Monk in Paris

Coming out next week, you can stream Thelonious Monk's Paris 1969 album now at NPR.  As the NPR piece tells, listen especially for the drum work of Philly Joe Jones.

Dylan, Interactive

Funny, amazing, crazy, odd, baffling. Takes a bit of bandwidth. It's the Bob Dylan Interactive Rolling Stone Video...

 You may be hearing about this.  I heard about it from Paste.

UPDATE: I have watched this two or three times now and I am thinking that it may be even worse than Dylan's infamous Christmas album of a few seasons ago.

A Lady G > Amy Connection

Now that Lady Gaga tells us that she intends to overcome her drug issue and to not join the infamous "27 Club" (think Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, et. al.), the sounds of another member of that tragic group came through my mp3 player while walking to work this morning.  While you can mourn the passing of any other member of the "Club" and wonder what they could have gone on to accomplish, and there are quite a few more than I just listed, the one I am missing so much right now, whose amazing contralto voice I heard today, is Amy Winehouse.  Hear her now in any early performance:

Really? Something for Everyone to Love?

NPR publishes the results of its poll for the top ten most-loved albums, the top ten women, the top ten least-loved albums, and the top ten least-heard.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2013/07/09/200471775/results-the-albums-everyone-can-love

John Tavener, R.I.P.

One of my most-admired contemporary composers, British Sir John Tavener, passed away today. Perhaps best known for his "Song for Athene", performed at the funeral of Princess Diana, I started listening to his work in earnest when in the mid-1990s I acquired an album by the choir of King's College of Cambridge called Ikos. The album also featured pieces by composers Henryk Gorecki and Arvo Part, which was why I got the record in the first place, but I soon found myself seeking out more Tavener work.  I have heard that Tavener claimed to be a descendant of John Taverner (note the spelling difference), himself a composer of wonderful religious vocal music in the 1500s, but I don't know if that is in fact the case.  Tavener also famously said, in explaining his transcendent, ethereal sounds,  something along the lines that many composers could lead you to hell, but he wanted to lead you into the experience of paradise.  Try the effect for yourself:

Lucrecia Dalt

Stream these sounds from the new Syzygy album:


Read full review of Syzygy - Lucrecia Dalt on Boomkat.com ©

Circuit des Yeux

Stream from the new Overdue album by Circuit des Yeux (aka Haley Fohr) ...