Manafonistas

 
 

 
 
 
1) Jan Bang & Erik Honore: The God of Silence, aus: UNCOMMON DEITIES

2) Christian Fennesz: Sekai, aus: AUN

3) James Yorkston: Kath With Rhodes, aus: I was a Cat from a Book

4) Alexandre Desplat: The Heroic Weather Condition, Part 1: A Veiled Mist,  aus: V.A. – Original Soundtrack Moonrise Kingdom

5) Hank Williams: Ramblin´ Man: aus: V.A. – Original Soundtrack Moonrise Kingdom

6) Benjamin Britten: Songs from Friday Afternoon (Old Abram Brown), aus: V.A. – Original Soundtrack Moonrise Kingdom

7) Emanuele de Raymondi: BV_02, aus: Buyukberber Variations

8) Bill Fay: The Sun is Bored, aus: Bill Fay (Bill Fay from 1971)

9) Terje Rypdal: Darkness Falls, aus: Odyssey

10) Bill Fay: Big Painter, aus: Life is People (Bill Fay from 2012)

11) Bill Fay: The Never Ending Happening, aus: Life is People

12) Matthew Bourne: Phantasie, aus: Montauk Variations

13) Don Cherry: Manusha Raga Komboji, aus: ORGANIC MUSIC SOCIETY

14) John Barry: The Persuaders, aus: V.A. – TV Sound and Image (British Televison, Film and Library Composers 1956-80)

15) Vivaldi: Winter II, aus: Recomposed by Max Richter (Vivaldi: The Four Seasons)

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I write: hey, look, jan, this is one of the first playlists in the world with the new Bang/Honore album in, well, very good neigbourhood. Jan Bang answers: that´s what i call a nice birthday present … I answer: oh, happy birthday!!!! You can hang it on the wall:) … Jan answers: not today, but on your broadcasting day. i bought the fennesz album in london recently. beautiful work. I: Fennesz risks being romantic, and it works.

Guy Sigsworth writes: Wonderful playlist. Will check out some of the unknown tracks next weeks. I love Matthew Bourne’s Montauk Variations. His piano playing probably owes as much to Messiaen, John Cage or Ligeti as it does to McCoy Tyner, Bill Evans or Keith Jarrett. Bourne judges mood better than any young pianist I know. Just when the avant-gardism hits the limit of what a generous but unsure listener can comprehend, he’ll resolve into a serenely naive hymn: difficulty and simplicity in perfect balance.

In this fascinating meditation, Talking Heads frontman Byrne (Bicycle Diaries) explores how social and practical context, more than individual authorship, shaped music making in history and his own career. Touching on everything from bird-song and mirror neurons to the scene at CBGB, his wide-ranging treatment analyzes the effect of music venues (he theorizes that terrible stadium acoustics bias arena-rock bands toward plodding anthems), technology (sound recording induced opera singers to add vibrato), finances (he proffers balance sheets for two of his albums), and much else on the music we hear. He draws extensively from his own experiences, as his music shifted from the minimalism of early Talking Heads („no `oh, babys´ or words that I wouldn´t use in in daily speech“) to complex theatricality; his chapters on Heads recording sessions are some of the most insightful accounts of musical creativity yet penned. The result is a surprising challenge to the romantic cliché of musical genius: rather than an upwelling of authentic feeling, he insists, „making music is like constructing a machine whose function is to dredge up emotions in performer and listener.“ Byrne´s erudite and entertaining prose reveals him to be a true musical intellectual, with serious and revealing things to say about his art. (source: Sweeney’s)

Kirk Knuffke und Jesse Stacken haben erst mal ziemlich knuffige Namen. Da sie bei Steeplechase schon mehrere Duo-Alben veröffentlicht haben, hielt ich Knut und Jesse erst mal (schön blöd!) für Dänen, dabei sind es relativ waschechte Amerikaner: und wie spricht man Mr. Knuffke dann aus? Das „k“ stumm lassen, aber das „e“ am Ende auch? Naffk? Oder Knaffki? Oder Naffki? Das sind Fragen, mit denen man schon ganz knapp an einem Koan-Rätsel (und damit womöglich an der Erleuchtung) vorbei schrappt! Die beiden haben Drummer Kenny Wollesen ins Studio geladen (den kennt man z. B. von meinem Bill Frisell-Lieblingsalbum „Unspeakable“). Sie erforschen moderne Jazzkompositionen von Carla Bley bis John Coltrane. Schöne Platte. Karl Lippegaus stellt ein Buch über das bewegte Leben von Jutta Hipp vor, einer Pionierin des Nachkriegsjazz. Karsten Mützelfeldt stellt eine neue CD des westafrikanischen Gitarristen Lionel Loueke vor, das er toller findet als ich: “Heritage”. Zwei Knaller kommen in die 45-Minuten-Sendung: Keith Jarretts “Sleeper” und “Didymoi Dreams” von Sidsel Endresen und Stian Westerhus. Und what the fuck hat der Jazztrompeter Enrico Rava für einen Narren an Michael Jackson gefressen? Ich kläre das – und spiele ein Stück mit Blut auf dem Tanzboden, ehrlich! Gerade landet mein Blick auf dem Cover von “Like A Tree”, dem Album von Knuffke & Stacken: die sehen wirklich aus wie ein altes Stereotyp von Jazzern in unseren Hinterköpfen: Brillen- und Vollbartträger der eine, der andere belässt es beim Vollbart. Zwei “Füchse”, die zum Glück das Rein-Akademische hinter sich lassen, wenn sie Kornett und Klavier in Schwingung versetzen! P.S.: Steeplechase Records-mastermind Nils Winther hat mir die Antwort auf meine drängende Frage gemailt: Ke-naff-ke.

The Norwegian singer and film and theatre composer Sidsel Endresen can touch the emotions of listeners who usually run a mile from abstract improv and experimental electronica. She’s in concert here with guitarist Stian Westerhus at the 2011 Nattjazz festival in Bergen – a set that unfolds lyrical confessions like wordless folk ballads; quiet, speech-like musings; spooky gabbles and gasps; and a guitar palette of astonishing depth. Westerhus sounds as if he’s ringing bells behind Endresen’s bluesy growls on The Rustle of a Long Black Skirt, he lays hammer-drill clatters and clashing-metal noises behind her on Barkis Is Willing, and cushions gentle pieces such as Drawing an Arc or Hedgehumming. The singer’s wounded sounds skid over drones and slaps on Wayward Ho, the standout track. Didymoi Dreams takes no prisoners, and the audience reaction says much about its power, originality and fearlessness. (John Fordham, The Guardian)

John Darnielle is a human male and American musician who was born in Indiana.

Alone or in collaboration with others, he has been known as the Mountain Goats since 1991.

He grew up in Central California, and has lived in many states, but now lives in North Carolina with his wife and child and at least one cat that I have observed.

I visited his home in the year 2011. I took off my shoes when I came in the door because that is my habit. No one made me do it.

John Darnielle’s house is not rockstar huge, nor rockstar glamorous. It does not have a home theater or rolfing center. It’s modest.

There is an office packed with shelves reflecting his preoccupations: pulp horror and philosophy and religious study. John Darnielle is fascinated with both death metal and the Holy Bible and speaks eloquently of the dark magic and elegance and grace of both.

Now I am going to tell you that, in the study by the stairs, I stepped in a little bit of cat vomit.

I can report that John Darnielle was not embarrassed. Because he knows it is in a cat’s nature to vomit, and because he saw an opportunity for kindness. He loaned me some socks, and they were argyle, warm from the dryer and very soft.

The house has a basement, which John Darnielle describes as “awesome.”

The basement is not particularly awesome. (I have seen some awesome basements.) It has some drums and guitars in it but otherwise is a fairly typical basement of a modest, middle-class home. Normal.

It is my impression that this may be why John Darnielle considers his basement to be awesome, for such normality was not necessarily going to be his fate.

Inside the basement is a box of a limited-edition, alternate vinyl version of his album The Sunset Tree, which came out in 2005. Each one is hand-painted by John: white sleeve traced with naïve snakes and swirls of bright color.

John Darnielle told me that he made these when things were going well in his career, but he was still not convinced he was going to make it…when he still thought he might have to go back to psychiatric nursing, which is what he did when he started writing and recording songs.

Those first recordings, you may have read, were made on a simple cassette recorder. And those tapes of just him plus guitar are full of hiss and urgency. They were made for one reason. Like these hand-painted LPs, even if all else failed, they were going to get out there, no matter what.

He has written almost 600 songs now, and some of them are very sad, dealing with hard drugs and tragic ends, hurting yourself and others, sicknesses of both body and brain, off-brand alcohols. They are told in beautiful, unnerving, specific detail, because John Darnielle is a very good writer, and also some of them are just true stories about his own life.

But many have noted that John Darnielle seems often very happy, and his demeanor on stage is almost exclusively unhaunted, ecstatic.

Anyone who reads his Twitter feed knows he takes great delight in his delights: vegan cooking, fat babies, hockey, the beautiful alchemy of Chemex coffee, Anonymous 4, playing music for people, loaning out socks when the time comes, basements.

These are the consolations; and if some of his songs suggest that there are real hells on earth, other songs remind that the heavens are equally close at hand.

(Sometimes they are even the same songs.)

It is my impression that this is the ecstasy John Darnielle is feeling: that thrill of having survived, escaped for even a second to enjoy those small transcendent delights, and to sing of them.

And I can report that if you are standing in the basement with John Darnielle and wondering how he survived this far, to stand happy in this heavenly basement, you may look down at the hand-painted album of songs you are holding and realize the answer is in your hand.

Like that album, TRANSCENDENTAL YOUTH is full of songs about people who madly, stupidly, blessedly won’t stop surviving, no matter who gives up on them.

I can report that it is a very good album and has many more instruments on it than those early tapes, including Peter Hughes on bass, Jon Wurster on drums, and, for the first time, a full horn section. And all of this makes a very joyous noise.

Everything I have written here is true, to the best of my knowledge.

I am not giving back the socks.

That is all.

John Hodgman
2012

Bill wer? Bill Fay? Nie gehört, aber er war da, in den frühen 70er Jahren, zwei Alben bei Decca, manche Songs (habe diese Lieder jetzt „nachgeholt“) aufschäumend mit Bläsern und Violinen, mit einem Pathos wie bei den legendären vier Scott Walker-Alben (jenen, wo er die Spuren von Jacques Brel sondierte), manche wiederum einfache Balladen, die in nichts anderem ruhten als in sich selbst: die Stimme spendete Trost im Dunkel, lauschte der Natur nach (besonders gern dem letzten Tageslicht),den Menschen, die verschwanden (und keine Notiz hinterliessen). Bill Fay verschwand dann selber und hinterliess diese zwei Schallplatten, die verramscht wurden, von einigen wie Schätze gehortet, und irgendwann im Wohnzimmer von Jeff Tweedy landeten. Wie sollte aber auch einer zum Mythos werden, der nicht mal Selbstmord beging, und einfach nur ein guter Songschreiber war, dem die Ruhe mehr lag als der fortlaufend anders getönte letzte Schrei. Und jetzt, 40 Jahre später, eine Ewigkeit, die Rückkehr: LIFE IS PEOPLE. Die ersten Reaktionen der britischen Musikkritik überschlagen sich, und das, obwohl die Musik keinen Pfifferling auf die Moderne setzt, und wieder in nichts anderem ruht als sich selbst. Jetzt ist der Wirbel gross, und Bill Fay begegnet ihm mit Ruhe. Totgeglaubte werden gern mal kurz in den Himmel gehoben. Ich habe die neue Platte heute morgen zum ersten Mal gehört: ergreifend! (M.E.)

Success in songwriting is as much a lottery as a measure of true quality.

Some writers instantly catch the zeitgeist, and become household names; others, like Nick Drake and Bill Fay, struggle for exposure, only finding their audience years later. Bill Fay made a couple of ambitious but overlooked albums on the cusp of the Seventies, then drifted into obscurity, his cult status gradually rising along with their eBay price, and the esteem of fans like Nick Cave and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. But it’s Bill’s time now: with the wonderful Life Is People, Fay has finally created the masterpiece that will secure his reputation and, hopefully, his future.

It’s not a young person’s album, Fay no longer being young; though even when he was, his eye was always drawn to the shady side of the street. But there’s no reason why anyone who bought a Leonard Cohen album shouldn’t appreciate Life Is People: it’s as if the accumulated wisdom and compassion of a lifetime has been condensed into a dozen beautiful, heartwrenching songs. And while there are devastating moments of quiet emotional turmoil, it’s an experience from which one emerges more positive and hopeful and generous towards one’s fellow fallible humans.

It opens strongly with „There Is a Valley“, a tableaux of landscapes stained with bloodshed, leading eventually to Jerusalem, where Christ’s stigmata represent the memories of all atrocities. „Big Painter“ – a metaphor for God – and „City of Dreams“ find Fay a fretful outcast from society’s brash media fantasies, the arrangements of vibes, organ and delicate guitar tracery establishing a static, ominous mood. „Be at Peace with Yourself“ is a sibling-song to Fay’s earlier „Be Not So Fearful“, while „The Coast No Man Can Tell“ offers the fondest of sad farewells to a dying friend.

But „The Healing Day“ is the knockout punch here, an anticipation of eventual redemption which, thanks to Fay’s characteristically undemonstrative, modest delivery, offers an overwhelming hit of compassion stripped of the kind of bombast that usually attaches to such anthems. Truly, the album of a lifetime.
 
 
 

 
Video: Bill Fay – Your Life Inside (Bill Fay in jungen Jahren)

Viel ist die Rede dieser Tage vom Ungemach der Leistungsgesellschaft, von Überforderung und Desintegration (Farewell To Multikulti) und von den Gefahren der digitalen Demenz. Passend zur Urlaubszeit im Folgenden ein Zitat zur Bekräftigung des Innehaltens – einer Potenz, die der Vita Activa das Vermögen zur Kontemplation entgegensetzt. Gemeint ist die Fähigkeit zur Abstandnahme und Abschlusshandlung – angesichts des Übermasses an Möglichkeiten und Beliebigkeiten. Die Sufis nannten das „Retreat“:

Ohne jene „abschließenden Instinkte“ zerstreut sich das Handeln zu einem ruhelosen, hyperaktiven Reagieren und Abreagieren. Die pure Aktivität verlängert nur das bereits Vorhandene. Eine wirkliche Wendung zum Anderen setzt die Negativität der Unterbrechung voraus. Nur vermittels der Negativität des Innehaltens kann das Handlungssubjekt den ganzen Raum der Kontingenz durchmessen, der sich einer bloßen Aktivität entzieht. (Byung-Chul Han, Die Müdigkeitsgesellschaft)

Besser also wäre es, nicht immer gleich dem nächstbesten Projekt hinterherzujagen, in das unsere Wünsche und Pläne uns verstricken. „Wie´s frömmt, so´s kömmt!“ – so die kritische Bemerkung eines Kunstprofessors zum erstbesten zu Papier gebrachten Einfall eines von sich selbst überzeugten Studenten. „Wer sich schon anschickt, Pinsel und Leinwand zu kaufen …“ – gerne auch gedachten wir dieser Mahnworte des Joseph Beuys und seiner Honigpumpe am Arbeitsplatz, als wir jüngst die dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel besuchten.

First song I ever bought: Beatles: Rock’n’Roll Music
Song that always gets me dancing: Talking Heads: Cities
Song from my childhood: Kinks: Sunny Afternoon
Perfect love song: The Gist: Love at first sight
Song for my funeral: Leonard Cohen: Who by fire
Song that makes me, me: Brian Eno: Spinning Away

(npr.org plays this game)

Karl Bruckmaier schreibt zu

Antony and the Johnsons
„Cut the World“
(Rough Trade/Beggars)
und er ist doch dümmlicher als alle behaupten ***

Sag mal, Karl, bist du eigentlich auch so dümmlich, wie einige Menschen in meinem Umfeld behaupten? Man kann auch dümmlich sein, wenn man, wie du, Peter Weiss und seine „Ästhetik des Widerstands“ schätzt. Eine gewisse Intellektualität schliesst eine gewisse Dümmlichkeit nicht aus, die sich in diesem Falle mit einer gewissen Blasiertheit zu mischen scheint. Beste Grüsse von einem aus der Ethnie deutscher Hundebesitzer, die du ja, wie du einst kundtatst, generell nicht magst. Vielleicht solltest dir aber doch mal einen kleinen Kläffer (einen von der nervigen, etwas verzogenen Sorte) zulegen, du könntest so einiges über dich erfahren, an einem lebendigen Gegenüber!

in the liner notes for the ECM recording of modern interpretations of lachrymose sixteenth-century composer John Dowland’s songs, In Darkness Let Me Dwell, composer Robert White notes the connection between Dowland’s fascination with the lachrimal, accompanied by the larger Elizabethan celebration of melancholy, and our current preoccupation with depression, saying, „What his age knew, and we sometimes lose sight of, is that meditating on a beautiful expression of sadness can help to provide a thoroughly uplifting sense of consolation.