19688. (Fred­er­ick Delius) Dance Rhap­sody #1
19689. (Fred­er­ick Delius) The Song of the High Hills
19690. (Fred­er­ick Delius) Piano Pre­lude #1
19691. (Fred­er­ick Delius) Piano Pre­lude #2
19692. (Fred­er­ick Delius) Piano Pre­lude #3 Read more »

This French turntab­list quar­tet is erod­ing the dis­tinc­tions between DJs, bands, and elec­tron­ic artists. They play live in clubs, mix­ing their own mate­r­i­al, or that of live musi­cians pressed onto vinyl, rather than the usu­al sam­ples, and restruc­ture much of what they cre­ate in the stu­dio. The result is inter­est­ing music, like­ly to appeal to an old­er crowd than most club-goers.

Scored for theremin, space echo RE201, toy piano, ARP­prodGX, Roland SH101, Prophet 600, 808 Roland, per­cus­sions, tape recorder, ana­log delay Ibanez UE305, toy piano and “scream­ing”, this album is an exer­cise in cre­at­ing a sense of uneasi­ness in the lis­ten­er. French elec­tron­ic musi­cians Eti­enne Jaumet and Cos­mic­Ne­man (from Her­man Dune) acknowl­edge the influ­ence of George Romero and John Car­pen­ter’s hor­ror films as much as the tra­di­tion­al elec­tron­ic gurus. I can’t say that Mad Dog held my rapt atten­tion all the time, but it suc­ceeds well enough in its aims to be worth a seri­ous lis­ten. This is a 2006 debut full-length release (after one 12“er). I don’t know if there has been any fol­low up since then.

This Ice­landic band con­structs sound­scapes with old-fash­ioned elec­tron­ic effects rem­i­nis­cent of the 1970’s. The cheesy beeps and whirs grad­u­al­ly build into intel­li­gent struc­tures, with ele­ments of hard rock and house. I espe­cial­ly liked track sev­en, “Ser­e­mo­nia”, which builds to a sat­is­fy­ing res­o­lu­tion. Jóhann Jóhanns­son, Ice­land’s won­der­ful­ly sin­is­ter-look­ing com­pos­er and mul­ti­me­dia impre­sario, is behind it all. If you like lis­ten­ing to old Kraftwerk albums, and the instru­men­tal piece “Tel­star” drifts out of your sub­con­scious when you come out of a coma, you’ll enjoy this.

19513. (Anton Bruck­n­er) Sym­pho­ny # “0”
19514. (Jean Sibelius) “Sou­da, Sou­da, Sin­isor­sa [Swim, Duck, Swim]”, JS 180 [s. Anne Sofie 
. . . . . von Otter]
19515. (Jean Sibelius) “Nor­den [The North]”, Op.90 no.1 [s. Anne Sofie von Otter]
19516. (Jean Sibelius) “Nar­ciss [Nar­cis­sus]”, JS 140 [s. Anne Sofie von Otter] Read more »

Sym­pho­ny No. 1 in D major, Op 25 was des­ig­nat­ed “Clas­si­cal Sym­pho­ny” by Prokofiev when it pre­miered in 1918, in Pet­ro­grad. “Neo-clas­si­cal” would be more appro­pri­ate. Prokofiev said it was a sym­pho­ny “that Haydn would com­pose if he lived today”. There are no quo­ta­tions from Haydn in the work, how­ev­er, and the melodies are unmis­tak­ably Prokofiev, with his usu­al sar­don­ic humour. The work must be hard for a con­duc­tor to inter­pret, because the three record­ings I have all feel rather dif­fer­ent. I have two vinyls: one by Jean Mar­ti­non, which is per­formed at break­neck speed, and an old Sovi­et record­ing by Gen­nady Rozhdestven­sky which is done a lit­tle more respect­ful­ly. On CD, I have Neeme Järvi’s set of the com­plete sym­phonies, with the Roy­al Scot­tish Nation­al Orches­tra. I find this one the most sat­is­fy­ing. Read more »

It would be hard to name a musi­cal influ­ence that isn’t to be found in the first two albums by Catalun­yan musi­cian Pablo Díaz-Reixa, aka El Guin­cho. His myspace page describes his music as “pop/tropical/club”, but that hard­ly begins to list the eclec­tic sources that he puts togeth­er on his Roland SP-404 sam­pling work­sta­tion. There’s a resem­blance to Ani­mal Col­lec­tive’s work, but it would­n’t be mis­tak­en for it. Noth­ing comes across as pon­der­ous­ly seri­ous — every piece is clear­ly designed to be fun to lis­ten to. It’s more “par­ty music” than “arty music”, even though it is tech­ni­cal­ly elab­o­rate. The first album, Folías (2007) has some nice bits, but Ale­gran­za! (2008) has the out­stand­ing work. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the catchy, almost high-life “Fata Mor­gana”, “Kalise”, with its man­ic steel-band con­tin­uo, and most of all, the grand, many-lay­ered “Buenos Mat­ri­mo­nios Ahí Fuera”.

I’m play­ing, for the umpteenth time, my favourite among Touré’s albums. I’ve writ­ten else­where about this aston­ish­ing musi­cian [Think­ing of Tim­buk­tu; Ali Far­ka Touré, Toumani Dia­baté In Per­fect Sync; Ali Far­ka Touré and Ry Cood­er Talk­ing Tim­buk­tu]. This album is a trib­ute to his beloved Niger Riv­er roots, with song lyrics jump­ing casu­al­ly between Bam­bara, Temazhek and French. Tracks like “Cinquante Six” and “Yen­na” demon­strate his absolute mas­tery of the gui­tar, with the per­fect tim­ing that made him a leg­end. My favourite track is the song “Dofana”, in which he wist­ful­ly evokes a small vil­lage, “a par­adise on Earth, only twen­ty kilo­me­tres from here”, threat­ened only by the “idio­cy of politi­cians”. Touré, on becom­ing a suc­cess­ful record­ing artist, eschewed the migra­tion to Paris or Lon­don, and instead became the may­or of just such a vil­lage. Most of the mon­ey he made went into sup­ply­ing it with clean water and electricity.