Saw this cracking new Jazz singer at The Voodoo Lounge last night. She was knocked over by a Jeep a couple of years ago which has affected both her sight and her ability to walk, vbut this just addsan air of mystique to her personality.
She performed a very intimate (short) set with her band consisting of trumpet, drums and bass under two fixed red spots which gave it a really old fashioned Jazzy feel. all it needed was for everyone in the audience to be smoking and we’d have been transported to a New York Basement Bar circa 1956.
Anyway, a superb singer that had the fortune not to have been beaten by the ugly stick.
To be honest I thought the choice of live songs meant she was better live than she is on her album; Worriesome Heart.
Kenneth Fowler pointed me in this direction via his blog. It’s a really funny set of Flickr ‘artworks’ on boyshapedbox’s Flickr sirte and turns well known songs, like this one, into graphs, Pie charts and the likes. Hugely clever and rather amusing. Well done Boyshapedbox. Check it out by clicking on the image. It’ll take you straight through to his Flickr site.
Whoa. Stop right there. What the fuck is this? I’ll tell you what it is - it’s a beast. The most finely concieved, played and produced African album I have ever heard.
It is an absolutely stunning mashup of tribal rythm from Mali an extended family of Saharan nomads who are quite unlike anything you’ve ever seen or heard in your life.
Count yoursef blessed that you have stumbled upon this post because the track I have for you, the first from their third album, is an absolute stonewall classic. This stuff takes your breath away and played back to back with The Very Best of Ethiopiques it shows the quality of music coming out of Northern Africa is nothing short of sublime
Please do yourself a favour. Buy this record. And Pick up The Very Best of Ethiopiques while you’re at it.
The new Portishead album has been ten years in the making. I read a review that said it was “nice background listening”. It may have been written by a monkey stabbing randomly at keys until this particular sentence appeared because nothing could be further from the truth; as this track demonstrates.
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This, the fourth on the album, is the best song they have ever written. It is a thing of intense beauty.
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Throughout the record Beth Gibbons’ vocals are used sparingly above an electronic symphony. Cool, funky, orchestral but all synth driven with utterly astounding drumming. This is so good that I thought I was going to cry just listening to it on the train home from Glasgow on Thursday night.
I met Jim Sutherland last week at a Guardian event in Edinburgh. A really interesting and modest guy with a great vision for this orchestra.
I particularly liked the ideas of the four Hurdy Gurdies that feature in his orchestra.
He brought along a Japanese Saw player (Su-a Lee) who performed ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow on the saw’. Cracking and really beautiful.
You can hear some of the music on their myspace site here. I urge you to do so because it is stunning. Beautiful. Magical.
And this is what his myspace site says about the orchestra.
La Banda Europa is an extraordinary 35 piece band of virtuoso musicians assembled from some of the finest musicians across Europe
“The Hurdy Gurdies are amazing to look at, like Elizabethan ships, with a sound somewhere between the violin and the bagpipes. The nykelharpas are similar, having a strange, other-worldly sound to them.”
In 2006, composer, Jim Sutherland was awarded the Creative Scotland Prize for artists of distinction It is one of the richest arts awards to an individual in Europe….. The Award allowed him time to develop his ideas for an orchestra that could make a unique ’sound of Europe.
“All in all we’ve got some incredible musicians, some of the very best in the world on their particular instruments.”…… …..“The Armenians play an ancient instrument called the duduk made from the wood of the apricot tree and which sounds like a woman singing alto.”
The whole thing was initially Inspired by Jim’s score for the BAFTA and Brittish Comedy Award winning film Festival when they famously flew the Drambuie Pipe band over to Seville to record Jim’s score with La Banda Tres Caidas, an Eighty piece Semana Santa band.
“Instruments like the ancient Celtic carnyx will grab the eye – it’s the only one of its kind in the world and was reconstructed from one found in bogland in Scotland. It’s a bronze war horn which was 6ft long and held vertically above the player’s head.”
Jim initially put the orchestra together to perform his score for ‘Before the Wolf’, a theatrically presented outdoor production. Niel Butler of UZ events raised the funds and facilitated the shows. These first performances were very successful and have lead to enquiries from event organisers and festivals throughout Europe.
“Bagpipes of 5 countries, Swedish nyckelharpas, , Armenian duduks, Turkish drums, trumpeters from Scotland and Serbia……..Many of the players in the Banda Europa are exciting composers in their own right.”.
Sometimes a record comes along that literally blows your mind.
This is it.
It’s a collection of the Ethiopian club music scene of Addis Ababa circa 1968 - 74. And it’s unique, hypnotic, sexy, trance-like because the rythms are so un-western. Yet it adopts western influences of jazz and soul and meshes them with military precision (many of the artists are from the Ethiopian army bands) and African mystery.
It is actually, to die for. OK, some tracks fail to quite mesh with my westernised ear - but not many.
Edwyn’s recuperation continues at a remarkable level and I read in the paper today that he is to play Glastonbury. Coincidentally, can you believe how chuffed I was that a post what I wrote in December last year was stumbled upon by his amazing wife Grace and even merited her comments via my bro-in law Alan McBlane?
Och I know my love of Donald Fagen is not widely shared but I stumbled upon this after a long night on the keyboards. It is not a great video. In fact it is fairly pish. But what a great song. The older I get the further it creeps up my top 100. It’s well into the top ten now.
Jeana discovers a new band and the Altzheimers doesn’t kick in.
She remembers their name!
They are Fleet Foxes and they were (apparently) the darlings of SXSW this year. They remind me a little of Midlake which is probobaly why they are on the fantabulous Bella Union Records label.
Enjoy…
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It also explains why they do Fleetwood Mac covers.
Nick Cave is one of the few artists that gets better with age. He was a kind of tiresome punk, but in the last 10 years his music has gone from good to sublime.
The Lyre of Orphee was quite simply magnificent and the particularly badly designed sleeve (in contrast to the aforementioned) of Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (C’mon man how many !!!’s does a quality writer need?) does not, in any way, prepare one for the solid gold that lies within.
This record rocks.
No, it rock and rolls.
It is wondrous.
Every track is totally different in construction, style, sound, arrangement and effect. But held together with Cave’s growling vocals and incredible lyrics.
The title track is the pick of the bunch. But not by much. It is a modern day take on the parable of Lazarus, or Larry as Nick fondly refers to him - in a modern US setting of course
Larry has found his moment of fame, having been, against his wishes, dug up and ressurected - and plainly he doesn’t like it, becoming in time a drunk, a junky and a drop out - just like all the rest of the unnamed ressurectionists.
It is a quite breathtaking piece of writing, but in addition it comes with a grinding bassline, a brilliant melody (in a Nick Cave sort of way) and a stomping rythm. And you know what? EVERY single song that follows perms one or more of the above qualities.
This is a very good record indeed and a certainty for my best of the year shortlist.
This doesn’t quite come off. I think Candie is a bit overwhelmed by it all. (Well, she didn’t spend 5 years being groomed for this sort of thing at Brats School after all.)
It does show her potential to be as big as I think she should be. It’s a far cry from when I saw her at Cabaret Voltaire last August, that’s for sure.
This doesn’t quite come off either but, by all accounts, it kicks Lilly Allan’s ass. Here she’s duetting with Ricky of the Kaiser Chiefs on Oh My God.
This, on the other hand, is class. An acoustic version of arguably her best song about being stuck with a crap boyfriend.
I’m often accused of favouring female singer songwriters in my year end CD’s, as if this was something to be criticised. And I found it amusing when my son’s mate declared emphatically that “Females can’t sing.” This weeks album charts seem to suggest that I am not alone in favouring the female voice as, in the top twenty you’ll find Duffy (no 1 for two weeks so far) Amy Wino, Amy MacDonald, Kylie, Rihanna, Leonna Lewis, Goldfrapp, Adele and Alicia keys.
I’ve reviewed both Amy McDonald and Adele elsewhere and both are outstanding records. The Wino can carry a tune too I have to admit and the more I listen to Back to Black the more I like it.
But Duffy. That’s an interesting one. (Actually, I lied - there’s bugger all interesting about it.)
I bought it last week, kind of excited by the big PR machine behind it from Rough Trade Records - never have they hyped an artist so much in their history. Her set on Jools was fairly good too and both Mercy and Rockferry were decent songs (although naggingly missing a certain something - if Candi Payne had sung either of them I suspect both would have been better).
The album though. That’s a different kettle of fish.
It’s poor. Really poor. Totally overhyped, dreary, unimaginative monotonous and unoriginal. It’s simply regurgitated sub- Dusty 60’s fodder. How Brett Butler (Suede) could put his name, with such enthusiasm to it is anybody’s guess. It’s totally manufactured pap.
Avoid at all costs.
On a brighter note though. Another new female singer songwriter is emerging. A cross between Marina-Topley-Bird (her from Tricky) and Amy Wino this particular song is very out there on Radio 2 and really is very good. I think you’ll be hearing a lot more about Gabriella Chilmi.
By now, dear reader you will have worked out that I like the odd song. You’ll know that I am a music enthusiast and you’ll be aware that I do not hold back in the superlatives department.
It came to my attention however that I have never blogged and shared with you my love for Penguin Cafe Orchestra. The prompt came from a member of the South Queensferry Arts Festival committee of which I am chairman. (How esteemed I must be; you must think.)
Anyway, at home alone tonight and watching dull football I thought I’d trawl youtube for some PCO stuff.
I wasn’t disappointed.
Now, let me drool.
I love PCO.
Thinking about my relationship with them it may outstrip any other band or performer I love: The Clash, The Cure, The Stranglers, Belle and Sebastian, New Order, Aimee Mann, Tom Waits - all have, at times, had profound effects on me and most are very long term - but for some reason PCO are more visceral, more important.
Perhaps it’s because their leader Simon Jeffes died so young (of a brain tumour before he was 50) and out of respect they were shelved (until recently).
Perhaps it is because they make the most beautiful music ever. The aforementioned bands might not merit descriptors that could be widely aknowledged as beautiful.
I believe PCO can.
Yes, some people say to me “get that shite off”.
I pity them.
PCO is a profound and beautiful musical experience. The PCO may be the greatest thing ever to happen to music.
But you can be the judge of that.
This particular tune (they only ever did one “song” on their first album) is called Music for a Lost Harmonium and features a harmonium.
Uncommon, lilting, infectious. I may love the Harmonium as much as I love PCO.
