After three well-received singles in Wasted, Liberty and Bassdrone, Joyhauser release their debut album. The Belgian duo have spent three years honing their craft, building a strong following underground – but now is the time to put their heads above the parapet and show their true worth.
What’sthemusiclike?
There is some thrilling dancefloor action on In Memoro.
Leben is a powerful opening track, a brooding slower number that catches light halfway through as synth lines flicker like lightning. The coiled spring energy is emphatically released in the quickly paced LXR02, a dark chocolate number with tough beats and a strong workout for the synths.
Elsewhere the combination of minimal but probing synth lines and sharply edged beats yields plenty of rewards. Bassdrone and Liberty are both dancefloor thrillers, and each track brings something to the table.
Does it all work?
Yes. Excitement levels remain high throughout!
Is it recommended?
It is. An excellent debut that bodes well for the future.
Jayda G’s new opus is an intensely personal tale. Since her last album was released, the Canadian singer-songwriter has seen a surge in popularity bringing her high profile remixes and DJ sets, not to mention gigs. It has also seen her marry her childhood sweetheart in the same house where her parents were married.
The story here is much more about them than her – and specifically her father, William Richard Guy, whose voice can be heard in the spoken word interludes surrounding the music. The music itself is all about him, too, tracking his upbringing in Kansas, brushes with local gangs and the authority, splitting with his wife on return from a stint in Vietnam and moving to Washington. From there he moved to Canada, where he remarried and Jayda was born.
Jayda tells the story through pop music, though is more than happy to bring in house, funk and soul to enrich the musical flavour.
What’sthemusiclike?
As above – pop music with extra colour and spice. Jayda writes with clean lines and has a cool vocal delivery, but these are beautifully worked nuggets that work in several contexts. House music fans will love the tempo and energy, lovers of soul will appreciate the deeper moments and the connection to the heart that she finds with her lyrics and vocals.
Pure pop music fans, meanwhile, will delight in the sharply observed lyrics, the hooks on which the music comfortably hangs, the sleek production and the riffs aplenty. What also helps a load here is the way Jayda clearly enjoys her role, and the personal input she gives to tell her story as vividly as possible.
There are many highlights, but a special mention should be made for Heads Or Tails, with its sharply observed pop and house music edge, Jayda G delivering typically cool vocals. Meanwhile Your Thoughts is an excellent power pop song, faultlessly delivered.
Does it all work?
It does. The ebb and flow here is spot on, the movement towards house music only heightens the pop sensibility, and there is a good groove at every turn.
Is it recommended?
It certainly is. This is music that is personal to Jayda G, but it will resonate deeply with any listener making the effort to get involved.
A press release in full, detailing an exciting album coming in October:
This autumn, Erased Tapes are set to release ‘Give It to the Sky: Arthur Russell’s Tower of Meaning Expanded’ by composer and producer Peter Broderick and French 12-piece group Ensemble 0; a complete re-recording of Russell’s epic minimalist orchestral composition originally released in 1983.
Released 6th October, ‘Give It to the Sky’ also includes unreleased tracks by Russell which have been restored and re-recorded, resulting in an 80-minute reanimation that threads several lost songs into a meticulous and gorgeous rendering. The album was recorded live as a group in a small theatre in the Southwest of France with minimal overdubs.
Today, Peter & Ensemble 0 share the lead track ‘Tower of Meaning III’. Peter says of the song; “Tower of Meaning III’ is as good a place to start as any, and being the third track on the album, after a couple of short introductory pieces, I see it as the first piece on the record which dives deeply into the wonderful and mysterious world that is ‘Tower of Meaning’.”
For all its wonder and beauty, the musical output of the American cellist, composer, singer, and musical visionary also embodies irony, tragedy, and paradox. Russell famously recorded more than 1,000 hours of tape and left an otherwise-tremendous archive, now part of the New York Public Library. But before his death in 1992, Russell released just three albums under his own name. One of those was ‘Tower of Meaning’ (1983), a score commissioned for and then abandoned by a Robert Wilson production of Euripides’ Medea. Composer and pianist Philip Glass helped preserve the music, at least, subsequently releasing a somewhat-thin recording on his own label of just 320 LPs.
A few years into his obsession with Russell’s work, Broderick paid $500 for one of those scant copies (it was remastered and reissued in 2006, followed by several subsequent editions). Still, he didn’t connect with that collector’s item the way he did with so much of Russell’s oeuvre. It felt a tad cold and distant, Russell’s usual tangle of intimacy and mystery perhaps lost in his frustrations with the process or maybe in the recording itself. Ensemble 0 founder Stéphane Garin realized he needed to pursue this project immediately after performing just a bit of the piece. In 2019, the group played a 25-minute chunk as a preamble to ‘Femenine’, the pulsing minimalist masterwork of Julius Eastman (a longtime Russell collaborator, Eastman conducted the initial recording of ‘Tower of Meaning’). He was struck by its splendor and subtle difficulty, the way that Russell shirked dissonance in favor of metric complexity. There was little else like it.
Garin was aware of Broderick’s stints interpreting Russell’s songs on stages and albums for the better part of a decade but also his work collaborating with Russell’s estate to restore previously unreleased tracks for the critically acclaimed album ‘Iowa Dream’ (2019). Broderick naturally did not hesitate when Ensemble 0 asked him to enlist, but he did offer a surprise: Rather than lace ‘Tower of Meaning’ with expected Russell standards, why not incorporate some of his cherished songs that had never found a home?
Early in the process, Ensemble 0 made the decision that they would not seek out Russell’s original esoteric scores, which had already been used to stage ‘Tower of Meaning’ elsewhere. They liked the fact that the recording felt unfinished, allowing them to consider what was missing and how the ever-restless Russell might have modified it over time. Ensemble 0 saxophonist Julien Pontvianne toiled over this task, scrutinizing recordings that Russell had slowed with a tape machine in order to find the melodies and undergirding arrangements.
‘Give It to the Sky’ is supple and dioramic. Pontvianne’s transcriptions add both muscle and nuance to the original recording, with a new low-end depth to balance the trebly tremble. Ensemble 0’s layers are as intricate as they are expertly rendered, the obfuscation of that rare Glass release replaced by a clarity that lets you peer inside this mesmeric music. New ideas appear, suggesting ‘Tower of Meaning’ as the scaffolding to something greater.
Ensemble 0 weave in and out of Broderick’s additions. ‘Corky’, a poignant cowboy ballad that Russell never finished, appears, disappears, and reappears three times, the droning exhalations of ‘Tower of Meaning’ making it feel sweeter and sadder. Arriving just after the triumphant halfway mark, the title track is a sublime meditation on mere existence, about staring at some simple rural scene and marcelling at the miracle of being anywhere at all. It is an apt encapsulation of how this entire project feels – a glorious way to hear something that might have seemed familiar as if for the very first time.
Russell was never much for definitive versions, of course. He was constantly rethinking the possibilities of a piece, of wondering what else it could do. ‘Give It to the Sky’ is a powerful affirmation of those principles, using Tower of Meaning’s framework to build outward and upward, to shape something that functions within Russell’s wondrous, paradoxical world. And ‘Give It to the Sky’ is also not intended to be some definitive last word. Broderick and Ensemble 0 speak already of the ways it may shift on stage, of where else it might lead.
Prom 9 – Mariza with Luis Guerreiro (Portuguese guitar), Phelipe Ferreira (acoustic guitar), Adriano Alves ‘Dinga’ (bass guitar), João Freitas (percussion), João Frade (accordion), Strings of the London Contemporary Orchestra
Royal Albert Hall, London Friday 21 July 2023
by Richard Whitehouse photos by Chris Christodoulou / BBC
The incidence of ‘world music’ at the Proms might be appreciably less than in its heyday of two decades ago, but a number of major figures still tread the boards at the Albert Hall and hearing Mariza this evening prompted a thought as to why she had not been invited before.
Maybe because Fado, of which she became the leading exponent on the death of its previous standard-bearer Amália almost a quarter-century ago, is still heard as provincial in its idiom and appeal. Emerging from urbanized Brazilian in the mid-19th century, it latterly took hold in Portugal as a means of opposing the authoritarian regimes in power until 1975 and retains its cultural potency today. With her Mozambiquan heritage and willingness to embrace other genres, Mariza has widened the stylistic remit of Fado but without diluting its essential ‘soul’.
An elegant and commanding but never overbearing presence on stage, she was joined tonight by a quintet of musicians whose intricate if discreet accompaniment was the perfect backdrop for this representative cross-section from her eight albums released over the past two decades. The smouldering pathos of What a strange way of living set the prevailing mood, followed by the pensiveness of There are Words that Kiss Us and the intimacy of Tear with its first hint of that vocalise Mariza unfurls to heighten the emotional ambit. The engaging Paper Carnations has a resonance for all who recall events of nearly 50 years ago, while Rain is the archetypal Fado number the world over. The underlying restlessness of Vain Wishes was complemented perfectly with the plaintiveness of Where Are You Going? from Mariza’s forthcoming album.
Thus far the set featured the strings of London Contemporary Orchestra, whose atmospheric arrangements evoked those by Wally Stott (later Angela Morley) for Scott Walker’s late ’60s albums. Their departure none the less abetted the immediacy of the music-making, witnessed by the impulsiveness of A Kiss of Longing and confiding warmth of I Wish, before the radiant poise of Spring brought the expected ovation. Hardly less enthusiastic was that accorded The Best of Me, its soaring aspiration furthered by the propulsive tread of Green Lemons then the rousing sentiments of Listen, Mr Wine when the singer’s rapport with her audience was made manifest. There was no lack of verve in the infectious White Rose, or in the headily rhythmic Black Boat with its breathtaking pause where one could have heard the proverbial pin drop.
A later than usual start and absence of an interval meant that this concert proceeded straight through 85 minutes, though neither musicians nor audience betrayed any sign of fatigue over its course. While the majority of a near-capacity house doubtless consisted of afficionados or enthusiasts, those unfamiliar with Mariza will surely have been encouraged to delve further into her music. As a starting-point, the studio album Fado Tradicional (2010) or live album Concerto em Lisboa (2006) are ideal for immersing oneself into what this music has to offer.
Tonight, however, the strings of the LCO emerged back on the stage to accompany Mariza and her ensemble in the incantatory O People from My Country – if not (yet) the Portuguese national anthem, then certainly a number such as encapsulates Fado at its soul-stirring best.
Here is a personal blog for Saturday 22 July – as on this day, my mother Coralie would have been 80 years old.
I owe my mum and dad a huge debt of gratitude, not just for bringing me up in the way they did but for playing music to me when I was young, and encouraging my love of classical music (they didn’t know about the prog rock and techno until a good deal later!)
As a thank you to Mum, who we still miss greatly, I have picked out some of her favourite classical pieces. She loved guitar music, and few pieces made her smile more than Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, with its bright first movement:
Another fresh-faced favourite was Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, a set work that she studied at ‘O’ level but one that stayed with her:
Scotland held a special place in Mum’s heart, and while her favourite places were Oban and Mull, one piece that never failed to move was the wonderful Farewell To Stromness by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies:
Arcana.fm 