Manafonistas

„Drei Körper“ heißt ein hörenswertes Radio-Feature. Es handelt von Körperwahrnehmungen: wenn der eigene Körper zum Feind wird und wie man ihn dann als vertrauten Freund zurückgewinnt. Meditation, Tanz, Bewegung – man kennt die tägliche Fitnesspredigt-Leier zur Genüge („In zehn Wochen beginnt die Badesaison – was Sie jetzt schon für ihren Sommerbody tun können!“). Doch das hier ist etwas anderes: überzeugend und warmherzig schildern die dort vorgestellten Personen ihre Geschichte. Untermalt und ergänzt wird das Ganze durch die kongeniale Musik. Laurie Anderson höre ich da und vor allem Eivind Aarsets Dream Logic, das in Verbindung mit diesen Erzählungen eine besondere Wirkung erzielt. (JS)

 

„The singer still takes a lot of tonal detours on Mala, but that’s the sound of creative freedom for a songwriter who’s never been afraid to follow his whims to epiphanies, dead ends and many points in between.“

Ho, ho, that’s a fine album: laid-back, skeletal (with some well-dosed sweetness in the arrangements, no bones alone), soft with the famous edge. Devendra Banhart succeeds in offering a song cycle with an ongoing mood of lighthearted darkness, surreal wit, some brazilian moments. And a cover I like to look at. There’s a guitar, a singer, some other sounds, no big deal. „I created a studio right behind the appartment I rented in LA and soundproofed it myself. I didn’t do a great job so we ended up accidentally recording birdsong. so these seemingly digital sounds are organic in origin. What sounds like syhth, is actually a bird.“ You can listen to „Mala“ now, on www.npr.org.  (M.E.)

„Mariana Sadovska – Songs I Learned in the Ukraine (Global Village, 2001)
Just voice and harmonium. This album shows why she is probably my favorite singer, if the word “singer” means to become life force and amplify it, to capture life force straight from the heart and pour it out to the listener through the voice. The greatest voice, in my opinion. Mariana breathes so much life and beauty into her singing; she is beautiful, vulnerable, a mother, manic, fierce. She makes me tremble, weep, celebrate. I am awed and humbled by the terrible, incredible reality of life as a human heart and mind when I hear her. I am also soothed, made to feel sane, quenched. I was introduced to this record in the midst of terrifying existential dread from some unexpected deaths, which manifested as insomnia for a while. It was a shifting moment of brightness out of a nightmare to first hear this album. And whenever I feel tired or frozen/boring while I’m singing, I just think of Mariana’s singing and voila! I am revived. So now I’m telling you about some of my tricks, how I cheat …“

Sometimes I feel touched by the way musicians talk about special records, like a heart’s affair. This is an example. You can listen to one track of the album here, and it’s a great day for Spring Calling songs, isn’t it? Dawn McCarthy is telling this in a new edition of the series „Listed“ (Dusted Magazine). Very interesting, too, what she’s telling us there about a quite unknown Popol Vuh-album and an ECM-album called ROSENFOLE. Dawn McCarthy recently published an album with Will Oldham, a collection of carefully selected Everly Brothers-covers. M.E.
 
„Cycle of Spring Calling Songs …“