This blog has just reached a milestone in its history, because here's the first annual calendar: a special interpretation of a year, because it starts in March. As you could get used to it, this blog introduces the songs by its mood and connection to seasons. The calendar was made in the same atmosphere, and it's just the first step to the large-letter CALENDAR which will have an album proposal for each day in a year. Until that, 5 minutes before lying down will give you annual calendars each year. Click on the image to view it larger and download.
Now it's someone who doesn't need to be introduced, but besides her biggest hits she has some notable albums, too. Being driven by a sudden emotion, I chose an old cd, American life a few days ago, which is her second best after Ray of light (it's an outstanding one amongst her albums).
After the first two faster and widely known songs, she sings slower songs. Nice songs in a cosy pop-atmosphere, and one of the advantages of this album is the clearness. At last a pop album which isn't too dense. If something wants to be expressive, it doesn't need to be "big". By the way, the singing voice sounds much better if there aren't too many instruments playing. Just enough. Whatever Madonna does these days, it's something notable in her interesting and colourful carreer.
It seems like the Pet Shop Boys never rest, they always come up with something new. Now, the Pandemonium concert dvd and cd, released on the 15th of February. Quite a cool choice with those new "two songs in one" types. Or the ep Christmas, released on the 14th of December, 2009, containing the new version of It doesn't often snow at Christmas, a cool remix of Madness' My girl, or the Viva la vida / Domino dancing mix. Now they have an own YouTube channel, too.
It's always a pleasure to hear other performances, adaptations and remixes of a song which you've known for a long time, let it be a jazz standard or even a techno song. Vortex involute, the Russian drum'n'bass band (in fact one person) reinterpreted Katya Chehova's music and created something, a deeply expressive atmospheric sound-world. The songs became slower, they don't hurry, there's enough time to express themselves and to make experiments with sound & noise. For example Po provodam (По прoвoдaм) got an other meaning, it became slower and ambient, such as Oblakami (Oблaкaми). And the closing song is the beautiful Вторая жизнь which - as I told you earlier - is my favourite song by her and also got a nice video. The whole album can be downloaded for free by registered users at www.station20.ru.
I remember listening to this album perfectly one year ago, in the cold, grey and hopeless February. Music stays with us, luckily.
It was the same time ago when I discovered Station 2.0 and Katya Chehova (Катя Чехова). In the beginning I didn't really know what I hear, just see the strange unreadable characters of titles on the screen. I had to go further, I liked it: I realized soon that it was much better than today's music played on radio and at clubs, but the main reason for it was the amazing atmosphere provided by the cold techno music and the Russian singing voice. The meeting happened, and even if it wasn't love at first sight (hear), later it got on a higher level.
Katya Chehova made three albums released by the Russian label Uplifto. Unfortunately her project ended, but there's something she created and left. Her, first, introducing, Ya robot, then the most known, Love 2.0, and after that K4, her latest and last. I think Love 2.0 is the best, with her biggest hit, Ya ne s toboy. The album is about another love, a love made today when everything changed. My first experience with her belongs to the song Вторая жизнь - Vtoraya zhiesn which has a very special atmosphere for me, see below.All of the mentioned albums can be downloaded at www.uplifto.ru or www.station20.ru.
At last I learned who is the man that would risk his neck for his brother man by watching the American movie Shaft (1971) which theme is written by Isaac Hayes. The movie is a nice thing, and its music perfectly matches to the pictures. It was also released in 2000, with Samuel L. Jackson in the main role.
My first meeting with Russian electronic music was a few years ago while downloading from last.fm's free downloads. Somehow I got to uplifto.ru which is an electronic record label, and also runs a webradio called Station 2.0 (СТАНЦИИ 2.0). I was glad to hear Russian voices, it was exotic. As I haven't visited this site for a while, it has been developing very well and now it's not only a radio, but a music community site as well with a lot of members and activities. The radio became a source of every kind of music let it be today's hits, Russian electronic and underground, or everything else. It also features live track information and a possibility for downloading archive streams back to a few days.
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 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.
Miike Snow is quite a new Swedish indie-pop band (formed in 2007), and when I heard the song Animal yesterday, I didn't know where have I known it. I don't really know now either... perhaps it remains a quest forever. But the song is nice, and can make your day. It's located on their one and only album Miike Snow - Miike Snow (2009).
It's always a great pleasure to hear new music, music which isn't really similar to other music. I know it seems to be impossible, but music is the kind of art which always keeps new potential in itself and something more to show. I mean, there are undescribable thoughts in our minds, or call them feelings, which you can truly live whilst listening to a song and say: yes, that's it. Somehow it reaches our soul.
Osibisa did the same with me this morning. This music shows the power of nature, emotions of the world which differ by folks and nations - and now it's the African way of expression. Translated from Ghanaian, Osibisa means "criss-cross rhythms that explode with happiness". And you can feel it very well: this music is the fruit of happiness, the happines of playing music, the happiness of living and the world which surrounds us. Besides their well-known songs, like Sunshine day and Welcome home, this album deserves at least the same attention.With the black chorus singing, with the cool and loose rhythms they created one of the most important meanings of music: to add beauty to the world. Maybe music roots in the world, and because of this it just shows its beauty, but I'm sure that it also creates beauty. Beautiful seven makes you feel The world around you. Woyaya makes you feel You live inside it.
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.
To start the new year most of the people would propose a happy or soul-stirring music to listen to, but somehow January is cold and very uncertain for me. It's the middle of the long and dark winter, and it doesn't want to be over. The last year has gone, and no one knows, what will the new year give. Now, because of these things, I would listen to Genesis' second album from 1970, Trespass. That music is cold, too. And full of energy. Emotions, which can reach your deepest mind, and give a nice colour to this month. "Nobody needs to discover me" - Peter Gabriel sings, and it's a cool sentence, another kind of expressing loneliness. "Trying to find a memory in a dark room... trying to find a needle in a haystack" -it's the first song, Looking for someone, a hard start for the album. These thoughts are true to the month January for me. Man has to put the pieces of his mind in their correct place again, revising them or overwriting them. And in White mountain, as it starts, that's the perfect emotional expression, it always remembers me to the cover. Amongst the serious emotions there's some lightness on the album, too, for example Visions of angels, which is light, yes, but also has a hiding melancholy and a celebrational mood. This is true to the whole album. The whole feeling becomes clear by the last track, the wild and faster Knife, which also cuts apart the cover. Nice! You can see it as you bend out the cover of the lp version (or on the back of the cd).
Still staying at films... the main aim of this blog was always to show something new and something which takes real effect on us, an effect which can't be described, to know it - you have to live it. That's the most fantastic thing in music, that incomprehensibleness.
One of my favourite films is Solaris directed by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972, based on the novel Solaris written by the Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem in 1961. I both like the novel and the film, they are both beautiful. They say it's science-fiction, and yes, but just because that sort of environment (another planet, space base). The real topics are human emotions and thoughts. The film is a milestone in film art, and with the book it tells me a lot of things about this world, and a lot of thoughts which - as I mentioned it - can't be described. About the future, the smallness of mankind and the huge aimless which is floating around us and which we cannot understand, just always suffer from it.
The main music theme of this film is BWV 639 Ich ruf' zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ by Johann Sebastian Bach. BWV is a categorization of all the pieces by Bach (BWV: Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis). I have a strange feeling about this music. Sometimes I feel, that a song is both about hope and hopeless. That's irreal, but maybe possible - as I said some time ago, music can contain everything at the same time.
The long and exciting quest of Two and a half men has been lastly resolved: when Charlie and Alan are joined by the big guy from the neighbourhood, the pizza guy and Herb, and get drunk a little bit, they sing a song which my father knew that he knew it and had it on cd at home, but which cd... we couldn't figure it out on that lazy, warm, nothing-to-do summer night. But the day before yesterday we saw again that episode and (after some research) it turned out that the song is the main theme of the movie Shaft and is on the following album: Isaac Hayes - Shaft. Isaac Hayes is a big name in soul music, he was the first afro-american Oscar prize winner (for the best original song). I have one album by him, but didn't know this cool song yet. Enjoy!
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.".
It was precisely a little bit more than two years ago: I was surfing on the internet when I saw a little nice feature on www.nasa.gov, the NASA Calendar. Interesting things on the sky, anniversaries of old historical events, etc... and, on the 22th of December, I saw the following subtitle: Prepare for a long night. I was totally amazed. Like a child, it perfectly fit in my season- or everyday-rituals, which sometimes are celebrated only in my soul, and doesn't have any physical effect. I think everyone has this sort of of rituals. The longest night... isn't it fantastic? When anything can happen, when man sinks into his deepest thoughts, in that deepest night, which doesn't want to be over.
The thought didn't leave me, and, with my friend we played songs just for fun that time, besides our "real" music activities. We called it Jules & Cakkos project, I won't describe it, why. As you can see on the myspace page, we only made four songs which are gathered on an ep, called Virginia creeper. We can't sing, but sing in Prepare for a long night, and Madár úr. An interesting thing: no one likes the first, but everybody the second one. That's all, this project has been over for a long time. The low "plays" numbers are because we uploaded the songs again not a long time ago. I hope you'll enjoy it. And don't forget about your own rituals in life.
In life, people sometimes have totally unnecessary days when they feel themselves aimless, lonely, or anything else. Today was something like this for me, and maybe this made me to pick off an old favourite from the cd shelf. The forever effective one-word-titled Behaviour is PSB's most "alone" and silent album.
Now there's a milestone in my life and I have so much free time... so much free time suddenly, and I don't really know or feel what to do. "Shall I rewrite, or revise my October Symphony?" "She said we were never feeling bored" "I never knew time pass so slow" These are quotations from the album, and there's one more important, "Dress in white", says an old birthday party invitation card - this is how the album starts with the beautiful song Being boring, which PSB says about: "The song is about growing up - the ideals that you have when you're young and how they turn out." The song didn't really changed over the years, as you can see in the videos (I remember singing it with my friend to strangers on the Sziget festival, but PSB didn't give concert here that year).
After the melancholic but somehow hopeful intro, I hear This must be the place I waited years to leave's lamenting and calmly celebrational melodies, and the lower part of the far sky quite fast turns from grey to faint yellow. Then I reach To face the truth, which is similar to Only the wind - these two songs provides the most intimate parts of the album. But - PSB remains PSB - there are bigger hits on the album, too, like How can you expect to be taken seriously? touched by some rock, and So hard. Ending with the purely honest and - I think - well-known feelings for everyone, Jealousy, which gives a celebrational close to the album.
I have this cd in Further listening version which means double cd, the original album + an extra disc containing longer or other versions of songs and songs which were made around that time, but were previously unreleased. Aimless days... Behaviour. And a reminder: She was never bored because she was never boring.
Popular jazz may not be the topic where you have seen Pharoah Sanders' name, he made music in other "spheres": the spheres of Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, and others.
Thembi is an album with many colours and desires to show things from this world, things which are hidden or things simply from nature - expressing them in its pure reality and sometimes in a wild, almost animalistic way. As we can read on the inner cover:
This album is dedicated to, and named after, Thembi Sanders. Thembi is an abbreviation of Nomathemba, which is an African Xhosa name, meaning hope, faith and love. Thembi is all hope, faith and love to Pharoah Sanders.
The album starts with the soft-sounding, pulsating Astral traveling, a piece by Lonnie Liston Smith (he also has an album titled Astral traveling, but now in this blog you can read a review about the album Renaissance). As Sanders's melody comes in, we can feel its ancient meaning, and some kind of piece in it. Its ambient, echoing atmosphere suddenly breaks when the second track opens: Red, black & green. Now it's something which is hard to write about. The completely free, vivid and harassed starting can be felt as the forces of the universe may struggle with each other, or all of the little movements of it become quickly loud. These hoarse brass sounds and huge drums later change: the chaos declines and something evolves out from it. It comes from behind it, under it or just one little melody gets the main role: the world shows some sort of system, piece and harmony. The music becomes a flowing journey amongst all of the emotions in the universe, amongst three colours which maybe describe everything: red, black & green. This song in music has an important meaning for me. As we go on, we mee the lighter Thembi with its cool rhythm and Sanders' fine melody again. But the album still keeps more secrets: Love, a bass solo by Cecil McBee, which is also a notable point on this album. The melody is slightly painful and lamenting, but rather woolgathering - I love when in a jazz song the other musicians get silent and one gets the main role and play a solo: then he uses his instrument in other way and shows its other abilities, makes experiments with it. Cecil McBee makes interesting slides and sometimes he let the bass' strings twang. At the end he changes to bow and the music leads through the last two tracks which make a nice frame on this album, it starts with a similar melody to Astral traveling. As we reach the end, everything becomes really vivid and animalistic, we can hear noises similar to nature's own noises which increase the character of this special atmosphere.
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.
5 minutes before lying down... just enough time to discover something new from this world. This is a blog of music reviews and commendatories. Amongst the labels you find mostly record labels, genres and there are some posts which match to one of the seasons - these are the labels which start with the word "season". I won't help you in downloading.
Followers
Choose a season
There are music of course which can be connected not only to one, but two adjacent seasons, and music which is "out of these categories". This classification is mostly based on my mind, my experiences, lyrics and song titles.
THE CALENDAR is a long project by me: a 365 day - 365 album review calendar where every day has an album to listen to. It will be ready in a few years' time. Until that time I make year-calendars. The first one is coming at the end of February, 2010.
Music is a very elusive media, which goes around you, above you, and under you. First you get to know it by hearing, you just draw to it. This meeting is very pleasant, then you'll live your whole life by chasing the melody. Soometimes you think you've just got it, you reach out your hands, but you only grab a little part of it. The others hear it, and say: Yes, this is the end. Well, you know, this is the end for sure, but not the total end. So you continue it, because you want more of this thing. So you chase the melody again. You lie down and wake up with it. You're always on the track of something.
About music (Kraftwerk)
- What kind of music do you hear? - We hear only Sounds.
About music (John Coltrane)
I would like to bring to people something like happiness. I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I'd like to play a certain song and he will be cured; when he'd be broke, I'd bring out a different song and immediately he'd receive all the money he needed.
5MBLD's top5 jazz standards
1. Summertime
2. Good morning heartache
3. Autumn leaves
4. Autumn in New York
5. Lil' darlin'
