The ECM Season

I should have written this post at least a month ago, but I don't have too much time nowadays. It will change soon.

So the ECM Season... what's this? Just that sort of things which lives in my mind, and I think about it as "something which is coming", "something which is worth to wait". As the weather turns cold and dark, the nights lengthen, people get in a mood when they would like to hear music which is more serious, I mean it stands on a higher and more complex musical quality, or has a contemplative side. Autumn comes and soon passes by to give its way to the long, long and dark winter. Sometimes we feel it wouldn't like to be over, it wants to stay here forever. But autumn, the beautiful season has another kind of special moods, which I told you a few times earlier in this blog. This special feeling takes great effect on you but as autumn goes ahead, the weather gets colder and the colours less colourful, the contemplative side and passing-by mood appears immediately. It's something which we have felt in our minds for a very long time, and maybe got stronger by poems, films, and childhood memories.

So this time has a special kind of music, too. The German label ECM can perfectly fit these desires with its special styled covers and great, fantastic, sometimes strange music. Let me show you a few notable albums.

• John Abercrombie & Ralph Towner - Sargasso Sea
• Art ensemble of Chicago - Full force
• Chick Corea - Return to forever
• Eberhard Weber Colours - Little movements
• Oregon - Oregon
• Colin Walcott, Don Cherry, Nana Vasconcelos - CoDoNa
• Rainer Brüninghaus - Freigeweht
• Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen - Those who were
  

Later you will see reviews of these albums here.
Visit the record's website: http://www.ecmrecords.com/, where you can download their new catalogue, too.

René Aubry - Mémoires du futur

René Aubry is a french guitarist and composer. A kind of musician who doesn't create a new world, but shows the real world from a different point of view. His music draws attention to the smallest vibrations of life, to pictures which we don't realize with our eyes - and does this in a very simple way: Mémoires du futur, his "newest" album (the latest studio album from 2006) is more minimal than the earliers and it can be understood as a musical change in his style.

There are also more sounding solutions than on the other recordings: the piano is blunt, comes from the background, or comes from the past. The drums are deeply crawling under the other instruments - they come back and disappear in the nothing again, so there's a constant uncertainty and mystery in the tracks.

There are three vocal tracks on the album: Viendras-tu avec moi? (Do you come with me?), Regarde les autres (Watch the others, or sg like that, I think it's the best song on the album), and Ha tutte le carte in regola (If everything is all right), which is an adaptation of a famous italian poem. My girlfriend translated it to Hungarian for me and now I'll show you a small part of it, translated to English.

When everything's fine

for him to be an artist,

Nothing scares him,

even not a tyrant.

He likes to be alone

even if it's expensive

He doesn't make a difference

between a year and a night

neither between a kiss and a farewell.

It's an entreaty without tears...

It's an entreaty by someone who doesn't have illusions yet...

When everything's fine
for him to be an artist...

When I bought this cd two years ago in summer, it was so hot in the city that we got small bags with cold water in it to drink or chill ourselves.

I took that photo above on the same day when I photographed the cover for my friend. The wind moves the curtain, which plays with the evening sunlight.

Look at the page of René Aubry on Myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/reneaubryhome