Dur­ing the era of silent films, the­atre organ­ists were big stars. After the arrival of talk­ing films, most of them lost their jobs, but the best of them found work in oth­er media, or lin­gered on as names. Such was Jesse Craw­ford, who fol­lowed suc­cess as a film organ­ist with suc­cess on radio, as a record­ing artist, and as an instruc­tor. In lat­er years, he became asso­ci­at­ed with the pop­u­lar Ham­mond organs. I have a Dec­ca Vocalion record­ing, Sweet and Low, of him per­form­ing a dozen stan­dard tunes, and anoth­er album which he shares with Don Bak­er and Marv Mer­lin, called Organ Greats. Bak­er was a Cana­di­an organ­ist whose career close­ly par­al­leled Crawford’s.

This stuff was very pop­u­lar in the 1950’s, when it was thought of as sooth­ing and mel­low, prob­a­bly pro­vid­ing the equiv­a­lent of “lounge” music today. In fact, Bak­er’s ren­di­tion of “The Third Man Theme” is includ­ed in Capi­tol’s “Ultra Lounge” com­pi­la­tion, Organs in Orbit. With the pas­sage of time, this genre has acquired a sort of unin­tend­ed creepi­ness. You could use these albums quite effec­tive­ly as a sound­track for a David Lynch film.

This is an Aus­tralian met­al­core band that sticks to con­ven­tion. It’s in the same vein as Pan­tera or Slay­er, with noth­ing to sug­gest that they are record­ing in this decade. Might be fun at a live venue, but not like­ly to be played repeat­ed­ly at home. They’ll be com­ing to Toron­to next month, and I might check them out if I’m in a nos­tal­gic mood for ‘core. I have two albums: Killing with a Smile (2005) and Hori­zons (2007), with dif­fer­ent bass play­ers. I like the drum­mer, who does some nice machine-gunning.

20090. (Juno Reac­tor) Mas­ters of the Uni­verse CDM
20091. (Juno Reac­tor) Con­ga Fury EP
20092. (Juno Reac­tor) God is God CDM
20093. (Front 242 & Juno Reac­tor) God is God Front 242 Remix­es [sin­gle]
20094. (Juno Reac­tor) Guardian Angel EP Read more »

Fin­land is one of those coun­tries where the “nation­al anthem” isn’t the nation­al anthem. “Waltz­ing Matil­da” is Aus­trali­a’s real anthem, as every­one knows, while the offi­cial one is some for­get­table piece of music called “March On Aus­tralia Fair Sis Boom Bah Rah Rah Rah”, or some­thing to that effect. Sim­i­lar­ly with Fin­land. Every­one out­side that coun­try assumes that Sibelius’ “Fin­lan­dia” is the nation­al anthem. It isn’t. An immi­grant Ger­man named Fredrik Pacius com­posed the offi­cial one ― “Maamme”. Read more »

This pleas­ant mix­ture of elec­tron­ic-psy­che­delia and pop is the prod­uct of Aus­tralians Luke Steele and Nick Lit­tle­more. There are so many eclec­tic influ­ences in this album that it would be exhaust­ing to iden­ti­fy them. Three songs, “Walk­ing on a Dream”, “We Are the Peo­ple” and “Stand­ing on the Shore”, have been chart hits in Anzac/UK ter­ri­to­ry, but I don’t think they’ve had much impact here in Cana­da. The biggest chart suc­cess, “Walk­ing on a Dream”, was the track that least appealed to me. There’s a retro-late-sev­en­ties/ear­ly-eight­ies feel, though the thick lay­er­ing is more con­tem­po­rary. Def­i­nite­ly worth check­ing out, espe­cial­ly if you have some ground­ing in eight­ies pop, Adam Ant, or Bowie, but not so much if you instinc­tive­ly eschewed these for hard-core, punk, or met­al dur­ing that tran­si­tion­al decade. Some of the orches­tral pas­sages, which drift away from the sev­en­ties-eight­ies ambiance, are quite charm­ing. Yes, the band is named after the J. G. Bal­lard nov­el. Released in Aus­tralia some­time last fall.

This is one of three dif­fer­ent ver­sions that Haydn pre­pared of a work meant to dra­ma­tize read­ings of “Die sieben let­zten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze” (“The Sev­en Last Words of Our Sav­iour on the Cross”), known more com­mon­ly in Eng­lish by the more suc­cinct “The Sev­en Last Words of Christ”. The first ver­sion was for full orches­tra, meant to be pre­sent­ed in the Cathe­dral of Cádiz. Haydn him­self wrote: “The walls, win­dows, and pil­lars of the church were hung with black cloth, and only one large lamp hang­ing from the cen­ter of the roof broke the solemn dark­ness. At mid­day, the doors were closed and the cer­e­mo­ny began. After a short ser­vice the bish­op ascend­ed the pul­pit, pro­nounced the first of the sev­en words (or sen­tences) and deliv­ered a dis­course there­on. This end­ed, he left the pul­pit and fell to his knees before the altar. The inter­val was filled by music. The bish­op then in like man­ner pro­nounced the sec­ond word, then the third, and so on, the orches­tra fol­low­ing on the con­clu­sion of each dis­course.”  Read more »

20085. (Lud­wig van Beethoven) Piano Sonata #16 in G, Op.32 #1
20086. (Lud­wig van Beethoven) Piano Sonata #18 in E‑flat, Op.32 #3 “The Hunt”
20087. (Polarkreis 18) The Colour of Snow
20088. (Frédéric Chopin) Polon­aise-Fan­taisie in A‑flat, Op.61
20089. (Sergei Prokofiev) Piano Sonata #6, Op.82 Read more »

This band (the name is a ref­er­ence to Greek myth) is pri­mar­i­ly Swedish singer/songwriter/lead gui­tarist Erik Mat­ti­as­son. Mat­ti­as­son works out his own per­son­al ago­nies. He had a rough child­hood in Kiruna, a small city in Swe­den’s north­ern­most boonies. He suf­fers from schiz­o­phre­nia. The title cut, with its eerie, whis­pered lyrics about holes in his head, explores this mal­a­dy from an insid­er’s view. The musi­cian­ship is fine, my only qualm is that all the songs have the same tone, so per­haps they are more effec­tive when heard one at a time. There’s a new album out, Bring the Lions In, which I haven’t been able to get a hold of. As with most Swedish rock, it’s sung in Eng­lish. Does­n’t any­body record songs in Swedish? It’s nice to be acces­si­ble to the world mar­ket, but sure­ly there’s some­thing lost when an inter­na­tion­al lan­guage so thor­ough­ly dom­i­nates a coun­try’s music scene.

While pok­ing around, I came across this epony­mous album of Cana­di­an folk stan­dards by Bon­nie Dob­son. Now for­got­ten, she was promi­nent in the folk scene of the 1960’s, and one song of hers, “Morn­ing Dew”, was cov­ered by Robert Plant, Jeff Beck, Clan­nad, Nazareth, the All­man Broth­ers, and the Grate­ful Dead. I was already famil­iar with “Morn­ing Dew”, which appears on the enter­tain­ing com­pi­la­tion The Music Nev­er Stopped: Roots of the Grate­ful Dead. Dob­son’s sopra­no voice is in a class with Sandy Den­ny, Mad­dy Pri­or, and Rachelle Paiement for that “strong and sweet” com­bi­na­tion that best suits folk tunes. Her inter­pre­ta­tions of Cana­di­an stan­dards are a bit quirky, but very mov­ing. Her ver­sions of “Four Strong Winds” and “Un Cana­di­en errant” are par­tic­u­lar­ly mov­ing. Her gui­tar-play­ing is restrained, always sup­port­ive of the vocals, but very skilled. This is not her most famous album, so I have a feel­ing I have some pleas­ant sur­pris­es ahead if I can find oth­ers. Despite obvi­ous tal­ent, she nev­er made it big, but I have a feel­ing that more suc­cess­ful singers in the folk scene must have respect­ed her work. Now 68, Dob­son long ago retired from the music busi­ness, moved to the U.K., and became the admin­is­tra­tor of the Phi­los­o­phy Depart­ment of the Uni­ver­si­ty of London.