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

Now Playing.....

Stephan Micus - Nomad Songs

Stephan Micus (Ndingo, Genbri, Steel-String Guitar, Suling, Voice, Nay, Rewab, Rabab, Twelve-String Guitar, Fourteen-String Guitar, Tin Whistle, and Shakuhachi)

Streaming on TIDAL........  Having listened to the 'Inland Sea' album and loved it, I am giving 'Nomad Songs' a spin. Through two of the tracks and the music is beautiful! Thanks Stefan for the earlier mention.

Notes from the ECM Records website found here: 

In his journeys all over the world Stephan Micus seeks to study and understand traditional instruments, the sounds that they produce and the cultures that brought them to life. He then composes original pieces for them, combining instruments that would never normally be heard together, chosen from different cultures simply for their character, texture and sonic beauty. Nomad Songs is his 21st album for ECM; he plays nine different instruments, but emphasizes two he hasn’t used before: The first is the Moroccan genbri, a lute covered with camel-skin, played by the Gnawa in Morocco. The second is the ndingo, a lamellophone similar to the kalimba, used by the San people in Botswana. These indigenous inhabitants of Southern Africa have been pushed off their land and marginalized by the new nation states. With the album’s title Micus, who sees himself as a musical nomad, refers to both the situation of people like the Gnawa and the San as well as his own way of working and living.

Now Playing......

Stephan Micus - Panagia

Stephan Micus (vocals, Bavarian zither, Chitrali sitar, Uyghur sattar, Sikh dilruba, Chinese gongs, Burmese temple bells, Tibetan chimes and Persian nay).

Streaming from Tidal........    Stephan's music works well for a quiet Sunday evening at home, beautiful and very peaceful.

Notes from ECM Records here:

“Panagia” is Stephan Micus’ 20th album for ECM, and it coincides with his 60th birthday in January 2013. The Greek word Panagia is one of the names of the Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ. Stephan Micus’ album takes six Byzantine Greek prayers and sets them in his own inimitable way with instruments he has collected in years of travels round the world. “The album alternates sung poems with instrumental tracks and thus has a clearly symmetrical, even ritualistic, structure”, says Micus. “On ‘Panagia’ I focussed mainly on strings,” explains Micus about the recording, made in his own studio on the island of Mallorca, where he has lived for many years. “The string instruments come from Bavaria, India, Pakistan, Chinese Xinjiang plus my own invention, a 14-string guitar.” But he emphasizes that his aim is never to replicate other people’s music, but to create something new and universal.

Grateful Dead. Shakedown Street (1978). On original CD from 1984. In the mood for some Dead.

The Doors. The Soft Parade (1969). On HDCD from 1999. Often dismissed as an overly quirky effort - that's exactly why I like it. Plus it made their succeeding two albums all the better.

Britten Sinfonia - Bach: Goldberg Variations.

The goldberg variations performed by the Britten Sinfonia ensemble as arranged by Dmitry Sitkovetsky. Very nice.

Joe Jackson. Greatest Hits. On A&M Records CD from 1996. I like everything J.J. and this is an excellent compilation of his earlier music for SQ. Well-mastered, and preserves his signature tight, bright sound signature without any edginess. Includes a couple of very good live recordings.

Great trio jazz

Masaaki Suzuki - Bach: Mass in b minor

TK421 posted:

Thundercat - Drunk via Tidal

This is totally bonkers but very addictive.

I've got to find this online later to have a listen - the album cover intrigues me 

More from Matt Johnson - 

The The - Soul Mining

Now Finishing.......

Stephan Micus - Bold As Light

Stephan Micus (raj plain, noncan, and vocals)

Streaming from TIDAL..........   Starting off Monday morning with some meditative, reflective music which is quite beautiful.

“The idea of sitting down at a table and making a composition on paper is totally foreign to me. To come up with a piece of music, I have to make the sound myself, have the instruments in my hands.” Stephan Micus (1953) has a special and intense relationship with the countless instruments he plays. Many of the instruments, a number of which come from Asia or Africa, represent age-old musical traditions, some of them dying out while others have congealed into the stuff of museum exhibits. But in Micus’ hands they come alive again. He experiments with new sound possibilities and often plays the instruments in ways other than those he was taught by local masters during his distant travels. Improvising, he comes up with the most surprising combinations of instruments, whose melodic lines he plays separately into a multi-track recorder. The resulting polyphonic structures are staggeringly and mysteriously beautiful. Micus’ three main sound protagonists in Bold As Light are the raj nplaim (a free-reed pipe made of bamboo) from Laos, the nohkan (a bamboo flute) from Japan, and the many male voices, which, of course, are all sung by Micus himself. With this CD -the nineteenth for ECM- , the impressive discography Stephan Micus has built up continues unabated, each time with new and unique music.

Listening to Famous blue raincoat by Jennifer Warnes, a selection of Leonard Cohen songs. She co- writes one with a Leonard Cohen, and he sings on one. Great opening track of “First we take Manhattan” with Stevie Ray Vaughan on guitar. It makes some of the Cohen songs more accessible for me.....good album.

(2006)

Nice warm tunes on this frosty afternoon.

On vinyl... 

On vinyl...

On vinyl...

joerand posted:

The Doors. The Soft Parade (1969). On HDCD from 1999. Often dismissed as an overly quirky effort - that's exactly why I like it. Plus it made their succeeding two albums all the better.

In college at a small religious-backed school in the late sixties we put the speakers in the window and played the "You cannot petition the Lord with prayer......." track at full volume at 1 am.  I think we might have made several converts.  

1997 - Tidal..

Very atmospheric. Just ordered the CD(£1.18 + p&p on the river) as the vinyl contains only a fraction of the concert.

Now Playing......

Stephan Micus - Snow

Stephan Micus (duduk, Bavarian zither, charango, and vocals)

Streaming on TIDAL........   Early morning doctors appointment after listening to 'Bold as Light.'  So now on this cold & sunny day time for some 'Snow' which after a couple of tracks I find bright and cheerful!   Another beautiful album.......

German multi-instrumentalist Stephan Micus (born 1953) with his 18th release for ECM: an eight-part suite, once again combining instruments from many different world regions. Micus’ approach to music-making originates in his extended travels through Asia, South America and Africa since 1972. He has never contented himself with learning the playing techniques of indigenous instruments but always seeks to remove them from their cultural contexts and to compose a new sound world for them. Employing multi-track recording, the opulent choirs and instrumental ensembles on “Snow” are all sung and played by Micus himself. There is an extended and particularly soulful duduk solo accompanied by Bavarian zither, there’s an improvisation on charango, the miniature guitar from the Andes and there is Micus’ own voice intoning songs of nature, wide open spaces and solitude…  

(2011)

Time for some well executed, heavy, stoner, psychedelic space-rock from this excellent Berlin outfit. One of my favourite finds on bandcamp from a few years ago 

On CD:-

Gazpacho - Firebird

Berlioz was born on this day in 1803...