Tilos radio

Let me show you which radio I think the best in my country. It's name is "Tilos", which means "forbidden", an underground little channel which has a rough history. Starting in a state of "almost-dying" and many times "vegetating" but Tilos survived everything and remains a nice piece of underground culture. The music broadcasted varies amongst a wide range of styles: from electronic / drum 'n' bass / hip-hop through experimental psychedelic songs to world / jazz music you can find everything. And it's a miracle of the new century that you can hear it from another country, too by the possibility of web radios.

Listen to it online at http://www.tilos.hu/

Hanne Hukkelberg - Rykestrasse 68

Staring out the window, and watching the snow as it falls, as it's being thickened, as it doesn't want to stop. Rykestrasse 68 is a real "winter" album by the Norwegian singer-songwriter - but rather experimental music maker - lady, Hanne Hukkelberg. It's her second album, a much more listenable than her first, Little things, but it fortunately keeps the advantages of that earlier one. These advantages are: widening and mixing the styles, using both English and Norwegian language on the same album (it's an exciting thing for foreigners, like me), making melodies and rhythms of noises and other sounds, creating a new little world, making experiments and exciting effects with her own voice. This mix leads to a half acoustic-half electronic sound, which is half-natural and half-strange.

My favourite songs on this album: the first one, Berlin (a nice introducing melody, with a cosy lyrics, see below), A cheater's armoury (the most "pop" song on this disc - if I can say this - which also got a video, see below, too), Northwind (with a more and more strenghtening refrain and some typewriting sounds), the rhythmic Ticking bomb, and the last song, Pynt, with the speciality of Norwegian singing.

Have a nice trip to Rykestrasse 68.

Read about her newest album, Blood from a stone.

Berlin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UCf5NDRmXY

A cheater's armoury:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aXZkHSVo3U

Northwind (live):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JERZ9NuYdWk

Ticking bomb (live):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCg9DWsv6DU

Few days at the weekend house... Kuupuu - Unilintu

"Where's the frontier between music and noise?" is an always coming-back question in my mind, and this album, Unilintu from 2007 by the Finnish Kuupuu is a good topic about it. It's something very new, very brave, and very experimental, which result is a meandering noise-mass with some sometimes-appearing music. And we can talk about rhythm, too, a special kind of rhythm, a rhythm made of sounds and vocal elements. From using natural sounds to distorted instruments, the whole atmosphere is unique. Kuupuu's strange and often dissonant vocals / childish singings are beautiful, and scary - at the same time.

I was in the weekend house the last two days, and in the night yesterday it was a perfect choice to upload myself spiritually. Because this album needs solitude and silence - and silence is an important word on the album, too, because the songs sometimes just crawl out from the silence. Listening to it the following thoughts came to my mind: Is this what we achieved in music? How can somebody make such extreme music? And, as the best song on the album, Myrskylaulu got to its end, I walked out to the terrace, then down in the garden, to look up and watch the early-autumn night sky, with the uncertain chill of it. Later, when Lohtulaulu started, with its mentioned scary dissonant voices, I need to go back inside the house, because the atmosphere was getting to be unpleasant. These voices seem to be coming from eternity, or beyond death, or maybe from the long, long past. Maybe it's a Finnish folk song or nursery rhyme, I don't know, but that's the best, when I don't know much about it, it's more exciting and unique. There's many more notable moments on the album, for example the song Mustaruhtinaan laulu which sound is very similar to some nose-trumpeters' sound, maybe it's that.

Chilly autumn nights in solitude? Try it.

Visit her on Myspace: www.myspace.com/kuupuu

Visit her official website: http://www.lurtta.com/

Lohtulaulu:

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