If you would like to be called legendary, try this: release an album that out of the blue becomes a world wide success and then NOT publish another album for 15 years. That’s exactly what St Germain (stage name of the French musician Ludovic Navarre) has done: 15 years after the success of his album Tourist in 2000, he has released a new album – simply called St Germain – in October 2015, just a few weeks ago.
One of the absolute masterpieces on Tourist is no doubt So Flute.
Female percussionists seem to have this strange effect on me (those who have attended a live performance of Lenny Kravitz will know what I am talking about – that level of energy is downright scary). An excellent example of the species is Isolde Lasoen, who is playing drums in a number of Belgian bands and on occasion also releases solo work or performs with Isolde et les Bens.
Watching the clip of this live version of Aluminium Folie (a song about tin foil, of all things) does not really show her exquisite skills at percussion as she’s only taking care of the vocals here, but trust me: she’s good at it (the live performance of Daan‘s classic Housewife at Lokerse Feesten a couple of years ago still belongs to my top 5 festival-memories ever).
Belgium is quite rich in high quality output when it comes to alternative pop music. Some of it is coming from bands that stick around for years, spitting out one album after the other and succeed in also gathering a substantial fan base outside of their country of origin, some of it from smaller bands with a rather local fan base.
That this latter category does not imply a lower quality of the output, is proven by this amazingly beautiful Reunite by Isbells. Wonderfully addictive guitar (or some other string instrument – not really sure it is a guitar) and drums. No wonder it was picked up by some creative in an ad agency for use in a commercial (from the Belgian national lottery).
A song and a video packed with loads of samples and references, which you undoubtedly can analyse until it actually drives you crazy. The alternative I suggest: click the play-button below, just sit back and enjoy this Frontier Psychiatrist, released by the Australian band The Avalanches in 2000.
The sixties should primarily be referred to as the decade that brought us The Beatles, of course. But there was more, in some cases from completely different segments of the the musical spectrum. Take this amazing Andy Williams song from 1967 (accompanied by some amazing contemporary footage of the topic at hand).
But beware: you will be whistling the tune for the rest of the day.
The songs I select here are primarily chosen for their merit as a song, not for the video accompanying the music- as you might already have deducted from the fact that for some of them the video shown is not actually a video clip, but rather a few minutes of footage of a picture (I’ve tried to use SoundCloud as an alternative to YouTube, but some of the music clips there tends to disappear after a while and that is not the case with YouTube, at least not that I’ve noticed – but YouTube does bring other difficulties, as I have mentioned before).
For some songs, however, the video is definitely very much worth watching, as with this Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack. At first sight it might not look special or spectacular, until you realize that the entire 5 minute clip is just one single shot. Both smooth and compelling.
There’s no doubt an artist like David Bowie would pop up sooner or later in this personal overview of music that touches me. But the tricky part is of course: which song to select? I opted for the easy way out and let coincidence decide, in the form of the shuffle function on my iPod during this morning’s jogging. Bowie’s Starman (released in 1972) was the first song served to me this morning, and I was paricularly struck by a short sequence in it, so… the choice was made. (To find out what effect the sequence has on you: it starts at 0:50)
Leslie Feist is a Canadian singer-songwriter, and what I want to present to you this time, is the third single from her third album: I Feel It All. Do check out the full album, The Reminder, if you can, as it contains some other hidden treasures, such as 1234, My Moon My Man (which you might know in the Boys Noize remix) and The Limit To Your Love (covered by James Blake in 2011)
On my way home from work today, the person responsible for selecting the music in between the evening news had the brilliant idea to dig up Love on a Farmboy’s Wages by XTC. Having come home inspired by this and after having had some dinner (damn, forgot once again to take a picture and post it on Facebook; perhaps I can make up for this by taking a picture of te remains that will come out of the body tomorrow morning or so – could generate some colourful comments) I have just sat down to look up the song and discovered I don’t have it in my iTunes collection! Amazon is obviously my next URL after having clicked the Publish button.
I have the album, Mummer – an absolutely masterpiece – on vinyl, but not all songs on it in my digital collection, as that currently only contains the content of XTC’s Greatest Hits collection (it’s a complete mystery to me why this specific songs is not on it).
To the dirvers and passengers of the cars in front of me and behind me while I was standing in front of the traffic light when the song was on: sorry if I made you think “there must be something wrong with that guy”. That’s just the effect this kind of song has on me when popping up unexpectedly.
If you’re like Love on a Farmboy’s Wages, perhaps you should also check out Wonderland, another song from Mummer (and fortunately on Greatest Hits).
If listening to this song doesn’t brighten up your day, I have no clue what else I could dig up to achieve that goal (should you be in need of that – if not: it’s always a great song to listen to at any time of any day, so click that Play button anyway).
A visit to the wiki-page reveals that The Ting Things are a British duo from the Manchester area. They have so far released three studio albums, but were recently not really able to match the success of the early hit singles like That’s not My Name, Shut Up and Let Me Go and this Great DJ.
THE SECOND HALF 