Naniwa Express - No Fuse (1982)
Not gonna send this to the non-bass players, but, yeah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB6Ujoa6VRA
James Blackshaw - New Album 2023
https://jamesblackshaw.bandcamp.com/album/new-album-2023
--
I first heard "Running To The Ghost" sometime in 2007. Back then I worked doing data entry for music. Quaint! Seemed normal then, even if it had its perks. Though we now have streaming and all (Rdio RIP) my old job remains the best chance I ever had to hear wide swaths of interesting music. A lot can change in 15+ years. If not always for the better, then surely things only get more complicated.
We can be surrounded by music constantly, our choice, if we want to be. We hear it and it's then gone from immediate experience. Which for me makes live music all the more special.
Music is a gift. In the past when I heard people say that, I used to think they meant something like "you're so gifted, thank you for sharing your talent." Nevertheless, there's another aspect: the gift that professional musicians give to listeners (aside from years spent practicing) is actually traveling around. (A musician friend once called himself a professional driver, which is very true.) In exchange, a lot of musicians give up whatever stability and community that the rest of us take more or less for granted.
Musicians do have their fans. They're somewhere out there. You can't call them up or get on a group chat with them all. You can't really get them all together in the same place. Do they really exist?? Sometimes you wonder, in a "When I'm Sixty Four" sense. I've heard it said the opposite of doubt - isn't certainty - it's faith. Musicians would seem to need a lot of that these days when you consider the time and money involved in recording and releasing a new album, and the lack of interest by anyone else helping pay for it up front. Personally, as someone not big on faith, I'd rather go the DIY certainty route myself, and who cares about the rough edges. As in, buy some gear, and listen and learn to use it as you go. Either way. Regardless of approach, that doesn't diminish my next point.
Powerfully, the work that artists do, is sometimes not so much commoditizing their artifact -- the encaustic on the gallery wall, the sculptural metalwork, the premiere of their documentary -- but the dutiful and earnest documentation of their life's journey. Not so much in the sense of presenting an outlandish persona. Though that can be fun. More so, sharing consequential experiences. When that magic intersection happens, art / music / life is better for it. And hey, musicians, by all means sell some merch too. Just remember to give us listeners something to live by. For example:
"Running To The Ghost" was the track that drew me in with its hypnotic lushness. And over repeated listens it dawned on me that all this vast sound was coming from one guitar, one pair of hands, 6 pairs of strings, and it opened a possibility. And maybe a challenge? Further in, the meandering landscape of "Clouds Collapse" / "The Mirror Speaks" / "Stained Glass Windows" revealed to me a sensibility and pathos that took no captive prisoners of guitar traditionalists, of which there are many varieties, and in time I think I came to appreciate that even more. And with that pathos, it's evident that this music came from a person with strong experiences, and the music's form followed the need to express that.
Thank goodness, James Blackshaw again opens up another way. Fahey's certainly here. So is the open ended templates provided by the likes of Can and Bo Diddley. To my ears, so are the tears and blood of the Child Ballads. I am at this point the type of grumpy person that if I hear yet another sloppy blues turnaround I'm going to publicly lose all polite decorum, so for this listener the source aquifer has to go much, much deeper than the dried up Woodstock mudpit of mainstream guitar. A music that honors its ancestors and destroys its idols is bound to reward my attention, and if you've gotten this far, yours too.
Nostalgia Remasterd by Kamlak Bmbo
https://kamlakbmbo.bandcamp.com/album/nostalgia-remasterd
Memory can be fascinating for the curious. We keep around old photos of events we deem significant, or that capture a feeling we’d like to remember. We apply filters to give our recent photos an impressionistic or timeless sheen.
Despite our best efforts to solidify our version of events, memory remains fluid. Not just because we forget stuff, which we all do, constantly. Trivial: grocery lists, emails we didn’t read, stuff we left under furniture; and significant: life events, health and safety, functional knowledge. I myself am probably among the worst at recording my actual life, and I think it’s because I suspect deep down, my version of events will probably change over time.
Old friends can disagree about the simplest facts about what happened long ago. In my experience, discovering subjective truth has been more life-changing than preserving memories.
But what happens when a new thing, say… music, gives you a feeling of nostalgia, and prompts you to re-examine a forgotten moment? Well, that might be even more interesting.
Listening to this little collection of tracks, I’m struck by how familiar the many various traditions and styles sound to my ears, and yet I wonder that I’ve ever heard anything quite like it. All the same they bring back very real memories.
"Coffee From Ethiopia (ቡና ከኢትዮጵያ)" is a standout, a neon sunset cruise through Addis. The tizita bassline weaves through Juno synths on the cassette player as woodsmoke and coffee drift by. Or did that never happen...?
"Nostalgia (ትዝታ)" is closer to the feeling of what could be described as the claustrophobia of memory, the shadow side of nostalgia, wherein we realize that there are some things that can never be reclaimed, can never be revisited.
This uncanniness is held up with the feeling that it plays as a soundtrack. If we're watching a movie, it's a slow motion grainy segment of a band playing in a small obscure venue. Lo-fi samples of hand percussion, background noises, and real sounding spaces contrast with the muffled direct-recorded keys that act as non-diegetic sound. We watch from a distance, and we are offered no illusion of being placed within the scene.
Music has always been a big place, but we only recently have seen how awe-inspiringly massive the world’s music is. Sun Ra streams back to back with Shakira on my home speakers and I love just about every minute of it. The world reverberates with music; it bounces back and forth between genres and across geography, overlapping and changing as it flows. And all this while we go about our lives, listening to the music and creating new memories.
Splitter.AI
Splitter in it's basic functionality as a Deezer Spleeter service
...
Isolating instruments from music is now possible using AI, and Splitter is based on Deezer's open source research project Spleeter to accomplish this.
Could see this being a quick tool for stem separation or vocal isolation.
Edit June, 2023 - Things have changed a lot since I logged this. Nowadays I'm using djay quite often, and most of the time isolating bass, vocals, or drums just works.
Plugins without demo versions
You can have a really nice looking and sounding YouTube tutorial of your effects plugin, but if you don't have a demo version, so I can see if it works with my system, if it sounds good on my mix, if it has decent CPU usage, you're probably not going to get the sale. Anyway..
JEFF PARKER & THE NEW BREAD Go away
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feX-SiCT1rE
"Is that a soprano?"
"Nope!"
In Each And Every One from Polar Bear
http://polarbearmusic.bandcamp.com/album/in-each-and-every-one
Drones. Grains. Textures. Jazz trio instrumentation. Gritty. Claustrophobic. Revelatory. Join me in the jacuzzi. Descend to ascend.
Rabble Rouser from Brass Funkeys
http://brassfunkeys.bandcamp.com/album/rabble-rouser
Some nice London tuba funk here. Balkan vibes. Great drums and percussion. Nice Tuneyards cover!
Ableton Live 10 Intro: Real Reasons to Upgrade
I use Ableton Live for most of my production work, and I'm a dedicated user of the Intro version. At $99 (or $79 on Black Friday) it costs significantly less than the Standard ($349) or Suite ($599) versions.
The main differences are detailed elsewhere, but for those of us who use mostly hardware or real instruments to create, Intro represents a great value.
If you look at the specs there are few reasons to get excited about upgrading from version 9 to version 10 of Ableton Live Intro.
This post is written from the perspective of someone who uses Ableton primarily for mixing a live band, where audio is not necessarily quantized to a grid. With that said, after having upgraded, here are a few things I've really appreciated:
MP3 Export.
Finally, when you export your mix (or any audio) Live will encode a constant-bit-rate 320 MP3 file along with your WAV/AIFF file, for easy uploading and sharing with clients or bandmates. For years I had a Hazel task setup specifically for this, but now it's great to have that built-in.
Easier zooming.
Maybe this was possible before, I'm not actually sure. In the arrangement view, if you hold down Command on a Mac (or I imagine Ctrl on Windows) you can easily zoom in and out by scrolling. Previously, having to use the keyboard + and - keys made edits more time consuming than necessary.
Fine-tuning automation.
Which brings me to my next item. Holding Shift while editing an automation curve allows you to make fine adjustments. Very useful when you want to bump up a background vocal by 3 dB, without having to resize the track to get enough resolution.
Nudging clips
I don't believe this was possible before. In the arrangement view, using the left or right arrow keys, you can move a clip by a small amount to correct minor timing issues. Previously, I believe pressing the arrow keys moved the play head to the beginning of the clip.
Sub-groups.
In Live you could always have groups, but now groups can contain sub-groups. This is really handy on a drum bus, where you have your overheads in a group, and then you want a bus for the whole kit. There are plenty of other common situations where this has been very useful for me, for example when grouping a guitar solo comp track group with a rhythm guitar track.
What's missing?
Well, in my opinion there are still a few things that Ableton lacks.
Comping takes
This is pretty painful in Ableton, especially when you have more than a few takes to keep track of. Check out some videos of how this is done in ProTools, Reaper, Logic, or Digital Performer, or really almost any other DAW and you can see this could be a lot better.
More?
There are always little annoyances that bug me, but not enough to make me consider moving to another DAW. I'll keep adding to this list as I think of things.
Why Ableton?
For me, Live almost perfectly bridges my two production worlds of working with samples and mixing live-tracked audio. I enjoy being able to keep it all in one DAW, and learning it really well so I'm productive.
Alefa Madagascar
[bandcamp width=350 height=470 album=3162735349 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false]
https://strut.bandcamp.com/album/alefa-madagascar
Another great-looking compilation on the excellent label Strut Records.
Can't wait to dig into this one, but right off the bat I'm digging the organ tones and the super interesting triplets-over-eighths grooves. Sure to be another classic alongside some of my all-time favorites:
- Inspiration Information 3 by Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics
- Pat Thomas & Kwashibu Area Band
- Orlando Julius with The Heliocentrics
- Next Stop ... Soweto Vol. 3: Giants, Ministers and Makers: Jazz in South Africa 1963-1984
- Appia Kwa Bridge by Ebo Taylor
From the liner notes:
Strut continues its essential compilation series of Indian Ocean sounds with ‘Alefa Madagascar’, the first compilation to document the unique culture of salegy, soukous and soul on the island during the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Originating as far back as the 15 th Century through folkloric ceremonial music and an a cappella chanting style called antsa, salegy emerged as a fast- tempoed local dance style based on 6/8 and 12/8 rhythms. By the ‘60s, radio was bringing in new sounds from the Congo, Mozambique, South Africa and Kenya and Jean Francois de Comarmond’s Discomad label championed a new generation of artists breaking the mould with their own new fusions of styles as electric instruments replaced the traditional. The strong call-and- response dialogues, rich vocal choruses and rolling triplet feel in the rhythm sections all boasted a unique Malagasy sensibility and singles started selling tens of thousands of copies, rivalling any foreign music at the time. Local pop was sometimes referred to as tapany maintso (half-green) a reference to the stickers on singles from the other key label in Madagascar, Kaïamba, many of them produced by Charles Maurin Poty whose work was crucial in shaping the emerging genre.
‘Alefa Madagascar’ showcases the rich variety of sounds during this heyday of Malagasy music: Roger Georges’ ‘Mama’ and Jean Kely et Basth’s ‘Andosy Mora’ bring the raw energy of salegy, influential band Los Matadores drop military drums and Hammond soul in the classic ‘Andeha Hanarato’; Mahaleo’s ‘Izahay Mpamita’ showcases the band’s powerful folk sound, a crucial voice emerging from the Rotaka farmer and student protests of 1972, while Terak’Anosy Group work around a stomping Congolese guitar groove. The era paved the way for many of the household names of Malagasy music today including Jaojoby, D’Gary and Lego.
Mastered by The Carvery and featuring cover artwork by top illustrator Lewis Heriz, ‘Alefa Madagascar’ is released on 16th August 2019 and is compiled by Réunionese DJs La Basse Tropicale and Percy Yip Tong (Mauritius). Physical formats feature sleeve notes by influential producer Charles Maurin Poty and Banning Eyre of Afropop Worldwide.
credits
released September 6, 20192019, !K7 Music
Warne Marsh - Marshlands
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NznMgf7EmkQ&list=OLAK5uy\_mankj58ZKJFRX7OFLKBmQgi6WcPkSOyKs&index=1
Warne Marion Marsh was an American tenor saxophonist. Born in Los Angeles, his playing first came to prominence in the 1950s as a protégé of pianist Lennie Tristano and earned attention in the 1970s as a member of Supersax.
While searching Apple Music / iTunes for my band Marshland's new album, I came across this fun gem.
The first thing that strikes me is the blending of jazz and classical influences.
I really like the moments of edging toward more free playing.
Warne's tone is very unassuming, almost brittle in an endearing way. I feel like I'm in the same room with him.
Health and Strength by Prince Far i
https://pressuresounds.bandcamp.com/album/health-and-strength
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=3060976817 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]