From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V4 #376 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Wednesday, October 21 1998 Volume 04 : Number 376 Today's Subjects: ----------------- trippy, chanty, trancy music [J Wermont ] Re: Triphoppy stuff [Brian Bloom ] sad songs [Melissa ] Re: One more word about Ana Christensen [Sherlyn Koo ] Re: sad songs ["Jeffrey C. Burka" ] I can be *such* a tease. ["Jeffrey C. Burka" ] Re: sad songs [Andrew Fries ] Re: trippy, chanty, trancy music [neal copperman ] Happy Music ["Jeffrey Hanson" ] Re: trippy, chanty, trancy music ["Jeffrey Hanson" ] Re: trippy, chanty, trancy music [neal copperman ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 15:48:13 -0700 (PDT) From: J Wermont Subject: trippy, chanty, trancy music Cos wrote: > I'm not sure any of these are exactly what you're describing, but... > > Hector Zazou - Songs From the Cold Seas > Alison Brown - Look Left (no vocals) > Dissidenten - Instinctive Traveller, Jungle book > anything by Ofra Haza > anything by Sheila Chandra > > Which of those are you not yet familiar with? Of the ones you do > know, which are anywhere like what you're looking for here? Haven't heard any of the first three. I have heard a little bit of music by Ofra Haza. Some of it was distinctly Middle-Eastern, but a lot of it just sounded like garden-variety dance music with just a touch of Persian sound for flavor. I have only heard one song by Sheila Chandra, something called "Woman, I'm Calling You" or something like that. It was acapella, Sheila singing by herself. Her voice was gorgeous, and the song was really neat, but I wouldn't call it trippy. So apparently I haven't heard the right songs or albums by these people. By the way, how would Dead Can Dance fit in with what I'm talking about? Joyce ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 15:53:24 -0700 From: Brian Bloom Subject: Re: Triphoppy stuff At 06:18 PM 10/20/98 -0400, Ofer Inbar wrote: >I'm not sure any of these are exactly what you're describing, but... > Hector Zazou - Songs From the Cold Seas > Alison Brown - Look Left (no vocals) > Dissidenten - Instinctive Traveller, Jungle book > anything by Ofra Haza > anything by Sheila Chandra > "Song from the Cold Seas" doesn't have the "dancey" aspect J was looking for. I'd say Ofra Haza is close, but some of her stuff is fairly traditional (and occasionally downright poppy) dance floor music. "A BoneCroneDrone" by Sheila is just what the title implies, mostly drones and shimmering background sorta music, nowhere near the "heavy percussion" description... Other suggestions not yet mentioned: Banco de Gaya - Last Train to Lhasa; more ambient than upbeat, but some nice ethnic moments. Horizon 222 - Through The Round Window; Hard to find album, and mostly ambient/dub, but has neato track "Groovin' with the Tuvan" :) William Orbit - Strange Cargo 3; again, kinda dubby, but with some great layers, samples, female vocals, etc. Passion, and Passion Sources - by Peter Gabriel, mostly traditional music, but some nice polyrhythms and chants. Akira soundtrack - Japanese but has some absolutely *amazing* uptempo bits to it. One of my all time faves. Opus 3 - Mind Fruit; a little dated-sounding now, but with some very ethereal dancy energy. Bill Laswell has done bajillions of projects that fall into the ethnic/trancy vein, though some are more minimalist.. Try before you buy (or you'll have another Loop Guru incident) I'll second the suggestion of Lamb, and also toss in the song "The Gift" by Way Out West. Very beautiful, emotive, and buried in layers... You might look for anything labeled or categorized as "Goa" trance. That might be down the alley enough for your tastes. Look for artists like "Union Jack", "Man with No Name", or stuff on the TIP label. I wish I was standing in front of my cd rack because I'm sure I'm leaving some out, but this is off the top of my head from work... Hope any of this helps... We now return you to your more traditional ectofodder discussion.. :) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 19:58:13 From: Melissa Subject: sad songs I am trying to think of sad songs that have made me cry and only can think of a few. I use to cry when I heard the song "Winter" by Tori Amos. The first time I saw her I cried when she performed it. I also cried during a Sarah concerts during many of her songs. I can't remember which ones. It's been a while but I use to listen to certain Happy songs when I was depressed like "Ode". I also use to listen to the last song on the Smiths "Louder than Bombs" album. I think it's called "Asleep". ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 10:31:30 +1000 (EST) From: Sherlyn Koo Subject: Re: One more word about Ana Christensen Howdy - Andrew said: > I once dragged Sherlyn to a concert which included Peggy in the lineup, but I > seem to remember she missed most of Peggy's set moving the car :) Yeah, but I did like what I heard. :) BTW, I haven't really been following the conversation lately but I'd like to throw in one choice for "Saddest Song" (hope it hasn't been mentioned already) - Patty Larkin's "I Told Him That My Dog Wouldn't Run"... Cheers, sherlyn =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= a+e=ig Sherlyn Koo - sherlyn@fl.net.au [Sydney, Australia] "We're born to shimmer, we're born to shine, we're born to radiate. We're born to live, we're born to love, we're born to never hate..." - Shawn Mullins ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 21:14:03 -0400 From: "Jeffrey C. Burka" Subject: Re: sad songs ariana sez: > I also use to listen to the last song on the Smiths > "Louder than Bombs" album. I think it's called "Asleep". Thanks: this one didn't even cross my mind, though it's one of my favorite bits of pop brilliance. Hell, I had the lyrics written on the wall of my dorm room one year -- occupied about 9 square feet of wall space*. Morrissey has this tendency to write things that are hard to take seriously in their depression; he mopes and whines a lot, but it's hard not to laugh when he says something like, "I wear black on the outside / 'cause black is how I feel on the inside." But "Asleep" really works for me -- a bizarre cross between a lullaby and a suicide note -- it's really unlike any other Smiths song. And the snatch of "Auld Lang Syne" plunked out at the end on a music box, over the sounds of a wind put the whole brilliant thing over the top. jeff np: nothing, but after that, I need to go grab _Louder Than Bombs_ and track forward to 24... - -- |Jeffrey C. Burka | moving to jburka@cqi.com -- come say hi | |http://www.cqi.com/~jburka | at the new digs...now up and running! | ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 21:24:03 -0400 From: "Jeffrey C. Burka" Subject: I can be *such* a tease. Oops. I wrote, regarding the Smiths' "Asleep": > Hell, I had the lyrics written on the > wall of my dorm room one year -- occupied about 9 square feet of > wall space*. But then was so anxious to grab the cd that I forgot to fill in the footnote I had marked. My freshman year of college, my roommate wrote the entire "Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" on 1.5 of of 3 walls of our room (the fourth side consisted of built-ins, not your basic plaster wall). I learned a lot from Joe. ;-) One of the years I had my own dorm room, I did lots of scribbling on the walls. Everything from a quote from _Willy Wonka And the Chocolate Factory_ (yes, the movie, not the book--"We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams") to Anton Chekov to Emily Bronte ("We lingered there beneath the harebells and heath and wondered who could have imagined unquiet slumber for the sleepers in that quiet earth" -- I probably mangled that, it's been years, but it was the last paragraph of _Wuthering Heights_ and contains phrases which should be familiar to fans of Genesis' _Wind and Wuthering_) to Morrissey to...geez, I don't recall what else was there. A lot of my friends were very concerned about "Asleep" writ so huge, but as many of us understand, there's comfort to be found even from such incredibly depressing music. jeff np: yup, "Asleep" - -- |Jeffrey C. Burka | moving to jburka@cqi.com -- come say hi | |http://www.cqi.com/~jburka | at the new digs...now up and running! | ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 11:28:46 +1000 From: Andrew Fries Subject: Re: sad songs In a message "sad songs" on 20/Oct/1998 19:58:13 Melissa says: > I use to cry when I heard the song "Winter" by Tori Amos. The > first time I saw her I cried when she performed it. Yes, this is such a sad song, isn't it? So desperately over the top, you can only either totally embrace it or totally cringe! Speaking of Tori, if anyone ever writes a book about sad songs, Tori would probably deserve a chapter all of her own. How about "Here, in my head", or "Upside down" or "Silent all these years"... funny, they are all her early songs. Pity I only ever got to see Tori in large, stately theatres - sit down venues with Tori herself far, far away... it was still good to be there, sure, but it just wasn't the sort of environment where I could get totally immersed in music to the point I could cry over it... __________________________________________________ "What the public wants is called politically unrealistic.Translated into English, that means power and privilege are opposed to it. " Noam Chomsky http://www.zip.com.au/~afries/hall.html __________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 20:20:20 -0600 From: neal copperman Subject: Re: trippy, chanty, trancy music At 3:48 PM -0700 10/20/98, J Wermont wrote: >Cos wrote: > > I'm not sure any of these are exactly what you're describing, but... > > > > Hector Zazou - Songs From the Cold Seas > > Alison Brown - Look Left (no vocals) > > Dissidenten - Instinctive Traveller, Jungle book > > anything by Ofra Haza > > anything by Sheila Chandra > > > > Which of those are you not yet familiar with? Of the ones you do > > know, which are anywhere like what you're looking for here? > >Haven't heard any of the first three. I have heard a little bit of music >by Ofra Haza. Some of it was distinctly Middle-Eastern, but a lot of it >just sounded like garden-variety dance music with just a touch of >Persian sound for flavor. I'm only familiar with some of the above, but I don't think the ones I know are what you are looking for. I can't recomend the Zazou highly enough, as it's a brilliant blend of world music, pop music, art music and atmosphere. Ofra Haza - She actually did pop into my mind from what you wrote, as possibly of interest. I have a number of her albums, and think they are pretty spotty. My fave is Yemenite Songs (also called 50 Gates of Wisdom, depending on what release you find). This is all traditional, but it's got truly amazing percussion on it. This was sampled by M/A/R/R/S in their big hit that I can't seem to remember, which gave Ofra world wide recognition. So she recorded an interesting companion disc to Yemenite songs called Shaday. Half of Shaday sounds just like you describe - bland dance pop with the barest hint of Middle Eastern influence. But the other half are really cool reworkings of songs from Yemenite Songs, in Hebrew, with interesting dance/percussion stuff mixed in. (I have two albums after that Desert Wind and Kirya [the latter produced by Daniel Lanois]) and I find both of them to be less interesting than the above. Sheila Chandra's old Indi-pop albums (with Monsoon and solo) have cool tabla's all over them, but are still more traditional sounding. Her more recent albums are more experimental. I'd track through Zen Kiss or Weaving My Ancestor's Voices (both on Realworld) for a flavor. I was reminded a bit of Loreena McKennit when I got Weaving. >By the way, how would Dead Can Dance fit in with what I'm talking about? I think DCD might be exactly what you are looking for. The first thing that popped into my mind when I read your revised description was Delerium. I only have their last album, Karma, which has a lot of guest vocalists on it. They played the song that Sarah McLachlin sings on the radio (Silence). It's got an interesting mix of world music stuff, combined in interesting ways with more electronic stuff. Check out these samples: Ritual Music of the Kayapo-Xikron, Brazil Heart of the Forest - The Baka Pygmy People as well as a number of samples from DCD. (Sort of third hand world music by that point, I guess.) Anyway, I like this, cause it seems more integrated than other, more popular examples of similar experiments, like Enigma and Deep Forest. There songs just make me want to throw all the electronics away and get the source material, whereas Delerium seems to build off of it. Also, I'd recommend Trance Mission (but I've only heard a few songs on a sampler tape from Jeff Hanson... Jeff?) and the second Land of the Blind album (Oit pf Cjaps, or Out of Chaos of you put your fingers on the right keys.) I'll bet Cyoakha knows more suggestions too. And from the way you are talking, I'd bet you'd enjoy listening to Gamelan music. It's pretty much all percussion, with all kinds of dense rhythms and counter rhythms. I did a quick check on the discs I have on Realworld, and here are a few more you might find interesting. Passion - Peter Gabriel's soundtrack to the Last Temptation of Christ. Passion Sources is full of a lot of the original music that inspired him, which he took and built off of for his beautiful soundtrack. This is more atmospheric than percussive, though there is some of that too. And any Peter Gabriel album has to have a buzzing low end :) (Similarly interesting music on Plus from Us.) Afro Celt Sound System - Volume 1 Sound Magic: The title pretty much says it all. Irish hybrids are my favorite, so this kind of thing always catches my fancy. It is a pretty intriguing sound though. Dream - U. Srinavas & Michael Brook: More in the Indian vein again. I find it very trancy and droney (tablas and sitar, plus infinite guitar, and a few minutes of ethereal musing from Jane Siberry). Mustt Mustt - Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan More Middle Eastern, and more Michael Brook. Sadly, it's the only NFAK disc I have so far, and prabably one of his least traditional. Now who's droning on and on? Neal np: Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Broken Arrow ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Oct 98 20:35:28 PDT From: "Jeffrey Hanson" Subject: Happy Music Although the Happy music has died down somewhat, the one song that comes to mind that makes me happy no matter what mood I'm in when I hear it, is Lone Justice's Sweet Sweet Baby (I'm Falling). I can't hear that song without jumping around the room and feeling joy. Most of the other "Happy" songs that I can love when I'm in a good mood will grate on me if I'm not in a good mood. Jeff Hanson ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Oct 98 20:33:37 PDT From: "Jeffrey Hanson" Subject: Re: trippy, chanty, trancy music Continuing in the trippy thread Neal Copperman wrote:. > > Also, I'd recommend Trance Mission (but I've only heard a few songs on a > sampler tape from Jeff Hanson... Jeff?) and the second Land of the Blind > album (Oit pf Cjaps, or Out of Chaos of you put your fingers on the right > keys.) I'll bet Cyoakha knows more suggestions too. Actually, Land of the Blind was the first album that popped into my head when I heard the description you're looking for. Only some of Dead Can Dance's stuff would--probably and most notably their latest Spirit Chaser which seemed the most percussive. Trance Mission didn't occur to me until Neal posted it but it would be good too. I got the opportunity to see them open for Mouth Music and it was one of the most incredible performances I've seen. It consisted entirely of a didgeridoo player and a bass clarinetist/baritone saxaphonist. Between the two of them they were able to create some really amazing music--the albums include other members who weren't able to get into town for the show, and have more electronic feel, but are really amazing. The baritone saxaphonist was the only person I've ever seen play a sax without a mouthpiece (or t his a common thing and I just don't get out much?!) I certainly never tried it when I played sax. The one Trance Mission album I have is entitled Head Light--I believe they have at least one other. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 23:55:17 -0400 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: trippy, chanty, trancy music neal copperman wrote: > Ofra Haza - She actually did pop into my mind from what you wrote, as > possibly of interest. I have a number of her albums, and think they are > pretty spotty. My fave is Yemenite Songs (also called 50 Gates of Wisdom, > depending on what release you find). This is all traditional, but it's got > truly amazing percussion on it. This was sampled by M/A/R/R/S in their big > hit that I can't seem to remember, which gave Ofra world wide recognition. That was the (in)famous "Pump Up the Volume". M/A/R/R/S actually cribbed the use of the sample from Coldcut's earlier remix of Eric B. and Rakim's "Paid in Full" (for which, if I recall, she wasn't paid in full, which led to legal stuff, the upshot of which was the worldwide release of "Yemenite Songs" and her ensuing microstardom). > (I have two albums after that > Desert Wind and Kirya [the latter produced by Daniel Lanois]) and I find > both of them to be less interesting than the above. Kirya was actually produced by Don Was -- though I'd love to hear what Lanois would do producing her. Mileage varies on the albums -- Desert Wind is my favorite of hers. n.p. Morton Feldman: The Ecstacy of the Moment - -- - ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ===== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Maryland? = <*> SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List <*> = ecto \|| |/ http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt ====== Comma: Voices of New Music \| ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 22:23:42 -0600 From: neal copperman Subject: Re: trippy, chanty, trancy music At 11:55 PM -0400 10/20/98, Joseph Zitt wrote: >neal copperman wrote: >That was the (in)famous "Pump Up the Volume". I thought that was it, but I couldn't stop confusing it with Pump Up The Jam (or whatever that was). > M/A/R/R/S actually >cribbed the use of the sample from Coldcut's earlier remix of >Eric B. and Rakim's "Paid in Full" (for which, if I recall, she >wasn't paid in full, which led to legal stuff, the upshot of which >was the worldwide release of "Yemenite Songs" and her ensuing >microstardom). Hmmm, that's interesting. I'll have to seek that out sometime. >Kirya was actually produced by Don Was -- though I'd love to hear what >Lanois would do producing her. Mileage varies on the albums -- Desert >Wind is my favorite of hers. Oops. Thanks for the correction. Guess I should have looked it up rather than relied on memory. I knew it was a producer who "specializes" in pulling people back on track who have wandered astray (of which both Was and Lanois would qualify). Course, Joe wouldn't agree that she had wandered astray :) In fact, in the three or so times this thread has come up after the original discussion, I have always posted that Desert Wind is Joe's favorite :) Glad to see you're still paying attention. (While I have your attention, I should post about the Sarah Cahill piano concert I saw where she played a bunch of Henry Cowell songs, among others.) Neal np: Kinnie Starr at the Metro Cafe ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V4 #376 **************************