Travis – Travis starts by dropping a Funky danceable groove, slightly Latin tinged. I’d say its coming from a dance perspective, DJ type of thing, but one that acts like a band. I think the complexity of the vocal parts reveals that. Pretty wild transition to something dreamy and pretty in the middle. The song is kind of music box-like. Sault – “W.A.L.”
Bart ran the Broad Street Run today, Nawi had family stuff and Matt was M.I.A. with a “Next time!” a few days later. A head to head duo Sesh.
We start with this cool song, which continues my dissection of the new /old elements of new music I’m hearing. I‘ve heard of this band, without having heard them before (at least not knowingly heard them before). My current thesis is new music features a lot of young minds who have grown up with digital studio production and therefore the conception is all naturally designed from that perspective. But they also access a huge collection of influential sound concepts that can be reproduced, or even sampled, and can sound both old and like their influences (in a different way than the way you sound when playing your instrument to sound like someone else, i.e. learned). It’s still all recycling, which all musicians do, but sometimes new music can feel sonically superficial, or inorganic, to me. Here I think I hear the layering elements in the production clearly. ALSO – there are a couple of “SAULT” bands, including a metal one.
Dan – Holger Czukay – “Persian Love” – This week I grabbed a bunch of “Looking for” list items and this Holger Czukay album, Movies, was an unknown to me, though I did read he was from Can, and this gem was from his first solo album after leaving that band. And what a weird, heavy on sound design, but fun listen. I had an enraged 9 year old become soothed when listening to this song on the way to being dropped off at theater camp and I’ve listened to it a bunch. The voice is sampled from a radio, though this is from ’79 so “Sampled” isn’t exactly the term for it. But he then plays this really remarkable, emotional, falsetto (for lack of a better term) guitar solo in accompaniment and it feels really joyful and spirited with the vocals. Really cool album
T2 – Charles Mingus – Black Saint & the Sinner Lady – “Solo Dancer” – Then however we got to the conversation about Mingus, and after some technical difficulties where I got bumped to a muted set of speakers, Travis was forced to throw on one of the greatest recordings of all. I bought BS&tSL in Houston at a CD shop and we (me and a group of non-Jazz listening sporty Houston College kids) proceeded to burn tire around Houston. By the end of the album there was a crew of exasperated journey takers saying “that was amazing”. It was hard to find back then, a must have for any and Mingus’ shear primal velocity of spirit is one of the true forces of nature. It truly feels like the vibrancy of life. Travis agrees with the critical importance of the music here.
Found Sounds 