Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Great Live: Phoenix Live. 30 Days Ago
Great live, indeed.
Sometimes one can be extremely lucky when it comes to buying records. In around 2006 I had this kind of look. I was a avid Phoenix fan all ready and outside a record shop, in the very cheep cd-s section; about 300 copies of a Phoenix live album that I hadn't even heard about. Price: 20 kr (About 2£). Of course I bought it, thinking that it had to be quite good, since it's a good band and after all it only costed 20 kr.
I went home, put it into my CD player and by golly! Firstly, a few of the songs are recorded in Oslo at Rockefeller, secondly it has turned out to be probably my favourite live albums of all time. It is tight, entertaining, and brilliant and you can feel the intensity of the crowd and what an amazing experience and energy the band is sending out. Makes me want to headband next to the stereo. They are playing, and it's beautiful. I saw them live a few years later, and it was exactly as brilliant if not even greater. Class, first-class.
Listen to it on Spotify
Friday, 2 December 2011
Musical Memories: The Shangri-Las
When I grew up, my parents bought this amazing collection of double LPs of the history of rock'n'roll. We are talking 50 double albums here. It was brilliant to grow up with. I started with listening to a lot of the 60's pop up until I was about 10-12 and then progressed into the more gloomier part of the collection. One of the tracks that really caught my eye was Remember (walking in the sand) by The Shangri Las. And as time has progressed I have grown to love them more and more. They are the backstreet, crazy, raw, ruff and tuff version of The Supremes.
The fantastic changes in rhythm and arrangements and the feel of the thing really does it for me... It's so lovely gloomy, sad, desperate and melancholic, but at the same time the kind of melancholy that you just want to enjoy and soak in. You really feel for the poor gal and her hopeless destiny.
The most famous song is without a doubt The Leader of The Pack, and again there is the classic story about a bad boy, a good girl gone bad and her family. It's never been my favourite, but is a great pop tune.
A few years back I found a even sadder song by them: I Can Never Go Home Anymore, about a teenage girl who leaves her mother for a boy and never can go home. "Life is so lonely, like a child without a toy, and then a miracle and then - a boy". The storytelling of this songs is like any sad classic story we have heard in gypsy songs and similar.
And then the fantastic Past, Present and Future that has none other than a spoof of Beethovens moonlight sonata in the background. That's should say something about drama and gloom!
The fantastic changes in rhythm and arrangements and the feel of the thing really does it for me... It's so lovely gloomy, sad, desperate and melancholic, but at the same time the kind of melancholy that you just want to enjoy and soak in. You really feel for the poor gal and her hopeless destiny.
The most famous song is without a doubt The Leader of The Pack, and again there is the classic story about a bad boy, a good girl gone bad and her family. It's never been my favourite, but is a great pop tune.
A few years back I found a even sadder song by them: I Can Never Go Home Anymore, about a teenage girl who leaves her mother for a boy and never can go home. "Life is so lonely, like a child without a toy, and then a miracle and then - a boy". The storytelling of this songs is like any sad classic story we have heard in gypsy songs and similar.
And then the fantastic Past, Present and Future that has none other than a spoof of Beethovens moonlight sonata in the background. That's should say something about drama and gloom!
Thursday, 24 November 2011
Guest Blog: Maarten Boos on Colin Stetson
I have always had an idea that I would like to have guest bloggers on my blog at this point. So here is the first one Maarten Boos talks about Colin Stetson, one of the most exciting musicians I have seen in a long while too. Enjoy!
Music from composition, composition from instrumentation. This simple line of thought tells an essential truth about the solo artist that cannot be ignored. Music takes up actual, volumetric space, wherever it takes place. The fewer people behind it, the greater the amount of skill required to fill it up. A musician who manages to take a single instrument and somehow makes it fill up this void with full, complete composition, possess true musical genius.
I first heard of bass saxophone player Colin Stetson while reading up on Bell Orchestre, a six-piece instrumental band from Montreal, several years ago. It was a particularly memorable phase of the past decade during which I came to realize most of my play lists were near entirely Canadian. Bell Orchestre was, at the time, a purely instrumental side project of Arcade Fire. Colin Stetson has in fact played in both bands. His track record includes a series of impressive collaborations with various artists, including musical dramatist Tom Waits and new wave pioneer David Byrn.
Weapons of choice? Saxophones, ever increasing in size and gravitas, strewn with arrangements of microphones that record everything from the clapping of valves and the beat of his fingers to the multitude of sounds he makes with his throat and mouth. These sounds are lost in any type of conventional recording and can really only be heard live.
Colin scavenges sound, then amplifies and mixes it into arrangements that are beyond anything currently available on recording. The result is complete, full composition, including an identifiable bass line, percussion, melody and more. So much more. Simply put, if you are listening to his music and happen to be unaware of what's going on, you are very unlikely to assume all of these sounds originate from a single bass saxophone, recorded without looping in a single take.
The year of 2008 marked Colin Stetson's first album of a planned trilogy, New History Warfare. It has overseen the maturation of his distinct musical style. New History Warfare, Volume 2: Judges released this earlier year has reaped the fruits of that process. There is a strong sense of interconnectivity and story present in this album. Like the first part of his trilogy, several tracks include sections of speech, this time from performance artist, musician and vocalist Laurie Anderson. While speech may come off as a strange choice for a solo album, it works out beautifully.
New History Warfare literally speaks in volumes and I will definitely
be looking forward hear to the final one.
Maarten on twitter
Music from composition, composition from instrumentation. This simple line of thought tells an essential truth about the solo artist that cannot be ignored. Music takes up actual, volumetric space, wherever it takes place. The fewer people behind it, the greater the amount of skill required to fill it up. A musician who manages to take a single instrument and somehow makes it fill up this void with full, complete composition, possess true musical genius.
I first heard of bass saxophone player Colin Stetson while reading up on Bell Orchestre, a six-piece instrumental band from Montreal, several years ago. It was a particularly memorable phase of the past decade during which I came to realize most of my play lists were near entirely Canadian. Bell Orchestre was, at the time, a purely instrumental side project of Arcade Fire. Colin Stetson has in fact played in both bands. His track record includes a series of impressive collaborations with various artists, including musical dramatist Tom Waits and new wave pioneer David Byrn.
Weapons of choice? Saxophones, ever increasing in size and gravitas, strewn with arrangements of microphones that record everything from the clapping of valves and the beat of his fingers to the multitude of sounds he makes with his throat and mouth. These sounds are lost in any type of conventional recording and can really only be heard live.
Colin scavenges sound, then amplifies and mixes it into arrangements that are beyond anything currently available on recording. The result is complete, full composition, including an identifiable bass line, percussion, melody and more. So much more. Simply put, if you are listening to his music and happen to be unaware of what's going on, you are very unlikely to assume all of these sounds originate from a single bass saxophone, recorded without looping in a single take.
The year of 2008 marked Colin Stetson's first album of a planned trilogy, New History Warfare. It has overseen the maturation of his distinct musical style. New History Warfare, Volume 2: Judges released this earlier year has reaped the fruits of that process. There is a strong sense of interconnectivity and story present in this album. Like the first part of his trilogy, several tracks include sections of speech, this time from performance artist, musician and vocalist Laurie Anderson. While speech may come off as a strange choice for a solo album, it works out beautifully.
New History Warfare literally speaks in volumes and I will definitely
be looking forward hear to the final one.
Maarten on twitter
2
kommentarer
Etiketter:
Arcade Fire,
Colin Stetson,
David Byrn,
Laurie Anderson,
saxophone,
Tom Waits
Etiketter:
Arcade Fire,
Colin Stetson,
David Byrn,
Laurie Anderson,
saxophone,
Tom Waits
Thursday, 17 November 2011
New music: Little Fish
Sometimes music really can grab you, and I have always loved music that sounds like it is played by people who play like their life depend upon it. Little Fish is like that. I was touched from the first moment as the song came through on Last.fm. It made me go, what's this? And that doesn't happen to often. I really liked her voice, but at the same time for some reason felt a bit sceptical. But then I found a link to their YouTube page, and OH MY what a front woman Julia Sophie Heslop is. She has fusioned PJ Harvey, Nina Person and Skin into one. This is music that is dead or alive, that make you run around just scream along with the lyrics because http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifof her intensity comes through so strongly. So.. Enjoy! And oh! Who doesn't like a girl that can play guitar well too? Ha?
Official Homepage
Official Homepage
Monday, 14 November 2011
Great covers: Bear McCreary - Battlestar Galactica
And now, just a quick blog post from in between exam writing! My boyfriend found this and it's just brilliant for Battlestar Galactica fans and accordion fans alike :) Enjoy, people! :)
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