Here are some great music playlists I have been building on Jamendo. You can download ALL of this music for free from the Free Music Archives or Jamendo.

(Here is my free music archives profile and my  jamendo profile).

This first Jamendo playlist is pretty damn amazing. It’s the best playlist I have ever created (and will create). I made it for my feature article about 11 Incredible Music Albums You can Download for Free.  (You can view & download all the tracks here).  A lot of European electronica, dance/techno/trance. Also, the amazing vocals of No Really. Sorry, it simply isn’t fair to call attention to one performer. They are all outstanding!

Below are several more excellent playlists to fit all kinds of moods.

Gentle & Carefree Living. Some upbeat and generally light-hearted tracks. More pop than rock, but still some oddballs thrown in for good measure (Airplane on the Highway didn’t exactly fit the mood, but oh, well).

Lackadaisical Mind-stretches. Slow otherworldly meandering through the dissonant terrain of jazz, electronica and a few other surprises.

Philosophical Rock. Songs that are philosophical either in tone or by theme (or both).  First half is guitar-based (starting  with the hardnosed thrumming of Brad Sucks).  The second half has slower songs, with a more elegiac tone and an electronic sound. Hey, even Kiss recorded "Beth"; hard rock must get dull for rock bands after  a while.   enjoy!

Mechanical Musings. This mix is supposed to be more danceable and have more industrial/mechanical sounds, but I veered off topic a bit, gave it a little whimsical glitch.  Get a load of that Bud Melvin; psychodelic  chip music with a banjo? Sad Robot is a great easy to sing song. John Ellis’s Stuttergun is more techno. By the way, I did an interview with the elusive VAE (aka Aleksi Virtu — not his real name, but a joke on another performer with the same name in his Finnish homeland).   His free album is not to be missed. And Gorowski’s Of the Sky definitely could have been composed by VAE. (Goworski apparently has 5 albums and 40 tracks on FMA, so he’s definitely worth investigating. Enjoy!

Neverending Music. Sometimes music tends to keep going on and on…without really reducing your enjoyment. Here are some samples. I left 2 20 minute pieces for the end (including the incredible experimental improvisation by Squadra Omega. You have a traditional techno sound (Jurek Raben), an eerie dream piece  (Phone), tranquil piano (Fabrizio Paterlini), rowdy Latin-flavored jazz (Har-You Percussion Group),  gentle percolations (Marco Kalnenek) and  gentle singing with low-key  guitars (Giraffe). Lots of repetition, but no monotony.

Songs with an Attitude. Here  I highlight songs whose vocals have an attitude — rebellious, rowdy, melancholy, silly. Leading the pack are two great hiphop mixes by Ethx with a social message, Russian Zemfira-like funkiness by Muha, angsty (and always-surprising) Josh Woodward, edgy Canadian hiphop from Audible Intelligence and  hazy strummming by Dallas Kinkaid. Counterpointing the rhythmic hiphopping  is Major Major’s muted anger, the nonchalant Steadman and Sleeping Life’s soft and cynical "Love is an Eternal Lie." Yes, there’s something for everyone!

Benny Goodman. In June 2010 I created a list of links to the best Benny Goodman mp3 links on archive.org (and other old-timey stuff). It also comes with an embedded player.

On Friday April 30 the Austin band Many Birthdays will be performing at the Lost in Space Fest 2. (Here’s the myspace event description).

In 2003  I raved about an Austin band Many Birthdays whose mp3s I had downloaded on some obscure website.

I wrote:

The New Asparagus

I was listening to the Austin band Red Cake Records (now known as Many Birthdays), but to tell the truth I just didn’t get it. The music was odd, not really intense, full of weird sounds and string mixtures of instruments and genres. Melodies just seem to putter out, as though, they forgot to write the rest of it, or the drummer fell asleep. What was going on.?

It’s like asparagus. The first time you eat asparagus, you think, “Man, what the heck is this? Is this a vegetable? And what’s with those ridges at the top? And what’s with the stringy parts of it? And that taste–oily, bitter, briney. But after a few sticks, you suddenly say, “hey, this is great! Gosh, I wish every vegetable could be this weird! And delicious!” And then you look at the other vegetables that used to be the loves of your life–the carrots and lettuce and beans–well, it all seems so uninteresting. How could you ever have lived before you knew asparagus?”

Listen up world, the band Many Birthdays is the new asparagus. So psychedelic, but notice  how carefully controlled all the audio effects were. Surveillance Society (mp3) is wistful underwater strumming and distortions drifting into the netherworld. In Better To Walk(mp3) strange ambient noises we hear while hopping along the highway median, watching the cars whiz by. Simple string numbers like Clay (mp3) convince us that these modest minstrels can actually play melodies when they fancy such a radical notion. In songs like Belt Buckle (mp3), you hear a country twang mixed with lovely garagey electronic strums, a country-western song for Eskimos. The music is contemplative, quirky, fun and totally insignificant. It’s the kind of music you listen to while watching the fish swim glumly around in the aquarium. After it ends, you say, wait, where did the afternoon go?

 

(The original review had mp3 links, all of which are now dead, but they now sell mp3s on Amazon and Rhapsody and have a small number of freebies on their website). Electro Fantastic Remix is an otherworldly electronic sound-poem with a hard beat (and by the way, it’s fantastic!),  Aya is a slow  and mellow song with Dixon on vocals. 130th Dream is another kind of instrumental sound poem that veers from style to style. Addiction is another instrumental sound poem with a fast techno beat. Just listening to these things, you’d swear that vocals are just an afterthought. Totally not the case with Black Crow Remix and actually a lot of their songs on other albums. Yes, they can sing; of course they can; it’s just that they are aiming for some blended electronic effect. In Minnawa (see youtube video below), the music is fierce, kind of punk and definitely exciting to listen to.

Compare them to: Lonah, Ladytron or even Talking Heads (Or a dozen underground Asian pops I have yet to hear).

As luck would have it, I met the bandleader at an Austin cafe a few years back and up until now have never had a chance to see them perform (It’s the Austin-Houston travel thing).

Since that time, I’ve kept up with the band at a distance. They have put out some great songs and albums, plus they have teamed up with  a videographer to make some artistically cool videos.  Here’s an interview by Eric Power with Many Birthdays:

How has the band/sound transformed over the years?

When we were just doing experimental home-recordings, we had no real concern with it sounding like a "band". Nor did we have concern about how to play the stuff live. But once we began figuring out how to play music for shows, our writing started to naturally change. We started becoming more interested in the pulse and energy of a piece than in the limitless details of recording. It’s like we really needed to paint with much broader strokes and let some of the shadings and details take care of themselves. It’s a balance we are still working on. Also, we’ve gone from a duo four years ago, to a 4-piece now, playing with as many as five people including guest players. Our sound has revolved around one main goal for quite sometime, and that is to make people move, dance or simply feel something.

I definitely understand the desire to find an audience for your art. That’s what it’s all about – especially for music.  But the early Many Birthdays stuff didn’t need to be danceable; there’s no shame in being just a studio band. It’s just different.

At the same time, it’s easy to play with the crowd. I’ve noticed that with live storytelling. Some stories go over well with live audiences, but that doesn’t necessarily make them better stories. It just means that audience like to laugh and they like  jokes about farts and vomiting.

At the same time, I am happy that Many Birthdays is more of a collaboration project; the earlier stuff could best be described as Jon Dixon’s sonic experiments, but now the group has new energy and different voices. The later stuff always surprises me in a good way. I get the sense that all the members are bringing something to the table. That actually is a very good thing and hard to accomplish. Ok, you have talent; so what? But finding people to complement your own is never an easy thing; you may have to try many many times to get the synergy just  right. And I think Many Birthdays has done  that.

I’m not a big fan of video/musical combinations, but I think the multimedia aspect of their music lend themselves easily to video as visual counterpoint. Listening to Iwaisuru, it seems just like an unremarkable  Asian pop song with sound effects, but when paired with the video (see last video below), you realize that the song is all about textures – not only of sounds, but images too. You are viewing Japan as a foreigner who find the sights and sounds and smells  fascinating and bizarre. 

After seeing it on  Catching the Waves, I am now testing  the new embedded yahoo media player.  Wow, it works!  I think I will start adding mp3 links to most of my posts. Let me know if it bothers you or if it has technical problems. Yahoo Media Player was the brainchild of Lucas Gonze  (who created the amazing webjay online playlist site in 2004). Click on the Play button to see the magic at work.

Aha, I see that the yahoo player will automatically embed every mp3 link on a web page. So after playing this Bei Mir bist du Schon link, the player proceeded  to the next mp3 on the page (which in this case is the fascinating but irrelevant  90 minute lecture about Internet freedom with James Fallows). Hey, that was a good talk, but I realize if you click on the Bei Mir Bist du Schon link, you hardly expect to hear James Fallows! To solve this problem, I guess I will just have to include multiple Bei Mir links (bummer!) 

•  Bei Mir Bist Du Schon (Andrew Sisters) . This is the catchy tune that took America by storm in 1937.
• Bei Mir Bist Du Schon (Martha Tilton).  This version is so good that I am half-inclined to want to toss all my  Andrew Sisters CDs away.  This came from the classic Benny Goodman 1938 Carnegie Hall performance.
• Berlin Nachkriegersschlager version 1946. Wonderfully idiosyncratic.
• Charlie and the Orchestra gives a very bizarre Nazified version of the same song. (More).
• Mieczysław Fogg/Henryk Wars version. Fogg was a Polish singer and Wars was a Polish composer who worked in my favorite city, Lviv, Ukraine. (On youtube check out Ostatnia Niedziela, an absolutely  beautiful tango by Fogg – unfortunately used by Nazis in concentration camps).
• Judy Garland Version. Not totally great, but still interesting. Fashioned as a kind of medlay. 
• Budapest Klezmer Version. The Klezmer instrument gives it a European/ethnic feel. Actually this is a jazzy/scat version too.
• The Janice Siegel version gives a great understated version which calls a lot of attention to the band. Appeared in the film Swing Kids. 
• The Louis Prima and Keely Version  is a slower, slightly more melancholy version sung as a male-female duet.

By the way, if any random web surfer has found this page through a similar obsession, let me mention two versions which give me shivers.

• I heard a jazzy Russian version on a Russian music cassette (from a band that did jazzy cover versions of various songs; I remember one they did of Don’t Cry for Me Argentina which was particularly terrific). Anyway, if anyone knows who did this version or how to listen to it online, let me know.
• The SwingChix Ukulele version of the Bei Mir on youtube is by my far my favorite modern version of the song. It is fresh, fun, silly, stylish and different. 

(By the way, I am officially NOT wondering about whether these versions ought to be available on archive.org).

This wiki page lists many  versions of the song. I eagerly await  the Pig Latin version of the song.

People who know me know about my obsession with the Andrew Sisters. I never tire of hearing their dynamite version of this song.

PS. I heartily recommend Swing It: The Andrew Sisters book by John Sforza (Read excerpts on Google books).

Recently writer and critic Robert Nagle made a list of 11 Incredible Musicians You Can Download for Free . Many of the musicians on this top list make their music freely available on Jamendo, a free and legal music sharing site. Several musicians  appearing on this  list also gave interviews to this blog  (Read the other interviews).  You can also download a free sampler containing full songs from artists profiled here.

JCRZ is  a French electronic musician  named José Cruz who has produced 12 albums for Jamendo. of which Sit Down & Dance 2.0 is the most accessible of JCRZ’s 12 albums:  fun, dancey, very pop and energetic. The melodies are simple and the electronic effects are understated. There are occasional voice tracks, but mostly it is electronic. It is straight/ conventional techno, but the formula is just right. The tracks that jumped out immediately were: Dreamsequence and Attraction Zero, and also Rollercoaster especially. All three are hard and very fun techno tracks. One Day Ago reminds me of some of the Suzanne Palmer remixes (that voice certainly sounds like her!) Also notable was the more serene/dreamy Memory Lost which reminded me of Paul van Dyk. (so did Fallen Angel).  JCRZ’s other albums are worth checking out, especially Kind of Music and Fractal Attraction. In Non-compliant Human Being, JCRZ does two amazing dream trances, Red Javeline (Sun Mix) and Blue Javeline (Moon Mix). I especially love the 16 minute Red Javeline, which has an otherworldly magic, stretching outward to the sky and ending in a kind of lovely musical fog. In Checksum of Life, songs like Touched by an Angel and  the lackadaisical Urban Interlude are so simple and joyful that one wonders if they were created in a happier and simpler era.   His latest album Volume 10 doesn’t exactly cover new territory, but it is still enthralling music.

1. Can you talk a little about your creative process? What parts about making music are the easiest for you? What parts are the most difficult?

Well, my way of making music is intuitive.  Most of the time I begin by playing the synth or making a rhythm;  next I will add  sound elements:  a bass, string pads (i love strings) …  Making a track can  take a couple of hours or sometimes  days. But I never know if i will keep it or throw it away.  Sometimes, after hours of work, a track can sound good.. But when i listen to it the next day, it sounds awful. The “next-day”  listening test is very important to know if I keep or not a track I composed. I learnt electro music by myself, never went to musical school.. so I know my limits. It’s like having a one-colored pencil to make a color drawing. This limit gives  my music a kind of minimalist flavor. You will never get a “note overdose” while listening to my music. I’m light years away from Beethoven or Bruckner    I always learn a little more with every track I compose.  For me, making music is like a endless quest.

2. How has your biography or geography affected the kind of music you make? What do you think is unique or different about the music you make?

I  have traveled to Africa, Brazil and lots of European clubs. That has definitely affected  my music.   Often one of my pieces will be reminiscent of another.     But it doesn’t matter. Every piece of music is influenced by another.  Every musician has only 12 semi-tones  to play with. I do not pretend to be creating something new.

As far as what is unique about my music, that’s a question only my  listeners  could  answer.    My music is only studio music but  one day I  would like to hear one of my tracks played  in an acoustic performance or   by real musicians. It would be a step out of  cyberspace.

3. What other musician or musicians have inspired you? Can you name someone who is not a musician who has provided inspiration for your creativity?

I always liked listening to  film music and electronic music. When I was young, i fell in love with film music  by John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith then Hans Zimmer…  my musical heroes. I  also liked film composers like Giorgio Moroder (who invented electro disco) and John Carpenter (who invented minimal horror film music). My first electro non-film music influences are Jean Michel Jarre 70’s German electro music (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Shulze, Kraftwerk), Philip Glass, Moby….  Synthpop has influenced me too;   Pet Shop Boys are my favorite band.. and I’m also  influenced by trance music and Eurodance  : Paul Van Dyk, Blank & Jones, Jam & Spoon ….

4. If a friend or family member listened to your music, what parts of your personality would this person recognize in it?

My music has melancholic parts. Most of my tracks are in minor key. If someone listen to my music, I  think the minor key sounds are the most recognizable.

5. What is the most difficult part  about being a musician?

After finishing a piece of music, I worry  about running out of inspiration.  It is like asking “Can I  find someone again to fall in love with?” After a creativity phase, there is always a kind  of loneliness.

6. Music seems to be an important part of videos and film now. Have you ever imagined what kind of video or film might be  perfect  for your music? What is the best situation (i.e., time and place) for people to hear your music?

Some of my  music  can be used to accompany video or film. I made some dreamy tracks that can be used to illustrate nature or space movies. Other tracks can be used on films  or video game  action sequences.   To hear my music you have to “Sit Down And Dance” : listen to my music and let your imagination go.

7. Can you think of one event in your life which caused you to decide to “become serious” about music?

Perhaps, a worldwide success of one of my tracks could decide this. Musical creativity has always been a big part of my life. In fact, making music for fun is total freedom.  Perhaps someday one of my tracks will become internationally known and that may determine how serious I need to get about my music; on the other hand  “becoming serious” about music could mean losing some of that  freedom.

Recently writer and critic Robert Nagle made a list of 11 Incredible Musicians You Can Download for Free. Many of the musicians on this top list make their music freely available on Jamendo, a free and legal music sharing site. Several musicians  appearing on this  list also gave interviews to this blog  (Read the other interviews).  You can also download a free sampler containing full songs from artists profiled here .

Väinö Ala-Härkönen (VAE)   is a young Finnish electronic musician whose music is described as cosmic-funk or intergalactic disco. Aleksi Virta Meets Torsti At The Space Lounge is a marvelous collection of  whimsical pieces based loosely on the idea of an intergalactic spy.  (By the way, Aleksi Virta is an actual Finnish musician, and Torsti is the  imaginary character who is Virta’s sworn nemesis in the album).  Vaino  even wrote up a silly fake diary  (which I reprint in full  at the end).  I loved this quirky little album a few years ago and love it even more today. Lots of sampling,  random voices, hard beats,  unexpected arrangements and instruments. Whirlwind Pistols Dub is a reggae funk beat with a fun harmonica melody trapped inside. Cosmos Bossa is a silly tooting bit of work, reminiscient of Ugress’s Swing e Sesso.  Nebulae Herb (my favorite) is a hard pounding dance number with great organ background. O Tema de Viagem Especial has a jazzy South American  feel, with rapid horns and lots of pounding. Dragons is a exciting bit of jazzy-funkiness. True Dwelling Place is a jumpy, eerie piece with a fluttering almost hypnotic quality, as though it were random noises and melodies spinning about  a drunk man’s head before he fades to sleep. Update: Apparently Catching the Waves blog is a fan too:

Väinö Ala-Härkönen’s opus has been out for years, got reviewed up hill and down dale, passed the 42,000 download mark at archive.org, and has its own dogbasket in the CTW household. If you don’t know it but are in the market for some trippy, dubby, funky, trip-hop-funk-bigbeat-dub-hop-skip-n-jump-hop, your luck is in.

Here is my interview with Vae:

1. Can you talk a little about your creative process? What parts about making music are the easiest for you? What parts are the most difficult?

I find that good ideas come naturally when their time is right… When I’m out of inspiration, I’ll just have to go on, do things and hope that something sparks an idea at some point. That’s what I live with since I rarely have any deadlines or schedules with music.

It’s making an interesting and working whole that is really challenging to me. The “work” part: finishing a song, finishing an album, whatever scale you want to look things on. It’s the classic “1% of inspiration and 99% of perspiration” thing. I constantly have dozens of unfinished melodies, chord progressions, sounds and grooves I’ve written down, most of them I might never finish because I just don’t feel I’m up to it for some reason or another.

2. How has your biography or geography affected the kind of music you make? What do you think is unique or different about the music you make?

Both of the questions are hard to answer since I haven’t been anyone else but me, obviously – so my music is what it is because what I’ve done and where I’ve lived in my life, and what makes the music unique to me is that it’s the only music that’s been made by myself. So I think to get a proper, meaningful answer you would have to ask someone else who has listened to my songs…

3. What other musician or musicians have inspired you? Can you name someone who is not a musician who has provided inspiration for your creativity?

I listen to and love lots of music (as they say, there’s basically just two genres: good music and, well, not-so-good music) and get inspired by everything around me – whether things I love or things I hate. So I can’t really mention anyone or anything above else just now… Often it’s just some sort of subconscious influence you just can’t pinpoint, too – realizing afterwards that some book or movie I just read has a mood similar to something I’ve just made.

4. If a friend or family member listened to your music, what parts of your personality would this person recognize in it?

Again, hard to say. At least I guess it depends on the particular song he/she was listening to.

5. What is the most difficult part about being a musician?

I guess generally the most difficult part of being a creative person (well, we’re all creative in some sense) in general is that the creativity is both a blessing and a curse… Blessing because it allows you to express yourself in fun and awesome ways, and a curse because it’s kind of something you just have to do it to feel whole. Even though I don’t earn my living making music, every time   I don’t get done   any music or other creative stuff over a period of   months I start to feel it negatively in other sides of my life too.

Someone once said that hobbyist musicians envy professionals because they get to do what they love for living… and professionals envy the amateurs because they get to do what they love in the way they choose, not having to agree to do whatever gigs that you get paid for. I like being an amateur in that sense, I don’t have to worry about creative freedom

6. Music seems to be an important part of videos and film now. Have you ever imagined what kind of video or film might be  perfect  for your music? What is the best situation (i.e., time and place) for people to hear your music?

More interesting to me is the other side “what kind of video, film or place I would like to make a soundtrack to?”  I’ve thought about that a lot when making some of my songs, but still haven’t come to any conclusion, except that it probably should be something just a tiny bit weird and really magical…

7. Can you think of one event in your life which caused you to decide to “become serious” about music?

Honestly, I don’t feel I’m “being serious” about music. I’ve earned some money making music, but it’s never been my main income. I do love making, listening and playing music and feel that it’s is a spiritual thing… But I guess that just comes naturally while you listen to music and learn new things.

8. In what ways do musical people look at the world differently from nonmusical people?

You should ask a musical person about that

******

One frivolous thing about this album is that it even includes an imaginary space diary. Unfortunately it has been offline for years (except for a cached copy on the Wayback Machine). I am reprinting the silly thing here:

( diary day one / a peer rumors ah gwan )
spending endless hours reading obscure, twisted novels and small-print magazines, watching b-flics from betelgeuze, listening to new dub cuts during my space travels. sipping cocktails at interstellar lounges, scent of exotic herbs floating around me. meeting people from all around the universe, being intelligent and polite, making witty remarks, memorizing every little thing they do and say for future reference.

that’s me. using my irresistible ninja charm to score beautiful cosmic ladies. soothing them with the sounds of the past and the future, polishing my aural armoury and sharpening my sonic shurikens, plucking their strings gently while they’re playing soundscapes with my flute.
after my nemesis torsti disappeared from the known universe and his minions scattered, i’ve had little to do. endless nights of travelling around space, partying, meeting people, looking out for clues that might help me and z15 intelligence agency find a new mission. until now i’ve thought torsti was gone for good but i’ve been hearing alarming things tonight – at this very space lounge i currently chill out at…
things are different now. world isn’t what it used to be when i first met torsti. sound is the weapon of the future and – let me tell you – the future is right now. i must stay alert, gather my powers and keep my sound system ready. you never know when dem evil selectas n soundbwoyz are coming and if torsti is not yet as dead as i suspected… he might be back some day – with a vengeance.
ever since i was a little boy, i’ve been dreaming of spacemen. and now i’m an intergalactic, supersonic secret agent. my name is aleksi virta, somewhere between 10 and 30.

( diary day two / likkle more labrish floating in outer space )
i’m slowly starting to sense my nemesis everywhere around me. daily reports from z15 secret headquarters and nu wonder espionage center on earth have suddenly stopped, some of the girls have got cold all of sudden and – what’s worst – the cosmic lounge bar has suddenly run out of all my favourite beverages. torsti hasn’t actually shown up yet but i have this weird feeling he’s behind all this. and when he’ll show up… all hell’s gonna break loose. for real.
i just hope all this travelling, partying and chilling out hasn’t made my senses dull. i’ll need all of my ill skills for this mission. too much wine and nebulae herb i suppose – i’m starting to suspect that even my magic reverb and delay fingers have gone numb. mental note to start concentrating, training and grooving as soon as possible. yeah. learning a few new tricks wouldn’t hurt either… after all, nobody knows what wicked things that evil mind has invented to battle against me this time. let me tell you: it’s not about the sound system size, it’s about how you use it. and this time i intend to use mine to the max.
to god, confidential: if you still exist, please give me your blessings for this one. kind regards – aleksi virta, top secret agent from z15.

( diary day four / trouble no set like rain )
still quiet before the storm and i feel happy… i’ve finally met the woman of my life. her name is gavrila nebula and she’s beautiful.

i met her at the lounge last night – turned out she’s also sort of a freelance agent, sound system specialist, whatever. she’s from earth too, russia to be exact. and her grooves are sooooo smooth you just couldn’t believe it. writing about her is like dancing about architecture, for sure. what’s best, she’s agreed to join me to fight against the supreme evil. my chances of winning this battle are now better than ever and gavrila has given me new hope and lots of motivation to start practising my skills again. now i finally understand what “back to back” actually means.
still no word from z15 – and i’ve been hearing rumours that someone has cut nu wonder off from the galaxy-wide network. sad news for the whole humankind – it’s getting harder and harder for me to get espionage information on torsti and his diabolical minions. i might even have to ask the secret service of the planet of the leather moomins to timewarp back from 7003 to help me in acquiring information on torsti’s whereabouts. i know he’s alive and somewhere in vicinity, but i want to be the one making the surprise attack.
strange things have indeed been happening lately – i started writing this diary only little more than four days ago out of sheer boredom and already there’s too much happening around me. well, at least now i have someone to rely on. gavrila my love.

( diary day unknown / just pure almshouse a gwaan )
still no reports from z15 nuwonder cut off torsti came out of nowhere i disappeared or at least i think i did i don’t know if i’m dreaming or not it’s all too confusing for me now damn you damn you you got to strike first and now i’m having illusions and making love in surround technicolor here’s a picture of how i feel like now

no… i’m okay really. really really. i think. it’s just that… these weird images started appearing in my mind i can’t concentrate and i’m seeing colors i’ve no doubt that torsti is beep beep behind all this. the master of frequencies he is, yes, but only after me. i had it all ready and planned with ms. nebula, this time that vile soul just made his first move before i did. and what a move. i know i’m still at the lounge but i can’t just believe it. echoes floating around me. sleeping on the pink rays of light. it’s useless to explain, everything is so… i can’t get no sleep.
i don’t mind the colors and the shapes-hapes-apes-pes-es; and the dreams. it could be worse. i like them. the only big problem is: unless i find out a way to get off this state of mind, how am i going to get gavrila – if she’s not in same state as i am – or anyone else to help me? i know this is just the first step and if i can’t get back to normal, i’ll be doomed. hahaha. doomed.
there’s a cute proud brazilian girl in the treshold of my dream and she’s blowing bubbles to keep me awake. caro… carol… all – that – jazz. it’s all one giant catch 22.

( diary day seven / obeah )
just when i was about to freak out and dissociate myself… a sight, a faint memory saved me and woke me up.

whirlwind pistols. in my dream i saw a mysterious brown-skinned girl giving me signals, apparently trying to wake me up from whichever nasty spells torsti had woven on me. she gave me these flashes, memories from my past and – who knows – maybe even visions of future. i was still falling deep into the hallucinations before this image appeared into my mind, out of nowhere.
… whirlwind pistols. my secret weapons. 1 and 2. my precious ones. capable of creating anything from gentle soundscapes to pure noise bursts. the memory of them, the memory of my fingers on their triggers made me find myself again and escape from those illusions that would probably have trapped me forever. thank god.
cool and calm again. when i woke up, gavrila was sitting next to me. and next to her sat the very same brazilian girl appearing in my dream. carolina. that’s her name. carolina. one of the few. one of those who’re still out there, waiting.

( diary day eight / creation steppa )
carolina’s a young space gypsy with mystical powers. she’s been traveling around the galaxies since she was little – in fact she says she was born on a spaceship.
the noble space gypsies have been there since the beginning. even before space travel was realized, they had their plan ready. you see, they had always wanted to be free. one thing they’ve got now is patience. another thing they’ve got now is total control of themselves.

carolina is… special. in most ways. she probably possesses powers i and gavrila can only dream of having. i know she can heal people from inside – like she did to me – as easily as outside. even though she seems to be very open, happy and talkative otherwise, she’s really quiet about her other skills. i’m starting to suspect there’s WAY more to her than meets the eye.
torsti has vanished again but carolina says she can easily track him down when we want to. i guess she’s joining us against the supreme evil too, then. which is nice.

( diary day eight part 2 / art of war )

ready to meet my nemesis. and this is what i learnt today.
“ the art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors to be taken into account in one’s deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.
these are:
1. the moral law
2. heaven
3. earth
4. the commander
5. method and discipline
the MORAL LAW causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.
HEAVEN signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons.
EARTH comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death.
the COMMANDER stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerely, benevolence, courage and strictness.
by METHOD AND DISCIPLINE are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure.
these five heads should be familiar to every general: he who knows them will be victorious; he who knows them not will fail. ”
-from art of war by sun tzu, a native of the ch’i state.

( diary day nine / nuff badness )
the chase is on. here we come, torsti. i, with my whirlwind pistols. gavrila and carolina with their special skillz. all three of us. armed, calm, dangerous. i defeated you last time and i’ll do it again now, no matter what you try. and this time i won’t be alone against you.

carolina has found you, easily like she promised. the lounge’s forest chillout zone may be a good place for hiding but remember – it’s also a good place for a surprise attack. we know where you are and you’ll never now what hit you before it’s too late.
there’s only two types of evil overlords in this world: the ones that get their ass kicked… and the ones that get their ass kicked really bad.

( diary day ten / armagideon time )
and so the final battle begins…

“let the rain pour down from god above with the blood on my blade, no love, begin the flood open the gates, let the battle begin, wherein with wind at our backs, ready for any attacks sound the horns, prepare for war, begin the storm the flaming arrows hitting your body, keeping you warm with the uniform of my sworn enemies you raped and pillaged my city, and spread disease feel the sword of the warrior’s wrath, the path you take can lead to the math that the master’s break the clash of the titans, are you frightened of loss fighting with the cause to free, you and yours, and god’s law look in the stars, aligned with sign and mars destruction, what’s your function, you roll with god”

- from ancient scriptures, labelled “clash of the titans”
torsti’s dark minions are abundant but we’re still going to be victorious. i know it now, better than ever before.

( diary day fifteen / all is well )

” Rain, hail, snow and ice:
All are different,
But when they fall
They become the same water
As the valley stream.
The ways of proclaiming
The Mind vary,
But the same heavenly truth
Can be seen
In each and every one.
Cover your path
With the fallen pine needles
So no one will be able
To locate your
True dwelling place. ”

-Ikkyu

Recently writer and critic Robert Nagle made a list of 11 Incredible Musicians You Can Download for Free. Many of the musicians on this top list make their music freely available on Jamendo, a free and legal music sharing site. Several musicians  appearing on this  list also gave interviews to this blog  (Read the other interviews).  You can also download a free sampler containing full songs from artists profiled here .

Serge Robinson is a jazz piano improvisationalist who spends hours upon hours on the piano, inventing all sorts of new melodies depending on where his fingers take him. They recall the usual piano repertory (Chopin, Satie), and each improvisation consists of two parts (each about 30 minutes).   The melodies traipse and linger and pause; they are more impressionistic than melodic, with the occasional flourish and moments of solemnity or daintiness. Now here’s the punch line. Robinson has about 100 improvisational piano compositions, each lasting about an hour long. (I’ve only listened to about 20). I recommend #85, 87, 95, 105, 106, 112, 77. Email me in a year and I will tell  you if the other 100 albums are  just crap.  About Serge Robinson’s improvisations, Free Albums Galore wrote: “Serge Robinson has a soothing touch on the keyboard and enough virtuosity and imagination to pull it off….  any of the albums will give you a hour of deep and thoughtful music, reminiscent of Keith Jarrett’s own improvisatory excursions yet mindful of classical and impressionistic influence such as Satie and Faure…. Each album has two thirty minute improvisations… jazz in style yet more suited to a lazy classical mood. “

Here is my interview which I did by email.

1. Can you talk a little about your creative process? What parts about making music are the easiest for you? What parts are the most difficult?

Initially, I made some recordings in order just  to hear what I played. When I’m playing and recording, my mind is so focused on improvising that I really don’t have the ability to hear what I’ve been playing. After a few months of doing these exercises,  I was not only making progress; I was also surprising myself.  I couldn’t believe I was able to play something like that. Technically speaking, I was just trying to be familiar with scales: C Major, D Major, E Major, F Major, G Major, A Major, B Major, C# Major, etc…

I continued playing and recording these improvisations. I didn’t really believe I could continue doing these improvisations, yet at the end of this period, it was hard to deny that I had a knack for it.

I have been always curious about how music causes us to feel an emotion. I tried to find some relationship between some a musical texture, musical chords and the  emotion they may imply.   From time to time, I let my emotions guide my improvisations.  While I am at  a piano, I will start by thinking about a word or an ordinary scene in my life and then  play with these things in  mind. By the end of the recording, I may have wandered far away from the word or physical detail which I started with. Some might  find that inconsistent.  But I don’t care. It’s fascinating to watch how an initial idea in my brain evolves into something different.

Improvisation is an exercise related to observing how the brain works.  You gain an understanding of what makes us human.  We can also think of someone who just sit down, admire the landscape, listen to the birds, the wind, etc… Meditation !

From time to time I like to play with technical stuff. I try to change scales very often (as I can) in order to observe the emotion produced by it.

Making music is a pleasure or just something you need to do (regardless of your skill level).  All my albums are improvisations. After it is played I cannot change anything. It’s just like talking or  breathing.  I play what I can; that’s all.

2. How has your biography or geography affected the kind of music you make? What do you think is unique or different about the music you make?

I have no ability to play music that doesn’t correspond to me.  But I don’t know what people can learn about me after hearing  my music. Obviously, I put something of myself in my music but when you listen, you put something of yourself in it as well. What you feel is obviously different from what I put in there. Anyway, we may feel the same thing from time to time.   My personal  history makes me who I am.  It has nothing to do with music even though it must eventually affect the  music I make.

3. What other musician or musicians have inspired you? Can you name someone who is not a musician who has provided inspiration for your creativity?

I think I can understand  Keith Jarrett’s approach to music. I love Ella Fitzgerald, and so on… Debussy, and many many more but I don’t try to be inspired by one musician or another. I’m probably inspired by all of those I like or all of music I’ve already heard. Anyway, I do not make any effort to do something like someone else. I only try to express myself… I have been inspired by some friends, my relatives, Sister  Emmanuelle and  Ingrid Betancourt.

4. If a friend or family member listened to your music, what parts of your personality would this person recognize in it?

People used to say that my music is so calm ( not always true).  The first time my mother  heard my music she said, “It’s amazing !”  Others said “it’s great”  or  “it’s too intellectual.” Some friends said “It’s so sensitive…”  I have already heard “I don’t like that at all…”  Someone called my music “melancholy.”  As I mentioned,  I don’t know what people  feel when they listen because  it depends on their own history. Thus, it’s not easy to guess what they can understand about my personality. I do not try to let my music reveal aspects of my personality.  My music is not supposed to be an advertisement for myself; it is just a collection of musical experiences which I can share.

5. What is the most difficult part about being a musician?

Why do you use the word “musician?” I’m just someone who plays the  piano. I don’t claim to be a musician.  Usually we use words to express something.  But sometimes  music can be the most appropriate way to express some other thing. Music gives us more tools  for communicating; Neither  words nor music (or any other way of communicating) are perfect. They are all limited… Anyway, it’s advantageous to have more than one  way to express yourself.  In that way, there is nothing so difficult as being  a musician.

6. Music seems to be an important part of videos and film now. Have you ever imagined what kind of video or film might be perfect for your music? What is the best situation (i.e., time and place) for people to hear your music?

Perhaps you are  walking in the forest or a gentle green  landscape or only wandering in your mind.  I  imagine a film in which we see someone meditating while my music is playing in the background.

7. Can you think of one event in your life which caused you to decide to “become serious” about music?

To become serious about music ? It’s always serious or it’s not serious at all. Is our life serious?

8. In what ways do musical people look at the world differently from nonmusical people?

I do not think musical people are special. Everybody should have some passion. Everybody should practice some meditation. Everybody should share good moments with others, etc… Music is just one of  several ways to make  life easier.

Well, I did it. After checking the library and the free recordings, I decided to plunk $8 and download the Complete Beethoven Symphonies, conducted by Josef Krips with the London Symphony. I am downloading them now from Amazon. I am giving it as a Christmas present for my nephew.

My reference for classical music recordings is Third Ear’s Classical Music guide, edited by Alexander J. Morin. It gives a rundown of all performances of Beethoven symphonies. Surprisingly, it recommends a boxed set conducted by Cluytens, and in fact there is general agreement that this is one of the best performances.  I would have been happy to spend the extra $15 to upgrade to Cluytens. (the preview audio did sound fantastic). But wait! It’s out of stock (and shipped only from Germany).  And it’s a CD – gosh, remember those?

The Cluytens is on EMI Classics, so there’s really no excuse not to make it available digitally.    If I bought a CD version,  I’d have to wait for it (probably a week). Plus, I’d have to rip it (which is 20-30 minutes).  I was planning to give it as a Christmas present to my nephew.  That’s in two days! Is it that important to delay a present by a week just to get a certain version? To be fair, Third Ear did like the Krips version (though it didn’t regard as one of the great recordings).  In fact, some people on Amazon liked the Krips version, including a person who compiled an annotated list of the best Beethoven recordings. There is no shame in  going for the Krips version. So I did.

(Alas, I now learn that the Cluytens is available as a CD set  from B&N for $22)

But I have to wonder: why isn’t every classical recording available as an mp3 nowadays? Hey, EMI I was ready to pay $25 for a historic CD recording, but you weren’t ready or willing to take my money!  I realize there are rights issues and transfer issues. But surely it has dawned on someone at EMI that every single person under the age of 40 now listens to nothing but MP3s! I realize that the time and effort to hire a 16 year old kid to rip 5 CDs into high quality mp3s and upload them onto Amazon is  probably considerable.    10 years from now, when teenagers aren’t protesting about global warming,  they will be marveling at the fact that their ancestors could not download and listen to any piece of music simply by pressing a button.

In my teenage years I was pretty obsessive about classical music, and I pretty much abandoned it after  college.  One reason was the price of that hobby. I could never afford the recordings  which  aficionados were always raving about! Later, I abandoned classical music (temporarily) and just checked CDs  out of the city library. But I noticed that even the library’s classical collection was diminishing. Sure, they always had a version of a particular piece, but your odds of obtaining a well-known recording through the library system were next to nil. Later, I became a fan of free downloads and creative commons music. That essentially meant forgetting about classical music (I wasn’t rich enough to belong in their club!) Also, I noticed that the used market for classical CDs remained pricey. The only positive development was that lots of East European orchestras I’d never heard of were making recordings at budget prices. Most of the recording I heard sounded fine, but who in God’s name were these people?

Recently, I’ve been wanting to buy classical music…if only to help me do my work. I require classical or intellectual music to do my work.  And I really miss the unavailability of low cost recordings. From internet archives I find  interesting recordings:

• Klemperer 1950s recording of Beethoven #9. (That’s really the only recording with decent sound quality I could download for free).    (The free Weingartner version is available for free download and it is exciting, but the sound quality issues are hard to ignore).
• the 1939 Toscanini/NBC Symphony  of Beethoven #5 recording definitely has sound quality issues (it’s from a 78 rpm), but it’s an exciting and idiosyncratic version. Highly recommended! Here is same conductor with Symphony #8 and a Heifetz/Toscanini pairing of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.
• other notable downloads from Internet Archive: Stokowski playing Dvorak’s New World (1934, 78 rpm), and BBC Philharmonic Complete Beethoven Symphonies . Unfortunately,  with the BBC recordings, each symphony is  a single mp3 with a BBC announcer doing an introduction. Helpful, but I wish the Internet Archive people could have shaved the introduction  off.  (But I recommend BBC’s Symphony #3; quite wonderful!).

If I had to buy different digital versions of the Beethoven symphonies, I would probably go for Toscanini’s Complete Beethoven Symphonies for $30 or Bernstein’s 9 Symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic for $35. With Toscanini you are definitely compromising on sound quality butit’s still exciting.

(Update: I am still listening to the BBC version of #3; it’s  subtle and fascinating! )

Finally, I probably could pick from a dozen of fussy comments about Beethoven collections. Here is my fave:

All Beethoven symphonic cycles are eventually disappointing because no one conductor can approach perfection in every one of these works. Bernstein succeeds in symphonies 2 and 7 in this set, but that’s really it, the rest are average or worse. Karajan’s early 1960’s cycle is the one to go for if you desperately need a complete set by one conductor. It’s not perfect but the most satisfactory available.

For individual symphonies, try Karajan in symphony 1, Karajan, Szell or Bernstein in symphony 2. For the Eroica, Karajan’s digital version if you want drama and power or Klemperer from 1961 if you like it slow or Toscanini from the good old days. Szell and Furtwangler are also great. Symphony 4 goes to either Szell or Karajan, Symphony 5 to Giulini, Furtwangler, Karajan and Kleiber. The Pastoral goes to Karl Bohm or Bruno Walter. The 7th goes to God knows who, I haven’t found a perfect Seventh, yet! Try Thielemann, Furtwangler or Bernstein or Karajan’s first DG cycle. Go with Karajan’s digital version for the 8th symphony. Last but not least, Solti, 1972 for the the Choral Symphony or Gunter Wand on RCA, as well as Karajan, 62, 77 and Furtwangler, 51, 42, all great.

(For the record, I checked the listing for Symphony #9 in Third Ear; it goes on for 1 1/2 pages, with summary verdicts of about 75 different recordings. And it does not even mention Solti or Wand  and equivocates about Karajan and begrudgingly accepts that the Furtwangler version “does present a very interesting philosophical argument about how to approach it”.  So much for artistic consensus).

Update: I like the Krips version; outstanding  sound quality, but the overall tone is stately  and mysterious and subdued. It’s not as lively as I would have liked – I would describe the interpretation as “faithful” and “cerebral” and acoustically full but never exciting.   Still, I think Krips’  approach matches the quiet intricacies of Eroica very well.