Louis Chen & Friends Ya Dong - The Sound of Silk and Bamboo

Artist:        Louis Chen & Friends Ya Dong

Album:      The Sound of Silk and Bamboo

Year:         1998

Line-Up:    Louis Chen – Zheng

                  Ya Ch’in – Yang qin

                  Li Kai – Erhu

                  Lam-zi Kun - Ti-tse, sheng

                  Wu Ronghua – Pipa

                  Ya Dong – Pipa

Label:        Network Medien

”It is in the nature of the ear to love sounds; and yet if the heart is not cheerful then the ear does not hear, even if all five tones resound”

-Lü Pu We

A few weeks ago the Chinese New Year was celebrated; it was a quite nice festival even in cold and snowy Finland. I was actually performing lion and dragon dancing and my fellow blogger was attending the shows. I have always felt this mysterious calling towards China, and its culture but only a few years ago I started listening Chinese music and I have written a few posts about the culture in question, and here is one more! Considering how huge and old the culture is, there is just too much to tell about the music of China. And even though I think contemporary Chinese music has gotten stuck in adoring and glamorizing the ancient traditions, it is still so different to a European classical approach, and for that it is not an easy quest to take.

The Sound of Silk and Bamboo is a diverse and comprehensive overview on Chinese traditional music. Chinese music can be categorized into two sub-categories: Music for the sages and scholars for the closed, private domain strongly concentrating on nature and more meditative feelings, and then there are more upbeat folk melodies and rhythms for the folk festivals, such as the Spring Festival, which is the other name for Chinese New Year mentioned earlier. We can hear both of these genres in the piece. Confucius had a strict demand for music: “Music of a high-minded man has to be soft and gentle”. But for the Chinese people, music has always been also an expression of joy and happiness. One aspect of construing Chinese culture is with its language. The ancient characters usually tell us something about the Chinese way of thinking and perceiving the world. The symbol 樂(traditional) means music as well as enjoyable, and happy.

Louis Chen, born in Guangdong province but raised in Malaysia, was the first musician to introduce guzheng (古箏) to western audience decades ago. Also simply called zheng, this wooden instrument contains as its up-to-date form 16 to 25 metal or silk strings, it is a close relative to guqin (古琴) or simply qin as gu refers to “ancient”. Last year I wrote about Wu Jinglue, a qin master. The sound of these two instruments is very close to each other, but zheng is nowadays much more popular in Chinese music than qin for its diversity. Li Kai, also from Guangdong, plays the erhu (二胡) in this piece. Erhu is a string instrument with only two strings, that is the reason of er (two) in the name. At the end of the album we can also hear the sharp playing of pipa (琵琶), the very traditional and old lute-like instrument of China. It has actually been played for more than five centuries its form totally unaltered, which is a rare case for a string instrument.

The Sound of Silk and Bamboo captures the essential emotions and soundscapes of Chinese music and offers nice music played with a professional and skillful touch. It won’t disappoint if you are looking for, or just into Chinese music or the culture itself. This piece contains beautiful melodies with a nerve-calming effect. Spin the album after a long day at work and enjoy a nice cup of tea: the small and important joys of life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYj2yBVNnKg

Written by: Oz

David Lagos - El espejo en que me miro

Artist:          David Lagos

Album:        El espejo en que me miro

Year:           2009

Line-up:      David Lagos – vocals

                   Alfredo Lagos – guitar

                   Santiago Lara – guitar

                   Manuel Moreno 'Moraíto' - guitar

                   Paco González – percussion

                   Pablo Martin – double bass

                   Carlos Grilo – palmas and jaleos

                   Luis Cantarote – palmas and jaleos

                   Rafael Romero – palmas and jaleos

                   Juan Castro – palmas and jaleos

                   Londro – backing vocals

                   Melchora Ortega – backing vocals

                   David Palomar – backing vocals

                   Mercedes Ruiz - feet

Label:         Flamenco World Music

David Lagos is a Spanish flamenco singer born in Jerez to a flamenco aficionado family where he was surrounded by the flamenco music and culture from am early age. He was constantly encouraged to sing in family get-togethers and parties and at the age of ten David made his first public performance accompanied by his brother Alfredo on the guitar. Soon he began making more and more shows finally deciding to immerse himself in the world of singing to flamenco dance. Since then David Lagos has been a much requested singer among numerous flamenco dance companies and he has travelled the world doing shows with various groups. I myself have had the pleasure of hearing and seeing David Lagos in concert for three times in a span of merely three months. Not only is he a brilliant singer , but he is also a very warm and a charming person. Therefore, I thought that the time was finally right to write a bit about the first, and at the moment of writing this post, the only solo album of David Lagos called El espejo en que me miro (The mirror in which I look at myself).

On the back cover of the album, it says that ”David Lagos is one of the most unique cantaores in today's flamenco”. One can certainly agree to that sentence upon the very first ten seconds on the album as David and his musicians kick it off with am energetic bulerias (one of the many flamenco song types) featuring only hand clapping (palmas), encouragement shouts (jaleos) and muted guitar string strumming as David enters the scene with his powerful voice before the whole band explodes to the musical frenzy. The artistry of David Lagos might not be unique in a sense that he would bring something extravagantly new or innovative to the table of flamenco music. The uniqueness lies solely in his voice: it is instantly recognisable and while trying to describing it I would use such adjectives such as deep, powerful, grainy and fat (in a positive sense). Personally, I find that special something in David's voice which attracts to me in flamenco in general: that magic, depth and the mystical sensation on which you cannot quite put your finger. The music itself on the album is fairly traditional flamenco featuring a good range of the different flamenco song types. Eventough the music might be traditional, it is performed with a good energy and the passion of today's flamenco artists which makes this album a very pleasant experience. David's brother, Alfredo is a real power house on the guitar and he is obviously on of the best and most natural choices to accompany the singing of David.

I could definitely recommend this album to all music fans out there. If you are already familiar with flamenco, you can surely appreciate this album. If you, on the other hand, are somewhat or completely new to flamenco this record could serve as a fine introduction to this fine musical style as it is musically very traditional but the musicianship and the performances are filled with the young and fresh energy of today making the album exciting and exhilarating to listen. I will conclude this post by saluting David with the very same words which close the the album itself shouted by the wife of David: ”Olé! Viva tu tierra!”

Preview of the album:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME3FGu7FSQI

David Lagos live with his brother Alfredo Lagos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIpRvcAPbdA

Written by Παναγιωτιης

Focus - Focus III

Artist:        Focus

Album:      Focus III

Year:         1972

Line-Up:    Thijs van Leer - Keyboards, flute, piccolo, recorder, vocals

                  Jan Akkerman - Guitars, lute

                  Bert Ruiter – Bass guitar

                  Pierre van der Linden - Drums

Label:        Sire Records

Focus, probably one of my favorite groups of all time. Yes, this artist may not be an aural obscurity for the basic prog-rocker, but I have learnt that most people, who know Focus, know it only by name and/or their most famous track, Hocus Pocus. So, this time I will tell you something about this wonderfully weird and humorous band’s third studio album.

The main drive behind Focus comes from Thijs van Leer and Jan Akkerman. After their debut-album, which included lyrical singing by Thijs , they have released mostly instrumental progressive rock with good attitude: beautiful melodies, kick-ass organs, incredible flutes, ingenious arrangements, and weird yodeling-like singing. Between the two successes of Moving Waves (or Focus II) and Hamburger Concerto, Focus III is a vital addition to any prog-rock collection. It provides all what Focus is about, charming “Sylvia” and “Love Remembered” at the beginning and solid all the way through to the legendary “Anonymus II”, running almost half an hour. It’s probably one of the best rock’n’roll jams I know, brilliant solo after another including an incredible bass solo by Bert Ruiter. The medieval influence of Jan Akkerman and his lute is displayed on “Elspeth of Nottingham”. Honey for your ears.

Sire Records is an American record label founded in 1966, now owned by Warner Music Group. It was an independent record label when Focus III was released, but in 1978 Warner acquired the company, and it became mainstream in the 80’s as it has released music from acts like Depeche Mode, Ice-T, The Cure, and even Madonna.

Focus is still releasing and performing, but without Jan Akkerman. After a few non-successful releases in the late 70’s and the 80’s, Thijs and Jan Akkerman parted ways and Thijs made a comeback in 2002 with Focus 8. Focus X was released last fall, followed by a small tour around Europe. One of my favorites, here is Focus and “Anonymus II”

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNzqWIz9wWs

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxU44vMfhUw

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCNKmd7e5fQ

Written by: Oz

House of Low Culture - Edward's Lament

 

Artist:       House of Low Culture

Album:     Edward's Lament

Year:        2003

Line-up:   Aaron Turner, Jeff Caxide & Luke Scarola

Label:      Neurot Recordings

”We're beyond mass and matter here, beyond even energy. What we're back to is the first thought”. 

Eddie Jessup in Altered States

House of Low Culture is a side project of Aaron Turner who is known best from playing the guitar and providing vocals in the famous post-rock/sludge metal group called Isis. In House of Low Culture Turner focuses his creative energy on exploring the possibilities of ambient and drone music. Edward's Lament is the third release from the project and here Turner is joined by one of his fellow band members from Isis, Jeff Caxide and Luke Scarola from Old Man Gloom, another metal band of Turner. 

On this album ,Turner has ventured forth in to more experimental fields of music. Normally, Edward's Lament is categorised as dark ambient and drone. One could sum up the dark ambient genre briefly by describing it as a subgenre of ambient music which focuses on gloomy, ominous and oppressive atmospheres and soundscapes. Usually lacking the basic pillars of western music (melody, harmony and rhythm) dark ambient artist face a difficult task when trying to compose appealing music to capture the listeners' imagination and attention for the whole album's worth. Here Turner takes on an additional challenge: making a dark ambient concept album. The concept here revolves around a 1980 science ficiton-horror film by Ken Russell called Altered States. The synopsis of the movie is as follows: A researcher Eddie Jessup believes that the altered states of consciousness are as real as the everyday reality. Jessup, as the guinea pig himself, researches those states in sensory deprivation isolation tanks while under the influence of psychoactive drugs. Edward's Lament tries capture the explorations of Eddie Jessup through sound. It is debatable whether or not the term 'music' is appropriate here since the material here is on the limits between music and pure sound and noise. The album consists mostly from various soundscapes of numerous different whistlings, hissings, buzzing, beeps and pulsating drones. Every now and then few distinguishable guitars are thrown in to the mix. 

Needless to say, this album is rather difficult to listen. The album is a long collage of ambient soundscapes which build around between almost unnoticable textures and details. While the actual movie has its' flaws, it is still very intriguing on both visual and idea level. No doubt the movie experience will fuel the listener's imagination to dive deeper in to the emotional core of this album. It requires the full, undivided attention of the listener to fully appreciate and catch all the nuances of Edward's Lament and it should be experienced as the experiments of Eddie Jessup: in a dark room with the headphones with as little outside distractions as possible. Take a trip to your inner self through music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntfYcta9t8E

Written by Παναγιωτιης