My week at the front

Music Lane

It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

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Well, here it is Saturday afternoon and what have I got to show for the week.
1. Van Morrison "His Band and the Street Choir" from the budget racks - slowly replacing my long gone Morrison collection starting from Astral Weeks. "Tupelo Honey" next, somewhere down the line.
2. Riley Lee "Autumn Field" - newly released Volume 4 in his series of shakuhachi pieces from the traditional Zen reportoire. Great playing and a good recording from the Australian Tall Poppies label.
3. Omar Faruk Tekbilek "One Truth" - latest from the Turkish multi-instrumentalist/virtuoso. Nice recording and some good music. Jim and Allan might appreciate this one - middle eastern on steroids with a real virtuoso set of Turkish musicians and some western ring-ins including Adam Del Monte on flamenco guitar on the first track - more nuevo flamenco than traditional but well played. Hasan Isikkut's kanun - a harp - is brilliant as always. There are times when you think it's a very fast steel-string guitarist playing. As for Tekbilek, a virtuoso on oud, ney flute, and percussion of various sorts. It's bad when someone is this good on one instrument, it's downright obscene when they can play that well on a myriad of instruments as well as write nice tunes into the bargain.
Then this morning:
4. Thelonius Monk "Monkism" - a cheapo reissue of a 1954 French solo monk recording. I bought it because it had a version of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" on it and I have fond memories of a Monk performance of this song from an old 2 LP set on Fantasy years ago. Only played it once so far but not impressed - the piano tone is very soft - not incisive - and didn't involve me. Don't knoe whether that is a fault of the piano, the original recording, the remastering, or just Monk having an off day. It's probably obvious in retrospect why it was released at budget price.
And finally
5. Jon Hassell "Fascinoma" - only played once so far also but that's enough to know it's going to be a stayer. A bit laid back for lunchtime when I spun it but it will go on again tonight when the time and mood are more appropriate.
Overall score: 4 good out of 5. Not bad for a hard week but oh, the pain of having to continue to listen to new music :-)
David

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Parts Connexion

Topic - My week at the front - David Aiken 23:28:59 01/07/00 (1)

Re: My week at the front - Jim Willis 05:43:12 01/08/00 (0)

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