There are only five female voices in the world I blindly trust: Joanna Newsom, Rickie Lee Jones, Laurie Anderson, Sidsel Endresen and Lucinda Williams. „The Ghosts of Highway 20“ is Lucinda at her best simply meaning she obviously can’t do just okay albums. Being full of blasts from the past, and some real darkness at the edge of towns, two or three of these songs would perfectly fit the atmospheres of Rod Reynolds‘ thriller „The Dark Inside“, winner of the „Mana Thrill Factory Prize 2015“. If you are in the mood for a brilliantly executed story from the days of old (Arkansas / Texas 1946), well, just start losing yourself in it. The company, „Faber & Faber“ wants to push the debut a bit with a small „stamp“ on the cover, „For Fans of True Detective“, and that’s fine with me. Intense, breathtaking, no post-modernism required!
Film music is a highly interesting field for composers who can leave their well-known ways of composing and let themselves being guided by moving pictures. Komeda was great in that, Morricone, and you can name some more creative minds without thinking too much. Miles doing Louis Malle just comes to mind. Angelo Badalamenti’s work for „Twin Peaks“. But who knows Russian dude Mikael Tariverdiev?
I didn’t: So I was even more surprised listening to the three lp/cd-box „Film Music“. The man from Russia has not been part of any avantgarde, but he works within a broad palette of styles that mixes – amongst other styles – spheres of Classical Russian music with strains of folk that make you think: oh, well, this man has written tunes for the Russian „version“ of Paolo Conte (long before Conte became famous, by the way). Coincidencies. Affinities.
Declaring a book about a record as „philosophica of the month“ may seem far-fetched. But the best philosophy books open up horizons, letting you stop in your tracks, test well-trodden paths of our own thinking. In that respect George Grella Jr.’s take on Miles Davis‘ classic „Bitches Brew“ (on 33 1/3, again) does exactly that: revealing the chemistry of a game-changer in highly interesting ways. No „smart Alec“-modus operandi! Purists had been full of resentment when the double album saw the light of day (with a decent shock value-guarantee for cover art a.D. 1970): for them „Bitches Brew“ really was a „bitches brew“ – the rock, the funk a sell-out for the narrow-minded – how wrong they were!