Category Archives: music

Introducing Quiet Village

Quiet Village is a UK-based band, who released their debut album Silent Movie in May of this year. The album reminded me of the compilation work of Andy Votel on Vertigo Mixed, one of my favorite records of the 2000s.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLkhKrEoo7U&]

“Circus Of Horror” (2008) Quiet Village

Their band name was taken from the 1952 Les Baxter musical composition “Quiet Village,” first released on the album Ritual of the Savage.

Silent Movie is definitely crate digging music but not “retro“, which I’ve come to see as a derogatory term. Just like Andy Votel’s Vertigo Mixed it celebrated the art of record collecting, one of my favorite pastimes between 1996 and 2002.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta4AWh-AfzI&]

Gorillaz-Kids With Guns (Quiet Village Remix), hear the Burundi beats?

Silent Movie is bound to end up high on year-end-lists of people who known their music.

Service your engine if you want it to function

Fritz Kahn @120

click the images for larger versions and credits

Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace) by Marc Wathieu

Fritz Kahn was a German writer and illustrator in the 1920s who specialized in illustrating the physical processes of human bodies as though they were machine powered.

This man machine trope can also be found in Lee Perry‘s “Throw Some Water In“[1] with the lines “Service your engine if you want it to function” by Lee Perry, from his album Roast Fish Collie Weed & Corn Bread .

Der mensch gesund und krank by Marc Wathieu

Additionally Horace Silver and Andy Bey recorded “I Had a Little Talk,” in which the narrator has a little talk with each of his organs:

Das Leben des Menschen... (The Life of Man). Vol. 5 by Marc Wathieu

“I had a little talk with my lungs and I’ve decided to treat them right. We made a mutual agreement and I think, at last we both see the light. ” –Bey/Silver

The Andy Bey track can be found on the Blue Note kozmigroov compilation The United States of Mind.

I almost forgot The Man-Machine, the 1978 album by Kraftwerk, perhaps the ultimate cyborg manifesto.

Mauricio Kagel (1931 – 2008)

[Youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=963AgJeM_-o&]

German–Argentinian composer Mauricio Kagel died on September 18.

Norman Whitfield (1943 – 2008)

Norman Whitfield died yesterday.

“Smiling Faces Sometimes” by The Undisputed Truth, (Whitfield / Strong)

Now you are sad. You remember going religiously to the Passage 44 in Brussels every week to rent 10 CDs, you were determined to learn as much about music as was possible in a very short time. You discovered The Temptations at about the same time you discovered Lee Perry. Your love affair with black music was about to start.

Whitfield remains an underrated music personality. In the words of pop historian and DJ David Haslam:

“The trad agenda set by commentators in the sixties, heavy with value judgments – glorifying the work of the Velvet Underground over Motown releases, the production skills of Brian Wilson over those of Norman Whitfield, and the social significance and songwriting talent of John Lennon rather than James Brown – persists.”
David Haslam

Amen.

Pink Floyd member dies

Rick Wright (1943 – 2008) of Pink Floyd is dead. See this clip[1] from “Us and Them” and this one from “Paintbox,”[2]; both have writing credits by Wright.

I’m not much of a Pink Floyd fan, their art rock was just too arty, or not arty enough, I can’t explain. The only intensive listening I have done is to their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which I thought was brilliant. And the band member of Floyd that elicited most of my sympathy was Syd Barrett.

World Music Classics: the first 100

World Music Classic is a series I started on this blog in 2007. Below are the first 100 entries in a project that will eventually include 1001 postmodern world music classics. Most of the entries have YouTube links at the top of the page. Feel free to add missing YouTube connections. The series’ future entries will mainly be posted to my FaceBook account and on my wiki. So it’s a goodbye here as far as regular WordPress/WMC entries go, WordPress/WMC will be reserved for longer articles on particular musical compositions. Hope to see you on FaceBook, for all of you who have yet resisted, I can assure you that FaceBook is an amazingly elegant platform and very suitable to quick and responsive writing.

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

9

90% of Me Is You

A

African Reggae

B

C

D

E

F

G

Girl You Need A Change Of Mind

H

I

I cont.

J

K

L

M

N

O

Over And Over

P

R

S

S cont.

T

W

Y

Z

Zozoi

The 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit: a love song to the computer

In search of computer love.

“In 1959, Texas Instruments’ Jack Kilby files the first patent for an integrated circuit. (Texas racists later run him out of town, crying “segregation forever!”)”

Today, 2008 September 2, is the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit, and invention that lead to electronic music, Japanese music machines, personal computers, the internet, bitpop and YouTube, to name but a disparate yet connected few.

Much of what we now call the origins of postmodernity coincides with the “microchip revolution or digital revolution,” aptly described by techno-utopian writer Alvin Toffler in Future Shock (1970) and The Third Wave (1980) .

With “Computer Love” (1981), Kraftwerk became the first German musical ensemble to hit No. 1 on the U.K. music charts and the first band to reach an audience with a love song to the computer.

Zapp and Roger also professed their love for man’s best friend in “Computer Love”[3] (1985).

Computer love can lead to computer addiction. By the mid eighties most traditional orchestration was replaced by “Japanese music machines” in Western music. Marvin Gaye’s single “Sexual Healing” lead the way.

An outright celebration of the electronic aesthetic came with electronic disco (“I Feel Love,” “Do You Wanna Funk”), electro funk (“Planet Rock”), techno (“Techno City”) and house music(“Your Love”); while previously non-electronic genres such as reggae also took up the aesthetic (Sleng Teng), but nowhere was this man/machine love affair so strong as in acid house (“I Got a Big Dick”).

Several of these compositions are WMCs.

See also: The Electronic Revolution.

Hector Zazou (1948 – 2008)

[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

Uncertain Times reports the death of Hector Zazou (1948 – 2008).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y-40ENc9n4

Strong Currents by Hector Zazou was released in 2003 and featured an all-female vocal cast which included Laurie Anderson, Melanie Gabriel, Lori Carson, Lisa Germano, Irene Grandi, Jane Birkin, and Caroline Lavelle. Musicians included Ryuichi Sakamoto, Dennis Rea, Bill Rieflin and Archaea Strings. The album took six years to complete.

In 2003 DJ Martian recommended “M’Pasi Ya M’Pamba”, “a weird afro-electro Fela Kuti meets Kraftwerk track produced by Hector Zazou.”–DJ Martian[1]

Jahsonic

Burgemeester van Dodenstad