19139. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Sonata for Vio­la da Gam­ba & Key­board #1 in G, bwv.1027
. . . . . [piano ver­sion; harp­si­chord ver­sion at 15867, cel­lo ver­sion 10512]
19140. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Sonata for Vio­la da Gam­ba & Key­board #2 in D, bwv.102
19141. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Sonata for Vio­la da Gam­ba & Key­board #3 in G Minor, 
. . . . . bwv.1029 [piano ver­sion; harp­si­chord ver­sion at 15869, cel­lo ver­sion 10514]
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Trip Hop is a slip­pery genre, the name being applied to a bizarre vari­ety of musi­cians, from Mas­sive attack to Björk. Start­ing as a reac­tion against the Amer­i­can dom­i­nance of Hip Hop, it has found voic­es right in the heart of the Imperi­um. Promi­nent among them is Philadel­phia based Daugh­ter Dar­ling, the col­lab­o­ra­tive effort of dj/producer broth­ers Travis and Steven Fogel­man with vocal­ist Natal­ie Walk­er. Walk­er’s vocals hark back to many indi­vid­u­al­is­tic female singer-song­writ­ers, but the resem­blance to both Sarah McLaugh­lan and Björk is pret­ty obvi­ous. I like her voice, and the way in artic­u­lates the lyrics, but I find some of the elec­tron­ic nest its embed­ded in occa­sion­al­ly annoy­ing. But most of the songs work well. The open­ing title track is fine, putting across a Leonard Cohen‑y world-weary lone­li­ness to good effect. So is the clever re-work­ing of Kansas’ “Dust In the Wind”. “Bro­ken Bridge”, with it’s well-placed piano accom­pa­ni­ment, and “Sad And Lone­ly”, where horns and snares are used with equal taste, can’t be fault­ed. “Let Me Speak” is prob­a­bly the strongest song. This album was wide­ly hyped when it came out, but I did­n’t hear it. Now I’m play­ing catch-up. My taste does­n’t focus on this kind of music, but if it’s well done, as this is, I’ll listen.

This is the only album I’ve heard by this tout­ed elec­tron­i­ca trio (Evgenii Shchukin, Evgenii Fomin, and Alek­san­dr Tochilkin) from Rus­si­a’s “sun­ny south”, the old Cos­sack city of Krasnodar. I don’t know if it’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive of their work but this album offers a dis­tinct­ly “old school” elec­tron­i­ca, with lots of beeps, zzzz’s and bleeps. I even sus­pect the influ­ence of the old Sovi­et-era elec­tron­ic exper­i­ments of Nemtin, Kre­ichi and Arte­myev. These quaint elec­ton­ic nois­es are well put togeth­er, how­ev­er, and sus­tain inter­est to the end.

This is the epony­mous debut album of a Hawai­ian band front­ed by Nicholas Thor­burn, a.k.a. Nick Dia­monds, for­mer­ly with the indie-pop bands Islands and The Uni­corns. The sound is a trip­py layed-back, mar­i­jua­na-cel­e­brat­ing trib­ute to the beach bum ethos. Most appeal­ing cuts: a delight­ful, and not the least sar­cas­tic, ren­di­tion of “Blue Moon”, and a loopy qua­si-reg­gae song (the term in vogue is “sub­aquat­ic”) called “May Baleen”.

It’s quite irra­tional, but I want­ed to lis­ten to some­thing spe­cial for the 20,000th entry in my “first time lis­ten­ing” list. I received some sug­ges­tions, includ­ing the only major Mozart opera I had nev­er heard, but chance brought a solu­tion. I’ve writ­ten else­where about my long-term love affair with the New Zealand-Aus­tralian band Crowd­ed House. The only impor­tant Crowd­ed House item miss­ing from my col­lec­tion was their farewell con­cert in Syd­ney Opera House. Thanks to a read­er (who wish­es to remain anony­mous) I final­ly acquired this won­der­ful record­ing. Read more »

This debut album was only released a few days ago, in the U.K., but I can safe­ly make the bet that it will be a big suc­cess. Close har­mo­ny vocals rem­i­nis­cent of Simon & Gar­fun­kle are com­bined with superb gui­tar play­ing and judi­cious­ly used bits of wood­wind (I think there’s a flugel­horn in there) and elec­tron­ics. The lyrics are real poet­ry. DCLC are list­ed as “exper­i­men­tal, folk, lounge”, which I sup­pose is fair enough, but is inad­e­quate to express the num­ber of nodes they con­nect to. Every song on the album, from the first, “Jeal­ous Ene­mies”, to the last, “Mir­a­cle Kick­er” shows an extra­or­di­nary crafts­man­ship, get­ting every lit­tle detail just right. “Robot Com­mand Cen­tre” and the pro­found­ly orig­i­nal “Spon­ta­neous Com­bus­tion Pact” in par­tic­u­lar had an emo­tion­al impact on me. This is intel­li­gent music.

Dark Cap­tain Light Cap­tain is a Lon­don-based band cur­rent­ly tour­ing the boonies in the U.K. —and I eager­ly antic­i­pate them break­ing out inter­na­tion­al­ly so they can show up here. I’ll be first in line for tick­ets when they play Toron­to. Dan Car­ney (gui­tar, voice), Giles Lit­tle­ford (gui­tar, voice), Neil Klein­er (elec­tron­ics, wood­wind, voice), Chin Of Britain (drums), Mike Cran­ny (bass, voice) Lau­ra Copsey (brass, voice), shown above, are the line-up.

19002. (North­ern Cree Singers) Stay Red: Pow-wow Songs Record­ed Live at Pullman
19003. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny #24 in D
19004. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny #25 in C
19005. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny #27 in G
19006. (Mas­sive Attack) Blue Lines
19007. (Antonín Dvořak) String Quar­tet #3 in D, B.18
19008. (Antonín Dvořak) String Quar­tet #4 in E‑flat, B.19
19009. (North­ern Wind) Med­i­cine Dress [Round Dance songs hon­our­ing the Jin­gle Dress
. . . . . com­posed by Gabe Desrosiers]
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The Jin­gle Dress dance is a wom­en’s round dance which the Anish­naabe (Ojib­way) of north-west­ern Ontario take spe­cial pride in. “Jin­gle Dress” is the com­mon term on the pow-wow cir­cuit, but folks in the Keno­ra-Rainy Riv­er region of Ontario usu­al­ly call it “med­i­cine dress”. Gabe Desrosiers has com­posed numer­ous songs in hon­our of the Jin­gle Dress and the women who wear it. The songs are deeply root­ed in north­west Ontario and Min­neso­ta tra­di­tion, but these are mod­ern songs. Desrosiers is accom­pa­nied by a sol­id team of drum­mers and singers from the White­fish Bay and North West Angle #33 reserves, known as the North­ern Wind. The Anish­naabe drum­ming style is char­ac­ter­ized by sud­den vol­ume changes and caesura. Expect impromp­tu shouts, hoots and excla­ma­tions to be thrown in at psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly apt moments, giv­ing these dances sort of hot jazz sen­si­bil­i­ty. I don’t have the group’s award win­ning album Whis­per­ing Winds, but I can rec­om­mend my new­ly acquired Med­i­cine Dress, which can be got­ten from Arbor Records in Win­nipeg. Read more »