Wyatters delights (what are you listening to?)

[VERNIXX]

Listening to SHYLOCK-Gialourges


A fine symphonic French prog masterpiece.

[Max_Gate]

A Saturday so gusty that it causes sparrows to shelter in large macrocarpas has prompted me to seek out stillness in motion, and to spin my two ECM LPs by Egberto Gismonti: 'Danca Das Cabecas' (1977) and 'Solo' (1979). Both are easy on the ear, even delicate, yet they're more substantial than a first hearing suggests. They have the sweetness of much Brazilian music - but Gismonti avoids the cloying and the sentimental.

Here's a career overview:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egberto_Gismonti

[iBee]

It has been a Slapp Happy week this week.
- Moon Lovers Nights (a mix of 2 live gigs in Tokyo recorded in 2000, Blegvad humors the japanese audience with his imperturbable nonchalance)
- Ultra Rare Trax (a bunch of tasteful rarities like the City Preachers album. Fun!)
- Camera (an opera for a tv show: always rated poorly by critics... their loss: this album is quite a gem)
- Ça Va (a very decent album even if i think the production is a bit too clean. "Scarred for Life" is like the perfect single, though. Would have reach No.1 in the charts of a better world)
I wish Slapp Happy could record again. It's such an impredictable band. Always full of surprises...

[iBee]

I've been playing Joanna Newsom's Ys all week end. After like 10 play i'm only beginning to embrace the whole thing. Damn this record is rich! I remember it took me around the same amount of plays to "get" Rock Bottom. Not to say that both records are alike but they are definitively both unique.

The nativity revisited:
The virgin Mary = Joanna
The Magi = Albini, Parks, O'Rourke
Baby Jesus = Ys

Hallelujah!

[iBee]

That's funny!

From an interview with Joanna Newsom and Sean O'Hagan:

I tell her that, in some way that I can't quite explain, Ys puts me in mind of Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom, another album about loss and survival. She suddenly perks up. "Oh, that's so good that you said that. I was listening to that record and to a lot of music by Henry Cow, too. I like the feel of those records, the tone, the submerged feel."

[Max_Gate]

Chris Whitley & Jeff Lang: 'Dislocation Blues'

The late Chris Whitley is one of my main men. I'm not a completist and usually have representative albums rather than the entire output of whomever - yet I have every album that elegant ghost released. I first heard his debut single 'Big Sky Country' in a makeshift crib outside Palmerston North. Both the tin-shed and that tin-pot town were threatening to lift off into the big sky that Whitley's voice seemed to breathe effortlessly. His singing and guitarwork mixed a whisper with a whirlwind, never more so than in the undervalued 'Din of Ecstasy', the furious miscellany that is 'Terra Incognita', the exquisitely stripped 'Hotel Vast Horizon', and the flawless glass that is 'Soft Dangerous Shores'.

If the Australian Jeff Lang is new to me he is also news in the best sense of the term. His guitar technique is so developed that it ceases to intrude, acting instead as a conduit through to the music. I write 'conduit' but there is no sense of distance; the song is simply 'there' and seems to have been so for an age. It is rust-red wonderful yet strawberry-fresh. Stuff to run your finger and tongue over. Music to burn your ears.

[theallgolden]

joanna newsom's album 'YS' is great. you are absoultely right, ibee. but i could not find a correlation to rock bottom until now. to me it is just like a new van dyke parks album. his arrangements are simply beautiful. what i further really like is the possibility to sing-a-long and whistle to some parts of their music like you whistle to a (charts-)hit (or similar). simply great!

max, thanks for yr. recommendation of chris whitley. i noticed
his name sometimes, but never listened to his music. your posting made me curious and i immediately listened to some snippets on amazon and read the entry at the all music guide. yes, it seems that his music fits perfect to my this years preferences. and it seems that his album she made in dresden, germany are the perfect one for me, but i am unsure with which one i should try to start: hotel vast horizon, weed or war crime blues. which one recommend you, max?

[theallgolden]

ah, forget to mention to what i listen now: the expanded and remastered version of yes' the yes album.  

[Max_Gate]

max, thanks for yr. recommendation of chris whitley. i noticed
his name sometimes, but never listened to his music. your posting made me curious and i immediately listened to some snippets on amazon and read the entry at the all music guide. yes, it seems that his music fits perfect to my this years preferences. and it seems that his album she made in dresden, germany are the perfect one for me, but i am unsure with which one i should try to start: hotel vast horizon, weed or war crime blues. which one recommend you, max?

My favourite of these albums is 'Hotel Vast Horizon' - but it is the most understated of the three and operates more as a suite (each song has a similar tempo and build) than the arguably better and certainly more diverse 'War Crime Blues', which is a spectacular example of how to use the National Guitar without making it sound like a stringed trash-can (and contains a hypnotic cover of The Clash song 'The Call Up'). 'Weed' is more transient; I would not start with it.

If you value the sonic equivalent of drinking from a clay jug, go for 'War Crime Blues'; if you want something more studied then 'Hotel Vast Horizon' is like drinking from white china.

[But my favourite albums by Chris are 'Terra Incognita' and 'Soft Dangerous Shores'. If I was freely recommending an album from his back catalogue then I would suggest the latter, which was his last studio album.]

[Max_Gate]

Supergrass: In It for the Money

The deft retro soundscape of this band delights me, however the pleasure is sentimental rather than musical.

It's as if my main source of transport is still bicycle and, one midsummer-madness Saturday, I've peddled against a Christchurch nor-wester (nearly catching my new flares in the chain) to my best friend's flat. Yes, we prop those deadly sash-windows open with his PYE speakers so that we can get smashed on the verandah: "Sun hits the sky...."

In this album the memory of an 'endless summer' that ended all too soon blends with the promise of next year. It feels like a tonic for middle-aged longeurs yet it really intensifies them: "I want to live...."

[Max_Gate]

Blind Melon: 'Blind Melon', 'Soup', 'Nico'

Early this November, while fireworking in Auckland (next time I promise to demolish the Sky Tower), I took time out to wander through Real Groovy Records. 'No Rain' was playing in the store; I recalled it fondly (along with the girl I was 'getting acquainted with' when I first heard it) so I picked up a copy of the eponymous debut from 1992. If only I could pick up that girl again - and as easily.

This band is an unlikely long-distance athlete; it goes the distance without losing form. There are experimental flourishes that enliven rather than irritate, intelligent lyrics from a songwriter who wasn't intelligent enough to stay away from hard drugs, and memorable hooks from the hooked.

[Brine]

Built to Spill- You in Reverse
Fripp & Eno- The Cotswold Gnomes
The Beach Boys- Pet Sounds Sessions (Disc 1)
Brian Wilson- Smile
Neil Young- Featuring (Disc 2)

Best to all in 2007!

Brine

[Jaakko]

Frank Zappa
- Trance-Fusion
- MOFO
Louis Moholo
- Freedom Tour
Slapp Happy
- BBC 74 & Reunion 83 (bootleg)
Soft Heap
- Soft Heap
Naked City
- Live at the knitting factory vol 1
Pere Ubu
- Why I hate women
Electic Masada

Jaakko

[greystone]

Hello this is my first posting. Currently I'm listening to Burlesque by Bellowhead (West Park music 2006) which I recommend highly.
Also Tunng's Comments of the Inner Chorus (Full Time Hobby 2006) which I think has a quirky charm.
My most played music of 2006 was undoubtedly the beautiful In the Heart of the Moon by Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate (World Circuit 2005)  I'd also recommend the late Ali Farka Toure's last recording -Savane (also World Circuit 2006).

[greystone]

And as a postscript to my last posting can I recommend BBC radio 3's Late Junction for new and out of the way music-back on 8th January and also available online