice. Sometimes these little parts make the whole music unique. It's interesting that her voice can be serious and strict in Truth, but the softest in Fade, which is the most silent song on the album. My favourite is To know you, listen to it below.

When you happen to be emotional in September, choose this one.

Visit her website:
http://www.sophie-zelmani.com/

To know you:

Hanne Hukkelberg - Blood from a stone

Hanne Hukkelberg is a Norwegian singer-songwriter. I have known her two earlier albums, with its strangeness and the strong intention to make experiments, so when I first saw this new third title few days ago, I got interested immediately.

I had many feelings and expectations about what will I hear... that familiar northern tone... but in the end it changed. This is a newer Hanne, who exited that deep introspective world - as she says: "and i find it really relieving to make this sort of non introvert music now. this is a record more direct, more loud and from the hip. lyrically as well." But this exiting is partial. Until the half of the album we meet nice songs, with some rock-indie touch, but they didn't tell me any more, I missed that old excitement, crazyness, weirdness as earlier - though, besides it - they show some signs of life and loosening, more carefree moods. Especially the song Blood from a stone, which became the single, is the most "new Hanne" song on the album. The video is perfectly like Anna Ternheim's To be gone, you can watch it on her website, see the link below.

So when we get to Salt of the Earth, the mood changes and those older memories wake up in our minds. From here the tracks feature more aggressive and introspective feelings, with dissonant vocals and sounds created by anything. I mean, she likes using kitchen obejcts or other tools to play it in her music. See the lyrics menu on the website, there you find detailed informations about it. In other words, as we get to the second half of the album, the circumstances of the creation are cleaner: "i’ve been sitting on an island north for the polar circle, Senja, and composed songs for my new album which is called “Blood From a Stone”. this took about seven months, and the rest of the year 2008, i spent recording it all in Propeller studios with my regular producer Kåre Vestrheim." Fortunately, in the last track we can also hear Norwegian lyrics.

Have yourself this adventure, which is probably just a stage in a longer trip.
http://www.hannehukkelberg.com

Salt of the Earth:

The three best Weather Report albums

There are different grades in musical talents. Somebody - after learning it - can play a song well. Somebody can write new melodies, and make a complete song of it. And somebody can create a quite new, exciting thing, almost a new genre, music which we hear and say: Yes, it must be that. Maybe this is the description of the word "unique".

Weather Report belongs to this last category. It's hard to find any band or musician who is similar to it, usually we read that it's for example Chick Corea's band, Return to forever. Both are jazz, jazz fusion, usually called jazzrock, but these genres are always disputed. Be that as it may, Weather Report was a world-wide known "supergroup" (making their greatest albums in the seventies). I mean that the band members are also big names in their personal carreers. The pianist/keyboardist Joe Zawinul, the saxophonist Wayne Shorter and for example, the bassist Miroslav Vitous or Jaco Pastorius. By the way, this is one of the coolest band names I've ever heard.

Now I've picked three albums which I suppose to be the best albums: Sweetnighter, Black market, and Tale spinnin'. I had a dilemma about Mysterious traveler, but that will be another post.

Sweetnighter from 1973 (as many albums of their's) starts with a longer, faster, evolving song, then calms down in the second song, which is usually a slower, more silent thing. Here the first is the 13 minutes long Boogie woogie waltz, with the sometimes-appearing cool bass melody of Vitous, and the undefineable saxophone parts of Shorter. This music always changes, evolves then the instruments find each other again to express melodies in a very unique way. After it, Manolete immediately leads us to somewhere else in a spanish mood. Listen carefully at 2:24, when a new rhythmic part starts, I like it very much. Later we get to the track next to last, it's Will, my favourite song on this album. Starting with a light drum pattern and the fine electric piano by Zawinul, it gets a little bit louder but stays intimate until the very end of it. Shorter's longly lingering sounds create an unforgettable mood.

Black market from 1976 is perfectly like its cover: vivid, varicoloured, and there's also a little bit of mistery behind that lake - and the songs - as on the other albums, like a constant flavor of Weather report. The first song, Black market is very friendly, especially because the carefree melody by Zawinul. And, as I told you earlier, the second song is usually a calmer thing. Cannon ball is beautiful at first, but sometimes it becomes serious and louder - with typical Weather report melodies. It's typical because when you hear it, you say: it must be Weather report. A cool part: at the start of the third track, Gibraltar, the noise of the big ship - it creates a strict atmosphere. Then everything gets silent for a while and after it immediately comes the louder part. After it we get to my favourite track on this album, Elegant people, a beautiful song, starting with one of the coolest melodies in "my musical life". For me, Hernandnu, the last track is the most connected with mistery. That melody has an uncertain feeling, but not in a negative way.

Tale spinnin' from 1975 maybe concentrate less on the melodies. Fast starting, then something else: Lusitanos, with the always coming back shift in emphasis, melodies, moods. It can be beautiful, contemplative, strict and uncertain at the same time, this is also a typical Weather report attribute. My favourite song on this album is Badia, a silent, slower expression. I've always liked in music when a song starts almost silently, then the little parts connect and we gradually get in that mood. The beautiful melody sometimes has an additional, slightly hoarse vocal, too, which is ice on the cake. And at 2:42 we meet the unexpected new fast part - to keep it exciting. In the end, Five short stories is an interesting improvisative dialogue between Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, closing the album.

There could be many more interesting things about these albums, but I think it's enough to be curious about the band.

Black market: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7fOetV0ha4

Badia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xDPJwIYz_E

Cannon ball: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkKw7mDmIIg

Chet Baker - Chet

Welcome to lonely nights. To long, slowly passing minutes...

Chet Baker is at his best on this album. Now he doesn't sing but takes the trumpet to a higher level, as he "falls" into the deepness of the ballads.

As you can read it on the back of the cd, its subhead is The lyrical trumpet of Chet Baker. He dosen't just perform the songs, it comes from his heart, it's purely honest. There's a clever writing about it in the inside cover:

"The trumpet of Chet Baker is, above all, a lyrical instrument. Every musician, no matter how many different kinds of things he can do, has one area that is essentially home, where he functions most effectively and seems most comfortable. For one man this favored area of operation may be the blues, for another it may be dazzling up-tempo fireworks. For Chet, home is clearly the world of ballads - of good, sound standards that lend themselves to a leisurely tempo and to rich, melodic, and often moody interpretation. In such an environment, the romantic sound and conception that Chet possesses seems to flourish extraordinary well. And it is the kind of jazz that is to be heard throughout this album.

As many a musician and many a listener has discovered, the ability to play ballads involves much more than just being able to play slowly. To keep it pretty and at the same time to keep it jazz calls for a way of feeling and a way of thinking that not every jazz musician can master. But ballads properly played can be a most beautiful and moving musical experience, serving to refute two very pervasive and false cliches: the one that claims that jazz is all loud and hard and fast; and the corollary one that would have you believe that if isn't loud and hard and fast it isn't properly jazz."

The best time for listening to it is night and the best way is when the room is absolutely silent, so put it in your hifi, and not in your computer, and let it to take you somewhere else.

'Tis autumn:

Frank Sinatra - Songs for swingin' lovers!

This April-May time is the main season to get closer to this nice album for me, and it's here again! I don't know many Sinatra albums, but as I've listened into samples from other albums on Amazon, I have a feeling about that it's the best Sinatra album (with the well-known song: I've got you under my skin).

The tracks are fresh, happy, and rarely sad. Frank is also happy, and that's the key for the entertaining. I think that one of the most likeable thing in these old swing songs and standards is the lyrics: with word-plays, naive thoughts, and with the simpliest human emotions that a man can feel. I'll qoute some of it from the album, to show you its atmosphere.

You'll find your fortune's falling

All over the town.

Be sure that your umbrella

Is upside down.

(from Pennies from heaven)

Oh, I can't break away,

I must have you everyday,

As regularly as coffee or tea.

You've got me in your clutches and I cant break free,

You're getting to be a habit with me.
(from You're getting to be a habit with me)

You're much - you're too much - and just too "very, very"

To ever be, to ever be in Webster's Dictionary.

And so I'm borrowing a love song from the birds,

To tell you that you're marvelous;

Tell you that you're marvelous;

Tell you that you're marvelous - too marvelous for words.

(from Too marvelous for words)

I've got you under my skin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHLC-EimdAc
an other version of You make me feel so young: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpPF5yG0IHo
We'll be together again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbCIzMGxqzk&feature=PlayList&p=AF697DF42E2D38FC&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=7

You're getting to be a habit with me

Meredith Monk - Dolmen music

I often think about the summer, and yesterday an early-summer afternoon came to my mind - in that afternoon I was preparing to my math comprehensive exam and in the background I was listening to this album. That evening there was a huge storm, so these memories are connected now. You can see the dark clouds on the picture.

Meredith Monk is a singer who has developed her own, very strange and special singing style and technics. Her music can be minimal, energetic, beautiful, sad, pleasant, and sometimes irritating - in the same time. Probably it will take some time for accepting it by the listener - or it won't even happen. But I always think that every music needs a mood (or weather) for listening and every mood (or weather) can find a music which suits it.

Dolmen music comes from an other, imaginary world. The picture above represents it very well: people sitting around a table - we don't know who are they, why are they there and what are they doing. Listen to the choir in the beginning of the last track: it gets louder and more detailed at every new part, making an atmosphere where we can see more and more from an unknown place - the melody is serious and strict (I think there was a long preparation period before the recording - and there's a microphone on that table but I don't know that they did it in the reality or it's just a design element - I hope the first).

Near the end there's a cool, enchanting melody by a chello, using it in an unconventional way. In the video (from 3:00) you can see as they are beating the strings by the bow and drum sticks.

It's recorded in 1980 and 81, and released by ECM records.

http://www.last.fm/music/Meredith+Monk/+videos/+1-CyA19sVeRPw