#Areni Agbabian

[musicwithoutborders]

Areni Agbabian · Nicolas Stocker, Patience, 2019

[burlveneer-music]

Tigran Hamasyan's new single "The Kingdom" is a veritable cyclone

Areni Agbabian - vocals Marc Karapetian -electric bass Nate Wood - drums Tigran Hamasyan- piano, synths: Korg Minilogue XD, effect pedals Composed, arranged and produced by Tigran Hamasyan

[plumpfig]

https://youtu.be/Rld8xc2cDTA?si=vbXvU6Js0YyEEbPI 🍃

[tuuguide]

ECM sen ne kafa açıyormuşsun yahu. Müzikte sözcükler bazen yoruyor. Ya ben sözcülerin oluyorum ya da enstrümanlar benim. 

[dustedmagazine]

Alex Cline's Flower Garland Orchestra—Oceans of Vows (Cryptogramophone)

The bell is struck. The importance of such intonation in Buddhist ritual grounds Alex Cline’s vast, ambitious two-disc setting for the Flower Garland sutra. It’s not a didactic release, though, nor is it obtrusively concept album-y. Rather, it’s an extension of Cline’s musical and conceptual interests going all the way back to the Quartet Music days of the early 1980s. Those musical associations are still going, as Cline has assembled a who’s who of Los Angeles improvisers (with some notable guests).

When letting the music settle in around you, and many of the pieces achieve just this effect, it’s tempting to note how the swelling gongs, the guitar and electronic tones, and in some ways the attention to tonal subtlety and modulation, all invite a comparison with fellow Buddhist obsessive Eliane Radigue. That’s not as much of a stretch as it might seem, since while there is plenty of good instrumentalism here, there’s far less burning improvising than one might expect from a “jazz” record (although that’s not what this is, that’s generally how these musicians are classified).

The nice, slow-moving chords in “The Tree of Enlightenment” get things strated evocatively. At the heart of this two hours of music are the texts Cline has selected, not just recitations from sutras (by the marvelous Areni Agbabian, whose vocals are central to the record) but also pre-recorded voices, including that of the piece’s dedicatee Thich Nhat Hanh. Cline blends swirling texture with traditional-sounding instrumentation (usually courtesy of Chi Li, who plays erhu, zhonghu, zheng, and qin) and extended features to showcase members of the orchestra. For example, the lengthy “A Flash of Lightning” is a heady brew for Yuka Honda (keyboards and samples) and guitarists G.E. Stinson and Nels Cline, tussling while the strings (violinists Jeff Gauthier and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and cellist Maggie Parkins) and percussionists (Cline along with Brad Dutz) conjure all manner of woody, scratching sounds.

As interesting as it is to attend to the recitations (and the gorgeous package reproduces everything lovingly), musically a lot of what’s most compelling is in Cline’s patient, judicious use of pulse (note the sparse patterns in “The Voice of the Buddha” or the lilting, spiraling groove on “We Will Be Back Again”). It’s not mere architecture, though; it’s almost like Cline’s own playing serves as the object of conceptual focus, which plays out in any number of idiomatic ways: delicate interplay between voice and guitar on the affecting “The Old Mendicant,” sections that sound like Mahavishnu in pastoral mode, the arco strings and trippy texture of “The Flower Bank World,” or the sprawl of the culminating “The Ten Great Aspirations of Samantabhadra Bhodhisattva.”

This is a distinctive and accomplished record. Whether submerged in the floating world, focused on devotionalism, or in little improvisational thickets, Cline and the assembled musicians have created something not just worth the time but worth returning to.

Jason Bivins

[odedmusic]

We’re Born · Sean Sonderegger · Areni Agbabian · Curtis Fowlkes · Harvey Valdes · Greg Chudzik · Joe Hertenstein

Utter beauty! #OdedFriedGaon #OdedMusic

[isoltsayre]

LIVE STREAMING, ROCK FOR ARTSAKH: A CONCERT FOR PEACE / Ft. Tigran Hamasyan, Serj Tankian, Sebu

ALL DONATIONS UP TO $3 MILLION WILL BE DOUBLED AND SENT TO ARMENIAFUND. 

Donate on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/donate/67530... 

Donate on the website: https://campaign.onearmenia.org/campa... 

 Featuring performances by Tigran Hamasyan / Serj Tankian / Sebu / Capital Cities / Golshifteh Farahani / Tom Morello / Bachar Mar-Khalifé / Dhafer Youssef / Ara Malikian ft. Serouj Kradjian / Viken Arman / R-Mean / Arto Tunçboyacıyan / Isabel Bayrakdarian / Norayr Kartashyan & MENUA Band / Miqayel Voskanyan / Artyom Manukyan / Ben Wendel / Guillaume Perret / Seigo Matsunaga / Derek Sherinian / Anna Kova / Tatiana Spivakova / SWIMS / Serge Avedikian / Alexander Romanovsky / Andrés Marín Vargas / Natalie Aroyan ft. Alex Sahagian / Areni Agbabian ft. Gagik “Gagas” Khodavirdi / Astghik Martirosyan / Hayk Arsenyan / Waxx & Juliette Saumagne / Jonah Walsh / Young musicians of Artsakh & Armenia

[anarcho-mom-unist]

A survey of my ‘spotify wrapped’ from 2020

So, I listen to music between a lot of platforms, I hate how spotify operates as a company (and like in a way that’s pretty comparable to my loathing of the publishing/distribution sides of creative industries,) and I fucking refuse to ever pay for spotify askjdhd

However based on the aggregate of my 100 most-listened-to songs from a year of mostly hitting shuffle on an artist, album, or playlist on mobile, I do have some reflections and highlights. From that I made something of a survey of that list which includes my #1 and #100 song in addition to 1 song from each set of ten, for a total of 12 songs. These represent artists and genres I really got into this year, as well as longtime favorites that are worth talking about:

1. “Bad Trip” - Bad Trip (single) - Xena Elshazlii & Fady Haroun: "Bad Trip” is probably my favorite 2020 release, like if I had to pick one. The track has incredible energy, from the soft piano and vocalization intro to the verse with it’s sparse drums, subtle bass line, and slight strings to an absolute banger of a chorus with punchy staccato synths, reinforcement of the drum groove, and addition of an electric guitar. Elshazlii & Haroun pack a lot into 2-and-a-half minutes of music, and the variations in texture, mix, & music in each iteration of the song’s discrete sections are *chef’s kiss* ---verse 1 and chorus 1 are not identical to verse 2 and chorus 2, to say nothing of the short instrumental transition b/n the first chorus and second verse. Whenever I listen to “Bad Trip” I’m compelled to hit ‘repeat’ ---which is not a normal occurrence for me---and experience the builds and releases that this track brings once again. I don’t know much Arabic beyond the slang terms and exclamations that peppered my grandparents’ & parents’ speech when they spoke to each other in Armenian, but I’d be a liar if I didn’t tell y’all that “Bad Trip” is among the songs that make me want to learn the language so I can better sing along w/ them.

3. “City Lights” - Sailorwave II - Macross 82-99 ft. Kamei:  "City Lights” is the opener to Macross 82-99′s 2018 EP Sailorwave II, and it does that job immaculately. While I recommend the entire EP and an exploration of the Future Funk genre as a whole, you can’t go wrong with getting a taste of either through “City Lights.” The track bursts to life w/ synth brass chords and fast drums, quickly finding its way into punchy up-tempo horn line w/ light rhythm guitar and an active & bouncy bass line joining the mix. “City Lights” more or less goes from A to B to C and after the instrumental opening, the track shifts to a more under-voice horn line offering a countermelody to a mid-to-low register vocal line which is soon after joined by high voices punctuating the beginning of each phrase. The horns, guitars, and singers are cut from the track as the song enters its final section, a rap verse from featured artist Kamei accompanied with a slower-moving bass and light synth chords & wash in the middle register. Taken all together, “City Lights” ---like “Bad Trip” before it---packs a lot of music into a short duration & leaves me wanting more, which I especially long for when listening to the track outside of the context of the EP (which is what I usually do.)

12. “Turn to Hate” - Pony - Orville Peck: There’s a lot I could have done better in 2019, and “check out Orville Peck” is pretty high up there. “Turn to Hate” is a song that is at once heartrending, sincere, & catchy as all get out. Peck does one of my favorite possible things a musician can do on this track, and that’s make me Feel Things at a quick tempo. The vulnerable lyrics sung in outlaw country bass are supported by a fairly simple chord progression that acts as a solid foundation for a lot of texture ---moving guitar lines in the accompaniment part and middle-ground lines that move in and out of the melodic foreground. My moment of pure delight on the track is Peck’s laconic “yeehaw” that leads into a guitar solo that does so much work w/ its relative simplicity. “Turn to Hate” is an excellent song to get you into Orville Peck’s music if you aren’t already, if any of this piques your interest then I strongly recommend exploring his output of classic country meets 2010s indie meets camp gay sensibilities meets emotional realness. (This is as good a place as any to advise you to check out Yola and her album Walk Through Fire.)

27. “Water No Get Enemy” - Expensive Shit - Fela Kuti & Africa 70: I’m a newcomer to Afrobeat which is a fuckin’ shame because it contains a lot of the things I love most in music: rhythmic density and variety, jazz and “folk” idioms working together, a sense joy in the music-making with righteous anger at injustice in the music’s purpose, and a kick-ass horn section. "Water No Get Enemy” by Fela Kuti & Africa 70 is as good an intro as any to Afrobeat as it’s a delightful & excellent piece of music by the genre’s pioneer. It’s worth mentioning that in addition to its musical quality, Afrobeat is also deeply connected with Pan-Africanism and the resistance to the presence of European colonizers in Sub-Saharan Africa. To be frank, whatever I write can’t really do justice to this song or the musical movement from which it comes, go listen to it... a jam you can dance to while hating the British!? Immaculate. 

31. “Vardavar” - EP No. 1 - Tigran Hamasyan: The first of two songs from Armenian Jazz-fusion pianist/keyboardist and composer, Tigran Hamasyan, is a fast moving rhythmically dense piece of music named after the Armenian holiday of the same name ---Vardavar is a holiday of pre-Christian origin that Armenians celebrate in July in observance of the transfiguration of Christ, it involves throwing buckets of water on each other! Appropriate to its namesake, the running piano line through much of the track and the melodic lines are both exceptionally fluid and reminiscent of water. The rhythm of the tune follows a highly irregular subdivision of the bar that it’s best to feel along w/ as a listener ---seriously, unless you’re transcribing the tune or practicing/rehearsing it, don’t worry about counting---and get lost in with the flow of the music. Notable features of the track are the dense layering of instrumental/vocal lines on the melodic and countermelodic material, breakdowns & entire sections where the music takes to longer notes, “slower” feel & division of the bar, and a slower harmonic rhythm, unexpected unisons b/n instruments, and the transformation of Armenian folk melodies & texts between vocalized material and statements of the original material. There is no living musician whose work I love more than Tigran’s and if you’re not familiar with it “Vardavar” is an excellent place to start.

46. “Boyish” - Tropical Jinx - Little Big League:  "Boyish” is better known as one of the singles from Japanese Breakfast’s sophomore album Soft Sounds from Another Planet where Michelle Zauner presents the tune at a slow tempo with an unassuming instrumental accompaniment, wash of synths in the chorus, and low-register closing guitar solo which leaves the audience with a sense of melancholy & vulnerability. The original version from the 2014 LP of Zauner’s former band, Little Big League, offers a different take on the text: noisy guitars, driving rhythm, aggressive drumming on a rock groove, and a vocal delivery offering more of the rage of heartbreak than its sadness. Zauner refers to “Boyish” as an ‘ugly girl anthem’ and that intention is very apparent on this version of the track ---whereas the Japanese Breakfast take on it gave me a sense of being in the gender hinterlands b/n acceptable presentations of masculine and feminine. Both versions of the song are really worth seeking out for different reasons, and I chose to highlight Little Big League on this list because they’re a solid guitar-driven emo band that deserves appreciation in its own right.

50. “Dreaming” - Eat to the Beat - Blondie: What do I need to say about Blondie!? A CBGB act from the late-70′s that straddled the worlds of Punk and New Wave at their peak with a mix of an exceptional rhythm section (that bass!) diverse and compelling guitar work, and the captivating and ever-iconic vocals and presence of Debbie Harry. “Dreaming” might be my favorite song from Blondie and has had a special place in my heart since I first listened to them with my mom. It’s one of those songs that I’m tempted to call a perfect pop song: a joyful performance, lyrics that are at once simple and relatable ---whom amongst is unfamiliar with longing!?---music full of hooks & containing the kind of energy that just goes and takes you with it!

65. “Holy” - Shadow Theater - Tigran Hamasyan: The second entry from Tigran Hamasyan comes from his 2013 album Shadow Theater ---an excellent work as a whole---and is one of the slower, more spacious, and simpler tracks from it. “Holy” is a setting of the Armenian liturgical piece “Soorp Soorp” which is frequently used in the celebration of the Eucharist (even in the Armenian Protestant church I grew up in) and it’s achingly beautiful. There’s always something to be said about a musician capable of complex and virtuosic feats on their instrument doing something very simply and very well, and that’s what the entire ensemble brings ---including frequent collaborator Areni Agbabian who provides the vocals. Even as the texture thickens in the middle of the song, the middle ground & harmonic support coming from strings and bassoon (Ben Wendel) is simple, under-voice, and reverent. “Holy” is the kind of piece of music that offers an encounter with God ---even if one would never otherwise believe in something beyond the material; even just for a moment.

77. “The Day the World Turn Day-Glo” - Germ Free Adolescents - X-Ray Spex: X-Ray Spex is one of those bands I’ve listened to before on a recommendation I received ages ago but never really followed up on beyond the one song sent my way. “...Day-Glo” is a fuckin’ banger of song that just bursts with this wonderful energy from the jump & showcases the best qualities of X-Ray Spex’s sound: driving guitars, wild saxophone lines, and chaotically charismatic lead vocals from singer Poly Styrene. X-Ray Spex have an output that is wild and fun as hell to explore, and “...Day-Glo” is an excellent place to start ---you’d also do well to check out their more notable song “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!” 

84. “Marquee Moon” - Marquee Moon - Television: Listen, you don’t need to read some internet lesbian with a music degree go off about Television ---one of the most musically interesting acts to come out of CBGB and one of many definitive proofs that Punk is not a label that people should fucking fight about having a true definition of. Clear 11 minutes in your day, find a pair of headphones so you can experience the use of stereo in the recording and enjoy each element of the song, especially with regards to Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd’s interlocking guitar lines.

96. “Leylum” - Kokorec - Collectif Medz Bazaar & Sevana Tchak: Armenian folk music, baby!! Collectif Medz Bazaar offer a lively and joyful rendition of the classic folk song “Leylum” which has been burned in my mind from church and community gatherings ---the fun ones with music and all of your aunties dancing in a circle and such. Listen to this song and DM me if you aren’t dancing along of joining in on the response parts as best you can. I think this particular recording offers a nice entry point into an exploration of Armenian music, the instrumentation hits a lot of the staples of Armenian folk ensembles ---duduks, dohl, dumbek, clarinet, shvi, etc.---and the song itself is an up tempo dance tune which I find to be easier to start with than ballads or liturgical music.

100. “Electrastar” - Paradize - Indochine: Back in the hazy past of 2017, one of my friends from undergrad and I were hanging out and playing music for each other. In a departure from his usual library of French Baroque music, he played a song by French New Wave band, Indochine. That song was “Electrastar” which is a consistent favorite of mine, my favorite song from its album ---Paradize, which is already a solid record---and a great entry point into the musical output of a band which has been active for about 40 years. "Electrastar” features driving rhythm guitar, pulsing synth under the texture, eminently catchy chorus and post-chorus, and a very care-full and effective approach to the mix. Also, not for nothing but that album cover is 👀

Survey of 2020 Listening

[sweetbreakbeat]

areni agbabian

[burlveneer-music]

Alex Cline's Flower Garland Orchestra - Oceans of Vows

Alex Cline’s Oceans of Vows is a deluxe box set of music drawing inspiration from four poems by Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, as well as excerpts from the Buddhist text known as the Avatamsaka Sutra. It’s performed by composer/percussionist Alex Cline and his all-star 14-piece Flower Garland Orchestra, featuring Nels Cline, Yuka C. Honda, G.E. Stinson, Jeff Gauthier, Areni Agbabian, and many others.  Available now!

Areni Agbabian, voice Chi Li, erhu, zhonghu, zheng, qin Jeff Gauthier, electric violin Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, electric 5-string violin Maggie Parkins, cello Will Salmon, flute, recorders Nels Cline, electric guitars G.E. Stinson, electric guitars Wayne Peet, electric piano, organ Yuka C. Honda, electric keyboards, samples Scott Walton, bass, keyboard Brad Dutz, vibraphone, hand drums, crotales, gongs, percussion Alex Cline, drums, gongs, percussion Vicki Ray, conductor

[riffsstrides]

Areni Agbabian - Bloom (2019)

Heavenly as the music sounds, the human element - Agbabian, Stocker, and centuries of Armenian people who have established and contributed to both the sacred and the secular traditions that so strongly influence Agbabian - is essential, inextricable from ‘Bloom’.

Areni Agbabian Voice, Piano

Nicolas Stocker Drums, Percussion

[armeniaitn]

Artists for Artsakh: A Concert for Peace

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/culture/artists-for-artsakh-a-concert-for-peace-64039-28-10-2020/

Artists for Artsakh: A Concert for Peace

ONEArmenia hosts Rock For Artsakh: A Concert for Peace. All donations to this special fundraising concert are being doubled, up to $3 million, and sent to the ArmeniaFund.

The concert features performances by Tigran Hamasyan / Serj Tankian / Sebu / Capital Cities / Golshifteh Farahani / Tom Morello / Bachar Mar-Khalifé / Dhafer Youssef / Ara Malikian ft. Serouj Kradjian / Viken Arman / R-Mean / Arto Tunçboyacıyan / Isabel Bayrakdarian / Norayr Kartashyan & MENUA Band / Miqayel Voskanyan / Artyom Manukyan / Ben Wendel / Guillaume Perret / Seigo Matsunaga / Derek Sherinian / Anna Kova / Tatiana Spivakova / SWIMS / Serge Avedikian / Alexander Romanovsky / Andrés Marín Vargas / Natalie Aroyan ft. Alex Sahagian / Areni Agbabian ft. Gagik “Gagas” Khodavirdi / Astghik Martirosyan / Hayk Arsenyan / Waxx & Juliette Saumagne / Jonah Walsh / Young musicians of Artsakh & Armenia

Read original article here.

[odedmusic]

Petal Two · Areni Agbabian

#OdedMusic #OdedFriedGaon

[blue-note-lp]

ModernJazzDaily: joelovano: RT ECMRecords: listen to AppleMusic's updated 'Jazz Chill' playlist features pieces by odedtzur, Areni Agbabian, joelovano, Keith Jarrett and many others. https://t.co/sgBXEzYdxN https://t.co/ak0bNq1xda http://twitter.com/BlueNoteVinyl/status/1230617166325653504 BlueNoteVinyl

ModernJazzDaily: joelovano: RT ECMRecords: listen to AppleMusic's updated 'Jazz Chill' playlist features pieces by odedtzur, Areni Agbabian, joelovano, Keith Jarrett and many others.https://t.co/sgBXEzYdxN https://t.co/ak0bNq1xda

— Blue Note Collector (@BlueNoteVinyl) February 20, 2020

from Twitter https://twitter.com/BlueNoteVinyl February 20, 2020 at 05:16PM via IFTTT

[edlorado]

Areni Agbabian-Patience