Category Archives: music

guan xiao – david (2013)

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Beijing-based Guan Xiao tries to steer away from the label “post-internet artist,” but, looking at her work, it’s obvious the tool—and the advancement that comes with it—is a big part of her creative endeavours. Both her sculptural and video pieces, which are often interconnected, draw on imagery found on the net, treating it both as a source and a platform.

joni mitchell – the wolf that lives in lindsey (1979)

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Of the darkness in men’s minds
What can you say
That wasn’t marked by history
Or the TV news today

He gets away with murder
The blizzards come and go
The stab and glare and buckshot
Of the heavy heavy snow
It comes and goes
It comes and goes

His grandpa loved an empire
His sister loved a thief
And Lindsey loved the ways of darkness
Beyond belief

Girls in chilly blouses
The blizzards come and go
The stab and glare and buckshot
Of the heavy heavy snow
It comes and goes
It comes and goes

The cops don’t seem to care
For derelicts or ladies of the night
They’re weeds for yanking out of sight
If you’re smart or rich or lucky

Maybe you’ll beat the laws of man
But the inner laws of spirit
And the outer laws of nature
No man can
No no man can

There lives a wolf in Lindsey
That raids and runs
Through the hills of Hollywood
And the downtown slums

He gets away with murder
The blizzards come and go
The stab and glare and buckshot
Of the heavy heavy snow
It comes and goes
It comes and goes

© 1978-1979; Crazy Crow Music

au revoir, jeanne moreau (1928 – 2017)

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From Jules et Jim (Directed by François Truffaut, 1962), the song “Le Tourbillon”. The film was directed by François Truffaut and released on January 23, 1962. This song of Cyrus “Boris” Bassiak [aka Serge Rezvani] is interpreted by Catherine [Jeanne Moreau]. Albert on guitar, is none other than songwriter Bassiak / Rezvani. Other roles:
Jules [the short one with blond hair]: Oskar Werner
Jim [the tall one with white shirt]: Henri Serre

According to Wikipedia Rezvani actually wrote this song seven years before, in reference to the couple formed by Jeanne Moreau and his companion at the time, Jean-Louis Richard, who was also Serge’s best friend.

_
Elle avait des bagues à chaque doigt, (She had rings on every finger)
Des tas de bracelets autour des poignets, (A profusion of bracelets on her wrists)
Et puis elle chantait avec une voix (And she was singing with such a voice)
Qui sitôt m’enjôla. (That I was at once under her spell)

Elle avait des yeux, des yeux d’opale (She had eyes, eyes of opal)
Qui fascinaient, qui fascinaient, (That fascinated me)
Y avait l’ovale de son visage pâle, (And there was the oval of her pale face)
De femme fatale qui me fut fatale (bis). (That of a”femme fatale” who was fatal to me)

On s’est connus, on s’est reconnus, (We met, we met again)
On s’est perdus de vue, (We lost sight of each other)
on s’est reperdus de vue, (we again lost sight of each other)
On s’est retrouvés, (We found each other anew)
on s’est réchauffés, (We warmed each other)
Puis on s’est séparés. (And then we separated)

Chacun pour soi est reparti (We each went our own ways)
Dans le tourbillon de la vie; (In Life’s whirlpool of days)
Je l’ai revue un soir aïe aïe aïe! (One night I saw her again)
Ca fait déjà un fameux bail (bis). (It was such a long time again already)

Au son des banjos je l’ai reconnue, (To the sounds of banjos I recognized her)
Ce curieux sourire qui m’avait tant plu, (This mysterious smile that pleased me so much)
Sa voix si fatale, son beau visage pâle (Her voice so fatal, her beautiful pale face)
M’émurent plus que jamais. (Moved me more than ever)

Je me suis saoulé en l’écoutant, (I drank as I listened to her)
L’alcool fait oublier le temps, (Alcohol removes time’s sting)
Je me suis réveillé en sentant (I awoke as I felt)
Des baisers sur mon front brûlant (bis). (Her kisses on my burning brow)

On s’est connus, on s’est reconnus, (We met each other, we again met)
On s’est perdus de vue, on s’est reperdus de vue, (We lost each other, we lost each other anew)
On s’est retrouvés, on s’est séparés, (We found each other again, we separated)
Puis on s’est réchauffés. (And then, we warmed each other)

Chacun pour soi est reparti (We each went our own ways)
Dans le tourbillon de la vie; (In Life’s whirlpool of days)
Je l’ai revue un soir ah la la, (Again I saw her one night)
Elle est retombée dans mes bras (bis). (She fell in my arms anew)

Quand on s’est connus, (When two lovers met)
quand on s’est reconnus, (when they met again)
Pourquoi se perdre de vue, (Why losing sight of each other)
se reperdre de vue, (why losing each other again)
Quand on s’est retrouvés, (When they found each other)
quand on s’est réchauffés, (when they warmed each other)
Pourquoi se séparer? (Why go their separate ways?)

Alors tous deux on est repartis (Thus both of us resumed our ways)
Dans le tourbillon de la vie, (In Life’s whirlpool of days)
On a continué à tourner, (We continued to go round and round)
Tous les deux enlacés (ter). (Both together bound)
__

More Jeanne Moreau on Fleurmach here and here.

And this is a WONDERFUL interview, from 2002!

ani difranco – your next bold move (2001)

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coming of age during the plague
of reagan and bush
watching capitalism gun down democracy
it had this funny effect on me
i guess

i am cancer
i am HIV
and i’m down at the blue jesus
blue cross hospital
just lookin’ up from my pillow
feeling blessed

and the mighty multinationals
have monopolized the oxygen
so it’s as easy as breathing
for us all to participate

yes they’re buying and selling
off shares of air
and you know it’s all around you
but it’s hard to point and say “there”
so you just sit on your hands
and quietly contemplate

your next bold move
the next thing you’re gonna need to prove
to yourself

what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable
and sell them to seagulls flying in circles
around one big right wing

yes, the left wing was broken long ago
by the slingshot of cointelpro
and now it’s so hard to have faith in
anything

especially your next bold move
or the next thing you’re gonna need to prove
to yourself

you want to track each trickle
back to its source
and then scream up the faucet
’til your face is hoarse
cuz you’re surrounded by a world’s worth
of things you just can’t excuse

but you’ve got the hard cough of a chain smoker
and you’re at the arctic circle playing strip poker
and it’s getting colder and colder
everytime you lose

so go ahead
make your next bold move
tell us
what’s the next thing you’re gonna need to prove
to yourself

mccarthy – red sleeping beauty (1986)

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McCarthy were a British indie pop band, formed in Barking, Essex, England in 1984 by schoolmates Malcolm Eden (voice and guitar) and Tim Gane (lead guitar) with John Williamson (bass guitar) and Gary Baker (drums). Lætitia Sadier would later join the band on vocals on their third studio album Banking, Violence and the Inner Life Today.

They mixed a sweetly melodic style, dominated by Gane’s 12-string guitar playing, with Eden’s overtly political lyrics, often satirical in tone, which reflected the band’s far left leanings.

Eden, Gane and Williamson met at Barking Abbey Comprehensive School. Gane was originally a drummer, but was initially taught to play guitar by Eden, who also taught Williamson the basics of bass. Eden and Gane were fans of punk groups such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Buzzcocks, and they covered their songs in small gigs as teenagers. Baker joined in 1984, and with the new line-up deciding on the name McCarthy (a tongue-in-cheek reference to American politician Joe McCarthy), they released a self-financed first single, “In Purgatory” in 1985. The band were signed by the Pink Label, releasing two further singles “Red Sleeping Beauty” and “Frans Hals”. The band had a track included on the NME C86 album (“Celestial City”).

Their debut album I Am a Wallet was released in 1987. The album was virtually ignored by UK radio programmers, except for BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel. Because of Eden’s Marxist political views, the band were, to their dismay, often lumped in with other left-wing acts like Billy Bragg and The Redskins. I Am a Wallet has since been described by Nicky Wire as “the most perfect record, a Communist manifesto with tunes”, and was rated by James Dean Bradfield as his top British album of all time.

Two further singles appeared in early 1988 and were followed by a second album, The Enraged Will Inherit the Earth, which was considerably less well received.

A year later, they released a third album Banking, Violence and the Inner Life Today, on which they were joined by Gane’s girlfriend Lætitia Sadier on vocals. The album suggested a new willingness to experiment musically, and was seen by critics as something of a return to form, but it in fact proved to be their swansong and they split soon afterwards. Eden felt there was no need to continue with the band, believing that their creativity peaked with that LP. The band’s final gig was at the London School of Economics in 1990.

The band twice had songs in John Peel’s Festive Fifty: “Frans Hals” in 1987 (#35), and “Should the Bible Be Banned” in 1988 (#38).

Gane and Sadier went on to form Stereolab, while Eden formed the short-lived Herzfeld.  Baker went on to a career in radiography, before going on to work for The Guardian.  Williamson went on to work for music publisher BMG and Domino Records.

http://cherryred.co.uk/

broadcast and the focus group investigate witch cults of the radio age (2009)

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“The entire album is an exorcism of an dead universe. Nothing can stay together here. It’s hauntology as a pasture of incidental tones and half-ripped photographs. The video footage is unable to focus. The lens’s view is eternally obstructed. The wild blurs of compounded biographies come off like a fever dream of a memory play.”  – Timothy Gabriele (12 November 2009). Broadcast and the Focus Group: Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age – PopMatters.

“i’m inspired: i cannot understand hate”: ray chikapa phiri 1947-2017

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sisgwen's avatarsisgwenjazz

“Songs as truthful as a dream/flow as steady as a stream/A stream of knowledge and of pain…”

Ray oldIf any words summed up the work of Raymond Chikapa Enoch Phiri, who died of lung cancer on Wednesday, aged 70, in his birthplace, Nelspruit, it was those. They come from the 1986 song he co-wrote with the Ashley Subel: Whispers in the Deep (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy9QPjUkvvM) – a song that became one of the decade’s anthems of liberation, and lives still.

Phiri’s Malawi-born father, “Just Now” Phiri, was a guitarist, and that family history gives the lie to all the xenophobic myths that cringe before colonialist borders. Migrant workers just like ‘Just Now’ built the economy, and fattened capitalist profits with their sweat. But they also built South African culture and music through the sharing, swapping and inventing of ideas that took place in hostels, shebeens and backyards. The king of instruments…

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mondo grosso – ラビリンス (labyrinth) (2017)

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In my daydreams I am sometimes this girl.

Starring：Hikari Mitsushima

Creative Director：Nozomu Hayashi (HAKUHODO DY MEDIA PARTNERS)
Director：Takeshi Maruyama
Producer：Yuki Miyamoto (HAKUHODO PRODUCT’S)
Director of photography：Chigi Kanbe
Assistant Director : Yuzuru Tatebe
Planner：Motoki Uno (HAKUHODO)
Hair & Make-up：Sayuri Yamashita (3rd)
Stylist：Babymix
Stylist assistant：Mana Iwanami
Choreography, Dance Inspired by Jillian Mayers

(English Subtitles by Junko Otsubo）

NEW ALBUM「何度でも新しく生まれる」
2017.6.7 Release
2017.6.6 Digital Release

http://www.mondogrosso.com/

Behind the scenes: