“It’s full of sharps and flats!” – Rose Elinor Dougall & The Weave

I don’t remember the path I took to discover The Weave. I’m 56 years old and almost completely disconnected from “what’s happening” – even more so because I know that today’s music world is like a vast, uncharted forest.

Nevertheless, I found myself returning to The Weave multiple times a week.

Today, I asked ChatGPT to tell me about them. One member is a guy from Blur (okay) and the other is Rose Elinor Dougall. Ohhh, I remember now that I listened to her 2019 album “A New Illusion” quite a bit. I recall the fantastic cover art, and something clicked in my head: harmonic richness.

Now I want more, and I’m curious to know if Coxon is such a composer, the “full of sharps & flats” type.

Dougall’s “A New Illusion” is a cool attempt at crafting “a cool pop song” (oh, that bass line), while her “Something Real” leans more towards the dreamy side, navigating through intriguing harmonic staircases. The piano in “Christina in Red”…

With “The Weave”, they’ve created a perfect song, an… unfolding. It starts with Dougall’s universe (voice, piano, twisted harmonies) and suddenly takes off like an old New Wave track (Clan of Xymox?). The arrival of the saxophones and the incantatory lyrics make it peculiar enough to raise an eyebrow, right?

This “pop with twisted harmonies” is what I love. The Bird and The Bee. Goldfrapp. Agnes Obel. Vienna Teng.

So I asked ChatGPT for “Female Singers and Strings Arrangements” and got this list. Some names I do not know…

1. Björk
2. Bat for Lashes (Natasha Khan) (great production & voice, poor harmonies)
3. Lana Del Rey
4. Tori Amos
5. Kate Bush
6. Enya
7. Of Monsters and Men (very interesting!)
8. Aurora (I want to listen more)
9. Agnes Obel
10. Austra (cool universe, original)
11. London Grammar
12. Cocteau Twins
13. Dead Can Dance (Lisa Gerrard)
14. Goldfrapp
15. iamamiwhoami (Jonna Lee) (Don’t Wait for me, Fountain, Canyon: arrangements)
16. FKA Twigs
17. The Sundays (Harriet Wheeler)
18. Daughter (Elena Tonra)
19. Regina Spektor
20. Emilie Autumn (OMG this universe! Misery Loves Company)

Well, thank you guys! I discovered some cool musicians/singers!

Who else?

A few tutorials for Disco Diffusion V4.1, ruDALL-E XL, and other Google Colabs

Prompt-to-image AIs are fascinating and everybody can make images.

These need 1 hour per image for free. If you pay you can make one in 7 minutes.

So I made some tutorials (watch in this order):

Have fun!

My last Shazam, in no particular order

Mantiskane makes instrumental music

I invented Mantiskane, a musical entity, a more electronic facet of my musiquettes. It’s maybe Mantis Kane, a guy from another planet, half-human half-mantis.

I made a clip with images I made with the GauGAN NVIDIA model, which is at gaugan.org. This tool is designed to create landscapes, but I tickle it with non-landscape-words, as it fits.

I made more than a thousand flying machines, chose a few dozens and made the music from a simple loop, a pile of sounds refusing to evolve. Piling.

QES Prototypes:

Then I added a “chorus”, a second part based on a military snare drum, it’s here:

QES Prototypes II:

oOOOo

Before that I did it with African mood, inventing a planet, composed a tribal music based on percussions and passing by sounds…

Quick-Eyed Memories:

oOOOo

Before that I worked with the VQGAN+CLIP model of hypnogram.xyz to create SF images. It’s a more “digital art” tool, right? I made an abstract music with a bunch of different slow loops on my Mac.

Space Gates & Titans:

oOOOo

Have fun! Thanks for reading!

Jean-Pascal

It’s Halloween, therefore here are some horrible things I made with Artificial Intelligence :-)

A sad circus in a storm, a haunted garden, a farandole of horrible faces, here are three weird movies for your Halloween pleasure. Some pictures to give you an idea…

Have a nice day, though 🙂

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Meticulous & Casual: The examples of VQGAN+CLIP on YouTube

You know me, I love “Meticulous & Casual”, it’s almost an inner motto.

I talked here about Nietzsche and his cow:

Three-quarter Strength.  A work that is meant to give an impression of health should be produced with three-quarters, at the most, of the strength of its creator.  If he has gone to his farthest limit, the work excites the observer and disconcerts him by its tension.  All good things have something lazy about them and lie like cows in the meadow.

There’s also this article about the “non finito” in Arts: https://afrenchtoolbox.wordpress.com/2017/10/01/non-finito-inchoate-in-art/

oOOOo

When I write an article here, I’m focused and at the same time I listen to music (here: Poulenc, “Les Biches”), I prepare, but not that much. I re-read, but quickly. It’s always a tango between control and letting go.

These weeks, I revisit my 2 CDs “Farist“, which were made for contemporary dance. I made them with work (awww the mixing of music, a pain in the monkey!), but also with… well you got my point.

To make the clip, I make images with a Artificial Intelligence. It often gives nightmarish creatures! Therefore I posted a bunch of frightening clips – I’ll post them here for Halloween, OK?

So I wanted to created cooler things. So I played for Yuleska (which is a Polish name) with the words “bokeh” or “emerald”. It was abstract enough to give cool little things like:

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The music was innocent and it worked.

For the second one, I had a story in mind. A Folletti (who is a little magic boyfaery) in Italy consoles a little girl. So I got Tuscany, wheat fields and angels. It’s a slow waltz.

oOOOo

For these I find/make images with random words. The first in the row? “Icy Bokeh”, that’s it. So I orient, but not too much.

When I edit the clips, I upscale the pictures with Automator (on Mac) piloting Pixelmator Pro, then I throw them all in iMovie. Random order, that I have to correct… or not. I use markers for the tempo, but I don’t follow them all the time. I’m meticulous (I work days on a clip), but I don’t really polish, finish, I let go and so there.

Yes it’s a tool for the toolbox! Where do we need to be meticulous and casual? Sex? Cooking? At work? Poetry writing?

Who are the artists who you know work like that? Picasso? Fellini? Any musician?

Do you like them?

Have a great day! Thanks for reading! I’ll post photos of Brussels soon. This week.

mmm

Prompts of Invocations? How to make pictures with words.

Prompts of Invocations? How to make pictures with words?

There are Google Colabs which create images from just a sentence.

One colab I use these days: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1n_xrgKDlGQcCF6O-eL3NOd_x4NSqAUjK#scrollTo=TnMw4FrN6JeB

Choose a phrase, “Brazil Morning Landscape” or “Giant Robot in Taiga”, whatever. You can just ask “The wind”!. You can increase the size of the image to 500 (pixels – more will crash the program). I also tend to put “steps per image” to 20 (I’ll get more steps to “see” the machine work). In the menu bar on the top of the webpage, go to “Runtime”, then “Run All”. And oh, OK, you need 30 minutes to get the last image.

On another page, I invoked “The Wind” and got this. The AI clearly needs more invocations 🙂

You can “color” this by another word. Here’s the wind with…

• A painter (Alex Colville, Pict.1).
• A website (Artstation, Pict.2).
• A tool used for video games (Unreal Engine, Pict.3).
• A way of painting for the movies (Matte Painting, Pict.4).

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oOOOo

Here are Picasso and Klee for the wind. Who else would you try?

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oOOOo

The word Artstation is commonly used because this site is full of great fantasy artists, and it gives dramatic pictures. I just added mist, dragon, emerald, dawn or airships…

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It’s interesting to see how the pictures are built. “Storm Circus Tent Artstation Matte Painting” begins with a cloud and finishes this way. Here are steps 20, 40, 400:

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I put 10 little movies with attempts here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkYi6dzJ5emaY0tPGat3k9Q

Have a nice day! Thanks for reading!

Music Chronicles 7: Drip Drip & Fan

I wanted, at the beginning, to sound like English New Wave from the eighties, but I added some percs, and a piano, and I lost everything about this, so there.

I tried many ways to sing the words, then the “Watch it drip, wait for it”, and failed. This is why I whispered all of it.

Really, I like to destroy the usual structure of a song. This is why it doesn’t verse/chorus. This is why I changed the beat in 1’44”, mutation, towards a “walking thing”.

It’s again about “modulation in the 4th bar”, and I think the reason this song exists is in the two guitars in the end.

I used old picture of my mom’s garden in the rain.

Eventail means “fan”, it’s a very complex poem from Mallarmé, which is really funny to interpret. Again, the usual song structure is melted. I added some tunnels with rockets of sound, which lead to this synth sound I love.

I tripled my voice I had to sing very low. The end brings a sweet chaos.

Same garden, another year: rain, birds, insects.

Eventail

De frigides roses pour vivre
Toutes la même interrompront
Avec un blanc calice prompt
Votre souffle devenu givre

Mais que mon battement délivre
La touffe par un choc profond
Cette frigidité se fond
En du rire de fleurir ivre

A jeter le ciel en détail
Voilà comme bon éventail
Tu conviens mieux qu’une fiole

Nul n’enfermant à l’émeri
Sans qu’il y perde ou le viole
L’arôme émané de Méry.

Google translates:

Fan

Frigid roses to live

All the same will interrupt

With a white prompt chalice

Your breath turned to frost

But let my beat deliver

The tuft by a deep shock

This frigidity melts

In the laughter of blooming drunk

To throw the sky in detail

Here is a good fan

You are better suited than a vial

No one enclosing with emery

Without losing or violating it

The aroma emanating from Méry.

Someone tries this:

Fan
Belonging to Méry Laurent

Frigid roses to exist
all alike will interrupt
your frosted breath
with a quick white calyx
but should my fluttering liberate
the whole bunch with a profound shock
that frigidity will melt into the laughter
of a rapturous blossoming
see how like a good fan
you are better than a phial
at carving the sky into fragments
no flask could be stoppered
without losing or violating
the fragrance of Méry.

New Progressive Albums I found

Yesterday I needed complex powerful music. It’s a kind of drug for the musician’s mind!

This I went to ProgArchives to find the, well, “Best Albums 2020” :

http://www.progarchives.com/top-prog-albums.asp?syears=2020

Voilà.

From Symphonic Prog to Progressive Metal, from Rock Progressivo Italiano, Neo-Prog or “Canterbury Scene” (which I love!)…

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Wobbler (hello Norway!) has all of it, bass like Squire (Yes), fractured building, fast organs, mellotrons and all, but I don’t feel the delicious thing along my back. See by yourself:

Logos (Italian Prog music, which is a genre!) is much more colorful, sharper. Harmonies are interesting, sounds are surprising (this sax!). Here’s a track:

Scardust is constantly playing with the “too much”, navigating between broadway-like choruses to growling metal. It’s strong and exhausting! But Break The Ice catches me:

The Reticent is too much Post-Metal for me, and Pendragon (I had their first EP!) too clean.

I LOVE what Mister Robot does to me. I listen and it’s “Nope!” but I can’t help go on listening. They’re ridiculous but they’re good. Childish but tasty. Plastic but delicious.

Zopp:

Etc. Have fun!

Music Chronicles 5: The Past & The Little Queens

I’m casual, I know. When I compose I don’t finish. I draft. I need a producer!

Also, I sing and I shouldn’t. But well, I’m the only singer around 🙂

Also, I build films with a few pictures and the Ken Burns effect. I don’t want to finish, it’s boring. Voilà.

These days I have fun with poems.

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“Aimez-vous le passé ?” means “Do you love the past?”. I googletranslated the poem for you:

Do you like the past And dream of stories Evocative With erased outlines?

Old rooms Widows of steps Who smell all low Iris and amber;

The pallor of the portraits, The worn-out relics That the dead have kissed, Dear, I would like

May they be dear to you, And talk to you a little Of a dusty heart And full of mystery.

“Veuve de pas” : widowed of steps, meaning “deprived of people walking in these rooms”.

I found pictures I took in Cabourg ten years ago in Normandy (yes it’s near the D-Day beaches), hop, iMovied.

The music is an exercise about obsession: there’s no change, no chorus, it “walks” all the time.

I wrote the bass after hearing “In the Army Now” by Status Quo : dong, dong, dong, dong, adding a tatatatata guitar over it.

The game was to weaveknit chords under this walk. I added little dissonnances in the piano, it’s a bit irritating for ears and all – but now so much. Here it is:

Aimez-vous le passé

Aimez-vous le passé
Et rêver d’histoires
Évocatoires
Aux contours effacés ?

Les vieilles chambres
Veuves de pas
Qui sentent tout bas
L’iris et l’ambre ;

La pâleur des portraits,
Les reliques usées
Que des morts ont baisées,
Chère, je voudrais

Qu’elles vous soient chères,
Et vous parlent un peu
D’un coeur poussiéreux
Et plein de mystère.

Paul-Jean Toulet, Chansons

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I wanted to try another one, so I googled “dance in poetry” to find this “Dansez, Petites Reines” (Dance, Little Queens). I found a possible translation (I did not use the whole poem) which changes things a bit:

THE GRANDFATHER'S SONG. 

Dance, little Queens, 

All in a ring ; 
Loves to Lasses 

Sweet kisses will bring. 

Dance, little Madcaps, 

All in a ring ; 
The crabbed old mistress 

Will grumble and fling. 

Dance, little beauties, 

All in a ring ; 
The birds will applaud you 

With clapping of wing. 

Dance, little Fairies, 

All in a ring ; 
With corn-flower garlands 

And fair as the spring. 

Dance, little women, 

All in a ring ; 
Each Beau to his Lady 

Says some pretty thing. 

The game here was to alternate a crappy vintage sound and a more luxurious one in the choruses (voices and instruments). I had fun with the bass line, and linked parts with a golden trumpet.

I found images with ducks for YouTube, because why not, right?

Here’s a remastered version: https://soundcloud.com/user-894673824/dansez-les-petites-reines-24-04-2021-14-54-mastered

Good day!

Dansez, les petites reines,
Toutes en rond.
Les amoureux sous les frênes
S’embrasseront.

Dansez, les petites folles,
Toutes en rond.
Les bouquins dans les écoles
Bougonneront.

Dansez, les petites belles,
Toutes en rond.
Les oiseaux avec leurs ailes
Applaudiront.

Dansez, les petites fées,
Toutes en rond.
Dansez, de bleuets coiffées,
L’aurore au front.

Dansez, les petites femmes,
Toutes en rond.
Les messieurs diront aux dames
Ce qu’ils voudront.

Some 2020 Pearls of Avant-Garde

I explored, methodically, the Quietus Top 100 Albums of 2020 (https://thequietus.com/articles/29302-the-quietus-top-100-albums-of-2020-norman-records), and found a couple of things I could love.

( thequietus.com ) is a magazine about intelligent music, movies and some other arts like graphic novels or architecture. It’s typically the chest-like website, full of possible discoveries.

Many (most of the) musics I don’t like here, but it’s always interesting, even when it’s awful or ridiculous. My brain is playing like a kid with colorbricks, analyzing how the artists push the cork a little or much too far.

Even the texts, the critics, are cool. Vocabulary gives a hint for each musician. “an album designed to both inspire calm as well as disrupt it” makes me want to listen.

What I selected here is, I agree, the less avant-garde possible. My pearls, emeralds and nuggets come often like this, digging, finding

I’ve been amazed by Hen Ogledd (26), who begins like Robert Wyatt then develop a… splendid pleasure of making music (I’m probably influenced by his great eyes). The most adorable guy of the list?

Katie Gately (49 )surprised me with her Waltz. I loved, immediately, the way she marked the first beat of this dance. Then, it’s a crescendo, weaved with surprises, sounds, breaks. It puts her into the territory of Björk, Kate Bush, even Dead Can Dance. Lyricism! Modulation under a bridge, responding voices, changes, this climbing. Fascinating, right?

I found another clip (same musician), which frightens me a bit more, but the clip is so fantastic that I had to keep listening. She explores limits, between pleasure and chaos. This music is like… growing like she’s alive.

I listened the broken things of Malibu Liquor Store, the swarming The Homesick (try The Pawing), the floating pedal steel guitar or Susan Alcorn, the acid synth loops of Lorenzo Senni, the rotating sickness of Sex Swing, the laments of Keeley Forsyth, Nadine Shah, the strange clips of UKAEA, the silly repeats of Horse Lords.

Then Memnon Sa (76 ), an insisting music with synths. Simple and haunted.

Mary Lattimore (35)? Quiet, but neve too much (which is always hard to achieve). Try Ana Roxanne too.

Thanks for reading!

Next to this I found two names you can explore : Chapelier Fou & Olafur Arnalds. Good day!

What did I shazam recently?

What did I shazam recently?

Most of the time, I don’t listen to my Shazams afterward. I did it because of “an element”, a sound, an idea, something which made my eyebrow upping up. If I “like” the YouTube film, I’ll find them back one day. Maybe.

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S. Decoster, because it was the end credit music of a great quirky French movie called “Perdrix” (“The Bare Necessity” in English). Nothing great here but I Shazamed it though, probably because the movie was hilarious and balanced.

The loopy “Je veux être à vous” means “I want to be yours”, BUT as you know, French has two “you”, the you for the persons you know well, and the you for the persons you don’t. Thus “I want to be you” with the “polite you” is charged differently, because it’s adressed to someone you don’t know from a long time.

Poltrock, Mute #2, navigates in interesting waters. Quiet piano music can easily be sugary – here it’s not because of the modulations of course :

Bon Entendeur, Basta Cosi, a sound, and a singer who does not sing but speaks.

Portugal The man, Fell it Still, the groove?

Lana Del Rey, For Free, a Joni Mitchell cover??! The song is splendid, and Del Rey has a good idea to sing un-reverbed, it whispers in ears. It modulated all along like smoke. Joni’s version stays much better of course. Here are some of the lyrics:

I slept last night in a good hotel
I went shopping today for jewels
The wind rushed around in the dirty town
And the children let out from the schools

I was standing on a noisy corner
Waiting for the walking green
Across the street he stood and he played real good
On his clarinet, for free

Nobody stopped to hear him
Though he played so sweet and high
They knew he had never been on their TV
So they passed his music by

Sting, Mad about you. Great song, right? Production is strange, it’s like… rustling, quivering:

Mahsa Vahdat & Mighty Sam McClain, Ambassador of Hearts.

Naïssam Jalal, Un sourire au cœur.

Duran Duran, Save a Prayer, and old thing I listen today with new ears, the bass line, the attemps for vocal harmonies, the chorus which climbs then falls back, modulations like stairs.

Mansfield. TYA, Ni morte ni connue, for the “old French new-wave” sound. Neither dead neither well-known.

Celeste, Love is back, because the vintage sound, the smiling desire to compose a similar base, and the broken Amy-like voice.

Colman Jones, Kiev, a dreamy walk in an unknown city under lukewarm clouds:

Ophélie Gaillard, Dos Gardenias, makes me ask someone to dance in the dark:

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Have a nice day! Je vous souhaite une très belle journée.

Music Chronicles 4: Little White Behind, and a Sad Violonist

I heard some music from Brazil, but I did not want to learn about their rhythms or about their scales, thus I wrote stupid lyrics about a guy in love with a contrary of a Brazilian girl : slow, pale, with a small behind. Found a beat, a big Liverpool bass (because why not) and played with bars where the 2nd bar is dissonnant.

I added “my idea” of an Elton John’s piano, sang (4 layers!) in Portuguese (like a Spanish cow), added a storm, a crowd, whistles, and voilà!

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I saw this violonist, walking, a sad Hungary figure, on a Sabine Weiss photography. I wanted to build a Tom Waits’ like waltz, a slow one. I sing very badly, so I added this sad harmonica, a crazy fly-like Chinese violin, and silly noises of a dog and cars. The waltz itself is broken, not following the 3/4 at times.

Totally drafty, but I posted it eventually. Non Finito.

Thanks for reading!

Music Chronicles 3: Silly French blursed song

I don’t know how to write a song, therefore I wrote one!

I wanted to talk about Pop Figures collectors. The title is “Faut qu’j’aille en ville” (must go to town).

I must go to town to buy my figure it’s a limited edition, etc.

I added silly voices, noises and whistles to this reggae-like “thing” based, again, on transposition.

My pleasure was to disturb the “idea of a song”, breaking the normal structure, adding random chaos in the end, putting the chorus in no matter what places.

Primitivism is an energy you can insufflate in things. It comes from prehistoricness, silliness, childhood, savageness.

One little jab (or two) of untamed elements.

Have fun. Thanks for reading!

Music Chronicles 2: “Déguisée” – the dress the night the house before the ocean

The sea, the waves in the night, Pacific. A tall woman, in an evening dress, solitary. It’s all blue-gray.

So, I wanted to write a song, but I’m not a lyricist, and I’m not a singer. I tried many things, then I made it an instrumental.

It was made to be “De Façon Déguisée”, in disguise. For Dominique A.

A slow dance, with a big pensive bass, marimbas in echo, brushed drums and a mattress of strings.

For chorus I wanted to add an… irritation. Thus I added a too-loud snare drum, an insisting piano, like an itching.

She dances alone, therefore I added flutes, and doubled the marimbas with a sound on the left.

But maybe she sleeps now. It stops. Birds in the morning patio give her the sun.

What did I shazam recently?

What did I shazam recently? Hmm let’s see…

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For this one I know: the immediate modulation (on “from by bedside”)! I just discovered the lyrics, which are delightfully ambiguous. Why would someone say “go away from my window my door my bedside”?

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For Voyou, hmmm it’s because of the end. The guy is not afraid to wax…

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For colors, of course. YouTube Balulalow for other versions.

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I often Shazam in the Fnac store, where my colleague from the Vinyls section has fun. This one is not terrible but it gave me the “walking-dancing on it” illness.

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Because of uncertain harmonies?

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Because it searches, and climbs?

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What did I Shazam recently?

What is Third Stream? – a personal uncharted territory

What is Third Stream? Let’s ask Wikipedia :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_stream

“Third Stream is a synthesis of jazz and classical music.”

Critics have argued that third stream—by drawing on two very different styles—dilutes the power of each in combining them. Others reject such notions and consider third stream an interesting musical development. In 1981, Schuller offered a list of “What Third Stream Is Not”:

It is not jazz with strings.
It is not jazz played on “classical” instruments.
It is not classical music played by jazz players.
It is not inserting a bit of Ravel or Schoenberg between bebop changes—nor the reverse.
It is not jazz in fugal form.
It is not a fugue played by jazz players.
It is not designed to do away with jazz or classical music; it is just another option amongst many for today’s creative musicians.

 

I’m interested because I love classical music and I don’t know contemporary jazz very well, but I think the “melting” genre can give interesting things, I’m excited by this personal uncharted territory (as a French, I always want to write “unmapped territory”).

I think about progressive rock (who probably encroaches upon this genre). The first label I thought about was ECM, but I found Rune Grammofon too. Of course, I find everywhere the reference of Bela Bartok, who collected and used old Magyar folk melodies…

ECM, a music label

It seems that today the genre is now 100,000 streams, like the Mississippi delta, a vast complex that has been fed by countless tributaries, with other musics, ethnic, folk, etc…

Let’s Google this. I find :

• https://www.allmusic.com/style/third-stream-ma0000012292
• https://www.last.fm/fr/tag/third+stream/albums
• https://www.jazzmusicarchives.com/subgenre/third-stream

This last link casts wide, for repetitive/minimal to ECM to Miles Davis or Lalo Schifrin (who wrote the Mission Impossible theme).

Well, that’s just the beginning of a new exploration!

Like each time, some branches will displease us, but with a bit of luck, we’ll find a golden one.

 

Thanks for reading!

What did I Shazam recently? I suppose because of…

“What did you Shazam recently”, she asked?

Chimacum Rain – Linda Perhacs, I suppose because I liked how flowers of voices blossomed in the middle of this little whispering lazy folk.

 

Richard Hawley – The Ocean, I suppose because of the Tindersticks-like voice, and the crescendo, voilà.

 

Martha Tilston – The Waters of Tyne, I suppose because of the silver pointy voice, or the “little Irish tale I’ll sing for you” tone…

 

Whispering Sons – Alone, I suppose because of the sound of 80s, very Xymox, no?

 

Juliette Gréco – un petit poisson, un petit oiseau, I suppose because of this :

A little fish, a little bird
Loved each other with tender love
How to go about it
When you are in water

 

Schubert: Sonata For Arpeggione And Piano In A Minor, D.821, I suppose because Schubert with a guitar, it’s possibly good!

 

Andrea Motis – Louisiana O Els Camps De Coto, I suppose because, as it was “not enough”, I couldn’t stop listening until the end, though. That’s why.

 

The Internet – Wanna Be, I suppose because I’m not used to this sophistication in this music (listen to the bass, or the way it ends).

 

Bolerisch (From “Femme Fatale”) Ryuichi Sakamoto, I suppose because of these Sakamotoish strings, the modulations…

 

Elbow – Magnificent (She Says), I suppose it trapped me with the end. The bass & percs system is cool.

 

AIR – High Point, I suppose because it’s instrumental, modulating, comfortable and quiet.

 

LALO – Concerto russe pour violon et orchestre, Op. 29: II. Chants russes, I suppose because it… sings!

 

 

What I didn’t find : Havoun Havoun by Tigran Hamasyan, Für Lou by Oliver’s Cinema. Also I passed Indochine La Vie est Belle (the clip is violent).

How to build an Anthology?

How to build an Anthology? #Jazz

Maybe you remember, I wrote an article about the fact that one book-lover could read only prefaces.

Imagine you have three hours free in a place full of books. You can pick one, or you can pick two dozens, reading prefaces only. That’s what I’d do, I think…

Yesterday I bought a book, “Jazz en 150 Figures”. It’s a great hardcover book, not about stars of this music, but about creative jazz.

This, alone, could be an article :

Choose a field (poetry, photography, history, etc), and don’t look for stars, but for creators. I reckon that they’re sometimes the same – but let’s focus on lesser-known explorers.

The foreword is one paged. The author asks What is an anthology? – to tell us, of course, what his book is NOT.

1. It’s not a dictionary, concerned to be exhaustive – and being objective, boring.
2. It’s not a kind “Who’s who“, telling for example that a tired aged musician is as great as himself as a young explorer.
3. It’s not an Almanach of an elite, made from a list from stardom status.
4. It’s not a chronological retrospective.
5. It’s not a ecumenical overview submitted to different kind of quotas.
6. It’s not a chory monstrosity which tries to make an impression.

So here I am reading this book randompagely, discovering names like Jimmy Lions, Grachan Moncur III or Roscoe Mitchell… with YouTube.

Tools here are multiple :

• Buying a good anthology, as a map do discover a universe you don’t know at all, or almost.
• Thinking, when you build something, about what it should not be.
• Reading prefaces only why not? Go to a library, then.
• Which domain to dig, for creators?

OK, I’m now writing something about Ran Blake – you know him? Me neither!

Thanks for reading!

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/50-greatest-jazz-albums-ever/

https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/the-100-jazz-albums-that-shook-the-world

https://www.senscritique.com/top/resultats/Les_meilleurs_albums_de_jazz/193105