Comments on: Musical Snapshot II

By: Vinnie

Vinnie — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:32:59 +0000

Djonie, remember to try these 2 albuns of JTQ: In The Hands Of The Inevitable and Hammond Ology. The first one i think you already know. The second one is a JTQ anthology (two discs special edition).

By: Andrew Turner

Andrew Turner — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 18:07:02 +0000

This is the best African music blog: http://bennloxo.com/
BBC Radio 3 has some great world music shows. Check out: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/worldmusic/index.shtml
Favourite band? Orchestra Baobab.

By: Chris Lord

Chris Lord — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:06:41 +0000

I love Earth, *Wind* and Fire – I was being obnoxious and poking fun at the typo :)

By: Vincent Geddes

Vincent Geddes — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:49:06 +0000

Hey, while you are researching African music, you might want to research the South African Jazz scene. it’s quite good listening! Some names to look out for are Abdullah Ebrahim (aka Dollar Brand), Hugh Masekela, and Basil Coetzee.

By: lucasr

lucasr — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:41:29 +0000

@Daniel, Great! I’ll definitely grab you at work! :-)

By: teuf

teuf — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:37:10 +0000

Re: electronica

Have you tried listening to Squarepusher/Music is rotten one note or Ultravisitor. Or Amon Tobin/Bricolage ? Imo they started from jazz music but tried to push it to the next level. Early Air is also heavily influenced by jazz, and Autechre or Boards of Canada are also really interesting ;)

By: daniels

daniels — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:34:05 +0000

As someone who listens almost exclusively to electronic music, I agree entirely. There’s a lot of overproduced rubbish, a lot of average songs made fantastic by production, and a lot of decent songs ruined by terrible production.

One thing that’s really moved me lately is Burial. His first couple of albums and EPs were great, coming with a different style, but his last one is just something else altogether, and has been the first album in a while that has a very deep, emotional feel. Part of the reason I love it is summed up by this quote from the late great John Peel: ‘Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don’t have any surface noise. I said, “Listen, mate, life has surface noise.”‘

The last Burial album (Untrue) really captures that more than most: the samples and patterns are left to stand as they are, surface noise and all (instead of being cleaned and polished to death), and it’s not sequenced at all, which adds an extremely different feel. Grab me at work if you want a couple of bits to listen to. Long shot, but eh. :)

By: lucasr

lucasr — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:21:40 +0000

@Vax, by all I wrote I don’t mean that any jazz music is wonderful (independently of the period). Also, I don’t mean that any electronic music is crap. My point about electronic music is that with very little effort and knowledge, you can come up with “something”. Culturally, this is amazing (power to everyone to express themselves) but musically speaking, this can be really bad in many cases. And, in my opinion, your comparison with the amped instruments critics doesn’t apply. I’m not being purist (I don’t really care “what” is being used to make music), I just care about the mood, the feeling and quality. Maybe I didn’t express myself accurately.

By: lucasr

lucasr — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:10:17 +0000

@Chris, don’t you like EW&F? They are groundbraking in many ways. Anyway, I’m already a big fan of Erykah Baduh and I’ll definitely look for albums of Shock, Zapp & Roger and The Ohio Players. :-)

By: Vax

Vax — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 21:35:56 +0000

Some jazz is Bad for entertainment and listening…. I’m glad you like jazz from certain time periods, but there are many examples of unlistenable junk from back then too.

You are just coming off as elitist, not insightful. Thumbs down. in fact people probably made arguments about electrically amped instruments too.