My radio show Amazing Songs & Other Delights #54 – The Ascend-Descend edition is now on mixcloud. You can read about the show here.
Tracklist: 01: Rafael Toral – Intro + Changes (except) 02: Cabrita – Todo Torto 03: Helado Negro – I Just Want To Wake Up With You 04: J. Masis – Can’t Believe We’re Here 05: King John – The Water 06: Mary Timony – Dominoes 07: MOORIS -04 08: O Gajo – Corrosão 09 – Swansea Sound – Paradise 10: The Lemonheads – Fear of Living 11: The Smile – Wall Of Eyes 12: Ty Segall -My Room 13: Vince Clarke – The Lamentations of Jeremiah 14: youbet – Carsick 15: Francisco Sassetti – Sara Is Happy
Amazing Songs & Other Delights #54 – The Ascend-Descend edition is tomorrow, Monday 20th, 3-4pm (gmt) on Yé Yé Radio:https://yeyeradio.com/ (or on the app).
The title refers to the flow of the very eclectic musical selection, comprasse of recent or just out instrumentals and songs, of this edition of the programme.
Tracklist: 01: Rafael Toral – Intro + Changes (except) 02: Cabrita – Todo Torto 03: Helado Negro – I Just Want To Wake Up With You 04: J. Masis – Can’t Believe We’re Here 05: King John – The Water 06: Mary Timony – Dominoes 07: MOORIS – 04 08: O Gajo – Corrosão 09 – Swansea Sound – Paradise 10: The Lemonheads – Fear of Living 11: The Smile – Wall Of Eyes 12: Ty Segall -My Room 13: Vince Clarke – The Lamentations of Jeremiah 14: youbet – Carsick 15: Francisco Sassetti – Sara Is Happy
It was an evening of Wimtrasts and counterpoints. Warmness, homeness, romanticism, afable communication – Francisco Sassetti – sparcity, dislocation, strangeness, non verbal speak – Win Mertens.
Portugue pianist and composer premiered his debut album, Home, Monday night. Home is a beautiful record filled with intimate, personal, homely, sacred even, pieces. It is also imbued in melancholy, joy, longing, wonder.
Talkative, Francisco told small stories and contextulized every theme throughout his performance. Opening in a nightly mood, with Home’s two nocturnes, Nocturne I and Nocturne II, moving to the journeying title track that leads us home after absense.
The next three pieces Francisca’s Dream, Francisco’s Jr Theme, Sara is Happy are dedicated, respectively to his daughter, his son and his wife. A little girl with a Ballon, in a carrousel, a young boy slaying a dragon, and a wife, mother, woman litting a room with her happiness. The piano translates the stories magnificently. Or the vignettes are magnificently played, in a reverie, with intensity, upbeatness sorrow, glow.
Francisco Sassetti’s performance ends with the wonderful, slightly somber, but rich is tone and soul, Music For Her.
Wim Mertens, , accompanied by trumpeter Ward Hoornaert, presented Voice Of The Living his album homage to all war victims. Voice Of The Living was commissioned by the Chancellary of the Belgium prime minister as part of the commemoration og the Great War (Work War I, 1914-1918).
It is an harrowing musical piece. Playing in November, with all that is going on, two days after Armistice Day (November 11,1918), the day of the end of war it was created to signal, it is sobering, chilling, beautiful, uncomfortable.
Mertens way of playing, more minimal leaning, heighlights the theme of the composition. The Piano runs free, is sound pointllism, while the trumpet holds it filling the atmosphere with a certain joy, at times, verging on exuberant happyness, but never fully crossing into glaring bright light.
In Mertens Voice Of The Living we feel the sense of loss, of desorientation, the discomfort, the wasteland. There are also glimpses of hope, of a better time among uncertainty.
Libreto:
Francisco Sassetti:01 – Nocturne I; 02 – Nocturne II; 03 – Home; 04 – Goodbye; 05 – Filipa’s Dream; 06 – Francisco Jr.’s Theme; 07 – Sara Is Happy; 08 – Inocência II; 09 – Music for Her
Wim Mertens: 01 – Too good, too loose; 02 – Glossary raisonné; 03 – Escape and recapture; 04 – Pondichéry; 05 – On the Zephyrous Peak; 06 – Continuous pushforwards; 07 – Nota notae; 08 – Watch!; 09 – Phaedra; 10 – Constance; 11 – Prudence; 12 – Far; 13 – Struggle for Pleasure; 14 – Close Cover
Mondo Bizarre Magazine 