Glen Hansard

High Hope
Tender Mercies
Her Mercy
There's No Mountain
  - Glen Hansard

Departure Songs - We Lost The Sea

Cat - Hiroshi Suzuki
Jazz Impressions of Eurasia - Dave Brubeck
Africa - Pharoah Sanders

Blood Mountain - Mastodon
Alice In Hell - Annihilator
Unquestionable Presence - Athiest

Mustt Mustt - slowly exploring more of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. This record was very ambient and put me in an easy mood.

There was a beating heart on stage. And now there isn't. Hansard and his music was always hanging around in my playlist throughout the last decade. There is this abrupt change in tone and mood that I crave every now and then, and his music almost always comes to my mind as a start. Never disappoints. I was hoping to see him live last year, but missed that out. The beauty of art is that it keeps giving, and we only have to let it become what it is and in turn shape our own association with it. Stitch stories with a time and a place that then eventually fades away. 

We Lost The Sea - so good, both studio and live. Great energy. I watched the documentary on David Shaw after this, and while some endeavours look pointless - there is an utmost clarity with which people go forward undertaking really dangerous missions. That needs to be respected.

Been getting into a lot of climbing and mountaineering docs. Especially the alpine style of climbing. Opened up all sorts of climbing vernacular and truly an experience without actually climbing :) Eg., "Bivvying on a portaledge" - how these alpine climbers setup camp on a vertical face of a wall is just mindblowing. These three documentaries were absolutely epic. 

The Dawn Wall
The Alpinist
Meru

Reminds me of the lyrics to "There's no mountain" by Hansard.

But we climb it, and we scale it
And when the wind and the weather are working together
I knew that we could make it
And we see it, and we take it
We set out unready, unworthy and unsteady
For all we now leave in our wake

There’s no mountain great or small you can’t climb
There’s no mountain you can’t move or you can’t climb

Monk

Thelonious Monk!

After having sunk deep into his work over the past several months, there is only fatigue and disbelief - I came out with a better understanding of what makes an artist tick. When artists stick to their guns and ooze authenticity in every shred of their existence, what impression it could make on others. My choice of words (or lack of) is understandable - to me of course. 

Percussion with piano and a wild free way of playing it. Its quite amazing.

There is this NewYorker piece about how Monk was constantly being pestered to follow the anchors way of doing things, and it sheds a whole another light on the business side of artistry. 

Monk, Mingus, Coltrane & Miles - breathtaking body of work. I'm gonna pause until my feverish mind is drawn out of this huge gravity well of jazz. Very inspiring and rewarding.

----

Sepultura are signing off after 4 decades of great music. It was amazing to catch them live for one last time and they absolutely killed it. Loved their energy and dedication. 

Like a river

Open Passageways - All Them Witches
Warflower - The Mayan Factor
Regenerator - King Buffalo

Striving to keep things impersonal - to liberate the mind and to keep it away from petty distractions and superficialities. 

"Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being."

- Bertrand Russell

Jazz Kissa

As a metalhead, I sort of had an internal self confession a while ago - this is it. The world of metal is so wide and tall, an entire lifetime can be spent and I would still be dancing around with sub par knowledge (if the pursuit of such is even meaningful?). There was a point where I was even considering to become a metal historian and maybe start my own zine or something. Or get a degree in sociology and write a thesis on metal subculture! I was digging deep into Peruvian underground metal scene and mixing my playlists up with the ones from Japan. And what a world of discovery it was becoming. There is so much amazing music out there. If only I could take it all. But the gongs of time only gets heavier and it has a tight leash on all of us. Years slip by and all the accumulated knowledge needs to be returned back. 

Now, the self confession part - while pure and pristine at that point - was just plain wrong. You see, it was all an act to convince myself of the journey I was undertaking. While I have a fair tolerance of all kinds of music, metal dented me in ways I couldn't ever imagine. So what next then ?

Black Sabbath has been in heavy rotation since the prince of darkness passed away. What a career. Anyways, there was this particular track from their live album - Wicked World, which had a very unique effect on me. Bill Ward's drum solo was amazing and I was craving to find more such extended solos/improvisations which had the same mood as this one. Jazz was always in the periphery for me, and somehow I ended up in that part of the world. What began as a simple craving for a certain style of percussion ended up with me becoming a Jazzhead!

So for the past few months, I've been only listening to Jazz and its the only thing I want to explore. Occasionally I get tempted to just blast Slayer - but a mysterious force nudges me to start my day with Jazz.

As an "avowed dilettante" (a phrase I'm borrowing from somewhere I don't remember), these are the ones I thoroughly enjoyed. I keep coming back to Coltrane and Miles a lot. What an artist!
Somehow the usual recommendation of Kind of Blue didn't feel too accessible to me. I love music where percussion plays a big role as it keeps things tight and anchors the overall mood. But now that my ears is tuned to the sound of all these instruments - Kind of Blue does sound amazing. But I still prefer the middle to late years of Miles.

Miles Davis -  In A Silent Way, Sketches Of Spain
Joe Henderson & Alice Coltrane - The Elements (trippiest jazz I've heard so far, especially the track - "Earth")
Rudresh Mahanthappa - Bird Calls
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme (Psalm was just amazing. A musical narration of a prayer and just showed how far Coltrane was taking his music)
Thelonious Monk - Straight, No Chaser

So far its been a very rewarding journey of exploration and diving deep into a native African American art form which has been embraced all over. Japanese and Polish jazz scenes are amazing too. I hope to one day pay a visit to one of Jazz Kissa when in Japan.

Tool, Opeth and Ne Obliviscaris live shows this year were amazing. 
I now need to make time to explore local Jazz gigs too.

 

Thank you Opeth

This band has been a huge gateway into a lot of things metal. More than a decade ago, I listened to some of their tracks from Damnation record and it was by far the most accessible. After multiple repeated attempts to dig into their sound, it clicked one fine morning. I don't even remember when that happened. Probably a couple of years ago. I should have written it down! knowing how significant of an event it would be. My entire view on metal music as a whole opened up due to Opeth. There were other key groups as well. Tool, Agalloch, and Dream Theater come to mind. Opeth's discography is so wide and dynamic that picking a record to listen and appreciate became an almost frustrating task. Things just didn't work for me until I re-oriented myself and uncluttered my mind to sit through a random album in its entirety. I loved the cover art of In Cauda Venenum and with a keen hope to not miss out on how the metal community regards Opeth, and whether my own journey is compatible with the trend so to speak, I powered through. Something about that lazy morning and the fact that there were a few birds perched outside, with a leafless tree in the background called out. Garden of Earthly Delights opened up slow, took its time and then...it happened. I got bricked. I was in it. The sonic tones kept intensifying and I felt the urgency. A lean communication. Soft bristles. Tough standing. No vocals yet. That is reserved for the second track Dignity. The opening track so meticulously blended into the second one with such great vocals by Mikael. Everything else was on pause as I dug through their entire body of work and everything just fell into place. And just like that Dan Swano happened. His collab with Mikael on Crimson was fantastic. Multiple streams opened up and I constantly am floored by all this great music. Picking favorites and ranking their work means declaring war! But music is subjective, like art in general. I get to see them perform live soon and I can't wait for it. 

Had a lot of fun reading this in depth series on Opeth and their sound - An Opeth Retrospective.

A few stand out passages:

Some art changes who you are while other art reveals who you always were, in occult shadow and the lingering yearning of youthful and aged hearts.

While metal and its extreme variants have had notorious links to ..well extremity, I think what is often overlooked is how its all human nature down to its core. I am not merely dismissing the bad stuff by delegating it to the realms of human nature, but instead want to invoke a sense of open thinking towards all things extreme. Maybe there is a middle ground (as there always is) to understand all kinds of art if we think slowly. 

Often, the cruelty and evil of extreme art is like a warding spell, a means to conjure and contain this wickedness so it doesn't transcend past the limits of the fantasizing mind. Ah, if this dynamic could be so easily solved by revolutionary thinkers and philosophers and art critics, our lives would be so much easier! But alas, it is not to be so.

Europa

Clipper, Clipper, Clipper.
Bring me news that the subsurface ocean is gushing with life. As we know it. Primitive or not.
And I'll play "Age of Aquarius".

On repeat for a few months now.

Abyss - Shepherds of Cassini
Withering Strands - Be'lakor
Grandis Spiritus Diavolos - Rotting Christ (goofy name aside, this is stellar music - and so is a lot of their work)
The Law of Asbestos - Ashenspire
Slaves & Bulldozers - Soundgarden (Thayil, Cornell and co pack such a punch)
Equivalence - Insomnium

These Polish groups make great music

Memories of Falling Down - Obscure Sphinx (really good post-metal music overall). The live show of their Thuamaturgy record was epic.
Hybrid Times - Riverside

Saw Ne Obliviscaris live and its the best I've seen so far. They totally owned the stage. Loved it.

While it appears that things are burning down all around us, let us not forget that there are incredible things happening all the time. A cursory look at the Turing award winners over the last decade should keep one busy. 

Young Archie finalists and their work is really good. 

Do not burn the bridges, build them to last.

From nothing to everything

Cygnus
The Wreck of S.S. Needle
  - Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas

What an absolute killer collaboration between the two. The entirety of the Mariner record is great. Cygnus especially had a profound impact. As the song progressed, I felt like I was being pushed into a corner of a green floating room where I witnessed myself being shattered into a million pieces, only to slowly become whole again by the end of the song. The last 5 minutes of the song entered into a whole new level of intensity.

You can't really play post/sludge/doom metal in the background. It's not good commute music either, in my opinion. Spirits have a dulling effect, and I feel like the mind tends to rush through without really experiencing the sonic journey. I have to set aside or make myself available for a good hour or so to give my full sober attention and seek out all the parts. From nothing to everything. Its the layers and layers of sound all mixed up to create a unique sonic atmosphere. You wait for the build ups, sometimes 10 mins into a song, but the payoff is guaranteed. I think stuff like this just happens over time and its quite hard to explain to someone why such kind of music exists. Its the open minded experimentation with different sounds that leads one to keep exploring. Arabic hip hop, Nigerian folk music, Indian carnatic/hindustani, Japanese ska, Qawwali, Scandinavian black metal contrasted with Atmospheric sludge metal, or even mainstream pop - and a million other types. Such diversity in sounds. Our ears can take it all. Whats important is the feel and the places music takes one to. One need not dwell in the past, but look far ahead to interpret a future within reach. 

At this point, I get these flashes at various times during the day where I just pause - and conjure up a place and time when an unheard, punishing, soul-rectifying track zips past me, leaving in its wake a scene that is just unexplainable.

Grinning Mouths - ISIS
Rocking Chairs and Shotguns - Mouth Of The Architect
A Solitary Reign - Amenra