Nice concept! When I read the title of your journal entry I immediately had to think about Lars von triers movie "Melancholia". Currently I am working on a 'possible worlds'-concept and I found your journal quite inspiring. So thank you man! Haha. I figured I had to pay you some respect. (Very first post! ;)) Anyway loving the angles and the elegant writting! Momentariley listening to Boris Kovac & Ladaaba Orchest, made me think of Goran Bregovic and Astor Piazzolla in a way. Keep up the good work!
Janszoon
05-10-2012 11:52 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolke9
(Post 1187667)
Nice concept! When I read the title of your journal entry I immediately had to think about Lars von triers movie "Melancholia". Currently I am working on a 'possible worlds'-concept and I found your journal quite inspiring. So thank you man! Haha. I figured I had to pay you some respect. (Very first post! ;)) Anyway loving the angles and the elegant writting! Momentariley listening to Boris Kovac & Ladaaba Orchest, made me think of Goran Bregovic and Astor Piazzolla in a way. Keep up the good work!
Thank you very much, and welcome to MB! :)
I'm not familiar with Goran Bregovic or Astor Piazzolla, but it sounds like I should check them out. Any particular albums you'd suggest?
Wolke9
05-11-2012 04:45 PM
Well, I first made acquantaince with Goran Bregovic through the film "Arizona Dream" by Emir Kusturica. He's a composor of Balkan music in some of his films which tend to be quite absurd. Definitely watch "Black cat White cat" a lovely satircal comedy. But nevermind that, some music of his:
Astor Piazzolla-Soledad: it's a box with 10 cd's but very fine for listening to when reading a book or drinking some wine.
Hey look, this album has almost the exact same title as the last one I reviewed! Mere coincidence? Or am I in fact sneaky enough to have grouped these two albums together in my list intentionally? I'll leave that for you to decide.
What we have here is an outrageously good pop album ostensibly written for children but which is certainly equally appealing to adults. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a concept album that tells the story of a round-headed boy born in a town of people who all have pointy heads; and for the record, yes, Nilsson did once confirm in an interview that he came up with the premise while on acid. Not surprisingly my introduction to it was during early childhood, and no doubt it was one of the first records I actually owned. I loved it as a kid but as I grew older I kind of forgot about it, until one day in my mid-20s I heard it playing in a coffee shop. It's a testament to how well-written it is that shortly thereafter I re-acquired it and promptly fell in love with it all over again.
Nilsson was one of those amazing people who make songwriting and performing sound so easy. His voice was beautifully melodic without ever for a second sounding like he was trying hard at all. His songs—in general from what I know but specifically on this album—always sound spontaneous, like he just picked up an instrument and started playing, though they are in fact often elaborately orchestrated. On top of that, the whole thing hangs together supremely as an album both sonically and in terms of the story, which is quite well crafted itself. And most impressively, even though this fable is a tale of exile and isolation, it is incredibly uplifting, lighthearted and beautiful.
Tough days ahead? The end of the world weighing too heavily on your mind? Give this album a listen. I promise it will make you smile.
One of my favorites. I bought the VHS as I couldn't find it on DVD. My son and I just watched it a few months back. Definitely good music, but the movie makes it for me...
Holerbot6000
06-16-2012 04:26 PM
Gosh so many interesting titles most of which I have never heard of - particularly UFOMammut. This is exactly what I was hoping to get from this site. Many thanks for the recommendations.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture,
you whom I cannot betray.
—"The Old Revolution" Leonard Cohen
An old man crouches in his basement, underneath the stairs, sweating and terrified. He is alone, as he has been for many years—his wife left him in distant memory, his children are long estranged. The power has been out for several days and the basement is pitch black. His only connection to the rest of the world is the thunderous sound of lunar debris making landfall outside. It shakes the floor beneath his feet but his eyes remain unassailed. He peers into the darkness, straining to see happier times in the depths of memory, times when he wasn't yet alone.
I came across a series of photos a while back which were taken by a Life Magazine photographer on the island of Hydra, in Greece, in 1960. They were black and white shots of young bohemians at some courtyard party, sipping wine, smoking cigarettes, playing guitar and generally looking like some super hip cats before the hippies came along and made this kind of thing all mainstream. Apparently these images were intended to accompany an article about some Australian author, but that's kind of a footnote here. The really interesting thing is the smiling 26 year old playing the guitar—none other than Leonard Cohen—and the young woman at his side—Marianne Ihlen, who is both the subject of the song "So Long Marianne" and also the woman pictured on the back of Songs from a Room.
The old man alone in the dark, the half century old photos—these are the sorts of things that are the quintessence of this album. It's an album of loss and regret and longing for lost good times fading in distant memory. It's over four decades old and it only seems to get better with age as the years add layer upon layer to the omnipresent sense of loss. Really it's difficult to imagine a time when this album was new and fresh sounding, maybe it's always sounded musty and broken.
The funny thing is, despite the distinct overarching mood and sparse arrangements, Songs from a Room is a fairly diverse album. The pinnacle of its sense of sadness and loss is the spare and echoing last song on side one of the vinyl, "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy", which is the chronicle of a troubled young woman and her eventual suicide. But elsewhere the album isn't quite so bleak, with "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes" in particular providing a mythic and oddly uplifting counterbalance via its rousing chorus and extremely weird sounding electric guitar. Quite a few of the songs have strong narrative elements—surprisingly unusual for a wordsmith like Cohen. The best of these are the biblically-themed "Story of Isaac" and the World War II remembrances of "The Partisan", which I believe is actually some kind of reinterpretation of a French song from the 1940s. Despairing, dirge-like material pops up throughout—such as album opener "Bird on a Wire" and mid side two downers "The Butcher" and "You Know Who I Am"—but the upbeat, almost country-ish album closers "Lady Midnight" and "Tonight Will Be Fine" keep the album from getting too depressing. These are, after all, the kind of happy/sad feelings we all have when we look back on those lost golden days, even if in the present we're hiding in dark basements with the world exploding around us.
