Mellow Sunday listening for your pleasure.
Belgian guitarist Johan Troch has released an elegant new album which strides somewhere between a Steve Roach-influenced ambient style, a sublime and relaxed Bill Frisell, and a warm, loungy vibe.
I really enjoy how relaxed this album is. Go through this track by track. It’s sumptuous.
Mongolia isn’t a place one thinks of when collectors talk about psychedelic music, but that’s exactly what Soyol Erdene, Mongolia’s cultural jewel (that’s what the name translates into) provide. They mix a light psychedelic sound with elements of Merseybeat and folk rock. A strange, but very satisfying, blend of genres.
A very pleasant surprise came into my inbox today. From Azu Tiwaline’s Bandcamp site:
Azu Tiwaline : It’s a new name for a new spirit. The one of a producer willing to find a new sound in her origins which take root in the Sahara and El Djerid region in the south of Tunisia. A sound from the desert, drawing on berberian and saharan transe music that connects human beings with Nature.
Peculiar translations and spellings aside, this album managed to hold my attention the whole way through. Thanks to being better connected to the world, we are beginning to hear more and more musicians come out of Tunisia and the Maghreb who are of an astounding quality. This is 21st Century Berber Music mixes techno, dub, and native Saharan rhythms. Fourth World music, updated.
I’ve been in a bit of an oldies mood, so I went through a stash of old links, and I came across this gem of girl-groups, many of whom you know intimately. Such names as Etta James, The Marvelettes and Mary Wells are featured.
A great deal of praise should be showered upon Fidelity Masters for the excellent remastering job they did on this and many other compilations.
Lauri-Dag Tüür is a composer from Estonia, a country whom I have a deep love for and who have given presented two equally fine composers whom I admire (Arvo Pärt and Erkki-Sven Tüür).
Lauri-Dag’s work compares favorably to these legends, as Polar Night Jet reminds me of works by a more freeform Popol Vuh, Paul Schütze or Steve Roach, yet with an aura of a field recording about it. The percussion work is very engaging, so ambient it isn’t – it hooked me about 5 minutes into the release.
According to the composer, the three pieces should be perceived as one symphony. I concur. Everything flows together naturally. One of the best albums I’ve heard in a while.
Duke Ellington, Charlie Mingus, Max Roach-Money Jungle. Label: Blue Note Records. On Monday, September the ‘17th’ 1962, bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Max Roach made their way to Sound Makers Studio, in New York. The two friends were en route to a session where they would record an album with one of the giants of […]
via DUKE ELLINGTON, CHARLIE MINGUS, MAX ROACH-MONEY JUNGLE. — dereksmusicblog
This has to be one of the most poorly tagged albums I have ever encountered on Bandcamp, and I’m happy for it. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I first played Quick Dreams, a release by Georgian composer Gacha Bakradze, but I knew about 20 second into it that it wasn’t going to be techno or house. It’s definitely an ambient record, and quite a shimmery and pretty one as well, but you find acoustic guitar, rock-ish structures, and a very calm, warm air around this disc.
Ambient as a cool breeze meeting a calming shopping experience. Oxymoronic, I know, but humor me a bit.
This description fits this release from Ataşehir (an alias of the ever-wonderful project and friend to this blog, Sumatran Black). AVM in a Turkish acronym for alışveriş merkezi, which translates into supermarket or shopping mall, though I might be mistaken. There is a nearly vaporwave aesthetic to their music in this release. It’s ambient, of course, but spiced with a touch of 80s or 90s cheese, the sort you may have encountered wandering in a mall 30 or 40 years ago. Modern Muzak. The music of my youth spent in elevators, escalators and fast food courts. Very pleasant, indeed.
I’ve quite enjoyed releases from Forbidden Place Records, as I’ve come to enjoy stoner rock and more advanced and interesting forms of metal, a genre I couldn’t stand some years ago. This Is Wreckage offer a rather brutal, bass-driven album which would remind a listener of groups like Pailhead (the collaboration between Ministry and Fugazi/Minor Threat lead singer Ian Mackaye) and the legendary Helmet, though more raw in sound and feel.
RRUFF are a band based in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Though they are tagged as “dungeon-synth,” there is a dark, rather pleasant, atmospheric, air about this two-track album. The work seems to come from a performance-oriented project focused on the ideas of Joan Fontcuberta regarding the state of photography and image.
From the band’s Bandcamp page:
Today photographs have ceased to be a memory to be ephemeral. The massification of photography has led us to a new situation in which it is not so important to own as to share. We live or perceive through the screens, which, like the shadows of Plato, are now our access to reality.
Perhaps it is because she was on my mind today, but the second track reminds me of American composer Pauline Oliveros, of blessed memory. RRUFF are in good company.
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