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Tracked it down here…http://www.myspace.com/centralmassive (see an earlier post for context). The song is Brother Don’t Cry and its flipping gorgeous.
or you could follow this slightly naughty link…
http://uploaded.to/file/1uxshu
Gilles Peterson this week played a track from the new Zero 7 album. I think those of us hoping for a return to their wonderous first album will once again be disappointed. Gutted.
So I seem to have a thing about stuff on white label/otherwise untrackdownable stuff. If you listen to this programme http://bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00m4247 from about 52.30 onwards you’re in for a good time: Red Eye et al., Brother Don’t Cry. All I can find is some LA producer banging out the sort of ‘house’-based tripe that only LA producers can put out…
I’ve been amazed often by Bloc Party’s lyrics: this one, from ‘Better than Heaven’ seems like an eloquent summary of the injustice of the doctrine of original sin:
“And there was a time before we were born
when we stood in the garden.”
I wasn’t sure about Intimacy, their most recent album. But lyrics like this, and there are more, make it easier to love.
Steve Reich is probably the most influential composer from the second half of the twentieth century. So today, I bought a package that Nonesuch, his record label put out, called ‘Phases’, with most of the defining recordings of his defining pieces. I also bought a remix package, where leading off kilter electronic artists take him on. The absolute highlights for me are Coldcut on ‘Music for 18 Musicians’ and D*Note on Piano Phase. You can listen to samples here.
The most recent album by Jon Hopkins, who I recently mentioned, today arrived in my pigeon hole. Its got some supremely beautiful moments, in particular track 9, ‘A Drifting Up’ (sadly not yet on YouTube, will keep an eye out a post a link). Its an album that has the potential to end up in Moby ‘Play’ territory: i.e. plastered all over adverts. Get it now before it gets devalued.
New exciting electronica guy: he makes the sort of clever stuff that just gets me incredibly excited: have a listen to some of his stuff on his myspace.
You MIGHT recognise bits of it from Coldplay. Scrap that, if you’ve been on the planet recently, you’ve heard bits of it. Its no surprise he’s worked with some of my favourite artists.
So, when staying with some friends in Aberystwyth, we watched Solaris, which is by far the best science fiction film I have ever seen. That isn’t saying a huge amount, as I have probably seen about 10 science fiction films, 3 of which were Star Wars Episodes I, II, III.
I was really struck by music; by a guy called Cliff Martinez, who played drums for some band called the Red Hot Chilli Peppers in the 1980’s. Pop/funk/rock, it is not. More orchestrally accentuated minimalism. I love it, I bought the soundtrack, it arrived on Sunday and I’ve listened to it getting on for 20 times in the last 72 hours. Incase you’re interested, its really quite hard to find.
Interestingly, there was a scene in which one of the characters announced that she ‘couldn’t stand these resurrections,’ when a character comes back to life. Obviously, one’s view is coloured by the intentions of the film maker, and it is worth noting that both the director, Stephen Soderbergh, and the author of the original book, Stanislav Lem, are atheists. However, as an aside, the film, highlights that resurrection is not an entirely ‘pleasant’ concept.
