segunda-feira, setembro 29, 2008

Well, What the heck!... What's going on here? Once again one of my messages dissapeared into thin air.

At least here's the music back for ya.

Lauryn Hill – World Is A Hustle (unreleased demo)
Kanye West – Love Lockdown

sexta-feira, setembro 19, 2008

YouTube just recently launched an extra channel called The Screening Room which is totally devoted to quality short movies and real moviemakers instead of the usual omnipresent junk debris of wannabe-popstars, snorkeling monkeys and eye-poppin’ mandrills… whatever.

On this new channel you can watch short movies by famous and not yet famous directors as Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know) and Torill Kove (whose The Danish Poet won the Oscar for best animated short movie last year).

As a result of all this, clips on YouTube are now able to be longer than 10 minutes which is meant to tickle the young and talented to produce some short movies.

If I understood it correctly in the near or distant future it's probably going to be possible to see real complete feature movies on YouTube.

segunda-feira, setembro 08, 2008

domingo, setembro 07, 2008

Life Is Just A Song And A Dance

Hi there disco brothers and sisters. The weekend is comin’ to an end and what did it bring me? Laundry Day, Opera, a damn cold and all 6 Episodes of Star Wars … A busy weekend so I didn’t catch much sleep.

Laundry Day on Saturday was good, clean cut fun. A bit cold, so that’s probably where I got this sore throat and nasty cuff from or maybe I got it from Conor Oberst himself :-) Luckily it didn’t rain. At least not when I was there. I left before 10 pm so I had an early night but I wasn’t sleepy yet.
Early that day I suddenly had the urge to watch a Star Wars movie. I ended up looking all 6 of them on the same day, just until dawn. I never saw the 3 new episodes so this was a good occasion to finally do so. I still like the old ones best. Thank god for Han Solo. Harrison Ford really saves those movies but unfortunately there’s no equivalent of that character in the new episodes. I must say that the last episode of the prequel isn’t that bad. It’s pretty dark and fits well with the first episode from 1977.



But enough nerdtalk. Some music now. Cyber-Soul from a young lady called Janelle Monáe. Is she the new Grace Jones? Grace Jones is still alive and kickin’ so probably not. Still, I like what she does. I posted some music a while ago but the links got lost so here we go again.

Janelle Monáe – Sincerely Jane this song just grows and grows on ya, a real favourite of mine and it addresses some real heavy issues. Check the lyrics
Janelle Monáe – Many Moons
Janelle Monáe – My Favorite Nothing
Janelle Monáe – Time Will Reveal

Left the city, my momma she said don't come back home
These kids round' killin each other, they lost they minds, they gone
They quittin' school, making babies and can barely read
Some gone off to their fall, lord have mercy on them
One, two, three, four, your cousins is round' here sellin' dope
While they're daddies, your uncle is walking round' strung out
Babies with babies, and their tears keep burning, while their dreams go down the drain now

Are we really living or just walking dead now?
Or dreaming of a hope riding the wings of angels
The way we live
The way we die
What a tragedy, I'm so terrified
Day dreamers please wake up, we can't sleep no more
Love don't make no sense, ask your neighbor
The winds have changed; it seems they have abandoned us
The truth hurts, and so does yesterday
What good is love if it burns bright, and explodes in flames
(I thought every little thing had love but uhh)

Are we really living or just walking dead now?
Or dreaming of a hope riding the wings of angels
The way we live
The way we die
What a tragedy, I'm so terrified
Day dreamers please wake up, we can't sleep no more

I've seen them shootin' up funerals in they Sunday clothes
Spending money on spinners but won't pay college loans
And all you gangers and bangers rollin' dice and taking lives, in a smokey dark
Lord have mercy on you
Teacher, teacher please reach those girls in them videos
The little girls just broken Queen, confusing bling for soul
Danger, there's danger when you take off your clothes, all your dreams go down the drain girl

Are we really living or just walking dead now?
Or dreaming of a hope riding the wings of angels
The way we live
The way we die
What a tragedy, I'm so terrified
Day dreamers please wake up, we can't sleep no more

We live and then we die, and we never know the right
So now, now were gone now, on your mark
We live and then we die, and we never touch the sky
So now, now were gone now, on your mark

Five, seven, eight, two, one
It is now time, for you to come home my dear
You've been gone long enough
You must come, you must go

What else have we got? Just random stuff I’m afraid. I didn’t have the time to worry about a mix or the flow of these tracks. Nevertheless great stuff.

The Pointer Sisters – Send Him Back (Pilooski edit)
Shortwave Set – Now 'Til 69 (Aeroplane remix)
Planet Patrol – Play At Your Own Risk
Afrika & The Zulu Kings – The Beach (Long Vocal Version) 1986
Twilight 22 – Electric Kingdom
Key-Matic – Breakin' In Space
Royal Cash – Radioactivity - Let's Jam (1983)
Cheryl Lynn – In The Night (1981)
Espen – Wet sequence (original mix)
¡Forward, Russia! – Nine (Napoleon IIIrd mix)




Mr Snu & Sir Matthew were playing cosmic disco records this Saturday at Laundry Day together with Aeroplane and other usual suspects. On their myspace they have a mix you can download that they made for the 'Disco not Disco' blog. Turned out that I had a couple of the featured songs myself. That’s why uploaded them here instead of the mix. If you have the missing ones feel free to share them…

Mr Snu & Sir Matthew no longer exclusive 'Disco not Disco' mixtape

Mascara – Baja
Metro Area – Atmosphrique

Baricentro – Tittle Tattle (1983)
Richard the Third – Flux Capacitor

Magazine 60 – Don Quichotte 1985
Magazine 60 – Don Quichotte (extended version) 1985
Edgar Winter – Above and Beyond (Instrumental)

Nice & Wild – Diamond Girl 1986
Plej – Borderline (Mock & Toof Remix)
Gino Soccio – Remember (LSB edit)
Master Dance and Boogie – Roll the Joint (Joey Negro re-edit)
Hypnosis – Borhaz (1983)
Magnus International – Kosmetisk
Hot Chip - One Pure Thought
Hot Chip – One Pure Thought (Supermayer Remix)

On Sunday I had some free tickets for a tryout of a new production of Puccini’s Turandot. What better way to chill out on Sunday than a fancy opera, no? Puccini is classic opera but it’s also 20th century music. Turandot was written in the roaring twenties and it has some adventurous melodies and even modern sounds. I like it a lot because of the exotic chinose folks songs and off course for the famous aria Nessun Dorma. It was a pity though that they didn’t play that aria because they only played the first 2 acts as a way of rehearsal. I also don’t know which ending they’re going to use because there are more than one options. Puccini died before he finished it. That’s why they let somebody else write an ending for it based on sketches from Puccini but I don’t think there are a lot of people who find it satisfying. I know I don’t. Berio made another one but I still haven’t heard that one. Maybe I can find one at the library.
From what I’ve heard and can judge, the orchestration was splendid but the singers didn’t really go all the way. Who can blame them. It was a rehearsal but still a bit disappointing. That’s why listened again, afterwards at home, to this live recording I have from 1961.

Turandot, Giacomo Puccini
Live recording, New York, March 4 1961.
Orchestra and Choir of The New York Metropolita
directed by Leopold Stokowski

Turandot ........................... Birgit Nillson
Calaf ............................... Franco Corelli
Liù ....................................... Anna Moffo
Timur ........................... Bonaldo Giaiotti
Ping ................................ Frank Guarrera
Pang .................................... Robert Nagy
Pong ............................. Charles Anthony
Altoum ...................... Alessio De Paolis
Un mandarino ................... Calvin Marsh

01 - ATTO I - Popolo di Pekino!
02 - Padre! Mio padre!
03 - Gira la cote! Gira!
04 - O divina bellezza
05 - Figlio, che fai¿
06 - Fermo! Che fai ¿ T'arresta!
07 - Silenzio, olà!
08 - Non indugiare!
09 - Signore, ascolta!
10 - Non piangere, Liù!
11 - Ah, per l'ultima volta!

12 - ATTO II - Olà, Pang! Olà, Pong!
13 - O Cina, o Cina
14 - Ho una casa nell'Honan
15 - O mondo, pieno di pazzi innamorati!
16 - Gravi, enormi ed imponenti
17 - Un giuramento atroce mi costringe
18 - Diecimila anni al nostro Imperatore!
19 - In questa reggia
20 - Staniero, ascolta!
21 - Guizza al pari di fiamma
22 - Gelo che ti dà foco
23 - Tre enigmi m'hai proposto!

24 - ATTO III - Così comanda Turandot
25 - Nessun dorma!
26 - Tu che guardi le stelle
27 - Principessa divina!
28 - Quel nome!
29 - L'amore¿... Tanto amore
30 - Tu che di gel sei cinta
31 - Liù... bontà!
32 - Principessa di morte¿
33 - Che è mai di me¿
34 - Diecimila anni al nostro Imperatore!





quinta-feira, setembro 04, 2008

The Many Sides of Conor Oberst
Conor Oberst And The Mystic Valley Band + Sky Larkin


Out go the summer festivals and… in come the club concerts! Last Wednesday was my first after summer concert gig. For starters I had me a very traditional old fashioned 70’s Dylanesk country rock outfit by rock’s boy genius Conor Oberst aka Bright Eyes. He’s presently touring under his own name with The Mystic Valley Band to promoter his latest album.
It was the first time that I actually saw him play live, even though I’m a fan for quite a while now. I really like his voice but I had my doubts if he could deliver it live. Boy, was I wrong. He was a bit sick, a cold and a nasty cuff, but that didn’t affect his voice. He can really run the shivers down your spine, especially in the more quiet acoustic songs.

Listening back to the record, these versions recorded in a studio somewhere down in Mexico are mere shadows of the live versions.

It took them a couple of songs to get into it, but from then on they did a real effort to make it a swell evening, despite of the rockstar's cold. Maybe because he likes the Botanique club in Brussels (he said so).



The support act was a young indie band from the UK called Sky Larkin. I checked their myspace page and it really sounded great, but live it sounded a bit plain. The balance was not right. Too much guitar and too little voice as it is often the case with young indie bands. They all like to hide behind a wall of noise. But hey, you’ve got to start somewhere.

They’ve made a nice cover of a QOTS song, I Was A Teenage Handmodel, but they didn’t play it, but they played this one.