Manafonistas

on life, music etc beyond mainstream

2017 14 Aug.

„The soft ambush“ – die Klanghorizonte am 19. August

von: Manafonistas Filed under: Blog | TB | 4 Comments

(Listening to „Einfluss“ under headphones)
 
 
 

I don’t believe in music as simple or clever entertainment. Sometimes music is a soft emotional ambush, it has endless ways of transcending the everyday, opening gates or slipping into nothingness. Stardust memories, dust to dust, chose your favourite exit signs! And, as a good journalist, you have to be prepared for surprises outside your usual playgrounds (that awesome old instrument Mr. Alexei Lubimov is playing) – or play the old games well!

I have been looking for some music that has not yet appeared, at least in the first two hours devoted to new records and and the very fine red lines that can link the most disparate material. Though I knew their music from the beginning (I was a studio witness, so to speak), I have been rather surprised about the fucking brilliance of Porter Ricks‘ return. David Torn will deliver a very special performance, promise! Not to speak of Matthew Bourne and his climate studies at  home, rainy home Yorkshire… 

A great late work from Herrn Roedelius, too. He doesn’t know what we recently did near Forst at the River Weser. We hang two loudspeakers into a tall tree and let them play „The Big River“ surrounded by tracks from „Einfluss“, after dark. The emotional impact was immense, the loudspeakers slightly damaged – that trip to the ancient places of Harmonia and Co. had been the most thrilling seminar I ever did. I’m still grateful for the wonderful people I met there.

As time moves, during the „close-up“ and „time-travel“-zones of my next radio night, the dfferent geographic climates, between Asian mountain regions, African Zanzibar dreams, Balearic Sea Music and Mediaeval dances, will trigger a ritualistic atmosphere: a dream zone for the clear mind. Coming back to music as a soft ambush, I will surely play this wonderful little song by Sam Beam aka Iron & Wine (and, maybe, you want to sing along when time comes). – m.e.

 

songbirds in the morning had my head
lost in the tall trees i knew well
well i would say
dreaming my dry weeds
stray life finds its way to all of us
say something green it comes back sun
light on my lips
let them kiss dark leaves

let the hands of the wrong prophets
heal me all they should
let the wine of the poison jesuses taste good

when all those trees lay down
if you were a bird and fell into my arms
if i wrote your song in stone
if i wore your wings back home
would the dreams in the backwater
drown us far from harm

give this to the gray it comes back gold
birds of the morning they may know
no more than us
giving their hymns for life
let the waves on the wrong water
say what they will say
while the wind in the broken branches
blows me away

all tall trees lay down
if you were the bird who fell into my arms
i could write your song in stone
i could wear your wings back home
where the dreams in the backwater
drown us far from harm

This entry was posted on Montag, 14. August 2017 and is filed under "Blog". You can follow any responses to this entry with RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Comments

  1. Lajla:

    A little wish: ich sitze irgendwo in der Welt in einer Kaffeerösterei und Sam kommt mit seiner Gitarre rein.

  2. Michael Engelbrecht:

    Das wäre wunderbar. Die Amerikaner haben in diesem politisch trostlosen Jahr wieder einige fabelhafte Songalben fabriziert. Das dritte Album der Fleet Foxes (die ich bislang kaum mochte) begeistert mich restlos, es heisst CRACK UP.

  3. Michael Engelbrecht:

    Deutschlandfunk, somewhere during the night …
     
    TERJE RYPDAL: DESCENDRE
     
    Terje Rypdal guitar, keyboards, flute
    Palle Mikkelborg trumpet, fluegelhorn, keyboards
    Jon Christensen drums, percussion

    Recorded March 1979 at Talent Studio, Oslo
    Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
    Produced by Manfred Eicher

     

    Before hearing the opener that lightens Descendre, I believed that the introduction was a thriving art form. Entitled “Avskjed” (Farewell), it works its distant organ, glockenspiel, and muted trumpet through the nocturnal folds of a weightless security. In a mere three minutes, I hear sunrise, worldly virtue, and restraint rolled into a single entity.

    Rypdal’s palimpsestial motifs grace the edges of dense brass and sudden exhalations. The album is full of such moments, unexpected and eternal. Nestled in the tessellation of Jon Christensen and Palle Mikkelborg, that unmistakable guitar cuts its swath through the swells and squawks of “Circles,” on through the trembling “Men Of Mystery,” and ending on the delicate considerations of “Speil,” where kaleidoscopic keyboards abound.

    Standouts include the title track, where Christensen’s melodic sensibilities shine forth and Rypdal’s solos brand themselves into our hearts like the icy stares of advertising icons in Blade Runner, and “Innseiling” (Approach), a masterful slice of transcendence that guides Mikkelborg to glorious heights. With every change of light, bright resolutions and shadowy recollections are revealed, betraying the raging fire behind its glacial surface.

    An elegy in emotional unrest, Descendre is a must-have for any Rypdal veteran and greenhorn alike. Like its title, it descends with every sonic verb, reminding us that conjugations never end.

    – written by Tyran Grillo

     

  4. Michael Engelbrecht:

    Very fine review, Mr. Lewis!

    ON MATTHEW BOURNE: ISOTACH

    „With his recent Radioland tribute to Kraftwerk and his Moogmemory projects, Yorkshire-based pianist Matthew Bourne has shown that he’s one of those rare jazz musicians who knows how to grapple with a synthesiser, rather than simply playing it like an organ or a piano. Weirdly, these solo piano pieces – completed over an 18-month period when Bourne had virtually stopped practising his instrument – sound as if he is interrogating an alien sound source on an upright grand. On tracks such as Isotach and Isopleth, simple phrases are stated and restated, as if Bourne is thrilled by the sound of a piano for the first time in years. The parallel fourths on Extinction nod towards Radiohead’s Everything in Its Right Place; the parallel fifths on Isothere recall one of Harold Budd’s ambient piano pieces; while Isotherm sounds like Bourne is lingering quizzically on a single Erik Satie riff. The results are spartan, hypnotic and beautiful, if gloriously unresolved.“

    (The Guardian)


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