It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play. Miles Davis At the age of 32, Mark Hollis had achieved commercial success with his band Talk Talk’s first three albums, which combined the new wave synthpop of the 1980s with subtle art rock arrangements. This was not the style of music that …
Countless wealthy white musicians have copied, have been heavily influenced by, or have shamelessly ripped off black blues guitarists/singers who lived in poverty during the 1920s and the Depression era of the 1930s. These wealthy white musicians more often add flash without feeling, style without substance. This criticism cannot be leveled at Ry Cooder’s deeply …
According to the Cambridge dictionary, the German word Sehnsucht can be translated as “craving, desire, longing, pining, wistfulness, yearning.”, with the second syllabe ‘Sucht’ meaning addiction: the addiction to yearn and desire. Franz Schubert’s life and music are a complex experience of Sehnsucht, starting in his twenty-sixth year when he contracted an illness which inspired …
History has puzzling patterns. Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman (two film directors who both explored the post-World War II malaise of European society) died on the same day in 2007. Ten years later another juxtaposition was just as revealing about American society. George Romero (who directed the most politically charged horror film of the 1960s) …
Ripley Johnson is a guitarist, singer, and songwriter for Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo, and his most recent project Rose City Band. Rose City Band’s newest album Earth Trip will be released through Thrill Jockey Records on June 25. Ripley Johnson’s music has been described as “dazzled psychedelic wandering” (AllMusic), “some of the decade’s most mesmerizing …
Delia Derbyshire was born on May 5, 1937 in Coventry, England to working class parents Edward Derbyshire and Emma Dawson. As a child and adolescent, Delia was fascinated and obsessed with sound: the sounds of her father’s sheet metal factory, the sounds of the German blitz bombers as they flew over Coventry during World War …
December 1 ~ Pandora’s Box (1929) Released on December 1, 1929, Louise Brooks embodies the “flapper” spirit of her Lost Generation in this sexually charged and erotic silent melodrama ahead of its time in its depiction of the divide between men and the feminine psyche. It tragically ends in the winter slums of Soho during …
Ennio Morricone is one of the most influential and renowned film composers. There is an alchemy, a magic, inside Ennio Morricone’s best compositions. It is a blurring of the boundaries and definitions existing between genres. His film scores do not abide by conventions and break the rules. The metamorphoses and transformations are what make Morricone’s …
Everyone, no matter who you are, needs a vacation. Can’s Future Days is a quintessential summer vacation record. Many of us would love to spend time on a beach, a faraway island, yet we are still stuck in our homes because of the coronavirus quarantine. Future Days magically transports you to a hidden refuge. Damo …
Gustav Holst (born September 21, 1874, died May 25, 1934) was a British composer who became fascinated with astrology in 1913. In the spring of 1914, prophetically before the outbreak of World War I that summer, Holst composed the first of seven pieces for his orchestral suite The Planets– “Mars, the Bringer of War”. In …
