What Are You Listening To?

[Dissily Mordentroge]

Always found this preferable to Beethoven’s 9th, the final movement of which strikes me as pompous, nationalistic and military posing as uplifting universalism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I8AT3S3iRc

[CRAZY-HORSE]

SECRET GARDEN "dawn of a new century" cd, 1999.

Norwegian/Irish duo.
i'd call it folk/classical for the most part but the experts say "new age", so World Music
is probably the most apt place for it.
overall, violin and synths seem to be the most prominent instruments here 
along with a beautiful Irish accented voice which is ethereal in places.
as a comparison, hearing Enya/Clannad in places.
was listening whilst cooking the dinner last might, pleasant background music for sure.
I LIKE THIS ALBUM

beautiful live version of this one:

[CRAZY-HORSE]

no cover art available



MICHAEL CRAWFORD "the phantom unmasked" cd, 1990

for those who don't know MC he was the original Phantom Of The Opera.
also, similar to Jim Nabors, put on horrid accents in sitcoms but sings like an angel.
anyway
a collection of songs, not just from Webber musicals but songs he loves from the world of music.
I LIKE THIS ALBUM

his signature tune:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1cHyI1dotA

love this one from the album:

[CRAZY-HORSE]

ELVIS PRESLEY "peace in the valley: the complete Gospel recordings" cd, 2000

triple cd boxset
played the first disk.
put it here because I figured Gospel was closer to World Music than the others...
close to ninety tracks in this set.
this one covers the 1960s and 1970 inclusive.
superb collection of tracks here.
this is Elvis at his finest IMO.
you can feel the commitment and sincerity in his vocals as he sings these tracks.
for those who don't know Presley only received three Grammy's during his lifetime
and all were for his Spiritual/Gospel recordings not his pop/rock material.
impossible for me to pick one track as favourite.
I LOVE THIS ALBUM

will go for this one because it always sends the chills down my back:

[CRAZY-HORSE]

ELVIS PRESLEY "peace in the valley: the complete Gospel recordings" cd, 2000

disk two of the three disk set.
some twenty-four or so tracks on here.
covers his recordings of spiritual music from the 1970s.
also several impromptu rehearsals which weren't necessary IMO, sure they were
fun as EP and his band joke and muck about but in the scheme of things, totally unnecessary.
so, love most of this disk, dislike probably 20% of it.
I LIKE THIS ALBUM.

favourite for me this time is this hand-clapper/foot-tapper..

[Ruby]

The Idan Raichel Project - Within My Walls followed by Ismaël Lô's Iso. Fantastic album.



He seems to have disappeared off the music scene for some reason - hasn't released anything since his 2006 album Sénégal. Love this album but there are very few clips on YouTube so will have to steal some from the compilation Jammu Afrika ... slightly different recordings but not too dissimilar.

One from Sénégal  for good measure   - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0bwRCOljgU

"Nabou" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAQKnzpRmbI

"Khar" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNpUY7kg1wU

The lead track "Dibi Dibi Rek" ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlqXmlrvHv8

"La femme sans haine" ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKmV7Piy1ak, and another version of this, from Jammu Afrika, in duet with Marianne Faithfull - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfehKorG_Qs

"Nafantav" ... 

[Ruby]

Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Symphony No. 6, Sobre a linha das montanhas do Brasil (On the Outline of the Mountains of Brazil)

It’s in four movements, around 25 minutes in all and I love the ingenuity that went into the creation of this little symphony; basically, extracting a melody from an image in a process he invented called millimeterization. The idea is to lay transparent graph paper over a photograph - in this instance, his beloved mountains, presumably in silhouette, with the vertical lines being allocated to the pitches and the horizontal lines to durations. You would then have a melody of sorts (probably quite strange - or possibly not!) which would then need to be further adapted and harmonized to get a pleasing result. Living with the outlines of mountains constantly in view makes me feel especially intrigued by this work - I like to think I understand why he would have been so inspired although I expect mine are mere hills by comparison! His music is so warm …

[tapetumlucidum]

Ingratitude's the queen of crimes - Hilary Summers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbiqWoU-CdM

[Ruby]

Been hearing a lot of Johnny Clegg on the radio lately - he passed just over a year ago and South Africa continues to both mourn and celebrate him. They've been spinning this, which was his last single, I think ... the title track from his final release .. R.I.P. Johnny Clegg.

[Ruby]

After the Terje Rypdal track, one thing led to another and I've ended up listening to Music to Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet by Ketil Bjørnstad who is a seriously accomplished individual - musician, composer, poet and writer. Rypdal lends his wonderful melancholic strings to the majority of these pieces and Mr Bjørnstad's compositions are beautiful. It boggles the mind that someone has enough time in their life to create so prolifically! Oddly that very same scenario mirrors the life of Kahlil Gibran (to a degree), which wasn't very long, and yet saw him producing a substantial body of work, both writing and visual art. This seems to be something of an obscure release - not on label ... gorgeous, IMHO ... 

The opener - "The Coming of the Ship" ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QssKTKS_aMc

"Laws" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idAsjoR-5HE

"Good and Evil" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPFGb0q83BI

"Giving" ...