New Releases
Jun Miyake - Stolen From Strangers
Label: Yellow Bird
Distribution in France: Harmonia Mundi
Release date: October 25, 2008
This man is afraid of nothing! Avantgarde, jazz, gregorian chant, trip hop, chanson, tango, pop hit, an Arab, Indien, Latin American and Asian musical vocabulary. Jun Miyake mixes all of this so tastefully that it is overwhelming. Executed by tuba, cello, oud, mandolin, a Bulgarian choir and a multitude of electronic and acoustic percussion from which Miyake extracts the most curious of sounds, there is only one conclusion to come to : for whoever likes the melting of contrasts, who likes Tom Waits, David Sylvian or Chet Baker, should absolutely listen to “Stolen from Strangers”. Only for those who like musical drawers, there is a need for caution: be careful, this recording endangers your musical perception of the world.
Huun Huur Tu - Mother-Earth! Father-Sky!
Label: Jaro
Distribution in France: Abeille
Release date: October 09, 2008
The long expected studio album of Huun-Huur-Tu was created in cooperation with famous singer Sainkho from Tuva. The aim was to produce an album based on ballads, with sounds of silence and nature, closed to the great environment of central Asia. The listener should
dive into the nature and take time for “Mother-Earth! Father-Sky!” The music infers itself to the listener at the moment he/she takes time to relax.
e.s.t. Esbjörn Svensson Trio - Leucocyte
Label: ACT
Distribution in France: Harmonia Mundi
Release date: September 01, 2008
For e.s.t., spontaneous jam sessions were the way to renewal. The players needed this freedom in order to explore new musical regions, or as Esbjörn Svensson always formulated it, “…to follow the music”.
The trio constantly posed the fundamental question, “What can a piano trio be that it has not been before?”
(Pat Metheny).
Leucocyte is the result of one of these two day jams. It took place at the famed “Studios 301” in Sydney during the band’s Australian tour. In early 2008 e.s.t.’s sound engineer Ake Linton joined the band at the Bohus Sound Studios in Gothenburg, Sweden to begin mixing. On April 28 there was a photo shoot in Berlin for the new campaign. On May 16 the artwork and album were delivered to ACT.
Then on June 14 the incomprehensible happened: Esbjörn Svensson, probably the most influential stylist of the last decade, lost his life in a diving accident off the island of Vrämdö near Stockholm.
As a result, Leucocyte has become Esbjörn Svensson’s and e.s.t.’s musical legacy! It is the most venturesome album Esbjörn Svensson (p), Dan Berglund (b), and Magnus Öström (dr) have recorded as e.s.t. The essence of this journey of discovery is its ecstatic energy. It is a trip through the bloodstream sans compositional safety-net and stylistic restraints in which the borders of musical communication are sounded out.
Torsten Goods - 1980
Label: ACT
Distribution in France: Harmonia Mundi
Release date: September 25, 2008
Torsten Goods was born in 1980 and it is four 1980 hits that form the backbone of his second ACT album, simply titled 1980 (ACT 9719-2). Goods has a special affinity with each of them. “I’m a huge fan of Queen,” he admits, so he arranged Freddie Mercury’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” in a way typical for the whole album: “Freddie wrote it as a homage to Elvis. We’ve taken it that little bit further and transferred it to jazz.” The other cover songs have been updated in a similarly unorthodox way: Billy Joel’s “It’s Still Rock’ n’ Roll To Me” has turned into a swinging Big Band number, David Paich’s Toto hymn “99” is reduced to a cool easy–listening track and George Benson’s popular “Love Dance” takes us back to the Brazilian roots of its composer Ivan Lins.
La Cherga - Fake No More
Label: Asphalt Tango
Distribution in France: Abeille
Release date: October 09, 2008
LA CHERGA came together in Germany and Austria as these musicians began to feel out a new musical identity, sharing what Irina calls a “Post Pessimist” philosophy, working on cultural exchange projects, differentiating between war profiteers and anti-war profiteers. LA CHERGA (named after a Balkan rag rug, appropriate for these musical recyclers) began weaving a sonic collage, inventing a Balkan internationalist music & manifesto: their sound drawing on the best of both East and West (skanking rhythms and sour horns/boiling dub versus Detroit techno) while Irina sings of freeing your mind from mental slavery.
Bringing together Balkan brass, jazz vocals, Jamaican grooves and electronic beats might sound like a musical recipe for disaster but LA CHERGA rip up the rule book and demonstrate how to build musical and cultural bridges. Grab some friends, something good to drink and turn up the music: LA CHERGA create radical unity party music.
Garth Cartwright
Harold Budd - A Song For Lost Blossoms
Label: Darla Records
Distribution in France: Darla Records
A new record of ambient melody and transcendental mood portals from minimalist/modernist master Harold Budd and friend guitarist/composer/producer Clive Wright. A Song For Lost Blossoms builds on both artist’s previous ambient work. The compositions were recorded live and in studio at different locations including the artist’s homes, at The Red Cat (Disney Concert Hall), Los Angeles, and Clive Wright’s Desert Sky Studio, Joshua Tree, CA. These recordings represent the very best of Harold and Clive’s work together over the period 2004 to 2006. Harold Budd’s works are the cornerstones of the modern minimal and ambient cannon. Clive Wright is a founding member of the platinum selling pop/rock band Cock Robin and has worked as writer, producer and guitarist with Kim Carnes, Human Drama, Tears for Fears members, Montell Jordan, The Black Eyed Peas and Peter Gabriel.
Moscow Art Trio - Village Variations
Label: Jaro
Distribution in France: Abeille
Release date: October 30, 2008
The trio is one of the most exciting formations of new jazz. The boundaries between jazz, folk and classical music have become irrevelant. Or, as critic Mike Zwerin wrote in the International Herald Tribune: “Rarely have the frontiers between epochs, Eastern and Western folk music, and jazz and classical music been so gracefully negotiated as by the Moscow Art Trio. The personalities of the trio’s members are more important than the instruments they play.”
Some years ago, Andrey Boreyko, an old friend of mine who is a conductor, gave me the idea to write music for orchestra. I had doubts about this because I never wrote music for “anonymous” instruments. I always wrote for musicians I knew personally and played with. But somehow his idea stayed with me and began to live its own life.
During the next years this developed into “Village Variations”, music for Moscow Art Trio, String Orchestra and Percussion. A commission from Det Norske
Kammerorkester (The Norwegian Chamber Orchestra) in 2007 made this possible. To play with this orchestra was a great pleasure and a learning process for all musicians involved. Misha Alperin
