The Unforgiving Minute » music

Radio Free Djenovici: February 2010 podcast

Paul Currion — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:13:37 +0000

Tracks?

“Half Enlightened Optimism To Warm A Winter’s Night”, The Archivist
“Filhos Da Luta”, Kool Kleva ft Kennedy Ribeiro
“Bačvansko Kolo”, Kosta Šarćanski-Koča
“Broken Feathers”, Curse Ov Dialect
“You Are My Sister”, Antony & The Johnsons
“All of your things”, The RAAH Project
“Lil’ Girl”, Shafiq Husayn ft Fatima
“Together in Electric Dreams”, Lali Puna
“Fallen”, Bombay Dub Orchestra
“Twice”, Little Dragon
“If I Can’t Hold You”, Desire
“I Cry In The Morning”, Dennis Olivieri
“Stolen Moments (Telefon Tel-Aviv Remix)”, Oliver Nelson
“The Last Dance”, Bridezilla
“A Fool Can’t See The Light”, O.V. Wright
“Astronaut Farewell Blues”, Decoder Ring

Me and the Devil again

Paul Currion — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:22:45 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gil Scott-Heron used to have a drug habit that nearly killed him on more than one occasion. I met him in the Midlands in the early 1990s, at a stage in his life when he could only manage a couple of songs before he had to get offstage. He was incoherent and I was embarrassed. Now perhaps we can have a decent conversation.

A standing ovation for the Festival Hall

Paul Currion — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:57:10 +0000

Alex swings back into action with a new track for the Alexander’s Festival Hall album, which we’ve been waiting for since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Upturned is a slice of post-Christmas post-Britpop vaudeville which will have you crying while you’re dancing. Although you might not actually be dancing. Unleash!

Santanaut Re-entry Module

Paul Currion — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:58:35 +0000

Wow, I really forgot to post this. Only 2 weeks late, here’s my Christmas present to mankind – a mix of the tracks I’ve been listening to this Christmas in order to drown out the sound of Rage Against the Machine, who were fantastic for 18-year-olds back in 1992 who had never heard of Faith No More or Public Enemy, but in 2009? Put it away, nobody wants to see that at the family party. Christmas music doesn’t have to suck, and the proof is in the Santanaut Re-entry Module.

p.s. I was going to put something from Bob Dylan’s Christmas album on this mix, but then I actually listened to it. Good lord, that man can’t sing. Great radio shows, though.

Free Music Friday

Paul Currion — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:11:56 +0000

The magic of Soundcloud. It’s music. For free. On Friday.

First, the remix of “Two Sips and Magic” by Nickodemus. Straight up gypsy rock messed up funtime on Kush Arora’s bass-heavy mixing desk. The original track is a bit of a plodder, but this version gives it a donkey kick and tells it to get back to work.

Anybody who thinks this next track “sounds like Goldfrapp” needs their head examined. The Black Mountain Installation cuts some blues harmonica into a downtempo pitcher of homebrew called “Good Morning Mister Woods”. A 2009 vintage but will probably age well.

I’ve got no idea who recorded “Josephine Theme” but it is pleasant. I’d like to hear it in an elevator, but I wouldn’t like to be stuck in that elevator for more than about 17 hours, if you know what I mean.

The magic of YouTube, you already know about. Shugo Tokumaru jumps out of the folk-pop plane and releases his “Parachute”. Whoosh! Watch him float to the ground with musical precision, and there’s no topping that.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Me, Horace and Ashley

Paul Currion — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:52:20 +0000

My remix of Horace Andy & Ashley Beedle’s “Watch We” has been semi-shortlisted out of 450 entries in the Choice Cuts remix competition. You can check out the competition in the Remix Gallery – I’m listed at #12, and there’s some nice work in there. We await a final decision from Horace and Ashley themselves…

Muscular beats of the Balkans

Paul Currion — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:55:03 +0000

A lot of Balkan music is shocking. Imagine if a country came bottom of the Eurovision Song Contest every single year for eternity, and you’re imagining the popular music scene you mainly hear in Montenegro – a choice between over-produced fake ballads sung by thugs or sledgehammer folk sung by pipecleaners. Clearly people love it, but then what do people know?

Luckily there are bright spots, and last week this corner of the Balkans has been illuminated by Darkwood Dub and Edo Maajka. Darkwood Dub have been around since the dawn of time – early promo photos featured them riding on dinosaurs¹ – and are still going strong, with a solid fanbase many of whom were under 10 when the band started. It’s hard to describe their music – the “dub” part of it is mainly about the effects box they use on the vocals, with the occasional skanking rhythm in the background, and not really dub at all. They do feel quite 90s, but since they were ahead of their time, they’re in their own little musical universe in the Balkans. Here’s an average track with a nice video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A different kettle of fish altogether: Edo Maajka, the region’s best-known rapper. There’s a lot of hip-hop around here; the clothing style is the same faux-American uniform as it is in most places, but the style is distinct. Serbian² is a harsh language, perfect for battle raps, with consistent suffixes that make it easy to rhyme in. The one thing that Balkan rappers do have is something to rap about – war, sanctions, ethnic conflict, political shenanigens, and so on – although there’s always a worrying undercurrent of bling. Maajka has been around long enough that his rapping has a level of self-awareness that most don’t – he played out last night with his track Gansi, a trip down memory lane complete with Axl Rose impersonation:

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is a lie.
Bosnian, Croation, whatever – language is a boring game.

In the interests of Youssou N’Dour

Paul Currion — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:38:01 +0000

Intrahealth had a great idea:

Global non-profit IntraHealth International sees the use of open source technologies in medicine as a revolutionary step towards better health care in Africa and other developing regions. To that end, they have created IntraHealth OPEN. In much the same way that a musical piece benefits from collaboration and a sharing of ideas, IntraHealth believes that open source technologies can create better medical systems that will save lives.

First up – a Youssou N’Dour remix album. I loves me some Youssou, so I couldn’t resist downloading the stems and throwing them around, and neither could several other people. This lead me to discover that there are about 3 million open remix competitions floating around the net, which means hours of fun beat juggling. Now it’s judgement week – all the entries are up at the Intrahealth OPEN Remix competition, so why not pay them a visit and vote for your favourite entry?

If you want to give Youssou a helping hand with his budding music career, you should probably vote for the Black Mountain Re-Installation. Okay, so we’re languishing in 64th place at the moment, but it’s not as bad as it appears, so Vote Black Mountain! This is a bass-heavy rubadub, and in order to get the full health benefits of the remix, your computer will need to have some decent speakers…

Leafcutter John remix competition

Paul Currion — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:31:23 +0000

Leafcutter John – I like him, how about you? – is crowdsourcing a remix of his microsong “Big Black Eyes”. Since I have no experience at all of remixing, I decided that I’d give it a try. I sent him the MP3 this morning, but I thought I’d post here as well for maximum embarrassment. Enjoy!

Big Black Eyes (A Black Mountain Re-Installation)

While you’re listening, here’s a fact about me that I can pretty much guarantee that you don’t know. When I started learning to play saxophone, my teacher was Mark Lockheart, all-round top bloke and currently one of John’s bandmates in stellar British jazz project Polar Bear. It’s a small world.

He slung his hook – forever

Paul Currion — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:22:26 +0000

Anybody who’s still reading this blog will know that this year has been a bad one for musical death, and that it’s affected me quite badly. The most shocking news this year is the death of Eddie Bo, whose track “Hook and Sling” is the equivalent of a Force-10 hurricane in your feeble musical climate.¹ Unfortunately he never recorded anything else higher than Force-8, but that’s still pretty badass, right? He had a good run and his life in music is celebrated at the ineffable 16 Corners blog, with a run of great tracks and mixes to download, and complete background on the man.

UPDATE: Actually, “Check your Bucket” was also Force-10. If Kieran Wyatt is reading this, it’s Not Jazz.

Where Force-12 is Dyke and the Blazers remixed by the Prodigy IN MY DREAMS and Force-1 is the solo career of any member of Boyzone.