What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol. X)

Still waiting for this to arrive along with the latest Damon albarn release

atb

kk

Enjoyed it, very easy to listen to. with this type of music I take several listens before I appreciate it.

atb

kk

Love this but my favourite is most things haven't worked out

atb

kk

A little bit of PF revision.

[Original 1994 CD]  Hope the reissued vinyl has the same superb SQ.  Just seen what daft money is being asked for this CD on Amazon.  

His latest and looking forward to the gig this coming friday

Atb

kk

Rameau pour le matin.

On CD, just felt like hearing some quality Scandi-jazz

I think the reissue vinyl will be very good G. The original '94 vinyl, which I have, is extremely fine (it's a pity the music mostly doesn't match the sound quality ). If you think people ask silly money for the original CD, you should see the daft prices asked for the original vinyl!

Always adventurous and accessible and well engineered.

G

Richard Thompson Best Of

An excellent best of from this very talented musician. Great music for a Sunday afternoon

First spin

The background: The Rails are a new duo specialising in folk-rock, although the term "new" is used advisedly. The male half of the pair has been playing guitar for long enough to have been hailed a "teenage prodigy" after working with everyone from Son Volt and the Pernice Brothers to Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Davies, the Pogues and the Pretenders (Mojo called him a rock Zelig, a neat way of capturing his ubiquity). He even recorded a solo album for Heavenly, prompting Nick Hornby to describe him as "an unearthly cross between James Burton, Peter Green and Richard Thompson". "Walbourne's fluid, tasteful, beautiful solos drop the jaw, stop the heart, and smack the gob, all at the same time," proclaimed Hornby, one of the greatest music writers ever to be named after a toy train company.

 

Talking of Richard Thompson, the female half of the Rails is his – and Linda Thompson's – daughter (as well as Teddy Thompson's sister, we have just ingeniously surmised). It was Hornby who gave Walbourne his pass into British folk-rock's foremost dynasty when he introduced him to Linda Thompson. Through her he met Kami when they both worked on Linda's 2007 album Versatile Heart – and they later recorded together, before going on the Rails, as Dead Flamingoes. Her own CV is pretty full, including stints touring with Sean Lennon and Bonnie "Prince" Billy and issuing her own solo album, Love Lies, in 2011.

On CD:-

Ludwig van Beethoven:  Jean-Guihen Queyras (Cello Geoffredo Cappa, 1696), Isabelle Faust (Violin "Sleeping Beauty" Stadivarius, 1704), Alexander Melnikov (Fortepiano Alois Graff, c. 1828)

Without exception, it seems, Melnikov, Faust, and Queyras always put out very satisfying discs.  Together, maybe they are even better.

Chopin - Liszt:  Balladen und Walzer:   Dora Deliyska (piano)

 Porcupine Tree - Deadwing

K D Lang

"Watershed"

cd rip to iTunes

Yes, this is a wonderful record. Faust & Melnikov's complete Sonatas for Piano and Violin, also on Harmonia Mundi, is well worth getting hold of, if you don't have it.

1st play...

Have not listened to this for a long while, simply stunning! 

On vinyl...

Laura Veirs

"Warp & Weft"

iTunes download

I'll be interested to see what you think of it. To me, it starts well, then seems to veer off rather too close to smooth jazz for comfort, which surprised me, given that the Marcin Wasilewski trio are always so interesting. I've played it a few times, and that impression seems to grow rather than diminish.

David Bowie - Diamond Dogs

From his classic 70s period

Der Doppelgänger (Schubert/Liszt):  Dora Deliyska (Piano)

Brisk winds,
Scent of flowers,
All Spring and youthful joy,
Fresh lips
Stolen kisses,
softly pressed on tender breast;
Then the grape's
nectar stolen,
Round dances and games  and jokes:
Whatever the senses
can achieve:
Ah,does it ever fulfil the heart?

When the moist
eyes shine
from the dew of melancholy limes,
then unsealed,
therein mirrored,
the sight of Heaven's meadow.
Then suddenly
in the twinkling of an eye
every wild gleam is extinguished;                               
as from the rain
flowers are nurtured,
dull spirits are raised.

Not with sweet
floods of water
did Prometheus mix our lime.
No, with tears;
Thereby in longing
and in pain have we come home.
A bitter threshold
these springs
for the birth of our earthly senses,
as they pressed
out of the narrows
into the sea of life.

Eternal yearnings
float in tears
and surround the stark world,   
In their arms
it's salvation
they evermore uphold.   
Shall your nature
then be purged
free from the dross of Earth,
You must in weeping
unite yourself
with yonder water's holy shoots.

I come down from the mountains,
The valley dims, the sea roars.
I wander silently and am somewhat unhappy,
And my sighs always ask "Where?"

The sun seems so cold to me here,
The flowers faded, the life old,
And what they say has an empty sound;
I am a stranger everywhere.

Where are you, my dear land?
Sought and brought to mind, yet never known,
That land, so hopefully green,
That land, where my roses bloom,

Where my friends wander
Where my dead ones rise from the dead,
That land where they speak my language,
Oh land, where are you?

I wander silently and am somewhat unhappy,
And my sighs always ask "Where?"
In a ghostly breath it calls back to me,
"There, where you are not, there is your happiness."