This just blew my mind.
- listen to audio only – be amazed
- watch the video – experience extra layer of amazement
A fragment of summer (quote from Paul Murray’s novel ‘Skippy Dies’)
But Skippy doesn’t hear him. Looking through the telescope, he is watching the frisbee girl again as she runs back and forth over the gravel, jumping and twisting mid-air, upstretching her arm to catch the disc and spinning it off again before her feet even touch the ground, laughing as she scoops strands of dark hair out of her mouth . . . She seems so much brighter than everything around her, a fragment of summer that’s somehow found its way into October; at the same time, she makes everything around her brighter too — she makes it all fit together somehow, like in a musical where someone bursts into song and everyone else starts singing as well…
Listen | Check out ‘Objects of Desire’ by Flecks
Dublin based ambient synth-pop outfit Flecks have unveiled a new track entitled ‘Objects of Desire’.
A darkly brooding effort from Flecks, ‘Objects of Desire’ is bathed in deep rhythms and atmospheric texture. Containing a built-in patience the song takes its time before suddenly, and effectively, bursting forth with large-scale jumps of distorted noise.
Working as an interesting juxtaposition in sound, the dynamic structure of ‘Objects of Desire’ feels earned. As the vocals move with hushed malaise the song’s background waits patiently to step into the spotlight during the aforementioned overdriven passages.
An interesting and sonically pleasing listen, Flecks music is one of dramatic tension and power. Glistening on top but with a turbulent undercurrent, their sound is one of great movement. It’ll be interesting to hear how far the group can expand this already expansive production.
Click below to listen to the latest track from Flecks, ‘Objects of Desire’.
Cory Henry playing ‘He Has Made Me Glad’ on Hammond organ
San Fermin at Whelan’s, Dublin (28 April 2015)
My friend Andrew sent me a link to ‘Sonsick’ last year while I was in the U.S. on tour. I remember listening to it backstage at the venue we played in Mill Valley, CA — playing it loud through the JBL desktop speaker as we celebrated after the gig. I’ve listened to it many, many times since then — it’s one of my top five songs of last year. (My research led me to discover Lucius, whose lead singers Holly and Jess sing on San Fermin’s first album.) I missed them the last time they were in Dublin, so I was determined to catch them this time.
After a short instrumental track that played as the band walked onstage, they started with the first three songs on their newly released second album, ‘Jackrabbit’:
THE WOODS
Allen Tate’s voice softly sets the scene in this disquieting tale of a boy and a girl and the dark and the deep. The instrumentation gradually grows in menace and Tate sings the last verse an octave higher, the change in tessitura bringing out a more impassioned timbre in his voice. The song culminates in a snarl from the most unusual instrument in the ensemble, the baritone sax.
LADIES MARY
This short song introduces Charlene Kaye’s voice, weaving one of the many great melodies that we’ll hear tonight. The band’s composer, Ellis Ludwig-Leone, stationed at the side of the stage, plays the bass line on a Moog synthesizer.
EMILY
The crowd relaxes into this song’s backbeat and we travel further ‘down the rabbit hole’ to the sound of John Brandon’s trumpet. This is a cracker and will grace many a festival stage this summer, I hope.
From here, we hark back to a song from the first album:
CRUELER KIND
I’m listening to the album version as I write this. It’s cool to hear the various musical themes from the album appearing in the long instrumental section. Such a rich and rewarding work. Charlene Kaye and violinist/vocalist Rebekah Durham harmonise beautifully, Durham also employing a really great tremolo effect that caught my attention. Ludwig-Leone acknowledges Kaye’s great performance (the songs from the first album are seriously difficult to sing!) and comments that it’s a year since her first show with the group.
ASTRONAUT
Back onto the Jackrabbit playlist now with these next two songs. Astronaut is one that I was curious to hear live, as it features a virtuoso soprano line at the end that emerges and floats away from the other instruments. Wisely, they’ve elected to put that line on violin for the live shows — it just isn’t a practical thing to try and do live in a sweaty club. You should definitely take a listen to it on the album, though. Beautiful singing. The acoustic guitar part on this song is also really lovely.
PHILOSOPHER
This must be great fun to sing — a strong lyric that Kaye *owns*.
METHUSELAH
Two from the first album now, Methuselah giving the enthusiastic Dublin crowd a chance to sing along with its infectious, breezy chorus. Again, Tate’s emphatic higher range is used to great effect in the last round.
THE COUNT
Chamber math rock — again, this must be class to play, because it’s certainly class to watch!
WOMAN IN RED
…when you go to sleep don’t close your eyes…
Another brilliant vocal from Tate in this rocking tune from Jackrabbit.
PARASITES
Kaye leads off in this, a warped bluegrass duet with a choral cadence in the middle that leads onto some more awesome sounds from the baritone sax and the kind of dense ensemble work that makes San Fermin such a brilliant band to experience.
SONSICK
My favourite! (And, at close to 4 million streams on Spotify, beloved by many others it seems.)
…when you think you’re thinking clear / you’re really tied up and committed / but it’s an awful lot of talk…
RECKONING
I noticed the lovely celeste sound on this song (that, on listening back, I can hear a lot on the first album, too). Ludwig-Leone uses a Nord Electro — I wonder if it’s the sampled instrument from that?
TWO SCENES
Charlene rocks out on Telecaster for this…
BILLY BIBBIT
These three complete the Jackrabbit run through, but for the title track which is kept until last.
JACKRABBIT
I asked Ellis to sign the vinyl record I bought afterwards and, when I complimented him on the artwork, he said an artist friend had done both album covers. He mentioned wanting to relate the Jackrabbit image to the first album’s menacing bull, but to hint at something unnerving, too. Listening to the track now, it strikes me that this effect is achieved in the music, too. The song is at once a joyous expression and a reflection on life’s brevity and humanity’s cyclical existence. This idea could be extrapolated to a sorry conclusion, but Ludwig-Leone’s music and his band’s wonderful performing leaves us with a fiercely life-affirming message:
…better run for the hills…
——–
DAEDALUS (WHAT WE HAVE)
This tune, which permeates the first album, is coupled with a lyric that muses poignantly on mortality and remembrance (“…when it’s going quickly and it’s like we’re half asleep…”). It begins whimsically and gradually squeezes shut its eyes and clenches its fists and crys out to seek some catharsis. Beautiful work.
BUDDY HOLLY
This pretty faithful cover of the Weezer song acts as an antidote to the intensity of the last. Brilliant gig 🙂
RTE Concert Orchestra (NCH, 25 March 2015): Ravel’s piano concerto in G
RTÉ Concert Orchestra: Essential Classics
John Wilson conductor
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet piano
RTÉ Contempo Quartet
Eric Coates Dancing Nights
Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major
Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Gershwin An American in Paris
“What links all these pieces?” began conductor John Wilson, biding time as the stage was reset after the Vaughan Williams piece.
“Maurice Ravel.”
With a raconteur’s fluency, leaning casually on the podium, Wilson then gave a fascinating programme note. (I had been, shall we say, just in time for the concert, and so hadn’t availed of a printed programme.) Ravel was teacher to Vaughan Williams for an intense period that marked a transformation in his style; Gershwin adored the composer but Ravel famously recognised that the world would benefit more from a first-rate Gershwin than a second-rate Ravel; Coates was one of the few composers that Ravel sought out, on account of his command of the modern instruments (e.g. vibraphone, saxophone).
Coates’s ‘Dancing Nights’ was the only piece that I hadn’t heard before, but its stylish gaiety — with such glorious melodies and harmony! — was immediately familiar and just thoroughly enjoyable. It’s the music from this period that John Wilson has championed in his career and it is one of the very best things to do in Dublin to hear him conduct the RTÉ Concert Orchestra.
Onto Ravel. I fell in love with this piece of music when i first encountered it at university. (The conductor of the Edinburgh University Chamber Orchestra at the time, Richard Jeffcoat, conducted it from the piano. I was on clarinet.) It may say ‘piano concerto’ on the cover, but it’s an incredible piece of work that treats the orchestra more as a chamber ensemble. The writing for each and every instrument demands extraordinary technique. Perhaps this is why it’s so exciting to hear: it’s just so interesting! Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, the piano soloist, was such fun to watch — his remarkable abilities allowing the jazzy energy of the music to shine. There’s a thundering piano run in octaves in the first movement that he played rather differently than I’ve heard on recordings and that was the moment for me when I knew something really special was happening.
The second movement is one of the most perfect things ever committed to paper. It is simply one of the best things in my life; one of those things that I can’t even really recommend to you because, to me, it’s so completely mine.
After a stunning Ravel, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet casually sits down & blows us all away with the Pierné Étude in C minor. pic.twitter.com/MF9w30gwkO
— RTÉConcertOrchestra (@rte_co) March 25, 2015
(If you look very closely you can see me sitting in the balcony, directly above the harp!)
There’s a gem of a book by the brilliant fiction writer Jean Echenoz that I read, and loved, a few years ago. Echenoz uses the facts of Ravel’s last ten years to create a wonderful, charming work.
Rugby
I watched Ireland playing Wales in the Six Nations on Saturday, when we were up staying with my mum and step-dad for the weekend. It was really enjoyable. I don’t think I’ve ever sat down to watch a game before in my life! I went to see Scotland play Western Samoa at Murrayfield when I was at university, but that was *gulp* about fifteen years ago. It obviously didn’t make a great impression on me. The tickets were free and I don’t recall who I went with.
We had to play rugby in school. In primary school we played football. It was a small school so I made the team, despite any discernable (sorry, make that ‘discernible’) talent on the field. It’s amazing how important sport is in the life of a young boy. The social order was very much decided by (or certainly greatly influenced by) ones ability to control a ball of some shape or size. I did derive a lot of pleasure from kicking a ball up and down our garden, reenacting World Cup matches I’d just watched on TV or whatever it might be.
One of my poignant memories of my dad is choosing which teams we’d ‘be’ one afternoon when he suggested we play. I opted for my beloved Liverpool, and he opted for Leeds United. I was scornful, as they were currently languishing in the second division, whereas my Liverpool were enjoying a golden period (this would’ve been the mid 80s) on top of the first division – at that time there was no “Premier League”. Of course, I can see now that my dad was way ahead of the curve, summoning the spirit of a heritage side that had laid waste to all around them in the early 70s. (Here convincingly beating the Manchester United side of George Best, Bobby Charlton and co. in 1972, for example.)
That lesson – the one about respecting history and understanding people’s choices, not the one about the arrogance of youth – is perhaps one of the most valuable that sport can teach. It’s also, naturally, the most difficult one to learn.
When I got to secondary school at the ripe age of 11, we had to play rugby. As I watched the Irish and Welsh players lining out at the Millennium Stadium, I was reminded of afternoons spent discovering my aversion to the whole thing. I don’t really remember being instructed in the rules that much. But, of course, I had no interest in learning them, so our PE teachers’ accomplishment of teaching me to pass – and to not pass forwards! – and kick the oddly shaped ball is a testament to their diligence.
It strikes me that, compared to football (‘soccer’, as we never called it), rugby is a rather more war-like game. And more strategic, too. And more obviously a team sport. The dramatic portion of the game on Saturday where Ireland pushed forward right up to the Welsh goal post (and, after all their effort, were denied a try) was unlike anything you’d get in football. The ball was advancing so slowly as wave upon wave of Irish players drove the play forward inch by inch. In football, the ball moves much more dramatically and you don’t get that relentless, pounding attack so easily. I say easy but, of course, the fact is that it’s incredibly hard work and those massive guys are using every bit of strength they have to try and overpower the opposition.
Thrilling stuff! Next I need to actually go to a game at the Aviva stadium at Landsdown Road here in Dublin…
The Irish captain, Paul O’Connell, won his 100th cap from that match. Here’s a video that was made about him as part of the sponsor’s series about the team:
Emotional sound barrier (quote from John Cleese’s memoir, ‘So, Anyway…’)
One night I did, as near as dammit, a perfect show. I got every laugh, never missed a beat, my timing was exquisite; I was relaxed, disciplined and hilarious. There had been nights when I’d got most of the sketches dead right, but never before had I done the whole show impeccably. I was superb. (Please remember we did about 180 performances and this happened just once.)
The result: exhilaration. And then, the next day, depression. Because I realised I’d never do it so well again. Every night from now on I would go on stage and do it less well than I was capable of — it was going to be downhill all the way. And for a week or so after that, doing the show became a struggle: I was having to push myself through an emotional sound barrier, going on stage to do an imperfect performance that was going to dissatsify me. It was a ridiculous expression of perfectionism but it made me belatedly realise that that’s why I always called myself a writer-performer: I wanted to write something, perform it perfectly just once and then move on. Of course, I eventually found the right professional attitude: to keep it as fresh as possible every night, and take pride in your discipline, but now it always felt like work.
Snipping and stitching (quote from ‘The Ocean At The End Of The Lane’ by Neil Gaiman)
She pushed the scrap of fabric that she had cut across the table. ‘Here’s your evening,’ she said. ‘You can keep it, if you wish. But if I were you, I’d burn it.’
from ‘The Ocean At The End Of The Lane’ by Neil Gaiman
Sonos interview with James Vincent McMorrow
This is a great piece of film that captures the visuals and sound of our last show. It was a weird day, knowing that it was the final show, but it was one of our very best. I’m really glad it was recorded 🙂
You can see my mascot polar bear, that I’d picked up in an amazing hardware store in Glendive, Montana, a week previously.
Addendum
Here’s a screenshot of my ursine mascot, sitting majestically on top of my beloved Nord Stage. The shot does rather fly past if you don’t know what you’re looking for!
The album’s on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/6ovbwOxYvhbLCBh8LhMVyL
jay wilson :: music 