Ottmar Liebert - Santa Fe (Live)

Kashmir - Led Zeppelin

Tomas Tranströmer and Lena Endre

Tomas Tranströmer and Lena Endre held the full house in the Church of Leksand captive with strains of truths onto which we struggle to hold.
Sweden's greatest poet makes his return to Tällberg a musical event by performing 3 pieces for the left hand on piano. He was joined by Sweden's leading stage and screen actress, Lena Endre, who brought her own delicious Swedish to the phrasings. Lena read in Swedish at the concert in Leksand and in English during the opening session of the Forum. In this Tällberg Moment, Tomas plays the music of Frederico Mompou, III Para la mano izquierda, and Lena reads Part IV from Schubertiana, by Tomas Tranströmer.

Einstein on the Beach- Knee 1

How to choose a turntable

Enjoying Turntables Without Obsessing

Clockwise from top left: the Oracle Audio Delphi MK VI, the VPI Industries Classic 3, the Audio Technica AT-LP120-USB Direct-Drive Professional and the Music Hall mmf-2.2le turntables.

By ROY FURCHGOTT

Published: April 18, 2012

Buying records is easy. You can find them by the milk crate at yard sales, for a few dollars apiece in used record stores, and there are new, special pressings by contemporary musicians like Shelby Lynne, whose “Just a Little Lovin’” album, at $30, is a top seller. But buying the instrument needed to listen to them, a turntable, is a different matter. 

“Young people didn’t grow up with turntables,” said Kenny Bowers, manager at Needle Doctor, a Minnesota store specializing in turntables. “It seems mysterious and complicated because you don’t just push a button and have it play for you.” 

There are advantages to old-fashioned analog music, according to some audiophiles. “There is a fuller sound to it, and more depth to the sound,” said Ryan Holiday, the New Orleans-based marketing director for American Apparel. He’s a new devotee of jazz and David Bowie, thanks to LPs. (For the youngsters, that stands for long playing, as in long-playing record; there were also small records called 45s). “I could hear hands going up and down the frets, and stuff that they probably didn’t want you to hear. Which is a nice little surprise,” he said. 

Mr. Holiday is not alone in his appreciation. Record sales have climbed for five years. Now turntable sales are growing. They were up 50 percent in January over January last year. 

Hi-fi elitists may debate competing technologies of moving coil versus moving magnet cartridges as if Middle East peace depended on the answer, but turntables are really simple machines. It doesn’t cost a great deal to get a good one, and today’s turntables give you more for your money than they did when vinyl ruled. The celebrated Thorens 125 MKII, with tonearm, cost about $500 in 1975. (That’s about $2,000 in today’s dollars.) A comparable one in performance today, like the Music Hall MMF-2.2 or the Pro-Ject Debut III Esprit, costs $300 to $500. 

Nevertheless, some turntables, like the Clearaudio Master Reference at $28,000, cost as much as a Toyota Camry hybrid. 

You are paying for two things, precision and craftsmanship. So here’s a guide to some of the costs. (It was just as confusing back in the 1960s, kids.) A turntable is basically three assemblies: the revolving platform the record sits on, called the platter, and the motor and drive; the tonearm, which moves across the record as it plays; and the cartridge and needle, which sit on the end of the tonearm and pick up the vibrations recorded in a record’s grooves. 

Turntables are machines that read vibrations, but they often can’t distinguish a good vibration from a Beach Boys album and a bad one from your stomping across the room. A good turntable is designed to isolate it from the real world. 

The motor needs to provide noiseless, consistent speed. A heavy platter helps to keep the speed from varying. But it’s an engineering game of Whac-A-Mole. Heavier platters need bigger motors, which may be noisier (and they cost more). Light platters can more easily transmit vibrations that can cause a ringing sound. The rule of thumb is make sure the table weighs at least 10 pounds. “If not, it’s made of plastic compound. It will sing along with music,” said Harry Weisfeld, the owner of the turntable maker VPI, based in Cliffwood, N.J. He advocates metal platters. 

You can also buy mats and special feet to isolate the turntable from outside vibrations. 

The kind of motor is even more hotly debated. One way the motor drives the platter is with a belt; the other is to mount the platter directly on the motor. Direct-drive mounting is preferred by some people because there is less chance the speed will vary. Rubber belts can stretch and loosen over time. But a direct-drive turntable is more likely to transmit noise, whereas rubber belts absorb motor vibrations. 

The crazy thing is that the least and most expensive turntables tend to be belt-driven. It’s really a personal preference. Trust your ears. The tonearm needs to keep the needle where it picks the most vibrations from the record without so much pressure that it damages the grooves. “The main thing is the weight,” said Scott Shaw, audio solutions specialist for Audio-Technica, an audio equipment maker. “Lighter tracking forces tend to provide better audio quality,” he said. 

With some exceptions, the better tonearms are machined in one piece of lightweight steel, not cast or pressed. There are more exotic tonearms of carbon fiber, composites, even wood, but you are going to find that only on turntables that cost more than $1,000, said Mr. Shaw. 

The cartridge is mounted on the end of the tonearm and holds the stylus, or needle. “The stylus is where everything happens,” said Michael Pettersen, director of applications engineering for Shure, which makes cartridges. “When you buy a $100 cartridge,” he said, “the needle is $90 of the cost.” 

Needles are either elliptical or spherical, with no significant price difference. Elliptical tends to be better at reproducing high-pitched sounds, said Mr. Pettersen. Spherical does a better job riding over flaws in vinyl, though, and may be better for 45s and worn records. (An even older form of record, the 78, require a special, larger stylus.) “If I have a very nasty record, I’ll use the spherical," Mr. Shaw said. 

There are also two kinds of cartridges, moving magnet and moving coil. Most cartridges are moving magnet. While they tend to be heavier than moving coil, you can change the stylus yourself, which you may want to do to adjust to the condition of your vinyl or change the sound you get. 

Moving coil is the type often favored by audiophiles because it has less weight, but changing a stylus requires a trip to the manufacturer. Both types typically wear out in 600 to 800 hours of use.

Although the sky is the limit on price, a very good cartridge costs $75 to $100, said Mr. Pettersen. 

Getting the most from a turntable requires careful setup, although maybe not as careful as people who sell calibration equipment would have you believe. “Setting up the turntable doesn’t have to be as complicated as they make it,” said Mr. Shaw. There can be leeway from the exact specifications, he said, adding, “Set it up fairly close, it will be fine. My point is, don’t obsess.” 

One additional piece of gear Mr. Shaw recommends is a stylus gauge to measure the weight the cartridge is putting on the record. “Don’t rely on the little numbers on the back of the tonearm,” he said. “They are very inaccurate.” Mr. Bowers of Needle Doctor recommends the Shure scale, the SFG-2, available online for $20 to $40. 

It may also be worthwhile to buy a tool to make sure the cartridge is lined up properly. Mr. Bowers recommended the Mobile Fidelity Geo-Disc, which is $50 to $80. 

Finally, you can check some of your work with a test record, like the Cardas Frequency Sweep and Burn-In Record ($15 to $30), which plays tones that help confirm that the setup is correct. 

You may find that what sounds best is not the recommended settings, or what the gauges and protractors dictate. In the end, it’s as much art as science. 

And isn’t that the beauty of analog?

Nellie McKay - "A World without Love"

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort - Chanson de Maxence / You Must Believe In Spring

Je l'ai cherchée partout j'ai fait le tour du monde
De Venise à Java de Manille à Hankor
De Jeanne à Victoria de Vénus en Joconde
Je ne l'ai pas trouvée et je la cherche encore

Je ne connais rien d'elle et pourtant je la vois
J'ai inventé son nom j'ai entendu sa voix
J'ai dessiné son corps et j'ai peint son visage
Son portrait et l'amour ne font plus qu'une image

Elle a cette beauté des filles romantiques
Et d'un Botticelli le regard innocent
Son profil est celui de ces vierges mythiques
Qui hantent les musées et les adolescents

Sa démarche ressemble aux souvenirs d'enfant
Qui trottent dans ma tête et dansent en rêvant
Sur son front, ses cheveux sont de l'or en bataille
Que le vent de la mer et le soleil chamaillent

Je pourrais vous parler de ses yeux, de ses mains
Je pourrais vous parler d'elle jusqu'à demain
Son amour, c'est ma vie mais à quoi bon rêver?
Je l'ai cherchée partout je ne l'ai pas trouvée

Il pourrait nous parler de ses yeux, de ses mains
Il pourrait nous parler d'elle jusqu'à demain
Son amour, c'est sa vie mais à quoi bon rêver?
Il l'a cherchée partout il ne l'a pas trouvée

Est-elle loin d'ici? est-elle près de moi?
Je n'en sais rien encore mais je sais qu'elle existe
Est-elle pécheresse ou bien fille de roi?
Que m'importe son sang puisque je suis artiste
Et que l'amour dicte sa loi
**************************************

Jacques Perrin (Maxence)
Versione restaurata curata da Agnes Varda.
Colonna Sonora di Michel Legrand

Music written by

Michel Legrand

Lyrics written by

Jacques Demy

 *****************************************



When lonely feelings chill
The meadows of your mind,
Just think if Winter comes,
Can Spring be far behind?

Beneath the deepest snows,
The secret of a rose
Is merely that it knows
You must believe in Spring!

Just as a tree is sure
Its leaves will reappear;
It knows its emptiness
Is just a time of year

The frozen mountain dreams
Of April's melting streams,
How crystal clear it seems,
You must believe in Spring!

You must believe in love
And trust it's on its way,
Just as a sleeping rose
Awaits the kiss of May

So in a world of snow,
Of things that come and go,
Where what you think you know,
You can't be certain of,
You must believe in Spring and love

INSTRUMENTAL INTERLUDE

You must believe in love
And trust it's on its way,
Just as a sleeping rose
Awaits the kiss of May

So in a world of snow,
Of things that come and go,
Where what you think you know,
You can't be certain of,
You must believe in Spring and love

You must believe in Spring and love
You must believe in Spring and love
**********************************

Song

You Must Believe in Spring

Lyrics written by

Marilyn Bergman, Alan Bergman

Original music written by

Michel Legrand

Original lyrics written by

Jacques Demy

The Young Girls of Rochefort - an unabashedly romantic paean to American energy and optimism that’s quintessentially French...and perhaps the most beautiful dovetailing of failed and achieved connections apart from Shakespeare. By Jonathan Rosenbaum

From JonathanRosenbaum.com

Not the Same Old Song and Dance

• From the Chicago Reader (November 27, 1998), and reprinted in my collection Essential Cinema. — J.R.

The Young Girls of Rochefort

 

Rating **** Masterpiece

Directed and written by Jacques Demy

With Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac, George Chakiris, Gene Kelly, Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli, Grover Dale, Jacques Perrin, Geneviève Thénier, Henri Crémieux, and Jacques Riberolles.

As eccentric as this may sound, Jacques Demy’s 1967 Les demoiselles de Rochefort is my favorite musical. Yet despite my 30-year addiction to the two-record sound track, the first time I was able to see the movie subtitled was a couple of weeks ago — helpful considering my faltering French. It’s certainly the odd musical out in terms of both its singularity and its North American reputation — a large-scale tribute to Hollywood musicals shot exclusively in Rochefort in southwest France, and an unabashedly romantic paean to American energy and optimism that’s quintessentially French. It has a score by Michel Legrand that’s easily his best, offering an almost continuous succession of songs with lyrics by Demy, all written in alexandrines (as is a climactic dinner scene that’s spoken rather than sung); choreography that ranges from mediocre (Norman Maen’s frenchified imitations of Jerome Robbins) to sublime (Gene Kelly’s choreography of his own numbers); and perhaps the most beautiful dovetailing of failed and achieved connections apart from Shakespeare and Jacques Tati’s Playtime, shot during the same period.

When it comes to charting movie genres and traditions, most of this film’s virtues fall off the map. Joseph McBride invited me to contribute to his recently published Book of Movie Lists, and I opted for a list of the ten best jazz films — neither the best films about jazz nor the best examples of filmed jazz but something more rarefied: movies in which the aesthetics of jazz and the aesthetics of film find some happy, mutually supportive meeting ground. The Young Girls of Rochefort certainly qualifies: from Legrand’s improvised piano solos and big-band arrangements to stretches of scat singing and Demy’s allusions to Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Lionel Hampton, this movie swings. Even when the choreography is less than it might have been, Demy’s sweeping cranes and extended pans and intricate mise en scène cook as infectiously as a first-rate rhythm section.

It’s also a musical that periodically defamiliarizes — “makes strange” — the form of the musical. Defying the obsessive symmetry and frontality of Hollywood numbers, dancing extras here move at the periphery of the frame in certain shots. There are two cheerful songs about an ax murder, “The Woman Cut Into Pieces” and another just afterward about policing the crowd near the scene of the crime. And Demy’s clear tributes to Hollywood musicals — On the Town, An American in Paris, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes — wind up making the movie seem more French than American.

Most musicals shift back and forth between story (spoken dialogue) and song-and-dance numbers — sometimes creating queasy transitions just before or after these shifts, when we’re uncertain where we are stylistically. But The Young Girls of Rochefort often daringly places story and musical numbers on the screen simultaneously, mixing them in various ways and in different proportions. One of the stars may be walking down the street, for example, but the pedestrians around her are suddenly dancing, and she slips momentarily in and out of their choreography. This curious mix produces powerful, deeply felt emotions — an exuberance combined with a sublime sense of absurdity, shot through with an almost constant sense of loss, yearning, and even tragedy. Yet the coexistence of this strangeness and this intensity will inevitably make some American viewers laugh in disbelief and regard the whole spectacle as an esoteric piece of camp. (The same problem exists to a lesser extent in two of my favorite American freak musicals, Love Me Tonight and Hallelujah, I’m a Bum, both of which display a related metaphysical impulse to perceive the musical form as a continuous state of delirious being rather than a traditional story with musical eruptions.)

Some American viewers may find it difficult to feel their way into such an aesthetic overload. In France the film was revived regularly even before its 1996 restoration by Demy’s widow, Agnès Varda (who has a walk-on as a nun). And in her wonderful documentary about the film — The Young Girls Turn 25, which I saw at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1993 — we encounter a French teenager with a backpack who proudly and calmly informs us that she carries the CD of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion and the video of Les demoiselles de Rochefort everywhere she goes, unwilling to spend even a night without them. Such a degree of passion about art is bound to seem demented in a “utilitarian” (i.e., money-minded) society such as ours, but it’s entirely compatible with the degree of passion expressed in the film itself. And surely the reluctance of some American filmgoers to go with that kind of flow partly accounts for Miramax’s refusal to allot any advertising budget to the movie’s Chicago engagement.

Received opinion on musicals is that the genre’s greatest achievements — such as the entertaining Astaire-Rogers steamrollers and Singin’ in the Rain — are triumphs of engineering, coordination, and expertise; it’s almost as if we judge this art the way we judge our smart bombs and sporting events. This quantitative aesthetic doesn’t allow for the possibility that a musician with limited technique like Thelonious Monk might be a greater pianist than a virtuoso like Oscar Peterson. And unless you conclude that the only reason for “technique” is to express what you want to say, the technical shortcomings of The Young Girls of Rochefort are bound to be disappointing. The verdict of critic Gary Carey in the late 70s is characteristic: “Unfortunately Demy, who had been so good at choreographing the movements of ordinary people through his camera, does not know how to photograph the choreography of dancers. (He doesn’t have much of an eye as to what is good choreography and what isn’t, either.) The film falls to pieces whenever anyone begins to dance, and since someone is always dancing, it ends as a pile of very pretty rubble.” Pauline Kael wrote in separate articles that “a movie like The Young Girls of Rochefort demonstrates how even a gifted Frenchman who adores American musicals misunderstands their conventions” and “it was obvious from Rochefort that [Demy] had — momentarily, I hope — run dry.”

Made on the heels of Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which enjoyed worldwide success, this extravaganza — which had a much bigger budget than Cherbourg — might well be considered an attempt to do the impossible if one views it as an imitation of the Hollywood musical rather than an inspired appropriation of some of its elements. It would, of course, be unreasonable to expect a facsimile of the Hollywood musical from a filmmaker with no stage or film-musical experience (apart from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and without the resources of a Hollywood studio or an indigenous tradition. But there’s no reason to believe that Demy — a filmmaker with a fully developed style and vision of his own when he made Les demoiselles de Rochefort — intended to reproduce something we already have. An English-language version shot simultaneously — which I’ve never seen, and which has been so scarce since the 60s it may no longer exist — was a commercial prerequisite for the film getting made, but it was the subtitled version that opened in New York in April 1968. It was so poorly received commercially that Demy’s career never fully recovered, and we’ve had to wait 30 years to see the movie again.

The film unfolds over a single weekend. On Friday morning a team of boat, bicycle, and motorcycle salespeople in trucks and on motorcycles and horses, including Etienne (George Chakiris) and Bill (Grover Dale), arrive in Rochefort by ferry. As they set up their stands and stages in the huge city square for the fair on Sunday afternoon, the camera pans, cranes up, then pans again to the studio where Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) and her twin sister Solange (Françoise Dorléac) are giving a combined music and dance class to kids. We discover that Delphine is a ballet teacher and dancer, Solange a composer and singer, and that both dream of meeting their romantic ideals and moving to Paris. (Deneuve and the late Dorléac — who died in a car accident the same year Les demoiselles was released — were real-life sisters but not twins: Dorléac was one year older than Deneuve. This is their only movie together, though both appeared separately in films by François Truffaut and Roman Polanski.)

It turns out that Delphine’s ideal man, whom she’s never met, is an artist and sailor currently stationed in Rochefort, Maxence (Jacques Perrin): the ideal woman he’s painted, whom he’s been searching for across the globe, is a dead ringer for Delphine. His canvas hangs in a local gallery run by Delphine’s unsuccessful suitor, Guillaume (Jacques Riberolles). The sisters have a ten-year-old half brother named Boubou; their mother, Yvonne (Danielle Darrieux), runs the cafe-restaurant in the city square, which Maxence, Etienne, and Bill all frequent. Unbeknownst to the family, Boubou’s father has recently moved back to Rochefort to run a music store; Yvonne had backed out of marrying Simon Dame (Michel Piccoli) years earlier, when she became pregnant with Boubou, because she couldn’t face the prospect of being called Madame Dame. Though Simon knew she’d had twins by a former lover, he’d never seen them, so when Solange comes to his shop and they become acquainted, he has no idea that she’s one of Yvonne’s daughters.

It’s love at first sight when Solange encounters an old friend of Simon Dame — famous American composer and concert pianist Andy Miller (Gene Kelly) — while she’s collecting Boubou from school. She has no idea this man is Miller, whom she wanted to meet so he could hear her piano concerto. They don’t exchange names or addresses, but he has a page from her score, which she inadvertently leaves behind. Meanwhile, when two of the young women in the show planned for the Sunday fair run off with a couple of sailors, Etienne and Bill convince Delphine and Solange to stage a number in their stead, promising them a free ride to Paris afterward….

Apart from the ax murder and periodic dark reminders of the nearby soldiers in training, both of which further develop the theme of thwarted desire, these are the basic elements of the plot, and Yvonne’s cafe on the square is the hub of all the complex comings and goings. (Like many of the buildings in Playtime, this freestanding structure has huge glass windows, allowing us to see much of the surrounding traffic.) But to summarize these intricate moves, characters who are ideally suited keep missing each other as they go about their daily routines; in most cases they don’t even realize that they’re occupying the same city. And even though The Young Girls of Rochefort is on all counts Demy’s most optimistic film — the one in which every character eventually finds the person she or he is looking for — the missed connections preceding this resolution are relentless, and one may still wind up with a feeling of hopeless despair despite the overdetermined happy ending. Indeed, the split second by which Maxence misses Delphine at the cafe before he’s shipped away might well be the most tragic single moment in all Demy’s work, perhaps even surpassing the grisly suicide at the end of Un chambre en ville. By contrast, when the “ideal couple” do eventually meet (an event represented only obliquely) in the film’s final shot, it’s a simple concession to musical- comedy convention, registering only as a sort of offhand diminuendo and postscript; what reverberates more decisively is the sense of dreams just missing realization.

In fact the movie overall leaves one in a unique manic-depressive state, a kind of poetic fugue in which boundless despair and exuberant optimism coexist. This is Demy’s vision of life — Lola and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg are suffused with much the same ambiguous mixture — but thanks to Legrand’s buoyant score and the size of the canvas, The Young Girls of Rochefort conveys it with unparalleled vibrancy and luminosity.

If songs and dances represent fantasy, and everyday activities reality, it can’t be said that Demy ever privileges one over the other; he’s more concerned with how fantasy and reality interact, or fail to interact. One might say that the missed connections in the film represent reality — the characters are too engrossed by everyday life to see that their ultimate dreams are only a block or so away — and that the eventual successful connections represent fantasy, the dreamlike closure of musical comedy. But in fact Demy is a much subtler dialectician, converting the Cartesian principle of French life and culture — “I think, therefore I am” — into “I dream, and dreaming is a part of life, therefore I live.” Furthermore, by staging all his musical numbers in real locations rather than on sets, Demy deliberately mixes his modes, with the result that the missed connections are as much a function of his mise en scène as the chance encounters. A poetic realist as well as a dreamer, Demy confused some audiences and critics throughout his career, much as his mentor Tati did, by keeping a firmer grip on the realities he was filming than many were prepared to see at the time. For viewers trained to regard fantasy as an alternative to reality rather than part of the reality of consciousness, Demy’s mixture is bound to seem jarring — though it may also jar one into perceiving a richer reality than most entertainments acknowledge.

The film’s chance encounters and missed connections are expressed not only spatially but musically, in the score and in Demy’s delicately crafted lyrics. Maxence’s song about his search is reprised as Delphine’s song about her own longings; Simon’s account of his lost love becomes, with appropriate alterations in the lyrics, Yvonne’s own regrets about having abandoned him; Solange’s piano concerto takes on lyrics after Andy intercepts the score. Many other reprises are less obvious than these. The song that goes with policing the crowd, for instance, reprises and adds lyrics to a secondary theme from the opening dance number in the city square. Both sequences emphasize community over individual destiny: here, as elsewhere in the film, Legrand and Demy enrich the meaning of other scenes by playing with the emotional and thematic effects of rhyme.

Masterpieces normally connote perfection, but it might be argued that some of the imperfections in The Young Girls of Rochefort enhance the overall experience by bringing it closer to life, making the actors seem more vulnerable. (Other imperfections, like the product plugs during the climactic fair — another parallel with Playtime, given some of its neon signs — are simple reminders of the difficulties of making big-budget French movies.) Darrieux, for instance, is the only cast member who does her own singing, though the dubbing of the others is usually carried out well, with the actors’ singing voices carefully matched to their speaking voices (including Kelly’s spoken French). More artificial are Delphine’s and Solange’s performances on trumpet and flute.

Yet given some of Demy’s original plans for the movie, it’s a miracle it turned out as well as it did. Before he selected Rochefort as his location, he considered making “Les demoiselles d’Avignon,” “Les demoiselles d’Hyeres,” “Les demoiselles de Toulouse,” and “Les demoiselles de La Rochelle,” among others. Rochefort won out because of the size of its central square, though production designer Bernard Evein found it necessary to repaint 40,000 square meters of the city’s facades. (Still, director André Téchiné has cited the movie as one of the best ever made about this part of France.) Even more improbable, Demy originally thought of casting Brigitte Bardot and Geraldine Chaplin as the twin sisters.

Demy also planned to make more extensive references to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg by casting Nino Castelnuovo, the hero of that film, as Bill. When Castelnuovo proved unavailable, Demy had to change the script. But it’s worth pointing out that the offscreen victim of the ax murder is Lola, the title heroine of Demy’s first feature, and there are many other allusions to earlier Demy films throughout: According to critic Jean-Pierre Berthomé, the three successive endings of The Young Girls of Rochefort replicate the final shots of Bay of Angels, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and Lola. And both Lola and The Young Girls of Rochefort associate Americans with white convertibles.

Given the extraordinary lift Gene Kelly gives the movie, it’s hardly surprising that Demy wanted him from the outset, though he had to wait two years before Kelly was free of other commitments. Indeed, Kelly brings to the movie the kind of boundless elation musicals exist to produce, as do Chakiris and Dale, the other two American dancers featured, though to a lesser extent. Indeed, it’s the combination of this spirit with the soul of the French cast that gives The Young Girls of Rochefort its distinctive flavor. Like the pairing of Jean Seberg with Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard’s Breathless, or the mating of a David Goodis plot with Charles Aznavour’s mug in Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, this combination provides the kind of combustion that powered the French New Wave and the general reinvention of movie energy in the 1960s. Godard and Truffaut may have watered the roots, but it was Demy who produced this relatively late blooming flower, combining the virtues of the Hollywood musical with French poetic realism to produce these fresh, colorful petals.

Published on 27 Nov 1998 in Featured Texts, Featured Texts, by jrosenbaum

Hortz Fur Dëhn Stekëhn West, from Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh, by Magma

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh (MDK) is an album released by French progressive rock band Magma in 1973. MDK is Magma's most famous and stylistically acclaimed record; and although it has not become a commercial success, the band continues to present this 'classic' or 'symphonic rock' material to audiences. Magma's original recording of MDK was refused by their record company at the time, it was later published as Mekanïk Kommandöh.

Musical aspects

MDK is a song-cycle for small choir with baritone soloist accompanied by a jazz ensemble (including brass/woodwind choir) doubling on orchestral percussion. The sound of MDK is fantastically original- yet also ironically, even perversely traditional- because to a large degree MDK's sound is aggressively Teutonic due in large part to the use of antecedents found in Carl Orff's faux-antique Carmina Burana song cycle, particularly the extensive percussion resources. Further contributing to this powerful effect is MDK's orchestral foundation contrasting a variety of separate choirs. The primary choir is 'mixed voices'- primarily mezzos, sometimes subdivided- and a second choir of mixed horns and woodwinds. Above all is the arresting vocal sound- an almost unique blend of techniques from both the European operatic and Afro-gospel vocal traditions- which gives this music its dramatic 'Heroic' character.

MDK incorporates the Carmina's percussive orchestra with other rhythmic developments of 20th-century art-music (the use of piano as a percussion sound, syncopated rhythmic "phasing") within the larger form of a song cycle, i.e., a suite of unified and seamless music sung attacca- without audible breaks between the named sections. The effect sculpts a complex, angular and at times ecstatically propulsive orchestral sound especially suited to the oppressive and militaristic storylines of what is a desperately dystopian tale. This martial sound even projects something of the essential aggression and savagery found in later "Black/Death Metal" styles. Consider MDK's delirious falsettos and obsessive, growling repetitions of distorted rhythmic cells- as well the Middle-European mass of the composer's synthetic Kobaian language as embodied by his choir- against any other music of alienation.

Throughout these novel riches and depths MDK remain essentially a cabaret piece, presentable onstage by less than a dozen people. European art-song elements fuse over light 'electric-jazz' textures, with crisp yet momentary energetic rock strophes. Composer Vander credits the "spiritual" aspect of John Coltrane's output as his primary inspiration, and the MDK choirs are nothing if not volcanic. Yet apart from a similarly essential, broad and quite idiosyncratic virtuosity, MDK's sound is essentially a melodic one-and more reminiscent of some of Miles Davis' "Bitches' Brew" benedictions, than any of Coltrane's celebratory catharses.

Concept

As with most of composer Christian Vander's apocalyptic music, Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh is sung completely in his synthetic language Kobaïan. MDK is story of the prophet 'Nebehr Güdahtt' who delivers to the people of the Earth this insight: If they want to be saved from themselves, they must morally cleanse themselves to worship of the Kobaïan supreme being, 'Kreuhn Kohrmahn', by learning sacred "Zeuhl Wortz" music (already wildly popular on Kobaïa, of course). In response to this blatant cultural imperialism the people of the Earth initially march against Güdahtt, but slowly like any true believer Güdahtt attracts enough of a base of adherents to survive, to sing the Kobaian music.

MDK is conceptually the last movement of the trilogy "Theusz Hamtaahk", nevertheless it was the first of them to be released. The second, "Ẁurdah Ïtah" was released in 1974, and the first, "Theusz Hamtaahk" - which apparently translates to "Time Of Hatred" and narrates a period of fanatical demands between Kobaïa and Earth - has been part of Magma's live repertoire since the 1970s^[2] and has so far only been released on live recordings, first on Retrospektiw (Parts I+II) in 1981.

This story follows a Kobaïan party sent to Earth in order to bring the enlightenment achieved on Kobaïa to the rest of Humanity. The reaction to the Kobaïans' message is mixed, and Earth authorities arrest the party, causing Kobaïa to declare war and threaten to make use of their ultimate weapon (the Mekanïk Destruktïw Komandöh). The resolution of the trilogy remains cloudy. Some see evidence of all Earth joining in the Zeuhl Wortz, while others read evidence of Earth being destroyed. Vander's special relationship to the Kobaian language and his unique access to the Kobaian ambassadors has not yet made the situation any more clear.

Girl from Ipanema, La Mesa Junior High School Band

Untitled from Q Chat on Vimeo.

Lykke Li sings I Follow Rivers

Oh I beg you, can I follow
Oh I ask you why not always
Be the ocean where unravel
Be my only, be the water and I'm wading
You're my river running high, run deep run wild

[Chorus]
I I follow, I follow you deep sea baby
I follow you
I I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey
I follow you

He a message, I'm the runner
He's the rebel, I'm the daughter waiting for you
You're my river running high, run deep run wild

[Chorus]
I I follow, I follow you deep sea baby
I follow you
I I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey
I follow you

You're my river running high, run deep run wild
I, I follow, I follow you deep sea baby,
I follow you
I, I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey,
I follow you
I, I follow, I follow you deeps sea baby,
I follow you
I, I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey,
I follow you

[Repeat till end]
I, I follow, I follow you deeps sea baby,
I follow you
I, I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey,
I follow you

Lykke Li sings Sadness is a Blessing

My wounded rhymes make silent cries tonight
My wounded rhymes make silent cries tonight
And I keep it like a burning(?)
I'm longing from a distance
I ranted, I pleaded, I beg him not to go
For sorrow, the only lover I've ever known
Sadness is a blessing
Sadness is a pearl
Sadness is my boyfriend  
Oh, sadness I'm your girl
These scars of mine make wounded rhymes tonight
I dream of times when you were mine so I  
Can keep it like a haunting  
Heart beating close to mine
Sadness is a blessing  
Sadness is a pearl
Sadness is my boyfriend
Oh, sadness I'm your girl
I ranted, I pleaded, I beg him not to go
For sorrow, the only lover I've ever known
Every night I rant, I plead, I beg him not to go
Will sorrow be the only lover I can call my own?
Sadness is a blessing
Sadness is a pearl  
Sadness is my boyfriend  
Oh, sadness I'm your girl  
Sadness is my boyfriend  
Oh, sadness I'm your girl  
Oh, sadness I'm your girl


 

Koyaanisqatsi - a movie by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass

MGMDigitalMedia on 10 Dec 2008:

An art-house circuit sensation, this feature-length documentary is visually arresting and possesses a clear, pro-environmental stance. Koyaanisqatsi is composed of nature imagery, manipulated in slow motion, double exposure or time lapse, juxtaposed with footage of humans' devastating environmental impact on the planet. The message of director Godfrey Reggio is clear: humans are destroying the planet, and all of human progress is pointlessly foolish.

Strunz & Farah - "Candela"

Lana Del Rey singing "Video Games"

Morrissey - Everyday is like Sunday (Live 2004)

Ian Shaw singing his jazz version of "Alone Again, Naturally" by Gilbert O'Sullivan

And here's Gilbert O'Sullivan himself:

Anne-Sophie Mutter playing Vivaldi's The Four Seasons - Winter 1st Movement

Alice Sara Ott playing Liszt's "Grandes études de Paganini No. 3" nicknamed "La Campanella"

Maya Deren - The Very Eye Of Night (1958)

 Dancers, shown in photographic negative, perform a series of ballet moves, solos, pas de deux, larger groupings. The dancers glide and rotate untroubled by gravity against a slowly changing starfield background. Their movements are accompanied by music scored for a small ensemble of woodwind and percussion. 

1958

The Very Eye of Night

16 mm

15 minutes

In collaboration with Metropolitan Opera Ballet School;[12] assistant director: Harrison Starr III; music by Teiji Itō[11]