20347. (Somat­ic Respons­es) Dig­i­tal Darkness
20348. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny #79 in F
20349. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny #80 in D Minor
20350. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny #81 in G
20351. (Yous­sou N’Dour) Noth­ing’s In Vein
20352. (Doves) King­dom of Rust Read more »

Somat­ic Respons­es is the tag for two Welsh broth­ers, John and Paul Healy. Dig­i­tal Dark­ness is break­beat, rhyth­mic noise, or sound­scape, or some­thing like that. I like it. It has inter­est­ing rhyth­mic intri­ca­cies, with­in a rel­a­tive­ly slow-paced frame­work. I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked the strings in “Strand­ed” and the grim bass line in “Human Bass”. Not some­thing you would play as back­ground or to make your­self feel hap­py, but stimulating.

20178. (Arcan­ge­lo Corel­li) Sonata da chiesa in A, Op.3 #12,
20179. (Arcan­ge­lo Corel­li) Sonata da chiesa in F Minor, Op.3 #9
20180. (Arcan­ge­lo Corel­li) Sonata da chiesa in B‑flat, Op.3 #3
20181. (Arcan­ge­lo Corel­li) Sonata da chiesa in G Minor, Op.3 #11
20182. (Arcan­ge­lo Corel­li) Sonata da chiesa in F, Op.3 #1 Read more »

Kwak­waka’wakw [Kwak­i­utl] music in British Colum­bia comes as a sur­prise to any­one who is more famil­iar with the pow-wow music of the rest of Cana­da. It’s meant to accom­pa­ny indoor cer­e­monies and the pecu­liar dance dra­mas with elab­o­rate cos­tumes that pre­vailed on the Pacif­ic coast. Orches­tras of log, box, and hide drums are accom­pa­nied by a vari­ety of rat­tles and whis­tles play with uni­son chants in Kwak’wala, sup­ple­ment­ed by solo “hollers”. It’s the rat­tles that car­ry the aura of sacred­ness. The rhythms are noth­ing at all like what you would hear on the plains. Some are rem­i­nis­cent of Japan­ese forms, like gagaku. I don’t know how this par­tic­u­lar album, by the Gwa’wina Singers of Alert Bay, com­pares to oth­er stuff from the Coast. This whole area of music is unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry for me.

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 »