Showing posts with label bob marley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bob marley. Show all posts

Sunday 30 June 2019

Log #144 - Two Big Arrows From Marley To Marling

Eddy Bamyasi


Manitoba / Caribou - Stop Breaking My Heart
Chemical Brothers  - We Are The Night
Bob Marley - Catch A Fire
Laura Marling -  I Speak Because I Can
Blue States - Man Mountain
King Tubby - Declaration of Dub


A couple of entries in the box this month are from some more charity shop pickups. Honestly, as a CD collector, there is no better way to spread your collection with many outlets letting their CDs go for as little as 99p.

Man Mountain is the 2002 follow up to Andy Dragazis' (trading as Blue States) brilliant 2000 debut Nothing Changes Under The Sun which had the Bamyasi work over in Log #106. Man Mountain maintains his signature lush keys and ear for an excellent melody, and adds vocals on a number of tracks courtesy of New Young Pony Club vocalist Tahita Bulmer. Initial hearings suggest it's a little more easy listening.

It's another great album cover too, perhaps from the same photo-shoot as Nothing Changes?

The giant twin arrows are actually situated on the iconic Route 66 in Arizona (now by passed by the new Interstate 40) between the towns of Flagstaff and Winslow. They signified an old trading post (diner, fuel station and gift shop) which is long abandonned.





Next bargain was the King Tubby Declaration of Dub. This is a compilation of dub remixes of King Tubby 70s tracks. It's as you'd expect. Simple instrumental music including some covers, with the bass maxed up to speaker bursting volumes. It's the sort of music that you hear occasionally from a passing car which rattles your living room windows. Most the tracks sound the same and it's hard to play too many back to back.

At the risk of starting to repeat myself (I have a limited CD collection despite the frequent charity shop visits and some albums, but only the best, inevitably come around again):

Caribou - Log #109
Bob Marley - Log #2 
Laura Marling - Log #35

Just time for one more lukewarm review this week. I watched the Chemical Brothers Glasto set on TV and thought it was fantastic. But... was it more the visuals than the music? My suspicions deepened on hearing their We Are The Night album which is a relatively dull beats by numbers affair, without any visuals of course. 

Some bands are great on record but don't make for an exciting live experience, some do the opposite. Is this a "by band" phenomenon, or is it a wider "by genre" characteristic? For instance I've said before I'm not sure a lot of prog rock ever sounds great live, but I love the records. Whereas I love a good live rock out to heavy metal or a dance to some banging DJ beats but don't play those sorts of albums at home so much.



Sunday 30 September 2018

Log #105 - New Reggae Old Dub

Eddy Bamyasi


Today I read this in one of those excellent 33 1/3 album books. This from author Alan Warner writing on Can's Tago Mago album:

It is inevitable for writers writing about music that we must resort to image, simile, and metaphor. So you are going to get guitars playing on balconies across a mountain valley, and you are going to get keyboard solos compared to a killer whale rodeo. It is not something I am proud of, it is a tradition, a trope, a linguistic attempt to seize the myriad impressions and sensations which affecting music can throw at us. We resort to common poetry to describe the impossible, the same way scientists and physicists must when attempting to explain their most recondite flights. These images are variations of the pathetic fallacy but there is a tradition to it and sometimes the metaphors are apt. I like to avoid this plump fancifying but I cannot.

Musicians (and artists of all kinds in the public eye) are understandably dismissive of music writers generally and especially critics. Frank Zappa described music journalists as:

People who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

Perhaps Neil Young summed it up best with these cutting words from Ambulance Blues:

So all you critics sit alone
You're no better than me
for what you've shown

I'm not sure about killer whale rodeo keyboard solos but Alan Warner is right - writing about music is very flawed. Is there a point at all? Are one's views so personal it renders any opinion irrelevant? Surely it is just better to hear for yourselves without any pre-judgment inflicted by a writer?

Do writers have any right to pass judgement on artists?

But there remains so much of it about. Even more so these days with the internet and the prevalence of review sites like Amazon where anyone can leave their opinion. And I use those opinions when deciding on a purchase - the wisdom of the crowd is often correct even though all public review sites tend towards the positive.

Most of my 33 1/3 collection

So I'll continue, but not without a feeling that my writing might be arrogant or self-important, or read by no-one and meaningless. Where I think the 33 1/3 books succeed is that they are for the most part written by fans describing their own personal feelings about a record - what it meant to them when they heard it growing up - rather than an opinionated critique. That's the approach I should stick to.


On to my personal selection this week then. I've gone for some reggae which was inspired by my daughter actually, who showed me some clips of new new kid on the block Protoje from a festival. I misheard this as Prodigy at first of course! My go to reggae album Catch A Fire follows and then a CD from one of the excellent Trojan box set series, which moves us, by way of Austrian DJs Kruder and Dorfmeister, into "dub". Dub I understand as meaning deep bass, not necessarily reggae although the two are often synonymous. We have a leftover from the Bob Dylan weeks with his beautiful Blood On The Tracks album and then bringing up the rear a set from the prolific Cornwall DJ (no, not Aphex Twin - the other one) Luke Vibert.


Protoje - A Matter Of Time
Bob Marley - Catch A Fire
Trojan Dub Box Set - CD 2
Kruder and Dorfmeister - Sessions
Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks
Luke Vibert - Musipal


What strikes me about the Bob Marley is the lack of what I'd call reggae in it! It's actually just great pop/rock music with great rhythms and some beautiful guitar playing (I don't know if this is Bob himself - I suspect not - from the films I've seen of him he seems to be the one either just singing with his guitar slung over his shoulder or he's doing the reggae chug chug chug strum strum). Who is on lead guitar? Is it Peter Tosh?

That reggae chug chug chug strum strum.

Lots of reggae chug chug on the Protoje album. It's much faster and poppier and the singer sings in a rap style. There are some great pop singles on here. It's immediately accessible to almost anyone which does worry me a little as I wonder if it has much staying power - that is one of the most fascinating things about discovering new music - how your opinion changes over the coming weeks, months, and even years (one of the original reasons I started this log actually).

Who is he anyway? Well from Wiki I learn that he is a contemporary reggae artist from Jamaica. That's an obvious description but an important distinction as I still think of most reggae (probably solely due to Bob Marley) as 70s music. Furthermore most the Dub stuff from Trojan is from even earlier.  

Real name Oje Ken Ollivierre, Protoje started recording proper albums in 2011 and this one A Matter Of Time is his fifth.

One of my favourite tracks is No Guarantee which has this slickly produced video below (and also a catchy downward guitar riff):



Protoje himself has commented on the video:

This video is shot exclusively in Port Royal and shows bits and pieces of everyday life. Moments that often go unappreciated even unnoticed but are essentially all that we have. 

Tell me are there things you take for granted too often?

I've never visited Jamaica. I'm sure there's lots of what we would describe as poverty but that sea (and dare I say the way of life?) looks beautiful. Port Royal is a suburb of Kingston.



The Kruder and Dorfmeister double CD Sessions is a superb piece of music. For a brief moment in time it was actually my favourite album. The album consists of heavily dubbed out remixes of tunes by artists like David Holmes, Depeche Mode, Roni Size, Lamb, Count Basic and Bomb The Bass. CD number 1 is slightly more upbeat with CD 2 a touch more chilled. Sometimes this blissed out down tempo trip hop type music can become a bit too much like elevator music - a criticism K & D masterfully avoid (although you would have almost certainly heard some of their tracks before, even unknowingly, via TV background music). The other thing about this duo is they actually really do improve the originals - a case in point with the Depeche Mode remix below:



I had a look for the Luke Vibert album on Spotify and it wasn't listed. I then realised Luke goes under the name of Wagon Christ for this 2001 release. That's not his only pseudonym. He can also be found under the following names: Plug, Kerrier District, Amen Andrews, and the Ace of Clubs, although his own name plus Wagon Christ are the ones he uses most often. I believe each nomenclature indicates a different style of music whether it be trip hop, acid or drum 'n' bass, but I'm not enough of an expert to distinguish. What I can tell though is Vibert has a unique sound in the IDM (intelligent dance music) field identifiable across all his releases. This one starts off with the following sample and Luke always delivers. 

The premise of this album is very very simple - to listen to messages of soul with a solid beat.

For new listeners I'd also recommend Stop The Panic as a good starting point - available super cheap from amazon at the moment. This album expertly melds Luke's solid beats with slide guitar by BJ Cole creating a unique experience:



All for now, have a good week of musipal discovery!






Sunday 1 October 2017

Log #53 - Tangerine Dream were no Satsuma Nightmare

Eddy Bamyasi

Firstly I offer a thank you to all my readers as my blog enters it's second year. I hope some of you have stumbled across something of interest and discovered some new music. In listening to my music and writing these pieces I have both discovered new things and rediscovered old too! The list below is an example of that - I had never heard any Kanye West before last week (apart from a car crash live appearance on some awards show a couple of years ago) and I only recently bought Bob Marley's classic Catch a Fire album although I was very familiar with the famous joint touting cover (the music was not what I had assumed it would be). Yet at the opposite end of the scale I've been a fan of Neil Young and Tangerine Dream for over 30 years.

1. Tangerine Dream - The Essential
2. Kanye West - Late Registration
3. James Morrison - Songs for You, Truths for Me
4. Eilen Jewell - Sea of Tears
5. Bob Marley - Catch a Fire
6. Neil Young - On the Beach

I've just got to admit it. I do really like Tangerine Dream. It's probably not that cool nowadays but they are really good at what they do. And they are original. Their music is instantly recognisable even amongst the plethora (that's a Tan Dream song title if I've ever heard one) of electronic experimental instrumental music out there. They don't sound like Kraftwerk, nor Brian Eno, nor Boards of Canada. Possibly their closest contemporary may have been Jean-Michel Jarre or possibly Philip Glass in places or Aphex Twin, but their mostly drumless yet pulsed and rhythmic sequencer music is ultimately unique.
Don't think of it as music, just put this album on, turn it up loud, and let the experience wash over you and take your brain to far off places!
Actually I feel a gnod music map coming on - let's see if my hunches are right?


Other maps are available from the brilliant gnod.com

This album is yet another collection. There are loads out there and I generally avoid non original albums. But I knew enough from the regular albums to spot that this was a particularly good selection from their peak Virgin label days of the mid to late 70s and contains at least 60% of music I have not got on CD elsewhere. Crucially the tracks are full length - to maintain that hypnotic atmosphere so characteristic of Tan Dream's music this is essential.

The original knob twiddlers, Froese, Franke, Baumann

Quoting from the sleeve notes - "With a mere six tracks from six different albums, but more than seventy minutes long, this compilation serves as a perfect portrait of the sheer vastness of Tangerine Dream's music. Enormously epic and otherworldly tracks were the artistic trademark of the most important and internationally most successful German instrumental band ever. If Kraftwerk were the pioneers of electronic beats, Tangerine Dream were most definitely the pioneers of electronic atmosphere, the forerunners of Ambient."



For the aficionados the track listing is -

1. Movements Of A Visionary 7:55 taken from the album Phaedra 1974
2. Rubycon (Part One) 17.18 taken from the album Rubycon 1975
3. Stratosfear 10:35 taken from the album Stratosfear 1976
4. Cloudburst Flight 7:26 taken from the album Force Majeure 1979
5. Tangram (Part One) 19:47 taken from the album Tangram 1980
6. Hyperborea 8:38 taken from the album Hyperborea 1983

This collection is an excellent Tan Dream sampler for the beginner. For those who want to delve deeper into this weird and wonderful world I would recommend the original albums Force Majeure and Phaedra. The former is more conventional prog rock fayre with real guitars and drums as on the brilliant Cloudburst Flight (also present in the above collection). The latter is an ambient classic which forms a bridge between their early ambient soundscape drones like Zeit and their more commercial rhythmic albums. I'm also very fond of Cyclone which splits the fans being the only album with vocals. [Personally recorded cassettes of mine with old school friend and Tangerine Dream authority Electric Ape under the name Satsuma Nightmare are of old curiosity interest only!]

Three great Tangerine Dream albums from the 70s, always great covers too, many painted by Edgar Froese

So once again thank you for listening and reading, and I look forward to another 52 weeks and another 312 albums in 2017/18!
A new day, a new dawn, and new beginnings - where will we go, what will we discover?






Sunday 24 September 2017

Log #52 - So This Is, or Was, Kanye!

Eddy Bamyasi

If you had told me I'd have a Kanye West album in my logs this year I wouldn't have believed you. But here I am at week #52 and courtesy of a bargain bucket charity purchase (along with the James Morrison one listed below) I find myself the proud owner of Late Registration. My daughter tells me it's an early one and consequently probably quite good, and she is right, it's quite good in a rappy, hip hoppy, and even an early grimey way (I've heard a bit of grime through Earl Sweatshirt, Wiley and Stormzy).

It's littered with samples and these do seem to be a bit crow-barred in in a less than subtle way, but the underlying beats are addictive. I'm not going to go out and buy any other of West's albums nor listen to this one that often once it leaves the magazine, but it's had a fair few plays and has maintained my interest - not least on an anthropological level if you know what I mean! No? Well I mean even if the music is of little interest I have heard so much about Mr West that I am interested to investigate. It's my duty as a music investigator!

1. Ryan Adams - Gold
2. Kanye West - Late Registration
3. James Morrison - Songs for You, Truths for Me
4. Eilen Jewell - Sea of Tears
5. Bob Marley - Catch a Fire
6. Neil Young - On the Beach

Sunday 9 October 2016

Log #2 - Bob Marley Lights Up and Catches Fire

Eddy Bamyasi


I've been playing quite alot of reggae and reggae/dub recently. This culminated in seeing the reggae covers band Easy Star All Stars a couple of weeks ago - a band that plays covers of Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Beatles and Radiohead - check out their cover of Paranoid Android for something completely different.

The Trojan set contains a wealth of music I'm not familiar with like The Upsetters, King Tubby, Gregory Isaacs and Tommy McCook. I don't know if these versions are extra "dubbed" up or are originals (I expect the latter). I've also just got back from a mini-road trip in France where my fellow travellers were playing a lot of reggae and dub on the blue tooth.

1. Various - Trojan Dub 3 CD Box Set - CD no. 2
2. Bob Marley - Catch a Fire
3. The Doobie Brothers - The Captain and Me
4. Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street
5. War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream
6. Afro Celt Sound System - Anatomic (vol. 5)

Of course Bob Marley is much more common, but maybe not this album so much. Although considered a classic, or even his best by many, this album came earlier (1973) than the more famous hits. But more the better for it - it's much more rock than I was expecting, with guitars and organ, but with that easy groove. And what a fantastic cover with the extra thick spliff. Way to go Bob. My kids saw his son recently at a festival.

Bob Marley rolls up on Catch a Fire

Thank you to facebook junky Arthur P for The Doobie Brothers recommendation. Named as one of his two most favourite albums ever I had to hear it. It's right up my street, but I don't know if it will prove a stayer. Stand out track to date is Long Train Runnin'. Intiguing cover too. Another similar (I imagine) band we were playing a lot of in France was The Allman Brothers. I had no idea their tune Jessica was the theme tune to Top Gear. I like discovering trivia like that.

Anyway back to this list and the lovely Kings of Convenience. This was also inspired by something I was playing on my Ipod on the plane over - The Whitest Boy Alive. I think both bands have interchangable members, and they certainly sound very similar. The Kings project are more acoustic and with their vocal harmonies sound alot like Simon and Garfunkel. There is a beautiful track near the end where they are joined by a female vocalist. I think they are from Scandinavia somewhere, possibly Norway. Speaking of Scandinavia I am off to see Swedish band Goat next week, that should be interesting.

The War on Drugs record is one of the best rock albums of recent years - it was my Record of the Week in another post. It's been a go to album for a couple of years now.

I'm also seeing Afro Celts sometime soon. Can't remember this album at all - they are all very similar and indistinguishable in my experience so far. Time to familarise myself in the run up to the gig.

Record of the Week: Catch a Fire
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