Philip Glass – The Hours

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Film Score, Philip Glass, The Hours

An excellent introduction to the Glass World

This CD stands alone in its own right, as well as a beautifully apt score to a movie. Most of the Glass hallmarks are there, the repetitions, the slow building of change, the shimmering dissonance, the beautiful, yearning melodic musicality, but packaged in more bite sized morsels, piece on piece, to fit the demands of a film score. And moreover a film which perfectly is attuned to the reflective, interior, plangent and yearning landscape which Glass often inhabits.

The more I steep myself in Glass’s music (and I’m pretty steeped in it!) the more I find myself questioning the use of the term minimalist or minimalism to describe his music. I find him an intensely romantic musician, and this music in particular is romantic in the way that Rachmaninov’s music is romantic – lyrical, melodic, with the arc of a musical line very clear, and with a blue, often minor key unresolved longing built into it.

The Hours is particularly fine in hinting at subtexts below the sometimes busy dynamics of a piece – listen to ‘I’m Going To Make A Cake’ for an example, where there are phrases of turbulence and activity, quite unsettling, and simultaneously something deep, slow, sorrowful and painful in the theme. Very apt for acting as counterpoint to the women’s lives (in the film/book) where there is actually huge drama and intensity going on, but its driven by interior landscape.

I like the video someone made of this, which rather captures something large, beautiful, mysterious – but also terrifying going on – like a meaning which can’t be grasped, caught on the edge of potential annihilation, but, maybe something new, some wondrous creation about to arise. I find myself on the edge of drowning in despair and expanding into promise with this particular piece – an ‘on the edge’, can go either way, piece of music, which potently illustrated the interior of the character in the movie, in a heartbreaking, heart making, scene

This is Glass for when I need a Glassfix but don’t have the time to listen to a 20 minute piece, as each track here has is own completion, as well as being part of a whole. Except that, as always with his music, I end up wanting more, so arrive late at my destination…………

Philip Glass – The Hours Amazon UK
Philip Glass – The Hours Amazon USA

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Inside Llewyn Davis – Soundtrack

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Bob Dylan, Carey Mulligan, Coen Brothers, Dave Van Ronk, Inside Llewyn Davis, Justin Timberlake, Marcus Mumford, Oscar Isaac, Stark Sands, T Bone Burnett

Sweet melancholy folk.

The music (of course!) in the Coen’s film of Inside Llewyn Davis was absolutely integral to its charm, and with images from the film spooling in my mind’s eye and music tantalisingly playing, half remembered, ditto, getting the soundtrack was a must

Oscar Isaac, on both CD and film is stellar. Though I found myself wondering what Oscar Isaac himself naturally plays and sounds like; as a clearly consummate actor, I suspect what we may have here is Llewyn Davis as musician and singer – Isaac himself may have quite different musical qualities. One of the hallmarks of the film is its loving steeping into the style of the times, both vocally and instrumentally – listening to Dave van Ronk’s playout track of Green Green Rocky Road, and the penultimate track of an unreleased studio recording of Dylan singing ‘Farewell’ in the context of the other 12 tracks shows this. There is a similar plangent, dourly tender quality to Isaac’s voice as in that early Dylan track – adding a nice little irony to the use of the Dylan at the end of the film, as a reminder of ‘then everything changed-– Llewyn Davis SOOOO close but not quite there!

I couldn’t QUITE go the full 5 star on the soundtrack, only because there are 3 tracks I skip over, as not to my ears for listening to outwith the film – the ‘joke’ Please Mr Kennedy, the very traditional old bouncy folk Roving Gambler, and The Storms Are On The Ocean (hope no one punches me for this – see the film!)

The rest are fabulous, as songs, as arrangements by the performing artists and T Bone Burnett, and as instrumental and vocal renditions.

But………I do agree with the CD sleeve note compiler that standout of many standouts is the rendition of Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song) with Isaac and Marcus Mumford, who is co musical producer. This is ineffable! Isaacs darkly honeyed, anguished vocals woven with the sweeter, lighter quality of Mumford.

There are so many little teasers to performers of that time and slightly later, in this music – from the Peter, Paul and Mary of Stark Sands, Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan, the on-the-verge-of early Simon and Garfunkel on the Isaac, Mumford track, and the quality of an almost but not quite there early folky Dylan from Isaac himself. Stark Sands rendition of Tom Paxton’s The Last Thing On My Mind is also a real delight.

The album is definitely a fuller experience if you saw the film, but pretty darned fine on its own.

Inside Llewyn Davis Soundtrack Recording Amazon UK
Inside Llewyn Davis Soundtrack Recording Amazon USA

The Broken Circle Breakdown (Soundtrack)

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Bjorn Eriksson, Bluegrass, Broken Circle Breakdown Soundtrack, Country Music, Johan Heldenbergh, Music review, Veerle Baetens

Stands alone as a CD or hooks the memory of those who loved the film

I’m not a genre admirer of bluegrass music, but this CD might make me think I could become one!

Hooked into it on the back of the Belgian film which this is the soundtrack from The Broken Circle Breakdown  I headed over to buy this pretty instantly, worn out by having to go to YouTube, again and again, in order to play trailers to hear tracks again.

So now the music is merrily (and heartbreakingly) playing, and dissociated from those stunning performances in the film where the tracks are in a different, progressive order and each track is telling the story of what is happening for Elise and Didier, I can settle to form a musical relationship with the CD.

This title is one of the purely instrumental tracks, Sand Mountain. Be patient, as the repeated, languid opening phrase, which then hangs silently for a beat or two (up to 44 secs in) then springs into hootenanny toe tappy jig, leaving the listener ebullient with all the steely twangs!

I have focused on the You Tube excerpts of the tearbreakers on my film review, but here is a bouncier vocal and instrumental (Country In My Genes)

Within the film itself my focus was on vocal performance from Veerle Baetens and Johan Heldenbergh. Baetens has a sweet, fragile voice working particularly well on the stick a knife into the heart tracks, though there is a lovely openhearted freshness in her rendition of bouncier numbers like Country In My Genes, whilst Heldenbergh has more textures in his voice, rich, full, even a little rough and burly on the Bruce Springsteen number Further On Up the Road,and lighter, more tender, without the grit in his duets and accompanying numbers with Baetens, as befits the way the music is used to explore their relationship as individuals who sing love songs with each other.

Divorced from the film, it is the quality and texture of the marvellous musicians that I’m now drawn to engage with: the weavings, the riding a horse trot and bounciness of the rhythms of the faster numbers, trotting, cantering galloping Yeeeee —-Haaar! so that sitting to listen is hard, the listener forced to toe tap, arm shake and finally give in and jig and skip. Finally (because of the different order of tracks in film and CD) you are allowed to rest, catch your breath and and hear how tender and soulful Bjorn Eriksson’s guitar, and the viols or mandolines of Geeart Waegeman and Nils de Caster can get.

The purely instrumental tracks are a wonder and delight of flying, flirty weavings, call and response, back-chat and breathless virtuosity

Within the film itself the movement of the music is one of steady darkening, the fizz and ebullient, show-off daredevil champagne tracks occurring earlier, and the steadily painful tracks of loss and despair and loneliness inevitably charting the sad journey of the film.

The CD mixes this up , and this is indeed a much better arrangement for a stand alone.

Who knows, I may find myself wanting to don that cowboy hat and become a country gal after all!

The Broken Circle Breakdown Soundtrack Amazon UK
The Broken Circle Breakdown Soundtrack Amazon USA

Jocelyn Pook – Untold Things

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Jocelyn Pook, Music review, Soundtrack, Untold Things, World music

Frankly weird, a mash-up, but definitely haunting

I had never heard of Jocelyn Pook, till a friend sent me a link to a YouTube video of a piece of `sacred style’ Western choral singing composed by her, very much in Early Music polyphony mode (which I love)

Alas, this was a while ago and I can no longer find that particular clip

However I also love the strange atonal, dissonant singing and ululations of Arabic music. And it turns out that Ms Pook, best known for film and TV sound tracks, (Eyes Wide Shut, by all accounts propelled her to a wider audience) works with a fusion of Western classical, and strands of world music which clearly pull in threads from the Balkans, the Middle East, India, and she also incorporates more modern, electronic techniques – reverb, sampled sounds. And then there is a rich and sumptuous vein of high romantic and lyrical use of Western classical strings, lush and emotional.

And, on this particular album  some up-beat, tabla driven rhythmic numbers, which invite the listener to groove, move and sway

This shouldn’t really work, somehow it does! Personally I found the more dance upbeat numbers were not quite as alluring as the other tracks, missing the stranger, more unusual quality of the other, intensely emotional tracks.

The YouTube embed is of Requiem aeternam, a track from another Pook album Flood
Untold Things Amazon UK
Untold Things Amazon USA

 

Ernst Reijseger – Requiem for a Dying Planet

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Cuncordu e Tenore de Orosei, Ernst Reijseger, Mola Sylla, Music review, Requiem for a Dying Planet, Soundtrack, Werner Herzog, World music review

Shivery, aching music for the end of time

This is an utterly splendid, stunningly beautiful, piece of music, which, even without the Werner Herzog films it is soundtrack for, suggests space opening up, relics of all we have loved and lost, and humanity itself, vanished on the wind. All we were, all we created, gone. The first track, a richly pure unknown vocalist floats a classical devotional `Thanks Be to God’ Danke Sei Gott’ in a way which seems to lift into the stratosphere, dissolving into Reijseger’s cello and disembodied isolated notes. This then settles into the overall musical flavour, which is a rich weaving of the cello, accompanying the ancient, earthy, visceral sounds of the vocalists – Senegalese singer and musician, Mola Sylla, singing in Wolof, with a voice of rich ululations and resonance (he also plays kalimba, xalam, percussions), weaving with some of the amazing drones and tapestry of throat music sounds of Sardinian polyphonic music, both sacred and secular, sung by Cuncordu e Tenore de Orosei, marrying two traditional singing modes.

The powerful combinations of voices, cello, other instrumentation, and natural sounds which come at the ends of songs – water, wind, thunder, suggest the sadness of a planet now without life.

This is music for and by those who value and hold sacred Gaia, and all that creeps, and bounds upon her, swims within her waters, or flies in her skies It also speaks to those who treasure and value our several histories, as creatures who are nurtured by earth, even as we destroy her
Requiem for a Dying Planet Amazon UK
Requiem for a Dying Planet Amazon USA

Jocelyn Pook – Flood

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Africa, Early music, Flood, Jocelyn Pook, Kathleen Ferrier, Music review, sacred music, Soundtrack, World music review

The weird, wonderful, Puckish Ms. Pook

Jocelyn Pook’s fascination with both the sacred early music traditions of Christianity, and the music of northern Africa, the nomadic tradition and Islamic influence, easily puts a girdle round the earth in 40 minutes.

From the beginning track where ethereal female voices sing a choral Requiescat, she moves into something which opens out the horizons on the second track, with a vista of sandy deserts and nomadic camel riders, except that the strange beat, the synthesised soundscape behind the ululating female voices, suggest an almost other world, futuristic planet.

The fourth track, Oppenheimer, where the narrative voice at the beginning makes reference to Hindu devotional texts, Vishnu the destroyer, is apocalyptic. There is a harsh, windy soundscape which sounds like the end of the world has happened, through which weave and interweave prayerful music from Christianity and equally devotionally intense music of Arabic influence. It is almost like some final, terrible battle between major faiths, and at the end of things is harshness, and the beauty which mankind created (music) left to remind us of the devotion and the savagery of faiths.

Another track starts with the urban voices of children at play, and weaves the rich voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing Blow the Winds Southerly with the small soprano female choir singing a Pie Jesu. Pook clashes worlds together in an utterly new, hypnotic way

I don’t know who is responsible for the primary female vocals on most of the tracks, the floated voice, but it is sublime!
Jocelyn Pook – Flood Amazon UK
Jocelyn Pook – Flood Amazon USA