My radio show Amazing Songs & Other Delights #81 – The Ambients edition airs Monday 16th, 3-4pm (gmt+1) on Yé Yé Radio: yeyeradio.com (or on the app).
Since I received Thomas von Wachenfeldt’s Estradörerna I’ve been listening to it non stop. I knew I one of its pieces was going to open this programme. The choice was Suite no1 in G minor (Jon Erik Hall) I. Visa Air.
Estradörerna has music by three Swedish folk musician – Jon-Erik Öst, Wiktor Öst, and Jon-Erik Hall – arranged for string trio chamber instrumentation by Thomas von Wachenfeldt. It was not chamber, but baroque music, that less to the two final selections.
The show was mostly complete. There were a few possibilities. None seem right, to fit. Returning home by metro an walking, from a concert by Orquesta Barroca Casa da Música playing seven baroque pieces with oboe, some for oboe, there was one of those moments with only the Universal can explain.
Ventos Animais, by Mão Morta and Forças Ocultas by Duplex Longo were the missing links. Each enriched the tapestry of diverse ambients present, allowing for the programme to have a deeper feeling.
Tracklist: 01: Thomas von Wachenfeldt – Suite no1 in G minor (Jon Erik Hall) I. Visa Air 02: Thee Headcoats Sect – Man Trap 03: Afonso Rodrigues e Catarina Salinas – Um Amor Qualquer 04: Duplex Longa – Forças Ocultas 05: Esteves – Os Fortes Não Choram 06: Gonçalo F. Cardoso – Cozido na Caldeira Velha (São Miguel, Açores) 07: Lifeguard – Like You’ll Lost 08: Mão Morta – Ventos Animais 09: Luto – não fui ao Alive (ft. Catarina Branco) 10: Paul Pèrrin – Olekta 11: Monkeywrench – Love Is A Spider 12: Pomadinha – Time 13: Ricardo Ribeiro – Má Sorte 14: Sally Anne Morgan – Flowers of Shandihar 15: Versus O.K.S – God Bless 16: The Good Ones – Agnes Dreams of Being an Artist 17: The Makers – Are You On The Inside Or The Outside Of Your Pants?
Old Jerusalem – Breeding angels – drawing by Francisco Silva
My Amazing Songs & Other Delights #63 – The Say Hello, Wave Goodbye edition is tomorrow Monday, 8th, 3-4pm (gmt+1) on Yé Yé Radio: yeyeradio.com (or on the app).
The title comes from the Soft Cell song of the same name, here on a cover by David Gray. The meaning refers to saying hello to something new, goodbye to an old, beloved one. In this case, the old beloved one is Old Jerusalem that Francisco Silva is retiring with a last concert on the 20th, at Socorro here in Porto. Old Jerusalem’s farewell includes Breeding angels, a demos album that contains Red sun over the interstate – that is also on this week’s programme – a song I have the previledge of known, and often sing on my own home, for a couple of years.
If Francisco is retiring Old Jerusalem, he is bringing, given birth, to The June Carriers that release their debut album Equanimity on the 10th. And now, beginnings and endings, and metting, and journeys, and the same thing, that yet is, but isn’t, become even more interesting.
My track Big Bang, that opens the show, has the exact same guitar line as The June Carriers’s Pastoral Epigraph, that closes the show. It is a travel from the The Big Bang, from the ends, or beginnings, of The Universe to Earth. The guitar, of course, is played be Francisco on both instrumentals. As for the why and how Francisco’s guitar line ended up on my track, on both tracks, that is for another day.
What my Big Bang and Then June Carriers’ Pastoral Epigraph shows is how the exact same guitar line, although easily recognisable, can feel so different depending of its surrounding, of the musical ambience and creation. Of how two people compose differently with the same guitar line (or any other same musical bit). Other than knowing I was going to use his guitar line, Francisco had no say, nor knew, what I was going to do with it. I didn’t have a clue how he was going to use it on what become The June Carriers’ first album.
My 16 choices for this The Say Hello, Wave Goodbye edition are all about travel, journeys, inner and outer, out in space, on our planet, far from home, standing still. The Modern Lovers’ Dodge Veg o-matic is probably the best going nowhere song ever. Bartleby, the immovable, “I prefer not to” scrivener of Henry Melville’s tale as his very fixed ideais regarding is life, his views, doing, moving, changing in ways others find normal is not for him.
Some journeys don’t end well. Like in the Erlkönig a Schubert lieder, with lyrics by Goethe, in which a father rides madly through the night, on horseback, with his son, whistle the Erlking is enticing the child, that tries to draw dad’s attention. The lieder ends with the blunt “In seinen Armen das Kind war tod” (roughly “in your arms the child is dead”.
Others have twist and turns. Diferentes in perspective, depending where we find ourselves. My photos of the maze from my favourite local park are taken from inside it and I know my way around it because I know from where the whole maze can be seen. However, on a foggy day, I may, and still get lost in it. The colour and black and photo illustrate the same thing seen in two different ways.
Tracklist: 01 – Raquel Pinheiro – Big Bang (radio edit) 02 – Old Jerusalem – Red sun over the interstate 03 – Franz Schubert – Erlkönig (Op. 1, D. 328 – Wer reitet so spät sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau) 04 – The Modern Lovers – Dodge Veg o-matic 05 – Bernard Butler – Camber Sands 06 – The Fugs – Bartleby The Scrivener 07 – Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road 08 – David Gray – Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (Soft Cell cover) 09 – The Beatles – Drive My Car 10 – The Clash – Lost In The Supermarket 11 – Kings of Leon – Going Nowhere (live in Nashville) 12 – Siouxie & The Banshees – The Passenger (Iggy Pop cover) 13 – The Proclaimers – I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) (2011 remaster) 14 – Aaron Copland – Going to Heaven! (Emily Dickinson poem, sung by Sanford Sylvan) 15 – Little Eve – The Loco-Motion (remaster) 16 – The June Carriers – Pastoral Epigraph
Mondo Bizarre Magazine 