Monday's Long Song

 

In 1998 Scottish electronic duo Boards Of Canada released their debut album Music Has The Right To Children, an epic album in electronic music. This album was one of those why electronic music had a massive influence to my musical taste. The brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin Sandison fascinated me with their use of analogue equipment, samples and often hip-hop influenced grooves. Happy Cycling is the last song on the album but this version is recorded during a session for John Peel and shows how beautiful this music can be.

Boards Of Canada - Happy Cycling

Loading

 

James Blake is a British singer/songwriter crossing many borders to popular music. So he tried to involve hip-hop and dance elements into his pop songs. He got many critical acclaim for those experiments but less of them touched me. A few weeks ago he released his latest album and Loading is the second single from this album and he is going back to his dancefloor roots. On this song he uses a dubstep rhythm patters and cascading synths and shows that a melancholic mood could work on this sound. Not the best song this year but one that grows the more you listen to it.

Nostalgic Samples

 

Last week youtube recommended a video I have really forgotten. Back in 1997 Janet Jackson released Got 'til It's Gone with a massive support by A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip. I never have been a huge fan of Jackson but this song is a masterpiece not only because she used a sample of Joni Mitchel's Big Yellow Taxi that worked very well in a hip-hop and jazzy context. In these days music videos very very important and I know less videos that has this kind of attitude of a peaceful black community. Maybe it will be the start of a new series

Monday's Long Song

 

The recent days I got the news that The Who released Who's Next | Life House as a 10-CD-box after more than 50 years of it's original release. Townshend describes Life House in his introduction to the new editions as a portentous polemic about the coming of a nation beaten down by climate issues an pollution. He then explains how an opportunist and autocratic government enforce a national lock-down in which every person is hooked up to an entertainment grip.. Music itself becomes an inconvenient diversion, a very real distraction to the subjugation of the population in suits. I didn't listen to these songs in that context but now I can see his intention in various songs. Anyway, Who's Next is the last great album they made. Everything else later didn't fit to my musical taste any more, although it wasn't worse. Listening to the demo of Baba O'Riley shows once again Pete's ability of songwriting and I ask myself why I should have to wait for decades to listen to this version. But better late than never.

Dark Mambo

 

Three years ago Velvet Desert Music Vol. 2 was on heavy rotation since the date of it's release. Now Cologne's finest record label for new electronic music announced that Vol. 3 will be released in almost four weeks. One of the reasons why I liked to hear the previous album again and again is that over the full length of the double album, a sound was generated that made me dream of width. The combination of cinematic Morricone based western music, ambient and psychedelic was the perfect sound for late evening. Now the mastermind Jörg Burger and his crew are back with a new album and new artists hopefully doing an excellent job once again. The only song that is able to be heard in advance is Dark Mambo by French guitarist Seb Martel. In his music you can find elements of chansons and French pop as well as world music. Listening to this song I thought Steely Dan met Brazil musicians. This song with it's saxophone over tribal rhythm and Brazil pop is one the best ones out this year. If the rest of the album is similar to this it will be worth to appear in my years end list.

Walking With Jesus

 

                                        

Pete Kember and Jason Pierce formed in the early 80's Spacemen 3 and brought back (neo-)psychedelia to our ears. Starting on their first album with covers by 13th Floor Elevators, The Stooges and Juicy Lucy to find their own psychedelia road on their second album The Perfect Prescription in 1987. They said about their concept album it is "a vision of a drug trip from inception to its blasted conclusion, highs and lows fully intact.". This is a very good description how to describe their sound. Trained by psychedelic heroes from the past both transformed it in a unique sound other bands live on this sound until today. Songs between Walking With Jesus a song with two chords and almost close to a perfect song and Take Me To The Other Side a psychedelic song starting slowly and turning to a feedback orgy. Probably one of the best second albums ever.

Spacemen 3 - Walking With Jesus

Monday's Long Song

 

Since ages I love the music Van Morrison gave us and I thought he can never do anything wrong. Of course, he never made a dull album since ages but my concern to his new music stopped somewhere in the late 80's. When I talk with friends about him and his music many turned of when he released Common One in 1980. Of course he moved away from his basics and turned more and more into a brass based version of soul. Friends told me that he drifted into money and commerce and left his soul behind. I can't agree to them because Common One and Scandinavia were true highlights in his career. Summertime In England has much more soul than most of the musicians in these days. These were good records to bypass the time until Dexy's will appear.

Van Morrison - Summertime In England 

In The Neighborhood

 

In The Neighborhood shuffled up during the last days on my mobile phone and made me listen to Tom Waits' second album Swordfishtrombones once again. Once again I couldn't believe that this record is 40 years old. I remember when I bought this record in autumn 1983 only because I enjoyed his ballad Jersey Girl on his album before. And I wasn't disappointed about Swordfishtrombones. It is an album that shows Tom's ability of storytelling in short songs. Mainly most of the songs are based on blues and rhythm and blues pattern and added with jazzy and piano moods. This was a highlight of his output and beaten by his next record Rain Dogs.

Tom Waits - In The Neighborhood

Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombone

Tom Waits - Franks Wild Years

Into The Sun

 

Fields Of Dream is a Birmingham based duo by producer Chris Kentrish and DJ Alan MacKenzie. They released during the last years several songs and EP's that were remarkable and mostly over the average limit of other releases. Now they released their new EP Keep Rolling, a hybrid of deep and acid house with a pumping rhythm and some echoed synths. The more I listen to it the more I like it. Stunning.

Jimmy Buffett 1946 - 2023

 

Today the s.ad news arrived that Jimmy Buffet died peaceful at the age of 76. He was well known for his song Margaritaville a country-pop song that made him famous in the late 90's celebrating the easy going life on the beach in Florida. I have to admit that I am not the one that was a huge fan of his easy listening sound but there is one song that an American friend introduced me to many years ago and a song I like to go back from time to time. He celebrated his easy life but in the real world he was a very clever businessman earning billions of dollars. But it doesn't matter if he was able to write songs like this.

RIP Jimmy.

Monday's Long Song

 

The resent days I came back to an album I almost have forgot during the last years. Herbert Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and a forming member of 60's folk-rock band Pentangle. He got well known in London as an acoustic guitarist and singer songwriter. I like some of his releases in the mid/late 70's because his gentle folk music and the way he played his acoustic guitar. His songs were fragile and reminds me to Nick Drake without vocals. 

Bert Jansch - Avocet

Y Llwynog

 

Tici Taci is a British record label and well known for their releases in electronic music. This label is at work since ten years and now they celebrate their anniversary with two albums containing stuff they released during these years. I discovered many artists in the last years and especially Duncan Gray and The Long Champs were featured on this pages. Y Llwynog is a song by The Long Champs released in 2016 and to be frankly new to me. As far as I know the title is welsh and means fox. And like a fox this song creeps into my ears. A fantastic Peter Hook-like bass line is the center of this song where harp and guitar appears to make this song unique. If you want more, you can get it here.

Hallogallo

Many of of the usual visitors of this little part of the internet know that I have a huge affection to Andy Bell and his output during the last years. I always thought nothing of his releases can surprise me but with the one he released during the week he made me smile. He went back to one of his and many others artists influences. He recorded a song by Neu! first released back centuries ago. Hallogallo is one of the most influential songs by German electronic pioneers and it works very well in this new outfit. Based on a remarkable theme Bell uses riffs and wha-wha sounds to transport krautrock into the 20s. Never thought that this could happen but it seems that this song is one of those that should appear on a years end list. Just beautiful.

You Remind Me Of You

 

Summer is gone and we have the meteorological autumn right now. I planed to feature some song with the name September in it's title but found nothing worth to be featured as September by Earth Wind And Fire. So I thought what kind of music could be right for the upcoming season and I remembered an artist that accompanied me during the last decades and one I come usually back to in the second half of the year. For those who didn't know him, Robin Hitchcock was the leading figure of the Soft Boys, a proto punk band of the late 70s who released with Underwater Moonlight the link between psychedelic folk and the upcoming new era of punk. During the decades since then he moved into a singer/songwriter genre and released a couple of great records. Many of them are worth to be listened but Luxor, released 20 years ago shows him at the peak of his career. An album filled with great songs and instrumentals that could warm you when it is cold and rainy outside.