Music of the Ox

Over the last few weeks I’ve fre­quently found myself drifting to sleep to the sound of Amiina, an Icelandic musical quartet with a dreamy, min­im­alist sound. I’ve also been listening to múm, who I may have men­tioned on erhebung earlier, Library Tapes, a group whose backlist I have only just started to explore, and Jóhann Jóhannsson, an artist with a very pleasing sound (I’m listening to ‘Bangkok Norðursins’ from Dís right now).

The Year of the Ox just ended, the Year of the Tiger just began; fire­works are still exploding (Explo­sions in the Sky, Friday Night Lights — good stuff), and will continue to explode for a few more days. Last year I listened to a lot of music, and I’ve been going through my Last.fm account, con­sol­id­ating my memories. There was a lot of Regina Spektor (I can’t remember when I first heard her, but it was love on first listen), quite a bit of Laura Veirs (a fas­cin­a­tion with Viers’ voice has been creeping up on me slowly), not enough Basia Bulat (I heard Bulat while walking to work in Mianyang one day, and pro­ceeded to listen to the same track all morning), lately a con­sid­er­able amount of Emily Haines (as with Spektor, love at first listen, and as with Spektor, I’m not sure when I first heard her voice, although it might have been while I was in South Korea, after Chris recom­mended Metric), a smidgin of Char­lotte Gains­bourg (daughter of Serge Gains­bourg), and a dose, here and there, of Seu Jorge (thanks to Hugo for that one).

Here is what I wrote about Jorge a week or so ago:

I won’t ever tire of listening to Seu Jorge’s Por­tugese rendi­tions of songs ori­gin­ally sung by David Bowie. What grabs me is in part the genius of the ori­ginals, in part of the beauty of the trans­lated words, words I under­stand only tent­at­ively, each clause or sentence calling on memories of the English, but remaining, always, a little mysterious.

These are some of the Por­tuguese lyrics to ‘Starman’:

Adeus amor
Não sabia que horas eram as luzes eram baixas oh como
Debrucei-​me para trás em meu rádio oh oh
Alguns gato foi deitada abaixo um pouco de rock n roll lotta soul, disse ele
Então o som alto pareceu desvanece-​se uma ade
Voltou como uma voz lenta em uma onda de Hase ha fase
Jive que DJ não werent que foi nebulosa cósmica

Há um Starman waiting in the sky
Hed gostaria de vir conhecer-​nos
Mas ele acha que ele ia explodir nossas mentes
[…]

It’s a beau­tiful version, full of seductive sounds creating very vivid imagery. I like, in a way, that in these versions, for me, the meaning of the lyrics is at a remove from the music.

Also, recently, a lot of Beirut. Aston­ish­ingly beau­tiful music. The Flying Club Cup has been played almost every day for the last couple of weeks, either at work or at home. Beirut can be con­nected to Arcade Fire via Owen Pallett (formerly Final Fantasy), and then from Arcade Fire it is only a short leap to David Bowie (the version of ‘Life on Mars’ recorded at Fashion Rocks is spine-​tinglingly good). I imagine this concert was memorable.

Broad­cast & The Focus Group Invest­igate Witch Cults of the Radio Age was an unusual col­lab­or­a­tion between one group I knew of, one I didn’t. I listened to it a lot, for a time, and need to revisit it. When I first got it, it was, like Amiina, some­thing I listened to before sleeping; but I should listen to it while walking, to see what thoughts it inspires when released into the wild. (Walking, music, pho­to­graphy — I am happy to think about the first of these things, right now; the third is off-​limits, thoughts of cameras and images cur­rently creating a numbness.)

In my mind, that album is clustered together with albums by Elegi, Natural Snow Build­ings, and Max Richter. Richter’s music is dense with meaning, but light on the ears; pos­sessing density, but touching gently. I always feel that the com­pos­i­tions are like self-​contained poems. I hope to be listening to Richter a lot more this year. Natural Snow Build­ings have a darker hand, perhaps, but are no less beau­tiful for it. Their album Ghost Folks can be down­loaded in its entirety from Last.fm.

Related to those three, to dif­fering degrees, is Philip Glass. I listened to Koy­aan­isqatsi very fre­quently last year. The music is so effort­lessly, tire­lessly good, and the world does feel, “out of balance”, so the tracks became, at moments, con­cil­itary: like old friends who nod in silent agree­ment at some mutually acknow­ledged problem. Other music by Glass that stood out this year: his score for Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula, and also his score (from 2002) for The Hours (I had failed to make the con­nec­tion with The Reader — has Stephen Daldry really only made two films in ten years?), a film about Virginia Woolf (I have been listening to a dram­at­isa­tion of The Waves, and have also been won­dering if I should read, again, To the Light­house).

On a com­pletely dif­ferent note, there was also a lot of Tegan and Sara and Belle & Sebastian, this year, according to Last.fm. I can remember the Tegan and Sara (it was some­thing about Shanghai, and cleaning, and needing to feel upbeat — “I feel you in my heart…”); the Belle & Sebastian, however, is explic­able (I have listened to them since before uni­ver­sity — 1997, or there­abouts; and I always listen to them, peri­od­ic­ally), but a bit strange (I don’t remember listening to them much over the last six months; I don’t remember my nos­talgia, or cravings, pointing me in that dir­ec­tion). Also con­nected to this is a fairly recent burst of Pulp (‘Mile End’ still sounds so vividly alive). (From ‘Mile End’ my mind goes straight to my time in London, nat­ur­ally, and to a com­pletely dif­ferent set of memories, but not memories that seem to have a dis­tinctive musical signature.)

And so ends, a little abruptly, a little glance at the music of the last year. There is more, I am certain, but that is what comes to mind, right now. May the Year of the Tiger be equally intriguing.