On the Playlist 19OCT2018…

Listening to an interesting album from Joshua Van Tassel called Crossworlds. This album was released in conjunction with a short book. Each piece on the album corresponds with a chapter in the book. The story is about an old lady defending her island from some force not of this world. The album contains something that looks like a giant squid and I know that Joshua has a thing for giant squids. Anyway, very pleasant music.

Joshua Van Tassel - Crosswinds

On the Playlist 18OCT2018…

Recently discovered a Euro House/Nu Jazz artist called St. Germain. Got a couple albums and am enjoying listening to the album by the same name as the artist. This album features a lot of African musicians and instruments which is great by me. St. Germain is a stage name for a French musician, Ludovic Navarre. I guess if I looked closely at the album cover the face is in the shape of the African continent - subtle!

St. Germain - St. Germain

On the Playlist 15OCT2018…

Listening to a project my Jay Crocker who is originally from Calgary but lives in Nova Scotia now. This project is MUIXX and the album "Joyful Talk" it is an interesting blend of pop like sounds but with an avante garde twist to it. Jay uses homemade digital instruments but they are all recorded analog so there is a bit of a rawness to the sound.

MUIXX - Joyful Talk

On the Playlist 9OCT2018…

Listening to Clara Venice and her album "Electric Dream." Her music is dreamy bouncy pop music. Clara Venice is also the only musician in the world who plays the Theremin as instrument in her music. She also plays a bunch of other instruments as well but it is the Theremin which she is famous for. She is from Canada (of course - ha ha!). Her performances are apparently quite something and got even more interesting as she incorporated her LED Twitter shoes which the audience can interact with through Twitter. According to her bio on her website her signature visual style variefs from 21st century pop princess to Harajuku spacegirl as she draws listeners into her playful and melodic world. The best song from this album is "Ordinary Day" which is a very fun tune. 

Clara Venice - Electric Dream - "Ordinary Day"

On the Playlist 8OCT2018…

Listening to the Syzygys today. They are a Japanese duo that plays pop music using a microtonal 42 tone scale. They play organ and violin. At first the music sounds like J-pop bouncy light music but the tones in the melody are just a bit off. This is the microtonal scale at work. The notes just don't correspond to the do, re, me, fa, so, la, ti do that we are all used to. It is interesting to listen to and after a bit your ear kind of adjusts and gets used to it. A fun listen.

SYZYGYS - Complete Studio Recordings

On the Playlist 5OCT2018…

Since I was listening to Clarinet music pulled out Vox Terra by another Vancouver based clarinetist Chris Inguinati. I don't know this artist very well as he came up in the Vancouver scene after I left. It is interesting that Vancouver is a good place for clarinetists and this relates to the fact that one of the worlds best custom clarinet makers is based in Vancouver. Backun is one of the premier brands of high-end clarinets and they are based in Vancouver. Back to the music... this album contains pieces that are inspired by many different musical styles and while the clarinet is front and center there are accompanying instruments. This music while not mainstream is bit more accessible that a lot of improvisational new music that I usually listen to.

Chris Iguanti - Vox Terra

On the Playlist 4OCT2018…

Listened to "Letting the Blue Note Settle" by Francois Houle and my favorite track from this album Rubber Time. I studies with Francois Houle when I was in Graduate School. He is a brilliant clarinetist who came up through classical training and then discovered jazz and improvisational music. As something to keep me focussed when I was in graduate school I picked up my clarinet playing again after stopping in high school. Francois was great because not only was he consumate in his technique he encourage me to explore and improvise on the instrument. I remember a session where all we did was play percussive rhythms using the keys of our clarinets for the whole hour. This class actually was the genesis of this tune Rubber Time that he released while I was his student. I still keep in touch with Francois and make a point of going to his gigs when I am in Vancouver. Last time I was there I even took the kids to a gig that was fully improvisational music with a violin, cello and clarinet. Despite it being quite out there the kids seemed to actually get it a bit. Anyway, you likely won't find this tune on spotify but if you ask me I am happy to share it.

Francois Houle - Letting the Blue Note Settle - "Rubber Time"

On the Playlist 3OCT2018…

Listening to The Cranberries album Bury the Hatchet. This is their fourth album and one I have just discovered buried deep down in my music library. Funnily I picked it today based on the album cover and then one or two songs in was thinking I recognize that voice and realized I was listening to the Cranberries. Been a long time since I listened to them. I first became aware of them in the late 80s and early 90s when I was in that phase of alt-rock in my life.

The Cranberries - Bury the Hatchet

On the Playlist 2OCT2018…

A bit of the Dead today. Got a new CD recently which honestly I bought because I like the cover and heh, you can always use a bit more of the Dead in a music collection. Listening to Grateful Dead - Pacific Northwest '73-'74. Fairly standard sets here with an extended version of "Playing In the Band" that goes on for 46 minutes. Pretty much a sucker for native art from the Pacific Northwest.

Grateful Dead - Pacific Northwest '73-'74

I was looking at a print the other day from one of my favorite Pacific Northwest Artists - Roy Henry Vickers. I have one of his limited edition prints and this one would have been a great addition to a collection for any Deadhead. Not cheap but way cool.

Roy Henry Vickers - Grateful Dead Post

On the Playlist 1OCT2018…

Back in the office after what seems like an eternity of travel. Didn't do much music listening on this batch of travel. So yesterday put on some music and was listening to Lennon Legend - The Very Best of John Lennon. This is from the trove of CDs that my wife had and is one of the few that was able to rip through without any problems. A nice mix of favorites by John Lennon.

John Lennon - Lennon Legend the Very Best of John Lennon

On the Playlist 12SEP2018…

Post yesterday got me thinking about another band from my experience at the Rock Cirkus - Blue Oyster Cult. I have a lot of tapes with their music but when I searched the digital library I only found one - "Veterans of the Psychic War" which was from a scene of the Heavy Metal Movie. The scene featuring this track was of a grumpy NY cabbie. Love the final line "two-day ride with one hell of a tip". Anyway, put the Heavy Metal Movie Soundtrack on for a big dose of 1980s rock. I'll have to add some Blue Oyster Cult to my next music purchase on Amazon.

Heavy Metal Soundtrack

On the Playlist 11SEP2018…

Carrying on the thread from the other day listening to the second ever album I ever purchased and another one that was heavily influenced by my older cousin - Heart - Little Queen. Although the band hails from the Seattle area it was when they moved to Canada that they had their earliest success. Little Queen is their second album (sort of) after Dreamboat Annie. The heart of the group (bad pun there) are the two sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson. Their first album was recorded in Vancouver at Mushroom studios which is just a couple blocks down from the apartment I own there. 

I remember seeing them live at Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium at the Rock Circus on August 26, 1979. I would have been 14 years old at the time and worked at the stadium as a hawker in the stands. The Rock Circus was absolute mayhem and I made about $400 that day which was a lot of money back then. The hawkers were absolutely forbidden from going down on the floor of the stadium but we all knew that we was where all the serious stoners and drunks were and thus where the real money was to be made. So, we would ditch our uniforms and go down there anyway. Just had to keep an eye out for our supervisors and not get caught. I made several large tips from people who were so out of it they had no idea what they were doing - ah the 70s. It was quite eye-opening to say the least. Good thing my parents had no idea what it was all about as they would have freaked out!. Working as a hawker in the stadium during the summer lead to a part-time job in the winter working at a concession stand at the hockey rink next to my high school as it was run by the same company. I made some good impressions with my hard work ethic at the stadium. Worked at the stadium one more year before moving on to better jobs but none quite as fun since I attended every major event at the stadium for 2 years. 

Heart - Little Queen

On the Playlist 10SEP2018…

Jackpot! Found a stash of old CDs that my wife had collected. They are a mix of cheap Chinese knock-offs of varying quality. Half of them can't even play through but I am working through them and ripping them. Decided to listen to some of the ones that I hadn't heard before and discovered All Saints and their album by the same name. A British Girl band similar to Spice Girls. A couple songs on their album were catchy and a couple I had heard before. Not my cup of tea but a fun listen.

All Saints - All Saints

On the Playlist 7SEP2018…

Keeping with the string of listening the last couple days today I put on Alan Parsons and I Robot. This is the first album I ever purchased and I still own it although I have since purchased the CD version of it. It is also another album cover by Hipgnosis. It was several years later when I was working with Quintiles and the division I worked for was headquartered in Paris that I noticed the cover was from the Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris. Love this album and in particular the track "Nucleus" which is an instrumental track on the album. 

I got turned on to this album by one of my cousins. She is a couple years older than I am and she used to come and visit from time to time when I was a teenager. She was cool! Actually a bit too cool for my parents as she had some run-ins with drugs and was considered a bad influence in our household so my parents limited my brother and my exposure to her. She listened to a lot of music and that rubbed off on me a bit so when she came to visit she inevitably had been to the music store and had some new albums she wanted to listen to.

The Alan Parsons Project - I Robot

On the Playlist 6SEP2018…

A small note about yesterdays album got me thinking. I always loved LPs for the album covers and there were often times I would buy an album strictly due to its cover. At one point I was a big fan of album covers and in particular the work of one company - Hipgnosis which was an English based design firm that specialized in album covers. They did the cover for Peter Gabriel's album yesterday as well as the album I am listening to today. Interestingly, Hipgnosis was formed by two Royal College of Art students who were friends with Pink Floyd when they were asked to do the cover for their second album, Saucerful of Secrets.

Anyway, I digress, the album I am listening to today is 10cc Bloody Tourists and that album cover was also done by Hipgnosis. My favorite song from this album is "From Rochdale to Ocho Rios" which has a nice light beat to it. The main hit from this album was "Dreadlock Holiday" which was the last number one hit for the band. This was the third record I ever bought. It was playing in the Sam the Record Man in Meadowlark Mall shortly after it came out. I liked the song that was playing and of course the album cover so I bought it. The first album I bought when it first came out from listening to it in a record store. 

10CC - Bloody Tourists

On the Playlist 5SEP2018…

A carry on from yesterday's post. As I was thinking about how groundbreaking the music of Jean Michel Jarre was and his use of electronics, it got me thinking to how far music has come and specifically with the very first samplers and sequencers and how ubiquitous they are in music now - so much so that there is now an app for the iphone that replicates the functions of one of the very first sampler/sequencer the Fairlight CMI. Jean Michel Jarre was one of the first to use it but the first mainstream artist to use it was Peter Gabriel. He formed the first company to distribute these machines in Europe and first used it on his third solo album (a great album in itself). With that backdrop this evening I was listening to Peter Gabriel's fourth solo album also know Security as it has some amazing effects and samples on it and most of them done with the Fairlight CMI. A couple tracks stand out for me on this album including "San Jacinto", "I Have the Touch" and "The Rhythm of the Heat". This was also one of the very earliest fully digital recordings ever made.

Peter Gabriel - Security

On the Playlist 4Sep2018…

After a weekend spend up at Yosemite camping and seeing the stars like we never see them around Irvine it reminded me of the planetarium in Edmonton and the laser light shows there set to the music of Jean Michel Jarre. His seminal album Oxygene was a staple of planetariums around the world in the late 70s and early 80s. The electronic music that he recorded himself in his own studio went perfectly with laser light shows with the planetarium stars as backdrop. A group of friends even bought a star on the wall located in Ursa Minor (major props if you can guess what name we used). So was playing it this evening and to my surprise I was able to remember just about every passage to the whole album. Great stuff!

Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene

On the Playlist 25AUG2018…

Out of town for the last couple days so haven't posted. Sitting in my office on a Saturday afternoon working on a monitoring report and listening to music. As you may have noticed from my playlist I am not an avid Country music fan but this one is what I would call Country music or maybe Western - not sure the difference. I discovered this album from a snowboarding video that had an amazing soundtrack to it including the album "Do Wrong Right" from the Devil Makes Three. This is the fourth album from this Santa Cruz band. I really enjoy the title track but all of the songs on this album are great. They also do a good rendition of Statesboro Blues.

The Devil Makes Three - Do Wrong Right

On the Playlist 21AUG2018…

Was listening to Imagine Dragons today and while this is a post of what was on my playlist it is also, in this case, something that isn't likely to be on my playlist again. So, I was listening to Imagine Dragons, and this is a bit-perfect rip of a CD which is to say a perfect copy of the CD, and thought that the sound quality was terrible. I checked settings and compared some other tracks in my library and confirmed that it just sounded terrible. Lots of distortion and the music just wasn't clear at all. I checked a bunch of different tracks from a couple of their albums that I have and they were all the same. Sounded like AM radio - terrible. I hadn't noticed it that much when I listened to them previously as I was mostly paying attention to their hit songs. This seemed worse than most modern music that is highly compressed in an effort to sound loud which is bad enough. I am not sure if this is their "thing" or their "sound" but it sounded awful. So while I was listening to them I am no longer a fan if this is what they produce for sound quality.

Imagine Dragons - Evolve

On the Playlist 20AUG2018…

Cello Metal - three classically trained cellists got together and formed a metal band called Apocalyptica. Hailing from Finland they started as a Metallica cover band using Cellos in place of guitars and then evolved to doing their own original music. Their latest album called Shadowmaker released in 2015. Now that is something different.

Apocalyptica - Shadowmaker