france – Listen To This

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 63: Early Choral Music Special V

My newest episode of Getting Warmer on NTS Radio is the fifth installment in the annual Early Choral Music special. Entirely acappella and sacred, with a little bit more of a Spanish focus this year. 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. You can download an mp3 version here. Stay warm, and happy holidays!

Previous early choral music specials: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018

Tracklist:
1. Sequentia – O Pastor animarum (Hildegard von Bingen)
2. Tonus Peregrinus – Missa Da gaudiorum premia: Sanctus (John Dunstable)
3. La Capella Reial de Catalunya – Sibil·la Valenciana: Gloria Tibi Domine (Bartomeu Càrceres)
4. The Cambridge Singers – Justorum animae (Orlando de Lassus)
5. Anonymous 4 – Ave Maria gracia plena (Anonymous, 13th century France)
6. The Tallis Scholars – Funeral Motet: Versa est in luctum (Tomás Luis de Victoria)
7. Discantus – O rubor sanguinis [Antienne] (Hildegard von Bingen)
8. A Sei Voci – Messe Vidi Turbam Magnam: Graduel [Exaltent Eum] (Gregorio Allegri)
9. The Tallis Scholars – Osculetur me (Orlando de Lassus)
10. Capilla Flamenca – De profundis (Sebastián de Vivanco)
11. Ensemble Project Ars Nova – O gloriosissimi lux (Hildegard von Bingen)
12. The Tallis Scholars – Missa Papae Marcelli: Kyrie (Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina)
13. Anonymous 4 – Codex Calixtinus: Portum in ultimo (Anonymous, 12th century France)
14. Capilla Flamenca – Quae est ista (Sebastián de Vivanco)
15. The Tallis Scholars – Motet: Sicut lilium inter spinas (Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina)
16. Discantus – Ave rosa novella (Anonymous, 13th century France)
17. Pro Cantione Antiqua – Missa Aeterna Christi munera: Kyrie (Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina)

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 53

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

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 51: Early Choral Music Special IV

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)

Isabelle Antena – Hoping For Love, 1987

One of my favorites, so much so that I’m confused why I haven’t posted this already. If you’re unfamiliar, Isabelle Antena is a French pop and jazz musician and composer, who began making music with her band Antena (whose highly influential Camino del Sol was one of the first records I ever posted here!). She went on to be a highly prolific solo artist, gaining a huge following in Japan–which makes sense aesthetically, as I think her sound very much anticipated Shibuya-kei. In fact, I grew up listening to Isabelle Antena because my dad heard the maddening “Quand Le Jazz Entre En Lice” in a hair salon in Tokyo, where my family was living at the time, and took it home to my mom, who got hooked on it. A lot of her live performances on YouTube were shot in Japan, like this particular gem.

Hoping For Love is jazzier than its excellent predecessor, En Cavale, but it has all the prowess you’d expect from Isabelle Antena, who wrote, arranged, and produced this record. Here she flits easily between Latin, samba, bossa nova, funk, and synth pop, with a few of her signature bass-driven dance floor twirlers like “Laying On The Sofa” and “Sweet Boy,” the latter of which I often catch myself singing to my dog. While it’s still strongly reminiscent of contemporaries like Sade and Linda di Franco, it’s fully her own world, spending most of the record’s second half squarely in the realm of acoustic jazz to terrific effects. Such a special, masterful record–I hope you love it as much as I do.

buy / download

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 46: Summer Disco Special III

Here’s my newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio. In keeping with tradition, it’s a disco special made with summer in mind. I have a confusing relationship with joy at the moment, feeling as alienated and scared as I imagine many people do, so I can’t help but feel a little bittersweet about listening to disco: it’s the most joyful music I know of, but it reminds me so much of how badly I miss dancing with large groups of people. I miss the way living in a city used to present you really magical opportunities to commune with strangers, and the cathartic joy that only a long night of dancing to the best music in the world can provide. I miss so many things. I hope this mix brings you some form of joy, and in the meantime that we have songs to tide us over until we’re able to dance together again. You can download an mp3 version here. Thank you as always for listening!

Tracklist:
1. Sandy Barber – I Think I’ll Do Some Stepping (On My Own)
2. Barbara Mason – Don’t I Ever Cross Your Mind Sometime
3. Roy Ayers Ubiquity – Running Away
4. Margaret Singana – Why Did You Do It
5. Charo & The Salsoul Orchestra – Dance A Little Bit Closer
6. Raw Silk – Do It To The Music
7. Sirarcusa – Streap Tease In The Stars (The Way I Do)
8. Dynasty – I Don’t Want To Be A Freak (But I Can’t Help Myself)
9. The Gap Band – Outstanding
10. Beauregard, Violletti & Ste-Claire – Ce Soir (Je Sens Que Tout Peut M’Arriver)
11. Ben E. King – Made For Each Other
12. Trio Ternura – A Gira
13. Theo Vaness – No Romance Keep On Dancing

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 40: Early Choral Music Special III

This month for NTS Radio I put together a third volume of early Western vocal music. Completely acapella and largely sacred, though I went a little ~crazy~ this time and threw in a couple of courtly love motets. 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. You can download an mp3 version here. Stay warm!

Previous early choral music specials: 2019, 2018

Tracklist:
1. Anonymous 4 – Peperit virgo (Unknown composer, England)
2. Huelgas-Ensemble – Apostolo glorioso (Guillaume Dufay)
3. The Gesualdo Six – Te lucis ante terminum (Thomas Tallis)
4. Anonymous 4 – Je te pri de cuer par amors (Unknown composer, France)
5. The Hilliard Ensemble – Sabbato Sancto: Responsorium 3 (Carlo Gesualdo)
6. Tonus Peregrinus – Credo: Da Gaudiorum Premia (John Dunstable)
7. Theatre of Voices – In hoc anni circulo (Unknown composer, France)
8. Tonus Peregrinus – Beata viscera (Pérotin)
9. The Hilliard Ensemble – Ave regina (Walter Frye)
10. Anonymous 4 – Quant je parti de m’amie (Unknown composer, France)
11. Ensemble Organum – Répons: Hodie nobis caelorum rex de virgi nasci (Unknown composer, France)
12. Sequentia – Nunc aperuit nobis (Hildegard von Bingen)
13. The Cambridge Singers – Libera nos, salva nos (John Shepperd)

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 26: Late Summer Ambient Special

My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a two hour long late summer ambient special. Long, lazy instrumentals with river sounds, crickets, cicadas, and bees. Ideal for heavy, thick weather, and for mid-day napping in it. If anyone remembers the two hour mix I made for LYL Radio awhile back, this feels like the more summery counterpart to it. You can download an mp3 version here.

Tracklist:
1. Hiroshi Yoshimura – Time After Time
2. David Casper – Green Anthem
3. Masahiro Sugaya – Straight Line Floating In The Sky
4. Roedelius – Wenn Der Südwind Weht
5. Yutaka Hirose – In The Afternoon
6. Inoyama Land – Glass Chaim
7. Haruomi Hosono – Wakamurasaki
8. Gabriel Yared – Un Coucher De Soleil Acchroche Dans Les Arbres
9. Maurice Ravel – Miroirs: III. Une Barque Sur L’ocean (Paul Crossley)
10. CV & JAB – Hot Tub
11. Virginia Astley – Summer Of Their Dreams
12. Satoshi Ashikawa – Still Park Ensemble (excerpt)
13. Ernest Hood – August Haze
14. Harold Budd & Brian Eno – A Stream With Bright Fish
15. Alice Damon – Waterfall Winds
16. Jansen / Barbieri – The Way The Light Falls
17. Yoshio Ojima – Mensis
18. Toshifumi Hinata – End Of The Summer
19. Carl Stone – Banteay Srey
20. Gervay Briot – Science

Ariel Kalma & Richard Tinti – Osmose, 1978

From the liner notes:

“When forest and music meet.

Richard Tinti travelled to Borneo and recorded the sound of the forest. When Ariel Kalma listened to it, he could hear his melodies sung by the birds, even sometimes in the very keys he uses… Natural harmony and inspiration seems to flow from the same spring. Thus began the studio work: to tune, record, mix the different element together; to the animals and atmosphere of the jungle, answered generators, flutes, saxophones, bird-calls, synthesizers, organs. Some surprises also occurred, like this fly coming down to the mic at the end of “Planet-Air” …

Mixed at the Groupe of Research in Music (GRM), a department of French National Audiovisual Institute (INA).”

Deep, densely psychedelic synth experiments. At times it’s difficult to distinguish between insects and electronics, and difficult to tell whether the natural cadence of bird song has been looped to sync with synthetic rhythms or vice versa. Big harmonium, reverb-soaked flute, circular breathing saxophone, long delays, drum machines, flanged keyboards, and plenty of synth, alongside birds, forest sounds, and war drums. Mostly voiceless, with the exception of the stark and heavy “Osmose Chant.” Clever play with space and distance, with the music sometimes pulling back into the distance in a way that allows room tone (or even unintended noises, such as the aforementioned fly on the mic, which makes several appearances) to become a kind of third musical actor. The whole thing feels like a very well-executed joke about what “ambient music” is. Try it with good speakers, if you can.

Tracks 1-6 originally comprised Disc A of the 1978 double LP split with Ariel Kalma and Richard Tinti, with the second disc comprised of Tinti’s tracks (if anyone has these and would be willing to share, I’d love to hear them). Disc A was later rereleased in 2006 with two additional unreleased tracks that were recorded at the same time, credited as just to Ariel Kalma. While it’s just these Disc A tracks that I’m sharing today, given that these were made in collaboration with Tinti and with the aid of his field recordings (recorded on a Nagra recorder), I’m using the original credits. (I’m particularly fond of the closing unreleased track, “Orguitar Soir,” which is one of the more mellow moments in the collection: just gentle guitar plucking and a keyboard drone tucked into forest sounds.)

buy / download

Maurice Ravel – Ravel Plays Ravel, 1994

For a torrential spring. I love Ravel for his humidity and his drippiness–swerving, suffocating greens, sometimes saturated and vibrant, sometimes murky and choked with algae. It feels appropriate for this time of year in New York, with bursts of spring euphoria, violent last gasps of winter, and water.

I’m not completely sure of all of the details surrounding this collection of tracks, but as best as I can understand it, these were recorded in 1994 from a series of reproducing piano rolls made between 1913 and 1933. The rolls were mostly played by Ravel himself, with at least five of them performed in London on June 30, 1922 on a Duo-Art reproducing piano. (For context, here’s a picture of a refurbished 1929 Duo-Art Steinway with a roll in the playback mechanism.) Though this wasn’t the first time Ravel had been able to listen back to himself performing, it was one of a small handful of known instances of such “recordings,” and as I understand it, there might be some suspicion that not all of the rolls attributed to him are actually his performances. There are four tracks by other prominent pianists of the time, and just to make this even more confusing, I’m using the album art from a 1965 collection of recordings, presumably from some of the same rolls, because I can’t find the art from the 1994 collection included here.

Regardless of the details, it’s pretty special to hear this collection (which includes some of my favorite Ravel compositions) performed in a way that we can assume is more faithful to the styles in which they were originally written than many more recent recordings, and it’s even more special to imagine Ravel himself tearing through some of the more torrential moments. Happy spring!

download

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 21: French Disco Special

Here’s my latest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio. This one is a French disco, funk, and synth pop special. I hope you like it! You can download an mp3 of the mix here.

Tracklist:
1. Judy Larsen – Gambling Man
2. Alec Mansion – Dans L’eau De Nice
3. Black Devil – One To Choose
4. Christopher Moore – What A Night
5. Lizzy Mercier Descloux – Funky Stuff
6. Cerrone – Give Me Love
7. Beckie Bell – Music Madness
8. Zoëlie – Lolo
9. Laurie Destal – Frivole De Nuit
10. Maryse Bonnet – Au Soleil
11. Isabelle Antena – Laying On The Sofa
12. Regrets – L’avion
13. The Manicures – Let This Feeling Carry On
14. Joëlle Ursull – Position Feeling
15. Chagrin D’Amour – Ciao Katmandou