I’m about to revert to a mode of musical description that I strongly dislike, which is: comparing female musicians with other singular female musicians, specifically female musicians who often get lazily categorized as “weird.” I’m sorry, I don’t like it either! But Jane Siberry is slippery to describe. I’ll do my best anyway.
The Walking is the fourth full-length from Canadian musician Jane Siberry. It’s the follow-up to No Borders Here, which was a highly ambitious record–and yet The Walking feels even moreso, both incredibly intricate and enormous, rapidly oscillating between macro and microcosmic. While Siberry found critical acclaim in Canada, her records–as I understand it–mostly flew under the radar in the US, in ways that feel both legible and surprising. There are elements of these songs which feel like they could have been commercially marketable to the art pop crowd, in spite of everything: there’s a theatrical spaciousness that’s difficult not to compare to Kate Bush or Laurie Spiegel, and a navy blue moodiness with cavernous percussion that suggests Talk Talk. Ultimately it seems that it was the songs’ length that kneecapped their commercial viability, at least for radio play, which is unfortunate given how easy it is to picture the jangly and ecstatic “Ingrid And The Footman” rolling through the ending credits of a John Hughes movie. The Walking functions as a series of eight mini-suites, only one of which is shorter than five minutes, and most of which comprise a series of movements, or, as Siberry refers to them, “emotional clearings”–which, if we are to take the title of The Walking at face value, starts to make sense as an extended metaphor.
And still, in spite of all of the tones and colors that she wrings out in less than an hour, she speaks in interviews of having “more to say than [she] could fit into a song,” and of having to abridge tracks that stretched over 30 minutes down to nine. Perhaps it’s this condensation which, in spite of how expansive these songs are, produces the feeling of rolling a many-faceted prism in your hands as it catches the light. It’s rare to hear a musician who so effectively combines poetic lyricism and razor-sharp, stunningly beautiful musicianship. Joanna Newsom’s Ys and its mode of mythical, longform, large-scale storytelling immediately come to mind. Not much else does.
For me, the most emotionally pointed track on the record is “The Lobby,” which, lyrically, paints in large, dreamlike gestures: it provides the flint-spark of pathos, gorgeous musical bones, and a lot of empty space. The rest is up to the listener, left to drape their own emotions and projections all over the structures that Siberry has built for us. I don’t know what this song is actually about, but I don’t need to, as I’ve already stuffed it full of my own stories. Listening to it provides the odd sensation of long fingers rooting around in your psyche, prodding deftly at the parts that hurt the most. There’s catharsis here too, though. If pain is a movement in Jane’s suite, then so is joy, and so is self-realization.
Thank you Nick for introducing me to Jane–you can read Nick’s post about her record No Borders Here from a few years ago, and read his more recent and very good interview with her here.
My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a very slow and drippy soundtrack to snowmelt season. Normally this time of year I make mixes that are explicitly springy, full of bird sounds and optimism. I’m definitely feeling some optimism–I imagine most people are, after the grimness of the past winter. But it’s difficult not to feel a little suspicious of that impulse, when everything seems like such a wash. So: this mix is drippy, with a few small green things poking out, but there’s plenty of mud in it too. I hope you like it. You can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist:
1. The Seekers – I’ll Never Find Another You
2. Sundari Soekotjo – Bengawan Solo
3. The Sweet Inspirations – Why Am I Treated So Bad
4. Mojave 3 – Love Songs On The Radio
5. Scott Walker – It’s Raining Today
6. Eileen Farrell – Beau Soir
7. The Crystals – Please Hurt Me
8. Esther & Abi Ofarim – Oh Waly Waly
9. Woo – It’s Love
10. Connie Francis – Half As Much
11. Barbara Lewis – Baby I’m Yours
12. Céline Dion – Falling Into You
13. John Foxx & Harold Budd – Stepping Sideways
14. Ziemba – Brazil
15. Gordon Fergus-Thompson – Suite Bergamasque: III. Clair De Lune
16. Craig Armstrong ft. Elizabeth Fraser – This Love
17. The Roches – Losing True
My newest mix for NTS Radio is an hourlong Yoko Kanno special. If you’re unfamiliar, Kanno is a Japanese composer, arranger, and musician. best known for her extensive work soundtracking anime films and series, though she’s also scored a number of video games and live-action films. Some of her noteworthy anime scores include Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Cowboy Bebop, Macross Plus, Turn A Gundam, The Vision of Escaflowne, Darker than Black, Wolf’s Rain, and Terror in Resonance. My entrypoint to her work, as I suspect is the case for many, was the terrific theme for the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series, “Inner Universe,” which is sung in Russian, English, and Latin by Japanese-Russian singer Origa, who is a regular collaborator of Kanno’s. Since then it’s been a joy to dig through her enormous discography, so I’ve compiled a few of my favorite moments here, ranging from opiated trip hop and jazz to sweeping cinematic modern classical to devastating choral pieces and churning dystopic breakbeat. I hope you like it! You can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist:
1. Yoko Kanno – Blue Tone
2. Yoko Kanno – Stamina Rose
3. Yoko Kanno – Pulse
4. Yoko Kanno – 縮緬エアー
5. Yoko Kanno – Chorale
6. Yoko Kanno – Go DA DA
7. Yoko Kanno – She Is
8. Yoko Kanno – Some Other Time
9. Yoko Kanno – Bang Bang Banquet
10. Yoko Kanno – Aqua
11. Yoko Kanno – Orphan
12. Yoko Kanno – On The Earth
13. Yoko Kanno – A Sai En
14. Yoko Kanno – This EDEN
15. Yoko Kanno – Ephemera
16. Yoko Kanno – Bells For Her
17. Yoko Kanno – The Clone
18. Yoko Kanno – Torch Song
19. Yoko Kanno – Siberian Doll House
20. Yoko Kanno – Inner Universe
Ok, so: in full disclosure, over the past few years I’ve been feeling increasingly disenchanted with a lot of music that is described as “fourth world”: effectively, music that loosely traffics in the traditions and aesthetics of the global south, but reimagined through the lens of “advanced” or “futuristic” electronics. It’s a fraught category for several glaring reasons, but even without the self-imposed description, the music itself can, at worst, feel like white people playing under-researched dress-up with bits and pieces of other cultures, often because the musicians are too lazy to come up with something of their own. (And yes, I participate in and celebrate this kind of work on a regular basis! I’m obviously not a passive bystander here.)
I’m not resolving to draw clean lines in the sand about engaging in this kind of thing going forward, because: any attempt to do so would be arbitrary and ridiculous, given that music always involves cross-pollination and borrowing, and much of it is done in good faith and with deep artistic reverence. And because this stuff is messy, and there isn’t always a clearly discernible hierarchy of ethical creativity! And because I love too much of it to ever try to impose one, and because I’m obviously not the right gatekeeper to decide what is and isn’t colonialist.
I’d love to be just a passive set of ears, and to be able to say that I love Total purely for its aesthetic value, regardless of its cultural position. But nothing exists in a vacuum. Total was made by four Germans, and it borrows heavily from across continents: steel drums, didgeridoo, sub-Saharan polyrhythms, maybe a guzheng, a kalimba, Calypso, “from Cuba to Mocambique” [sic]. I’m not going to argue that this is good or bad, but I am going to argue that what Om Buschman brings to the conversation–which may be a sloppy conversation, or possibly even more of a weird monologue–has musical value. These musicians employ a post-Krautrock scronkiness, a Western spiritual jazz ethos, and an extremely stoned sense of humor (I’m pretty sure there’s the sound of a toilet flushing hiding in “Prima Kalimba”) to a largely percussive record. The effect is, to me, a synchronicity that exceeds copy and pasting. It’s perfectly stuporific, sprawling, foggy. Luckily we don’t have to choose between listening to Nigerian apala, Cuban jazz, or something like this, because they’re not the same and there’s no comparison. But perhaps for a new listener, one can be an entry point to another.
If I sound defensive, it’s because I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole thing, and because I have a knee-jerk reaction when music that isn’t made by a literal tribe of people is described as “tribal.” But I like the music! It’s deeply purple, playful, and very trippy. It borrows from, but it becomes something wholly different along the way. So here you go; maybe you’ll love it too.
My newest episode of Getting Warmer on NTS Radio is the fourth installment in the annual Early Choral Music special. Entirely acappella and mostly sacred, though I got a little wild and threw in a secular song from 16th century England. Also, to keep it extra spicy there’s some Hungarian and Bulgarian stuff in here too! I’ve listed the performers as the artist, and then the composers in parentheses after the song title. In full transparency, I’m neither an expert on this stuff nor am I at all religious–I just really love this music, and I think it makes an ideal winter hibernation soundtrack. I hope you like it too–if you do, you can download an mp3 version of it here. Stay warm!
Previous early choral music specials: 2020, 2019, 2018
Tracklist:
1. Sequentia – Kyrieleison (Hildegard von Bingen)
2. The Tallis Scholars – Qui venit (John Taverner)
3. Sequentia – Ora pro nobis, beate Nicolae (Anonymous, France)
4. Anonymous 4 – Motet: Puellare gremium / Purissima mater (Unknown composer, England)
5. Huelgas-Ensemble – Virgo sub ethereis (Alexander Agricola)
6. Anonymous 4 – Pia mater gratie (Anonymous, France)
7. Huelgas-Ensemble – Fortuna desperata (Alexander Agricola)
8. Sequentia – O Dulcis Electe (Responsory/To St. John The Evangelist) (Hildegard von Bingen)
9. Osnabrücker Jugendchor – Miserere mei, Deus (excerpt) (Gregorio Allegri)
10. Theatre of Voices – Ve Mundo (Philip The Chancellor)
11. Anonymous 4 – Novum Decus Oritur (Unknown, Hungary)
12. Tonus Peregrinus – Quam Pulchra Est (John Dunstable)
13. The Tallis Scholars – Requiem: Taedet Animam Meam (Tomás Luis de Victoria)
14. Taverner Choir & Players – Westron Wynde (Anonymous, England)
15. Discantus – Vox in Rama (Unknown, France)
16. Tonus Peregrinus – Sanctus (John Dunstable)
17. Chamber Music Ensemble Kukuzel – Bulgarian Lament (excerpt) (Ioan Kukusel)
18. The Tallis Scholars – Dona nobis pacem (John Taverner)
19. Westminster Cathedral Choir – Sanctus (Missa Cantate) (John Sheppard)
There’s a significant chance you’ve already heard half of this record, as I’ve regularly been using it in mixes for the past year and a half. And with good reason! Aside from being objectively beautiful from start to finish, it feels particularly aesthetically situated to resonate well with listeners right now, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this prompts a reissue. (Do it!)
It’s a mysterious record–the only release from the eponymous duo Goddess In The Morning, comprised of Akino Arai and Yula Yayoi. Akino has left a pretty dense paper trail, credited on 95 different releases for vocals, writing, arrangement, and production, notably as a regular contributor to Yoko Kanno scores. Yula is a little harder to trace, with a handful of releases that I’ve had limited success in tracking down. I’d particularly love to hear her 1999 record Summer Aura on the basis of its cover art and release year alone, if anybody has a copy they’d be willing to share. (She also shows up as a vocalist on Seigén Ono‘s behemoth 20-disc Saidera Paradiso, and fittingly, Ono is credited with mastering Goddess, which seems particularly cool in light of how divergent the record is from Ono’s wheelhouse.)
Goddess In The Morning is a wild ride in the truest sense, ranging from hazy trip hop on “Ucraine” to the Celtic folk-inspired prog “Saga” to the Virginia Astley-esque pastoral closer “14.” Across them all are (what I assume to be) Yula and Akino’s heavily layered vocals (effectively musical catnip for me), processed into intricate electronic landscapes that feel both spacious and heavily polished to a reflective chrome sheen. I’m not gonna try to sell this too much harder, because if it’s for you, it’s very obviously for you, but I do hope you love this, as it keeps worming its way nearer (and dearer!) to my heart.
I wrote about this record in 2015, very briefly, and while I’m delighted by the opportunity to revisit it at greater length, I wish it was under different circumstances. Musician, composer, and poet Harold Budd passed away yesterday at the age of 84 from complications caused by COVID-19, and with him we have lost a giant.
It was jazz that first inspired musicianship in Budd, or, as he put it, it was “…Black culture that freed me from the stigmata of going nowhere in a hopeless culture.” He was drafted into the US army where he drummed in a regimental band alongside the highly influential free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler. Budd repeatedly credited Ayler with granting him the freedom to abandon time signatures, a freedom which stayed with him throughout his career.
Budd was notoriously resistant to genre classifications, so much so that I feel a bit sheepish using genre tags on this post: “The word ‘ambient’ doesn’t ring a bell with me. It’s meant to mean something, but is, in fact, meaningless. My style is the only thing I can do well,” “When I hear the words New Age, I reach for my gun,” and, at greater length in this excellent 1986 interview:
I’ll tell you very frankly that this whole ‘new age’ business is very distasteful to me. I don’t like being even considered in that category and I have almost no respect for it at all. To me it’s a kind of arrogant philosophical point of view where music has a metaphysical or biological function. I agree that music has a metaphysical function but when that’s your whole point of view, when it isn’t just a thing that happens out of the normal course of events, I think it becomes arrogant and rather precious. It smacks to me very much of science fiction religion and that’s not me. It’s very lightweight and very bothersome to me. ‘New age music’ is a marketing ploy and I don’t think it has anything to do with the actual truth about the meaning of the music. The only thing that rings my bell is serious music and music is that way when it’s impossible to analyse: ‘new age music’ is easily analysed.
But new age or not, Budd’s music has a consistent quality of brushing up against an experience of the divine.
Harold Budd with Hiroshi Yoshimura, 1983
Perhaps part of his resistance to being labeled as “ambient”–a term which, by definition, suggests something incidental and negligible–is that much of his music isn’t actually optimal background music. (I would argue that the category of “music to fall asleep to,” which Budd is frequently cited as–presumably to his chagrin–is also not necessarily background music.) I’ll go ahead and plagiarize my 2014 post about The Moon and the Melodies, which Budd made in collaboration with Cocteau Twins and which began his decades-long collaboration with Robin Guthrie. While not all of these observations apply to Pavilion, there is most certainly a slipperiness and synergy that the two records share, as do many of Budd’s other works:
It’s an uncategorizable work, one which far exceeds the sum of its parts. It’s egoless. It’s a fluid, restless record, moody and aloof–it peaks several times, ecstatically, only to retreat back into itself. Startling synergy between these masterminds means that ambient and new age fans will find a lot to love here–it’s Harold Budd, after all, and there are long stretches of huge, hulking instrumental tracks. But the record is darker than typical new age–it feels like climbing through a cavernous skeleton, and the instrumental tracks (like “Memory Gongs”) are echoing and sometimes sinister. It’s not as effusive as Cocteau Twins, and perhaps not as immediately gratifying–many tracks fade out right when you want more the most. It’s not daytime music, and it’s not background music. Clocking in at just under 40 minutes, it’s a perfect on-repeat record, folding in on itself like water.
Harold Budd with Satoshi Ashikawa, 1982
Budd began Pavilion in 1972 after returning from his “retirement from composing” with “Madrigals of the Rose Angel,” of which he said, “The entire aesthetic was an existential prettiness; not the Platonic τόκαλόν, but simply pretty: mindless, shallow, and utterly devastating.” Though the piece’s debut was at a Franciscan church in California conducted by Daniel Lentz (!), it was the piece’s subsequent live botching that led Budd to take up the piano in earnest in his mid-thirties:
Madrigals of the Rose Angel…was sent off for a public performance back East somewhere. I wasn’t there, but I got the tape and I was absolutely appalled at how they missed the whole idea. I told myself, ‘This is never going to happen again. From now on, I take full charge of any piano playing.’ That settled that.
Here’s what I wrote about The Pavilion of Dreams back in 2015:
Twinkling, lazy jazz-scapes for new agers. A dripping, humid, reactionary piece of anti-avant-garde. Budd refers to this as his magna carta. Gavin Bryars on the glockenspiel and celesta, Michael Nyman on the marimba, Brian Eno production.
To this I’d like to add that I can think of few records which can so immediately shift the feeling of the room in which they are played in the way that Pavilion does, literally within seconds. It’s the sonic equivalent of taking a few deep, elongated breaths: the pulse slows, the jaw unclenches. It’s an opiated smoke drift in which, once again, everything Budd touches feels weighted with spiritual potency. The worldless, meandering glissandos sung by Lynda Richardson, though clearly delivered in a Western classical style, start to suggest Eastern devotional drone and chant traditions. The occasional chime from the glockenspiel begins to resemble bells used in meditation. And most thrillingly, at times you can hear the creak of the harp against the floor, the crack of a knee, the scrape of a chair. When music is this willfully shapeless, rolling through space like a liquid, it becomes that much more consequential to be reminded of solid objects, human bodies in a room. Everything becomes sacred. Perhaps this is what Budd was after with his commitment to “existential prettiness” at the deliberate expense of meaning. Perhaps this is why critics and listeners still can’t help but try to pin him down with a label: it’s difficult to hear this much reverence without trying to name it in service of something.
My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a slinky-dinky hour of yacht rock and soft rock, perfect for recently divorced single parents, cooking dinner, or pretending to drive somewhere in the car you don’t own. Mostly 70s with a little bit of 80s. Please enjoy! Mp3 download here, if you’re interested. Sending love to you and yours.
Tracklist:
1. Kenny Loggins ft. Stevie Nicks – Whenever I Call You Friend
2. Brian Protheroe – Fly Now
3. Michael Franks – When Sly Calls (Don’t Touch That Phone)
4. Jaye P. Morgan – Let’s Get Together
5. Linda Thompson – Lover Won’t You Throw Me A Line
6. Hiromi Iwasaki – Kiss Again
7. Boz Scaggs – Jojo
8. Karen Carpenter – Midnight
9. The Alan Parsons Project – Eye In The Sky
10. Donald Fagen – I.G.Y.
11. Gerry Rafferty – Right Down The Line
12. Bobby Caldwell – Down For The Third Time
13. Ned Doheny – Sing To Me
14. Jane Kelly Williams – Boy, I’m Just Getting Over You
My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a classic K-pop special I made with very special co-host Bread Face. It’s mostly from the 90s, with a few early aughts tracks. Until recently I had been under the (false!) impression that K-pop was mostly limited to dance-oriented bubblegum synth pop, but I’ve been loving delving into all of its sub-genres: included here are moments of hip hop, trip hop, r&b, and even some ska influences. We had so much fun putting this together (my first time bringing a guest onto NTS!), so I hope you enjoy it. If you do, you can download an mp3 version here. Thanks as always for listening 💚
Tracklist:
1. Fin.K.L – 당신은 모르실꺼야 (You’ll Never Know)
2. 베이비복스 (Baby VOX) – Get Up
3. 엄정화 (Uhm Jung Hwa) – 초대 (Invitation)
4. 宋光植 (S.E.S.) – Feeling
5. 제이 (J) – 가사 첨부 (Time Out)
6. 영턱스클럽 (Young Turks Club) – 타인 (Ta In)
7. 지누션 (Jinusean) – How Deep Is Your Love
8. 룰라 (Roo’ra) – 날개 잃은 천사 (Angel Without Wings)
9. 宋光植 (S.E.S.) – Dreams Come True
10. 박지윤 (Park Jiyoon) – 아무것도 몰라요 (I Don’t Know)
11. 영턱스클럽 (Young Turks Club) – 정 (Jung)
12. 드렁큰 타이거 (Drunken Tiger) – 난 널 원해 (I Want You)
13. 宋光植 (S.E.S.) – Be Natural
14. 박지윤 (Park Jiyoon) – 박지윤 – (Coming Of Age Ceremony)
15. 타샤니 (Tashannie) – 경고 (Caution)
16. 이정현 (Lee Jung Hyun) – 와 (Wa)
