1. Astaroth is the Crowned Prince of Hell named after the Canaanite goddess Ashtoreth

For the first day of December we will quite down for some poetic serenity in the realm of modern jazz. Here we have American avant-garde composer and saxophonist John Zorn, who is usually known for his out-there antics, avant-garde mayhems and saxophone freak outs, proving that he is capable of composing of beautiful and rather simple (in a good way) modal jazz tunes. Lelabel was first interpreted by the Jamie Saft Trio on the Astaroth album, first in the Book of Angels songbook series, with Jamie Saft on piano, Greg Cohen on bass and Ben Perowsky on drums. The trio plays the tune with the intimacy that is required and Saft and Cohen both deliver very sober and lyrical solos while Perowsky provides a very subtle and stylish accompaniment.

Aural Advent Calendar 2013

Hello to you all readers. We are hoping that you are getting in to the holiday spirit as the Christmas and the holidays are approaching. We here in the Aural Obscurities team decided to do something special this December and share the anticipation of festive celebrations by doing our very own Aural Advent Calendar! So for the 24 days of December we will post one song that is very special to us and write a little something about it. Hopefully we will share the joy of these aural marvels with you.

The Victim's Shudder - Terror Romance

Artist:                The Victim’s Shudder

Album:              Terror Romance

Year:                 2008

Line-up:            ???

Label:                Paradigms Recordings

Beautiful and haunting. Terror Romance is an album one may find oneself enveloped by, swept by feelings of both awe and unease. These mostly ambient tracks have been impressively crafted to take the listener to places beautiful and serene, or horrifying and oppressive, or both at the same time. It is this blend of atmospheres that makes Terror Romance a noteworthy piece in the sometimes stale field of ambient music.

It may be that the music presented here is not strictly just ambient, since many parts of the album do contain melodies of a kind, but they are haunting in the background, blended into the ghostly female vocals or the more clearly ambient soundscape some tracks present. Sometimes the music takes more dramatic turns into droning, uglier sounds or muffled echoing cries, but it mostly keeps its harrowing atmosphere very subtle.

The quiet and subdued nature of the music is perhaps the first thing the listener hears in the album, and it may very easily become just ambient background noise, but I believe the album is meant to be listened to more closely and intensely. That is when the ghosts of Terror Romance can be heard. 

But it is not music to be listened to all the time, and a listener may find the album repetitive at times. When the mood is right, however, this album can be a very powerful experience.

Here is a track on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STCkdFTj-QY

Written by Those Who Know.

Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider - Silent City

 

Artist:        Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider

Album:      Silent City

Year:         2008

Line-up:    Kayhan Kalhor – kamancheh, setar

                 Brooklyn Rider:

                 Colin Jacobsen – violin

                 Jonathan Gandelsman – violin

                 Nicholas Cords – viola

                 Eric Jacobsen – cello

                 Jeff Beecher – bass

                 Siamak Aghaei – santur, tombak

                 Mark Suter – cajon, doira, djembe bodhran, ghaval, pods, shells and metals

Label:       World Village

A day of silence

Can be a pilgrimage in itself

Hafez - Silence

Every once and a while one comes across a musical work which is able to capture both the imagination and evoke various feelings on the listener by simply being something totally unique, beautiful, creative and exciting. Yet somehow, no matter how strongly we feel about this music and are fascinated by it, we find it almost impossible to capture those feelings and put them into words. Sometimes the music escapes the chains of language and all the word we seek to describe these sounds helplessly run through our fingers like sand. These kinds thoughts Silent City has aroused in me ever since I set myself to produce my next writing about this particular album.

Silent City is a collaborative effort between one of the most important Iranian composers and kamancheh players of today, Kayhan Kalhor and New York-based classical string quartet known for their unusual and contemporary repertoire. The project saw its' birth in 2000 at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts while Kayhan Kalhor and the members of Brooklyn Rider were taking part in ambitious effort initiated by the world famous classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The Silk Road Project is a not-for-profit organization which goal is to expand and study the multicultural and musical relationships of the historic training route of Silk Road. During this project Brooklyn Rider was part of performing a new composition by Kayhan Kalhor specifically composed for the occasion titled Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur. They were tremendously affected by the common modes and rhythmic grooves which offered them such a rewarding method of musical communication and the ease of co-existence of Persian musical traditions alongside with American minimalism and early European music.

Among with becoming personal friends of Kalhor, Brooklyn Rider were so taken by their experiences with Silk Road Project that they began to pursue a way of creating a dynamic musical vehicle that could produce something new and innovative which would hopefully breed meaningful musical experiences and communicate with a wide variety of different audiences. At the same time, their friendship with Kalhor evolved to the state that they began dreaming and visioning a studio record which would bring their musical collaboration not only to a new level but also to a wider audience. Silent City is the product of these studio sessions which the artists regard as their personal musical laboratory which enabled them to explore the possibilities of the intimacy between string quartet and kamancheh and study the common grounds of their respective cultures and traditions.

As I said earlier, I feel almost amazed how difficult I find it to try and describe verbally Silent City in a manner that would please me personally and make this record justice. Not only is the music itself beyond my verbal reach as it truly something truly remarkable and extraordinary, but all of the four compositions featured here have their own very distinct character and tone. Silent City opens with Ascending Bird which takes a traditional Persian tune as its' reference point on top which original material has been written. The music tries to capture a mythical story of a bird attempting to fly to the sun. Failing on two first attempts on the third one the bird finally manages to free itself of its' physical body as it embraces the sun – a metaphor of spiritual transcendence. The third track, Parvaz is Kalhor's personal take on the same story where the bird is called to recite the 1001 names of the Creator and failing to remember the 1001^th name, the bird is ultimately consumed by its' Beloved Sun. Kalhor plays here the setar (a long-necked wooden lute with four strings) which is considered a narrative instrument in Iran as it was usually the instrument of choice of the bardic poets and storytellers of the past.

The center piece of the album is definitely the title track not by only its' enormous length of nearly 30 minutes but also by its' high artistic quality. Silent City is the music of silence, an aural prayer without words, a personal journey, an experience. It tells the tragic tale of the town of Halabjah in Iraqi Kurdistan: On March 16, 1988, after two days of conventional artillery attacks, the Iraqi military forces dropped gas canisters on the town accompanied by bombs, artillery attacks and further chemical weapons resulting in the immediate death of at least 5 000 people and 7 000 people being injured and suffering long term illness. Most of the victims were Kurdish civilians. Later the Iraqi forces destroyed the town completely. Silent City serves as an elegy and a testament of only of this tragic but also of other fallen cities and civilisations. More importantly it attempts to arouse hope by the idea that life always returns growing and sprouting once again from the desolate landscapes. The album ends with a composition by the Brooklyn Rider violinist Colin Jacobsen titled Beloved, do not let me be discouraged. The inspiration for this piece comes from a legendary tale of Layla and Majun, which is a story about ill-fated lovers similar to Romeo and Juliet. Musically, it draws inspiration from the chamber version of Hajibeyov's opera of the same story performed by the legendary Azeri mugham singer Alim Qasimov and from the genre of sacred songs called Laude of the 14^th Italy where Jacobsen found many similarities of devotional feel of joyful praise and penitence of Layla and Majnun.

The meeting of the Persian kamancheh and Western string quartet, the dialogue between the ethnic traditions of the East and the Western Art Music together here spawns something totally new and exciting which is not just an East meets West type of fusion project but something truly unique and beyond conventional categorizing. Silent City is a small monolith of beauty and art which opens up a window to a new historical and contemporary musical world.

Take a listen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftwfCOlBnv0

This is the city and I am one of the citizens,

Whatever interests the rest interests me..

Walt Whitman – Song of Myself

Written by Παναγιωτιης

Juhani Aaltonen Trio - Mother Tongue

 

Artist:       Juhani Aaltonen Trio

Album:     Mother Tongue

Year:        2003

Line-up:   Juhani Aaltonen – tenor saxophone, flute

                Ulf Krokfors – bass

                Tom Nekljudow - drums

Label:      Tum Records

”The music flows so easily among the three of us that playing together is a constant joy. I hope that at least of some of that joy is also communicated to the listener through this recording”

- Juhani Aaltonen

When autumn is coming to an end with all its' splendid colorful leaves of red, yellow and green now fallen from the branches and winter is closing in, when you feel the chill in the air and days are getting darker and shorter and you seek warmth and light for comfort, I often times find myself in the mood for some good moody and atmospheric jazz. If you have a tendency for melancholy like me you might find modern jazz from Scandinavia to suite your state of mind better than American classics. For over five decades Norway has been the birth place of many of the most interesting modern jazz masters such as Jan Garbarek, Arild Andersen, Terje Rypdal, Ketil Bjørnstad, Tord Gustavsen, Trygve Seim and many more who intergrate the melancholy, the vast spaces and the silence of the North to their music. These artists have become house hold names in the jazz partially for recording for ECM Records. However, the global jazz public seems to be somewhat unaware that in the recent past few decades Finland has seen also a rise of creative and exciting modern jazz musicians and records.

One of the most important channels to discover new Finnish jazz music for me personally has been the record label TUM and its' own festival TUMfest. TUM stands for Todella Uutta Musiikkia (Really New Music) which is a sort of an inside joke in the Finnish jazz circles for there is a prolific big band in Finland called UMO which stands for Uuden Musiikin Orkesteri (Orchestra of New Music). TUM Records is a record company which focuses on improvised, jazz-based music emphasizing on the free expression and the own music of the performing artists. One the most interesting musicians and very personal favorite of mine, who has been aboard with the label from the very start since 2003, is saxophone player Juhani Aaltonen.

Juhani Aaltonen (b. 1935) is a fascinating musical figure to say the least. Largely self-taught as a musician, Aaltonen began his career as a freelance musician in 1961 and at the same time began his studies at the Sibelius Academy. However, after only one year's studies Aaltonen quite the academy to pursue a full-time career as a musician. In the 60's Aaltonen worked with some of the finest Finnish jazz musicians and composers including Otto Donner and Edward Wesala and formed the progressive rock group Tasavallan Presidentti. Since then Aaltonen has been involved in various projects including playing with Peter Brötzmann and being one of the founding members of UMO in 1975 in which he continued playing until 1986. In 2001 a new Finnish jazz ensemble Suhkan Uhka (also the first record by TUM) was put together and Juhani Aaltonen was asked to join in. At the time, Aaltonen thought that his career of playing improvised music was largely over and it took much persuasion to get him finally on board with Suhkan Uhka. The project turned out to be a happy coincidence as it brought Aaltonen together with drummer Tom Nekljudow and bassist Ulf Krokfors who, after playing for the first time together in Suhkan Uhka, decided to form a trio together.

Mother Tongue is the first album of Juhani Aaltonen Trio and second release by TUM Records. The performances here were recorded live at Kanneltalo in Helsinki on October 17^th, 2002 in a concert part of a tour organized by Finnish Jazz Federation. Taken into account that the trio had only played together merely over a year, it is rather astounding how well these three talented musicians play together – especially when the music is mostly free improvisation. Aaltonen himself says in the linear notes that ”from the very first times that we played together, I knew that this trio was something special. After only a few performances, we went through that rare transformation from three musicians just playing together to the three of us playing as a group, a unit reaching a whole new level of communication. I feel that this trio truly represents a case of the whole being more than the sum of its parts.” These words could not be more fitting to describe this record. I myself have experience attending free improvisation concerts and practicing the same art myself as a musician with others and it is a rather difficult and demanding musical setting. Sometimes the finest musicians and improvisers might get together but the magic is just not there. Therfore, in the case of hearing Juhani Aaltonen perform live or on record you truly feel privileged to witness such seamless interplay between these three musicians and witness the one aspect of magic of music.

So how is the music itself of Juhani Aaltonen Trio? The term free improvisation tends to have a confused identity among players and listeners alike. This genre – if one can even call it a genre – encompasses so many different kinds of musicians, too many starting points and attitudes towards music and too many ideologies and philosophies of what improvisation really is, that many find it a fallible term to give a complete description of certain kind of music. A general misconception is that free improvisation is linked with experimental and avant-garde, fighting against the conventional musical parameters such as key and rhythm. At times, it might be just that but not always and certainly not with Juhani Aaltonen Trio. Even tough Aaltonen has always been heavily influenced by the likes Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane who themselves have been known for their experimental and avant-garde elements, the music on Mother Tongue is mostly quite beautiful. Here free improvisation is a musical philosophy granting the musicians a musical freedom to do something unexpected without the fear of making ”mistakes” or missing cues. As said earlier, all of the three musicians are highly prolific and talented in their own right. The style, and particularly the sound of tenor saxophone, of Aaltonen is instantly recognisable and unique. It has very organic, soft and warm feeling in it. Also, the flute playing on Reflection is something truly haunting and mesmerising. This theme is also present for the rest of the record: a certain spirituality which is created by the intimacy of the three musicians who are in a constant dialogue with each other with music as their mother tongue.

I feel that I have praised this record already than enough. If you even remotely like jazz or improvised music, Mother Tongue is an essential and a must-have record in our record collection.

You can listen to the first track Lullaby on the label's internet page:

http://www.tumrecords.com/002-juhani-aaltonen-trio-mother-tongue

Written by Παναγιωτιης

Procyon-X - The Ghost of Orion

 

Artist:      Procyon-X

Album:    The Ghost of Orion

Year:        2007

Line-up:   ???

Label:      Paradigms Recordings

I have taken notice that I have recently developed a trend of writing about albums about which I feel very strongly on a personal level. Don't get me wrong, my very meaning of my writings is to shed light upon some of my favorite records which feel have been left in the shadows even among the music enthusiasts yet alone the mainstream audience. However, I personally feel at the moment that I have been maybe too over sentimental and perhaps even a bit grandiose about some the albums I have covered recently. I might have indulged in poetics and romanticism where my personal experiences and world views have come into play in my text very strongly. I figured that it might be the time to write about a more low-key album this time around where I do NOT use the term musical journey to describe the album. Thus, I present you The Ghost of Orion by Procyon-X.

Language is the medium through which we construct and outline the reality around us. However, music escapes the chain and possible limitations of language in its' abstract nature, and yet it is still able to penetrate into our very souls and provide us with an endless variety of different human emotions and feelings. We can describe music verbally by theoretical vocabulary and using different adjectives to communicate to others what emotions a certain piece of music is able to evoke in us. Still, one can never quite capture the essence of music. This task becomes even more difficult we can dwell in the realm of ambient music. The genre often does not have its' emphasis on the usual musical parameters such as rhythm, melody and harmony. Instead, ambient normally focuses on the actual sound and its' mechanics; that is to say the texture for example. It is tends to try and create atmospheric sound environment and soundscape still retaining a sense of musical movement. Normally one the goals of ambient music is to invoke a sense calm and space in its' listener. 

When I one night listened to The Ghost of Orion for the first time in preparation for this writing after a long period of the album just sitting on my record shelf, this image of space kept coming to my mind. When I next morning began to do some research about the album, I noticed to my surprise that some sources label The Ghost of Orion as space ambient. Yet another proof that music often has the ability to capture our imaginations and cast very specific images before our very eyes without the means of language. Space ambient is an umbrella term of a subgenre of the ambient genre which is described as flowing and relaxing by its' general atmosphere. Sequencers are used along with synthesizers with ascending and descending rhythm patterns. These characteristics are certainly present on The Ghost of Orion. The label Paradigms Recordings describes the album as ”seriously mysterious exploration of the sonic void. Dark astral ambient voyages through solar infinity. Deep, all encompassing sensory projection for earthbound space travellers and cosmic explorers.” I certainly would agree to this description although it paints a lot more poetic and magnificent picture of the album that I would give it credit for.

The Ghost of Orion is a nice little (clocking just in 30 minutes) but interesting and intriguing ambient album. So if you are looking for an relaxing and stimulating space atmosphere thorugh music to fuel your imagination or set the mood of your dreams, pop this baby in your player and float into the mysterious realms of outer space.

Take a a sneak peek of the the last track of the album from the web page of Paradigms Recordings:

http://www.paradigms-recordings.com/audio/procyon_x.mp3

Written by Παναγιωτιης

Melos - Chants de la Méditerranée / Mediterranean songs

 

Artist:            Melos

Album:          Melos – Chants de la Méditerranée

Year:             2012

Line-up:        Keyvan Chermirani – artistic direction & percussions

                     Dorsaf Hamdani – vocals

                     Mohamed Lassoued – violin & rebab

                     Mohammed Rochdi Mfarredj – qanun

                     Drossos Koutsokostas – vocals

                     Kyriakos Kalaitzidis – oud

                     Kyriakos Petras – violin

                     Périklis Papapetropoulos – saz, bulgari, lavta

                     Juan Carmona – flamenco guitar

                     El Kiki – vocals

                     Sergio Martinez - cajon

Label:           Accords Croisés

μελος – 1. a member (a person in a group); 2. a limb; 3. a song, strain, the music to which a song is set, an air, melody (Lindell and Scott: Greek-English Lexicon)

The Mediterranean is truly a fascinating place in many ways but especially in the field of cultural history it holds a particular interest. The roots of the whole Western culture and civilisation are found in the Ancient Greece which was not summoned out of nothing but rather it was born in the course of over a thousand years as a result of interaction between the Mediterranean culture and the Arabic and Islamic cultures. The Mediterranean is not only a historical and cultural space of the researchers, historians and intellects but also the mystical and magical space of writers, musicians and other artists. All the numerous cultures of the Mediterranean form one singular and vast continuity where the same phenomena, thoughts and forms appear over and over again in different geographical locations and in different time periods. All these elements are rooted deeply in the space and time and thus one cannot separate one Mediterranean culture without taking account the greater network of cultural influences of the whole Mediterranean sea.

Melos is a project created by Saïd Assadi, the director of the French concert office, production agency and record label Accords Croisés and realised by the prolific Iranian percussionist and composer Keyvan Chemirani. Its' aim is to explore the endless Mediterranean culture and its' power through music. For this rather ambitious artistic pursuit of bringing together different musical traditions of the Mediterranean and modern compositions, Keyvan has not settled on gathering individual musicians from different Mediterranean cultures but has went even further by bringing in three whole ensembles forming a group of eleven people which features musicians from Spain, Morocco, Tunisia and Greece. The ensembles around the project have varied over the years around Keyvan but on this particular album we have the plessure to witness Juan Carmona and his ensemble, Dorsaf Hamdani and her ensemble and the Greek En Chordais joining forces to create something tremendous musically.

This record, simply titled Melos – Mediterranean songs, brings together three rich musical traditions of the different members of the project: flamenco from Spain, Greek music and maluf from the Maghreb region (Northwest Africa, west of Egypt). Additionally, other musical traditions and their elements are explored here going as far as to Armenia and all the way to India. Music presented here is an enchanting search of common musical grounds and counterparts of various music style and lyrical themes of the Mediterranean; Melos is a fascinating study of the similar musical modes and their functions and specially the rhythmic strength and possibilities which are exquisite and endless in the Mediterranean music traditions. Nevertheless, it is not only a piece of academic research but most of all an artistic creation. The one major problem with these kinds of fusion projects is the difficulty of mixing the two – and in this case various – different elements in one pot without it sounding contrived. The strength and the magic of Melos are that Keyvan Chemirani and all the talented musicians here succeed in making and piecing together songs which have all these different elements in them, and yet, they all sound natural. Here we have compositions which all at the same time have sounds and images of the past and the tradition, but still sound new and exciting, they might seem somewhat strange and foreign but are also somehow familiar. It is a piece of the mythical time which still can be found in certain parts of the Mediterranean.

Similar to the epic story of Homer's Odyssey, Melos is a musical and cultural journey where one sets off traveling the world and returns home, returns to oneself. The project is a glorious attempt to caress the whole Mediterranean culture and spellbind its' listener with its' magic never neglecting the integrity and the uniqueness of the cultures of its' individual members. Here the one who seeks might find a brief glimpse of the mythical time, the nature and the hidden.

Here is a 10-minute document about the project:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTZwB4N2c6E

Written by Παναγιωτιης