🎵The end of the year is near, which means listening to a lot of best-albums-of-the-year playlists, like Bleep’s, Pitchfork’s and my favourite Dutch one Plato Mania Eindlijst. There’s not a lot of overlap between them, except for Promises by Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders.
🎵🎥 Elvis: That’s the way it is (1970) ★★★½
Great documentary with a lot of behind the scenes and sometimes hilarious rehearsal footage, and with a nice build up to the film’s climax: the live registration of ‘The Elvis Summer Festival’ at the International Hotel in Las Vegas.
📚 Very excited to read this book I got as a gift from friends!
Written by one of my favourite musicians about one of my favourite musicians: Nina Simone’s Gum by Warren Ellis.
🎵 Today, I had a lot of fun upgrading and rearranging my home studio. Even with a fairly simple setup like this, it took some time to carefully plan all the input and output connections. But the awesome MindNode app made it a pretty smooth experience.
🎵I Don’t Live Here Anymore - The War on Drugs ★★★★
I couldn’t resist to play the second track Harmonia’s Dream on maximum volume in our living room. Such an energizing track.
🎵 Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - Night Moves (1976) ★★★★½
My favourite classic rock album was released 45 years ago today. While writing this post, I found out that instead of the Silver Bullet Band, part of this album was actually recorded with backing by the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, a group of session musicians “associated with more than 500 recordings, including 75 gold and platinum hits.”
🎵Another beauty from my favourite Belgian band: LUCY - Dez Mona & B.O.X
🥾🎵Short walk around one of my favourite polders. The Teckop polder is designated as a stiltegebied (silent area), which made it appropriate for making some field recordings. A brisk breeze and quite a lot of holiday air traffic made silence a relative concept though…
🎵 I decided to change my quasi automated week in music to my month in music, to make it feel less compulsory and more fun.
This past month, I particularly enjoyed the dreamy, calm and peaceful soundtrack of No Fear, No Die by Abdullah Ibrahim.
🎵This legendary DJ-Kicks album by Kruder & Dorfmeister turned 25 years old this week. At that time a big part of the soundtrack of my life…
🎵Afro-Harping (1968) by Dorothy Ashby ★★★★
One of the most peculiar soul / jazz albums ever made, but groovy none the less.
🎵 Made some great field recordings today of the Waddenzee at low tide. The weather was calm, so were the sheep and birds that came along during the recordings. All very peaceful and silent. Apart from a few cycling tourists pointing and yelling at that guy with a microphone. 🙃
📚🎵 Re-reading In the Field - The Art of Field Recording.
I recently upgraded my audio recording kit, which made me excited again about sound art and artists involved in field recording. It’s a joy to read about the practices of Annea Lockwood, Andrea Polli and Steven Feld.
🎵Due to its geographical location in the northeast, Norg must be one of the quietest places in the Netherlands. Which makes it a perfect place to record a dawn chorus in the local forest!
🎵 🎥 Mister Soul: a story about Donny Hathaway (2020) ★★★½
Very intriguing documentary by Dutch director David Kleijwegt, about the tragic life of soul singer Donny Hathaway, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and ultimately committed suicide at age 33.
🎵 Several Blue Note classics from the 60s have been remastered in Dolby Atmos and to me, they’re among the best examples of Spatial Audio on Apple Music. I wonder to what extent Rudy van Gelder’s legendary recording techniques are still affecting the quality of these remasters.
🎵 Testing out the new Spatial Audio features of Apple Music. I like the genre-specific playlists Apple made for showcasing this. To me, it works best with classical music and jazz, probably because of the higher dynamic range of the recordings.
🎵 My week in music (week #21 2021)
Alex Paterson and one time collaborator Andy Falconer on their ‘Adventures Beyond The Underworld’ debut album (from 1991..?!) are going back to their roots on this great new collaboration: Sedibus & The Orb - The Heavens.
”Eventually terrible memories turn into great ones. So if they call you, embrace them. If they hold you, erase them.”
🎵 Lost in Yesterday - Tame impala 💬
🎵My week in music (week #19 2021)
Very much enjoyed the new album Medieval Femme by Fatima Al Qadiri.
🎵 My week in music (week #15 2021)
This album is an excellent sampler of early sixties jazz by “The Modernists” from Soho, London. It gave me a big smile on my face during my sunny Sunday morning run.
🎵 My week in music (week #10 & 11 2021)
Two new albums that stood out to me were Aai by Mouse on Mars (anarchic artificial intelligence indeed: it’s more of a showcase than a pleasant listening experience) and (the more pleasantly experimental) Distractions by Tindersticks.
🎵 🇳🇱 Lou Ottens, inventor of the cassette tape, dies aged 94
He not only invented the cassette, but also helped with the development of the CD. What a career.
🎵My week in music (week #8 & #9 2021)
Last week I discovered the atmospheric sounds of Sarah Lipstate aka Noveller. I hadn’t heard from her until I found out she was responsible for a big part of the sound of Iggy Pop’s latest album (which I like very much).
🎵 My week in music (week #7 2021)
I’m getting at an age where a lot of my longtime musical heroes come to pass away. This week, U-Roy died at age 78. There was a period in my life when I listened to reggae and dub for weeks in a row. And U-Roy was among the most played artists.
