Monthly Archives: May 2010

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35 Rhums

I finally saw 35 Rhums last night, after months of anticipation, and I loved it. It has such a beautiful, glowing, under-water light, and there’s something at once completely prosaic and beautifully dreamlike about it. The film has very little dialogue, drama, or plot, but I found it utterly compelling.

This scene was nominated by ex-Clip Joint guru for “wordless communication,” and the whole scene is a study in everything I love about film. The music, which is diegetic, is so perfectly integrated into the movement and the mood. (It’s hard for this film to have a spoiler, because of the relative lack of plot, but the scene is a central one, so if you like to be surprised you may want to just watch the movie.)

I liked the use of music throughout. The soundtrack was by the Tindersticks, and I feel like that’s a name I’ve encountered here on the ‘Spill. Anyone?

I can’t stop thinking about the film, I’m not sure what the film version of an earworm would be, but I’ve got one.

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Why I haven’t been around too much lately…

Hi there you all, as some of you might have noticed, I haven’t been around here too much lately. My oldest sister (a year younger than me), a long time heart patient (heart failure), was hospitalized a couple of weeks ago because she was suffering from fluid overload. All kinds of medication did not help, and things took a turn for the worse when her kidneys stopped to function completely this weekend. Her situation detoriated rapidly after that, and I am sad to say that she passed away peacefully this morning (May 12th) at 8.45. I was lucky enough to be with her last night , when she was  still conscious and enjoying the icecream (…normally strictly forbidden for her…) that my brother and I brought her…..

RIP Liesbeth Bukkems, aged 49……

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White Stripes – Stop Motion Tailer

I just mentioned on TFD’s post that visual arts are my passion and obsession. I participate in a few online sites and get to see lots of great work and meet lots of great artists too. (small world, 2 photographer acquaintances had shots posted on a Guardian portfolio yesterday).

Ed works a full time job, shoots film with a Holga, and instead of sleeping, makes stop motion film animations. This one, a trailer promo for the White Stripes – Under Great White Northern Lights film of their Canadian tour, was made with models and a stack of screenshots. You can see his paraphernalia at the end of the film for the proof. He recommends viewing in the widescreen HD verison here.

Get some sleep, Ed.

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EOTWQ – instead of music

This is August Farmland, Dumfriesshire, by Davy Brown

Since I’ve been having so much difficulty posting music, I’ll try questions instead.

1 What’s your favourite painting? You don’t have to own it – although I do own the one above.

2 Have you ever been frightened by an animal?

3 Rate your cookery skills

4 When was the last time you changed a wheel?

5 Some say that people with untidy desks are creative thinkers. Do you agree? Is your desk tidy or not? (If you haven’t got a desk, imagine what it would be like if you did.)

6 Some people hate houseplants; others have houses full of ‘em. Are you a house plant person? Which is your favourite?

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New Orleans Special

A small representation of New Orleans and Louisiana music, mostly by artists from the area, inspired by Treme and a funeral I attended where the body was introduced by a New Orleans style band, featuring Crescent City legends such as Allen Toussaint, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and the Nevilles a few of the tracks here are N.O. songs by outsiders, sometimes N.O. songs by local folk. There’s a wider selection in the ‘box:

West End Blues – Louis Armstrong
Shag – New Orleans Feetwarmers
Climax Rag – Jelly Roll Morton’s New Orleans Jazzmen
Petite Fleur – Chris Barber
New Orleans (The Rising Sun Blues) – Leadbelly
Basin Street blues/When It’s Sleepy Time Down South Medley – Louis Prima

Big Chief – Professor Longhair
Ya Ya – Lee Dorsey
Free, Single And Disengaged – Huey “Piano” Smith & His Clowns
Goin’ Down – Allen Toussaint
Handa Wanda – Bo Dollis & The Wild Magnolia Mardi Gras Indian Band
Bouncin’ Back (Bumpin’ Me Against The Wall) – Mystikal
Hook ‘N’ Sling, Pt. 2 – Eddie Bo

Pop, Popcorn Children – Eldridge Holmes
Gossip – Cyril Neville
Chicken Strut – The Meters
Cold Bear – The Gaturs
Right Place, Wrong Time – Dr. John

Crazy Cajun Cakewalk Band – Redbone
The Flood – Eilen Jewell
Louisiana 1927 – The Neville Brothers
La Vieille Chanson de Mardi Gras – Cedric Watson
Cryin’ In The Streets – Buckwheat Zydeco

Also, GHE was asking if anybody has any recommendations as to music venues /local performers to try and see when he visits the city in October.

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Earworms – May 11

It’s sunny and in the 70′s here now (farenheit, not sure how that translates into centigrade temps), this one has been in my head ever since Maki’s summer thread.  Won’t be getting donds for this one, but have to exorcize the demon. And hey, it was inspired by the Beach Boys.     – amylee

A sheer joyful celebration of the music & people of New Orleans, and a song that is welcome to stay in my head every time I watch an episode of Treme. A great show too, and one that spends a lot of screen time on the music.     – Blimpy

I don’t think this is typical for them, or even originally their song. I sense that I’ll like their stranger stuff more enduringly, but this is the one I’ve been playing over and over again all day. I like the fuzzy mix of hardcore, poppy, cheerful angsty energy.      - Steen

What was it Tinny was asking for the other month – “overlooked gems”? Well… I’m not about to make a case for critically reappraising our Cilla’s singing career as a whole, But I can’t help but find this slab of high-camp melodrama utterly irresistible.      - bishbosh

Some wise words from this song have been going through my head over the last couple of weeks: “I used to think it was our politics not how we treat people that taught us who we are. I was wrong.” At his best, Hefner’s Darren Hayman deserves a place in the pantheon of Great British Songwriters. Ray Davies would have been proud of penning this one.     - barbryn

A beautiful song from Chile’s Violeta Parra, who despite the beauty of her lyrics committed suicide after the breakup of her relationship with Gilbert Favre. Baez included it on her Spanish album as a “message of hope to the Chileans suffering under Augusto Pinochet” in the wake of the death of Salvador Allende.  (LYRICS)      -  goneforeign

At home in country swing, diva jazz and smokey blues, Jewell started bringing it all together in last year’s Letters From Sinners & Strangers (buy it!). There’s a couple of other earworm candidates on it, but I picked Stealing because I get to to show off. It’s a lovely ”mash of Bessie Smith songs”, which is in quotes because I messaged her in MySpace to sort its provenance and she replied.      - tin

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Lorem Ipsum – say what?

Maple Leaves (7″ Version) Jens Lekman
i thought you said make believe or was it maple leaves? as ever Jens has a song for the subject

Harold T. Wilkins, Or How To Wait For A Very Long Time Fanfarlo
as sad as saneshane – brings beers to my pies.

Preservation Aesop Rock, Del The Funky Homosapien
Aesop is the undisputed king of profound nonsense.

Tom Cat Muddy Waters
i’m just sitting here licking my balls – years before I realized it was Paws.

2nd Law Tom McRae
he’s gone to the moon.. up where the air is thin
there’s a funny Utube where he explains the many mistakes of his songwriters art, utterly fantastic and funny.
Here?

Porcupine Or Pineapple Brakes
it’s perfect logic – was it worth fighting for?
[Audio http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1075113/sat%20what/17%20Maple%20Leaves%20%287_%20Version%29%201.mp3,http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1075113/sat%20what/09%20Harold%20T.%20Wilkins%2C%20Or%20How%20To%20Wait.mp3,http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1075113/sat%20what/Think%20Differently_Wu-tang%20Meets%20The%20Indie%20Culture_16_Preservation.mp3,http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1075113/sat%20what/02%20Tom%20Cat.mp3,http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1075113/sat%20what/03%202nd%20Law%201.mp3,http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1075113/sat%20what/08%20Porcupine%20Or%20Pineapple.mp3%5D

there’s an extended version of this with a say what? box playlist
OVER HERE

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Hang on, it’s an oud!


Blimpy had a post about jazzers Portico Quartet a while back, noting that they use the hang drum in their music. So I went to see them the other day, to discover that they use not one, but three! And Nick Mulvey uses drumsticks, not his hands, to play them. I share Blimpy’s enthusiasm for their newish album, ‘Isla‘.

They were support to virtuoso oud player Anouar Brahem. Perhaps best known for his interpretation of Balkan and Roma music on ‘Astrakan Cafe‘, this concert was based on his new line up and album, ‘The astounding eyes of Rita‘, which nilpferd introduced us to last year. I thought their warm and unprecocious East-West style was mesmerising. Whilst Anouar is the ‘master’, Klaus Gesling often eclipsed him on the bass clarinet. See what you think in the clips I took…

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More tunes from the Subcontinent

Look at the horns on that!

So, a little time to kill on a Sunday afternoon and I feel it’s time for the latest instalment in my semi-regular series on music wot I have discovered either during my time in India or through watching Hindi films (in, er, Croydon mainly). These four tracks are a little more esoteric than my previous selections. At least I think they are – never been quite sure what ‘esoteric’ means. Maybe I just mean they’re classier than your average Bollywood soundtrack. (Actually, for all I know, they’re the Indian version of Enigma or Deep Forest or some such, but I like them!)

The first is from the wonderful, wonderful “Monsoon Wedding”* and the others are from… well, not sure really. I just have them on various compilations of music by artistes from India or of Indian extraction (Susheela Raman being from Hendon, for example!).

Enjoy…

*Did I mention that it’s wonderful?

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Ninja Tune Part 3 – Tangentals



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Go West?


And as we feel the chill wind of decades that we thought had been safely buried in the past…I thought that we ought to try thinking about something more cheerful, namely another RR Social. Anyone fancy a trip to the West Country for a change? If we do the traditional ‘room in pub’ format again, this time in Bristol, I’d propose meeting for lunch or in the afternoon, to make it easier for those of us who don’t live in Bristol (including me) to stay for the whole event and still get home reasonably easily. However, I’d also be very happy to host an RR Picnic or barbecue down in darkest Somerset – we do have a railway station, so it’s not quite the middle of nowhere. Expressions of interest and comments on format, please, and we can see if there’s enough support to start making some more definite plans.

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Pardon?

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Election Night Jazz

Aaah, elections, the roar of the ballot booth, the smell of the polling station – makes me think of one thing….Jazz!

More specifically the free taster tracks that the astounding Cuneiform Records have on their website!

First up with some post-free jazz semiconductors are The Claudia Quintet:

Next we take it sideways into the fridge with Ideal Bread and their slow-burn take on the lounge-ooompah giblets that was all the rage in ’82:

And to round it all off, we get totally balkan with Univers Zero and their fantastic voyage through folicle jive:

Please visit Cuneiform Records for more, and after the jump there’s a second opportunity to hear the jaw-dropping track by Zevious that stole the show in the last ‘Spillcast. Continue reading →

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Queen Jane

At TatankaYotanka’s suggestion (nay, he insisted) I went to see Jane Siberry last night at the Mill in Gatehouse of Fleet. Well.

I’d barely heard of her before, except for having the kd lang album with some of her songs on it, but TY said she was doing the sort of tour where people invite her to come and sing in their houses and get all their friends round. This gig was actually in an arts centre but it had that homelike feel, and I’ve never experienced a show like this before – not so much a concert as an extended poetic conversation with embedded songs. She played keyboards and acoustic guitar (not electric as in the clip – but it’s otherwise very similar, even to her outfit) and had some backing tracks on an iPod. Very funny. Very moving. Very profound. Blimpy, you won’t have a category for this one.

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Down down, deeper and down

I don’t know, maybe it’s the rain / leaden skies; maybe it’s the fact that I feel utterly drained physically (don’t ask!); maybe it’s even Gordon(immel, not Brown)’s mood overpowering the distant whoops of joy from May & Herr Hippo – but, is it just me who gets a great sense of foreboding about today, rather than one of hope?

Stina’s magnificent moodpiece captures that sense perfectly . . . unfortunately.

If we’re going to risk a political discussion, let’s have it here.

After all, I’m sure lots of us will be staying up tonight for more than just the MFF, and if this week’s palava is anything to go by, we might struggle to get a working GU blog anyway tonight.

I’ll start … I’ve voted tactically in the metropolitan election to get rid of the BNP; I’d rather have a Tory councillor than that f***ing tw@t Cromie [Sorry for the sweary, tfd, but it does reflect my feelings accurately]; and given that my sitting MP has been that slimeball Culture Minister Sutcliffe (who’s been a “What’s in it for me?” scumbag for twenty years in Bradford), I’ve put a cross against a Lib(Dem) candidate’s name for only the second third time in my entire life.

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Songs of Praise

No, no, not that kind. Thinking about Bob Dylan since the recent RR Insults topic. So many of his best songs (many nommed) seemed tome to be, viewed en masse, as so many well crafted excercises in petulance. Figured he had to have been in love at least once. So i thought i’d give a look around some of his other songs and lyrics to see if i could find an outright song of glorious praise for an individual, no backhanders, hopefully un-ironic, and a little more enthusiastic than the beautiful Lay Lady Lay.
Found a song called Nobody ‘Cept You, an outtake from the Planet Waves album recorded in late ’73, released in early ’74, right around the time his marriage was ending. (lyrics here). Make up your own mind, but i’m thinking it’s kind of lame compared to the diss tracks. I have no conclusions to make. But i will offer up the lovely Sara from Desire, (written as an attempt to reconcile) – praise indeed (with a possible few backhanders included). Feel free to add your own takes.

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In the beginning…

I was excited when I first heard that every thinking ‘Spiller’s favourite Somali-Canadian rapper K’Naan was providing the theme song for the World Cup. Then I heard the execrable travesty that is the official Coke-endorsed version of Wavin’ Flag. Proof that it’s impossible to make a good football record (unless, of course, you’re Half Man Half Biscuit).

It’s sad that this particular recording is going to introduce him to a global audience of hundreds of millions. So I thought I’d post this as a small way of redressing the balance:

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More signs that the end is nigh

After Baconnaise and Jimmy Dean’s microwaveable chocolate chip pancake wrapped sausage on a stick, more signs that Western civilisation has given up, featuring “food”, the media and schools.

A brown thing that you’ll totally eat…

**edit** in the interests of good taste, I’ve hidden these horrific images after the jump. **blimpy**
He’s right folks…

Continue reading →

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Ninja Tune mix 2

Part two of the Ninja Tune mix features electronic down beat jazzy shit.

Wagon Christ Saddic Gladdic Sorry I make you lush
Ammoncontact Through the moon One in an infinity of ways
London Funk Allstars Give it to me raw Coldkrushcuts
DJ Food Scratch yer head Recipe for disaster
Mr. Scruff Shrimp Trouser Jazz

Wagon Christ It is always now all of it is now Musipal
Rainstick Orchestra Overflow Floating glass key in the sky
Yppah I’ll hit the breaks You are beautiful at all times
The Cinematic Orchestra Channel one suite Remixes
9 Lazy 9 Grazing Maize Sweet Jones
London Funk Allstars Love is what we need Coldkrushcuts

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Four Days, Four Gigs

My name is Tim, and I’m addicted to live music.

It’s been one of those bank holiday weekends – four gigs in four days, which I think is the greatest amount of music in the shortest time I’ve ever done outside of a festival.

Things started a day early on the Thursday, with The Reasoning at The Met Theatre in Bury. Support band Morpheus Rising are a five piece band shamelessly citing the 1980s NWOBHM as a principle influence, now reclassified as hard rock following boundary changes. Entertaining high energy stuff.

I’d seen The Reasoning a week earlier in London, where a very poor sound mix really hadn’t done the music justice, and the performance suffered badly as a result. Tonight was far, far better. Bury Met is always a great gig whoever is playing, and The Reasoning I know and love were back with a vengeance, now expanded to a seven-piece with new members Jake Bradford-Sharp on drums, ex-Fish keyboard player Tony Turrell and vocalist Maria Owen. The new album “Adverse Camber” features heavily, which takes a slight step back from prog-metal in favour of some elements of the atmospheric melodic music that Rachel did with Karnataka. Not that the twin guitar attack of Dylan Thompson and Owain Roberts doesn’t still rock hard plenty of times, but the overall effect is to make their live set a lot more varied and multi-dimensional, which cannot be anything other than a good thing.

On Friday I travelled down to Cardiff to see Hawkwind supported by Panic Room at St David’s Hall. I’ve seen Panic Room many times before at their own shows, here they made the most of their five-song 30 minute slot, naturally including a great version of “Apocalypstick”. Blessed with a good sound mix for a support, they seemed to go down well with Hawkwind’s audience, and told me they sold a lot of albums after the gig.

Hawkwind themselves I hadn’t seen since 1980, and had lost track of what they’ve been doing since the mid-80s, so I really didn’t know what to expect.

Continue reading →