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burlveneer-music · 2 years ago

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Shakti - Mohanam - John McLaughlin, Zakir Hussain & co. reunite for first new Shakti studio album since 1977, this being the advance single

Born of an immense degree of both soul-searching and woodshedding, Shakti emerged in the early 1970s – shattering the barriers between Eastern and Western music with an ecstatic, soulful hybrid that knowingly embodied both traditions while setting out for uncharted musical terrain. Shakti’s catalyst was the meeting of guitarist and composer John McLaughlin and tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain. Both had already achieved a certain degree of notoriety in their musical domains. John, through his association with Miles Davis and his immensely successful group The Mahavishnu Orchestra: Zakir through his amazing classical work and his collaborations with the California music scene. Hussain and McLaughlin had become friends in 1969 and met musically one evening at the house of the late great Ali Akbar Khan. To quote McLaughlin, “It was a revelation playing with Zakir”. McLaughlin subsequently began studying the Vina with Dr. S. Ramanathan and through him met with Dr. L. Shankar himself a head at the South Indian Music department at Wesleyan University and by 1973 had brought Zakir, violinist L. Shankar and the head of the percussion department Ramnad Raghavan playing the mridangamfor the very first time. It was at once, a marriage of the tonal and rhythmic intricacies of classical Indian music with the immediacy and soul of Jazz. This first formation of Shakti recorded its first live recording in 1975 and released in 1976. Their unprecedented music awakened subsequent generations to the rich, untapped potential of such pan-cultural fusions and helped to create what is now known as “World Music.” While the initial lineup of Shakti disbanded in 1978, Hussain and McLaughlin have periodically resurrected the Shakti group for live performances and concert recordings – but have not released a new studio album since 1977’s Natural Elements…until now. “Mohanam” – available for streaming/download – is the first new studio music from Shakti in more than 45 years. Drawn from the upcoming album This Moment (to be released on CD and vinyl in the summer of 2023 by Abstract Logix), the track glimmers with optimism and wonder as it moves with unhurried grace through a series of instrumental movements that acknowledge Shakti’s formidable legacy while proposing new routes. “‘Mohanam’ is a joyful piece,” explains McLaughlin, “and joy is the inherent nature of the Shakti group.” The lineup featured on “Mohanam” – McLaughlin (guitar) and Hussain (tabla) are featured alongside vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan, and percussionist Selvaganesh Vinayakram (son of original Shakti ghatam player T.H. “Vikku” Vinayakram). On “Mohanam,” Hussain and Vinayakram are also featured on konokol – a traditional and demanding form of Indian vocal percussion.

#Shakti #john mclaughlin #zakir hussain #jazz #fusion #indian music #indian classical #tabla

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bamboomusiclist · 11 months ago

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12/7 おはようございます。Ten Years After / Ten Years After DES18009 等更新しました。

Pug Horton / Don't Go Away bw102 Joy Bryan / Sings modlp108 Modlp108 Jimmy McGary / the First Time TM-3401 Zoot Sims / Whooeeee stlp914 Johnny Hodges / Duke's In Bed mgv8203 Toshiko Mariano / Toshiko Mariano Quartet Cjm8012 Duke Ellington / We Love You Madly spc3390 Johnny Smith / New Johnny Smith Quartet rlp2216 Roland Kirk / Kirk in Copenhagen mg20894 Andrew Hill / Black Fire bst84151 Idrees Sulieman & Jamila Sulieman / The Camel SSX1008 Dexter Gordon / One Flight Up bst84176 Dewey Redman / Look For the Black Star Al1011 Shakti John McLaughlin / Natural Elements jc34980 Sonny Fortune / Waves of Dreams sp711 Henry Kaiser / Aloha Studio Solo ml109 Giorgio Buratti / Don’t Bother Me msa77267 Woody Shaw / Love Dance mr5074 Ten Years After / Ten Years After DES18009 Egberto Gismonti / Solo ecm1136 Egberto Gismonti & Academia de Dancas / Sanfoma ecm1203 ecm1204

~bamboo music~

[email protected]

530-0028 大阪市北区万歳町3-41 シロノビル104号

06-6363-2700

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nectarine-vibes · 7 years ago

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Shakti | Face To Face

#shakti #natural elements #face to face #world market #world fusion #prog #progressive rock #john mclaughlin #zakir hussain

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redantsunderneath · 4 years ago

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On Analysis Part 1 - Hermeneutics and Configurative reading (the “what” part)

“Without turning, the pharmacist answered that he liked books like The Metamorphosis, Bartleby, A Simple Heart, A Christmas Carol. And then he said that he was reading Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Leaving aside the fact that A Simple Heart and A Christmas Carol were stories, not books, there was something revelatory about the taste of this bookish young pharmacist, who ... clearly and inarguably preferred minor works to major ones. He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecouchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze a path into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.” ― Roberto Bolano, 2666

Much of the background for this post in particular comes from Paul Fry’s Yale lecture course about the theory of literature. This is a great starting course for interpretation and textual analysis and, yes, film and TV shows are text.

In futzing around with this stuff, what am I doing? Less charitably, what do I think I’m even trying to do, here? Many feel that applying theory to art and entertainment is as pretentious as the kind of art or entertainment that encourages it. It’s understandable. Many examples of analysis are garbage and even people capable of good work get going in the wrong direction due to fixations or prejudices they aren’t even aware of and get swept away by the mudslide of enthusiasm into the pit of overreach. That’s part of the process. But this stuff has an actual philosophical grounding, so let’s start by looking at the stories history of trying to figure out “texts.”

Ideas about the purpose of art, what it means to be an author, and how it is best to create go back to the beginning of philosophy but (outside of some notable examples) there is precious little consideration of the reception of art and certainly not a feeling that it was a legitimate field of study until more recently. The Greeks figured the mind would just know how to grok it because what it was getting at was automatically universal and understanding was effortless to the tune mind. But the idea that textual analysis should be taken seriously began with the literal texts of the Torah (Rabbinical scholarship) and then the Bible, but mostly in closed circles.

Hermeneutics as we know it began as a discipline with the Protestant Reformation since the Bible was now available to be read. Sooooo, have you read it? It’s not the most obvious or coherent text. Reading it makes several things clear about it: 1. It is messy and self contradictory; 2. A literal reading is not possible for an honest mind and isn’t advisable in any event; 3. It is extremely powerful and mysterious in a way that makes you want to understand, your reach exceeding your grasp. This is like what I wrote about Inland Empire - it captures something in a messy, unresolvable package that probably can’t be contained in something clear and smooth. This interpretive science spread to law and philosophy for reasons similar to it’s roots in text based religion - there was an imperative to understand what was meant by words.

Hans-Georg Gadamer is the first to explicitly bring to bear a theory of how we approach works. He was a student of Martin Heidegger, who saw the engagement with “the thing itself” as a cyclic process that was constructive of meaning, where we strive to learn from encounters and use that to inform our next encounter. Gadamer applied this specifically to how we read a text (for him, this means philosophical text) and process it. Specifically he strove to, by virtue of repeated reading and rumination which is informed by prior readings (on large and small scales, even going back and forth in a sentence), “align the horizons” of the author and the reader. The goal of this process is to arrive at (external to the text) truth, which was for him the goal of the enterprise of writing and reading to begin with. This is necessary because the author and reader both carry different preconceptions to the enterprise (really all material and cultural influences on thinking) that must be resolved.

ED Hirsch had a lifelong feud with Gadamer over this, whipping out Emanuel Kant to deny that his method was ethically sound. He believed that to engage in this activity otherizes and instrumentalizes the author and robs them of them being a person saying something that has their meaning, whether it is true or false. We need to get what they are laying down so we can judge the ideas as to whether they are correct or not. It may be this is because he wasn’t that sympathetic a reader - he’s kind of a piece of work - and maybe his thheory was an excuse to act like John McLaughlin. He goes on to have a hell of a career fucking up the US school system

But it’s Wolfgang Iser that comes in with the one neat trick which removes (or at least makes irrelevant) the knowability problem, circumvents the otherizing problem, and makes everything applicable to any text (e.g. art, literature) by bringing in phenomenology, specifically Edmund Husserl’s “constitution” of the world by consciousness. It makes perfect sense to bring phenomenology into interpretive theory as phenomenology had a head start as a field and is concerned with something homologous - we only have access to our experience of <the world/the text> and need to grapple with how we derive <reality/meaning> from it. Husserl said we constitute reality from the world using our sensory/cognitive apparatus, influenced by many contingencies (experiential, cultural, sensorial, etc) but that’s what reality is and It doesn’t exist to us unbracketed. Iser said we configure meaning from the text using our sensory/cognitive apparatus, influenced by many contingencies (experiential, cultural, sensorial, etc) but that’s what meaning is and It doesn’t exist to us unbracketed. Reality and meaning are constructed on these contingencies, and intersubjective agreement is not assured.

To Iser, we create a virtual space (his phrase) where we operate processes on the text to generate a model what the text is saying, and this process has many inputs based on our dataset external to the text (not all of which is good data) as well as built in filters and mapping legends based on our deeper preconceptions (which may be misconceptions or “good enough” approximations). Most if this goes on without any effort whatsoever, like the identification of a dog on the street. But some of it is a learned process - watch an adult who has never read comics try to read one. These inputs, filters, and routers can animate an idea of the author in the construct, informing our understanding based on all sorts of data we happen to know and assumptions about how certain things work.

This is reader response theory, that meaning is generated in the mind by interaction with the text and not by the text, though Stanley Fish didn’t accent the “in the mind part” and name the phenomenon until years later. Note that Gadamer is largely prescriptive and Hirsch is entirely prescriptive while Iser is predominantly descriptive. He’s saying “this is how you were doing it all along,” but by being aware of the process, we can gain function.

For those keeping score: 1. Gadamer, after Heidegger’s cyclic process at constructing an understanding of the thing itself, centers on a point between the author and reader and prioritizes universal truth. 2. Hirsch, after Kant’s ethical stand on non instrumentalization, centers on hearing what the author is saying and prioritizes the judging the ideas. 3. Iser, after Husserl’s constituted reality, centers on configuring a multi-input sense of the text within a virtual (mental) space and prioritizes meaning.

Everything after basically comes out of Iser and is mostly restatement with focusing/excluding of elements. The 20th century mindset, from the logical positivists to Bohr’s view that looking for reality underlying the wave form was pointless, had a serious case of God (real meaning, ground reality) is dead. W.K. Wimsatt and M. C. Beardsley’s intentional fallacy, an attempt to caution interpreters to steer clear of considering what the god-author meant, begat death of the author which attempted to take the author entirely out of the equation - it was less likely you’d ever understand the if you focused on that! To me, this is corrective to trends at the time and not good praxis - it excludes natural patterns of reading in which the author is configured, rejects potentially pertinent data, and limits some things one can get out of the text.

Meanwhile formalism/new criticism (these will be discussed later in a how section) focused on just what was going on in the text with as few inputs as possible, psychoanalytics and historicism looked to interrogate the inputs/filters to the sense making process, postmodernism/deconstruction attacked those inputs/filters making process questioning whether meaning was not just contingent but a complete illusion, and critical studies became obsessed with specific strands of oppression and hegemony as foundational filters that screw up the inputs. But the general Iser model seems to be the grandfather of everything after.

Reader intersubjectivity is an area of concern. In the best world, the creation of art is in part an attempt to find the universal within the specific, something that resonates and speaks to people. A very formative series of David Milch lectures (to me at least) proffer that if you find a scene, idea, whatever, that is very compelling to you, your job is to figure out what in it is “fanciful” (an association specific to you) and how to find and bring out the universal elements. But people’s experiences are different and there be many ideas of what a piece of art means without there being a dominant one. So the building of models within each mind leaves a lot to consider as the final filtered input is never quite the same. There is a lot of hair on this dog (genres engender text expectations that an author can subvert by confusing the filter, conflicting input can serve a purpose, the form of a guided experience can be a kind of meaning, on and on ad nauseum)

The ultimate question, you might ask, is why we need to do this at all. I mean, I understood Snow White perfectly fine as a kid. There’s no “gap” that needs to be leaped. The meaning of the movie is evident enough on some level without vivisecting it. The Long answer to what we gain from looking under Snow’s skirt is the next episode. The short is: 1. You are doing it anyway. That Snow White thing, you were doing thhat to Snow White you just weren’t conscious of the process.

2. It’s fun. The process only puts a tool of enjoyment in your arsenal. You don’t have to use it all the time.

3. You’ll see stuff you like in new ways. The way Star Wars works is really interesting!

4. It may give dimensions to movies that are flawed or bad, and you might wind up liking them. Again, more to love.

5. It is sometimes necessary to get to a full (or any) appreciation of some complicated works as the most frustrating and resistant stuff to engage with is sometimes the most incredible.

6. It reinforces your involvement in something you like. It makes you more connected and more hungry, like any good exercise.

7. You can become more aware of what those preconceptions and biases are, which might give you insights in other areas of your life.

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dustedmagazine · 5 years ago

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Jeff Parker — Suite for Max Brown (International Anthem/Nonesuch)

Photo by Jim Newberry

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Following the looped, electronic and eclectic New Breed, Jeff Parker’s latest album expands into an even greater range of off-kilter sonic experiments. His previous guitar playing with groups like Tortoise and Isotope 217, as well as his own trios and other collaborations, have shared his use of indelible melody and modal harmony in the context of post-rock and jazz. Here, the combination of treated loops, layers of horns (up front) and synths (usually in the background), create an atmosphere reminiscent of the soundtrack to a fast-paced cartoon.

Though not omnipresent, Parker uses his guitar here as an added dimension when it pops up. On album opener “Build a Nest” he plays with dizzying speed for a five-second burst of distorted John McLaughlin-like soloing that comes out of nowhere near the end of the track. Around that flourish, the track is built on Dirty Projectors-ish vocal harmonies, piano, a sliding bass line and a beat that keeps breaking down into jazz chords. From there, the album proceeds to the soul horns sampling “C’mon Now”, followed by a cover of John Coltrane’s meditative “After the Rain.” Parker plays the melody with a clean electric guitar tone with tremolo, with acoustic drums and bass, and featuring an almost cheesy synth sound as well. The juxtaposition makes the track land somewhere between far out jazz fusion and the weather channel, but it works.

Synth-heavy, jazz-indebted ambiance distinguishes “Metamorphoses.” It’s a break from the more beat oriented materials of many of the songs, and it layers droney notes with synth arpeggios and ringing chimes in overlapping loops that come together and then drift apart. After that, “Gnarciss” brings an evolving orchestral hip hop melody that gradually undoes itself into an abrupt finish. Throughout, the album mixes longer tracks with shorter pieces. They get into a well-developed idea that fades or burns out quickly before they become tired.

A more straightforward vehicle for Parker’s playing is the relatively unadorned “3 for L”. On it, Parker takes the lead with only an acoustic bass/drums trio, and the depth of his playing is evident. However, even as the composition unfolds, quiet background elements of percussion in the right channel add a sense of space and foreground the constructed nature of the recording. It’s the added layers and the mix of sounds, both on the album as a whole and within each track, that give the listener new details to focus on after repeat listens. As the album unfolds, it becomes more fun to detect each added piece of a different musical tradition that Parker has successfully incorporated.

Arthur Krumins

#jeff parker #suite for max brown #international anthem #nonesuch #arthur krumins #albumreview #dusted #jazz #guitar #tortoise #isotope 217 #loops

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riffsstrides · 3 years ago

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Shakti - Natural Elements (1977)

8/10

Natural Elements is Shakti's most interesting album, the one where Mc's original goal of fusion between Western and Eastern music realms works best.

John McLaughlin, guitar, vocal

T. H. Vinayakram, Ghatam, Percussion [Nal], Kanjira [Kanjeera], Jew's Harp [Moorsing (Juice Harp)], Vocals

Zakir Hussain, Tabla, Timbales, Bongos, Dholak, Percussion [Nal], Triangle, Vocals

L. Shankar, Violin, Viola, Vocals

#Spotify

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jeromer-spatialdesign · 4 years ago

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BOOKS AND ARTICLES

Theory in Landscape Architecture

“The Art of Site Planning” (Kevin Lynch and Gary Hack) 1984

8 Stages of Site Planning

Defining the problem

Programming and the analysis of the site and user

Schematic Design and Detailed Costing

Developed Design and the Preliminary cost estimate

Contract Documents

Bidding and Contracting

Construction

Occupation and Management

“Our physical setting determines the quality of our lives”

———————————————————————————————————

“An ecological method (1974) Ian McHarg

Ecology Offers emancipation to landscape architecture

———————————————————————————————————

“Community Design” 1974 Randolph Hester Jr.

Policies to make design profession more responsible for social sustainability of the neighbourhood environments

To clarify to whom the designer is responsible

To guarantee the input of users values

To eliminate proffesional ethics

To provide for socially suitable neighbourhood environments

To guarantee increased users involvement throughout the neighbourhood

———————————————————————————————————

Operative Landscapes: Building Communities through public space

Alissa North

2013

_Contemporary landscape architecture

_Operative landscapes exhibit concepts regarding self organisation emergence, ecology, systems, performance and function. This specific approach tends no to focus on future uncertainties to be adapted within a space over time…

_James Corner, put forward that landscape as an agent of change without end. “A cumulative directionality toward further becoming”; a constant process of unfolding rather than a rigid reality. Michael Desvigne interprets this notion as an indeterminate nature, a “Long time frame of landscapes and cities and especially “the play with time: the different stages of development that concentrate the condense, in short a short period. Processes with historical rhythms.

_Communities rely on their surrounding resources for their functions.. Resources such as in the form of intact ecologies of forests, bogs, rivers and grasslands and through cultivation transformed into reserves, channels, acreage and plots.

_Public spaces such as parks, community gardens, plaza or a street scape, the public where people interact provide a shared sense of ownership and the qualities of these spaces impacts the community on how they operate and evolve..

_Public spaces are the main core of creating and directing a successful community development… making use of a landscape framework to support an operative landscape….

_Public open spaces are continuously evolving with their communities… they can be considered as a dynamic rather than static and prescriptive

_A well designed open space tends to Forster strong community pride and involvement..

_What are remediation strategies for landscape?

_Understand the communities impact throughout the design phases of a project… it can lend an insight on the effects of community input, development and sustained involvement and therefore it can guide the design of public spaces as intentional catalyst for community building….

JENFELDER AU, HAMBEG, GERMANY

_The community has been developed on a site and it was formerly occupied by military Baracks…

_The design crated a typological references to the sites history to develop a strong image for this east Hamburg neighbourhood… currently considers charaterless but also includes technical design features such as rainwater harvesting, biomass energy production by useing sanitary waste and solar energy collection….

CRISTAL PARK, BIEL, SWI TZERLAND

_It was used as a waste disposal site, Prohibiting built structure, the site was then developed into a community park…

NEW FARM, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA,

_The riverfront community of New Farm provides a rich contextual narrative for a site that has experiences morphological and cultural transformations.

_New Farm’s name traces back to the portion of these sites peninsula that was once a farming settlement in the late 1800’s

_New Farms adaptive master plan, interprets the spatial and historical processes of socio economic change, the physical realities of the site, as well as its heritage quality informed by the sites previous industrial nature..

_New Farms regeneration to outline the preservation of the community’s historic housing stock, by providing guidelines that prescribe the creation of a heritage park system with reference to some fo the legacy features of the site.

DOCKSIDE GREEN, VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

_Dockside Green is an adaptive reuse of an industrial site that required brownfield remediation inured to make the site an appropriate contact for urban development.

_The project blends the best of the arbors old industrial fabric with innovate practices in landscape technology

*Landscape Architecture and Digital Technologies

Green-roofs assist in providing some of this habitat, collecting and recycling rainwater, insulating the interior membrane of the buildings and connecting the upper units to planted areas.

Remediating a Sense of Place

Memory and Environmental Justice in Anniston, Alabama

Melanie Barron

University of Tennessee - Knoxville

_”The Material Landscape itself, as it is produces by the black subject and mapped as unimaginably black, must be rewritten into black, and arguably human, existence on different terms…. Invisible geographies, marginality, indicate a struggle and ways of knowing the world, which can also illustrate wider conceptual and material spaces for consideration; real, lived dispossessions and reclamations, for example. The margins and invisibility, then are also lived and right in the middle of our historically present landscape.” Katherine McKitrrick, Demonic Grounds - pp. 5-7

RECYCLING SPACES Curation Urban Evolution:

The Landscape Design Of MARTHA SCHWARTZ PARTNERS

GRAND CANAL SQAURE Dublin — Case Study

_Recuperation as a contemporary landscape architecture in response to the slow violence of economic restructuring globally

_Post Industrial Cities

_Since the late 17th Century, the dublin docklands area has transformed from river estuary, to agricultural fields, to industrial port, to gas works, to toxic brownfield, to vibrant urban neighbourhood. Grand Canal Square, the centrepiece of the new development, has played a catalytic role in the most recent reshaping of this once forgotten part of town..

_Dublin is a city of change. More than 1000 years the city has been ruled by the norse and normans the British and the Irish, it has ben an agricultural city, a shipping city, a manufacturing city, a service city and a technology city. As the economy shifts, Dublin shifts..

_The most recent wave of movement to Dublin came during the Celtic tiger boom of the mid 1990’s, when Ireland transitioned from being one of the poorest in western Europe to having one of the fastest growing economies on the continent…

_In order to transform the site and its toxicity that got left behind, from being derelict industrial site to a vibrant mixed used development, the DDDA (The Dublin Docklands Development Authority) combined an innovative relaxation strategy and public realm design…

_”If you want to make it something that people are drawn to, you need to imprint it in peoples imaginations, in a way that is fun, that is lively. It had to have an identity in and of itself and had to be of cultural and artistic value.” - John McLaughlin

_The docklands are has historically been important of Dublin, but it was a really tough place to live, Now 80,000 people living and nearly 30,000 jobs. Facebooks agency is near and google just opened up their European headquarters. Businesses are growing and there’s a young and energetic population…

BEAUTY REDEEMED: Recycling post industrial Landscapes

Ellen Braae

“INTERVENTIONS”

Learning from Landschaftspark Duisburg - Nord

_German Landscape Architect Peter Latz - Latz + Partners

_The transformation of former industrial areas for new purposes is a widespread phenomenon happening before our eyes..

_ “A space is thereby established in which the past, present and future can be seen together in mutual dialogue”

_The reuse of ruin ions industrial areas inscribes it self cultural in a wider artistic re-orientation and re-interprests on what we already have, contributing towards thinking behind sustainability.

_The Industrial areas can be seen as potential new cultural heritage, where preservation, re use and transformation becomes allies

_Transformation of industrial areas is ushering in an epistemological breakthrough in design… there’s a lot of things to be learned from transformed industrial areas

_The innovation in Latz proposal lay in decoding of features and qualities and the way they were highlighted and reworked. He saw structures in the area which could form settings and provide inspiration for new uses…

_Relics of Industrialism and The Process of nature

_Latz also developed a strategy for cultural re-use which no only re-incorporated the materials on the site but also incorporated entire structures such as the massive blast furnace which today houses an auditorium

_Latz intervention-based transformations with its desire to re use the decommissioned industrial areas in various ways, includes several aspect of sustainability.

_Sustainability in relations to the questions of future ruin ions industrial areas also involve cultural dimensions. There is cultural history hidden in these discrete areas, where the requirements of productions are intertwined with culturally determined values - but of far greater importance of how we can build a new future out if these ruins and derelict spaces

_ “How can we work on the new aesthetics qualities, functions and materials, and the new frames of understanding in the industrial leavings, in a way that is meaning for us today and helps to draw the counters of tomorrow?”

_ “German Historian Koselleck said each era is formed by its expectations of the future and if we are unable to take a creative approach to an absolutely crucial central element of our recent past and the present we live in, then in that respect there is little hope for our future. We must then develop our aesthetic views of these ruins if we are build a future from them and on top of them. This is where we find the new sustainability”

_ “Industrial areas can be regarded as a new form of cultural heritage, to be investigated and creatively treated”

FROM INDUSTRIAL TO POST INDUSTRIAL UBRAN LANDSCAPE

Industrial Landscapes as an element of post-industrial urbanisation

_Post Industrial urban landscapes, ruinous industrial landscapes are simply part of are not planned, unified entities, they are accumulations of a series of decision taken over time, each rational in its own right, which led to the current stage of urbanisation.

_Overlaid like a palimpsest on largely obliterated earlier uses of the land…

_ “In between landscapes” can be criticised as lacking both identity and aesthetic quality

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roadscholarmusic · 4 years ago

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Indian jazz fusion is a musical genre consisting of jazz, blues and Indian classical music influences. Its structure and patterns are based on Indian music with typical jazz improvisation overlaid. While the term itself may be comparatively recent, the concept dates at least to the mid-1950s. Musicians including John Coltrane, Yusef Lateef and others reflect Indian influences. The Mahavishnu Orchestra might be an early example of a jazz group with Indian influences as John McLaughlin. Others found the improvisational elements already in some Indian music to fit well with jazz. Although John Mayer and Joe Harriott are perhaps the most important influences in the movement. In addition Alice Coltrane is also known for relational work. There are two main types of Indian classical music: Hindustani (North Indian), and Carnatic (South Indian). Hindustani is considered more romantic and expressive in nature, and Carnatic is more like classical or baroque. Both systems use ragas (melodies based on scales) and talas (rhythmic cycles), but in different ways. Both systems allow for extended improvisations and dazzling displays of melodic and rhythmic virtuosity. The beginning listener might find them somewhat similar since both systems have a drone accompaniment (like some early Western music), but after a while, one can easily tell the difference. Some well known Hindustani musicians include the famous sitarist Ravi Shankar—a true superstar; the late sarodist Ali Akbar Khan, who founded a school for Indian music in Marin County, California; and tabla player Zakir Hussein, who has played with Indian greats and Western musicians, and can be heard in numerous film soundtracks. Some well known Carnatic musicians include violinist L. Shankar (no relation to Ravi) who has performed with rock singer Peter Gabriel among others, and his brother L. Subrmaniam, who has performed with many Western classical and jazz musicians, including major symphony orchestras, and jazz pianist Herbie Hancock. https://www.instagram.com/p/CKZ_JofFvn8/?igshid=27bel7ly3gmu

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zhanteimi · 4 years ago

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Shakti with John McLaughlin – Natural Elements

India / UK, 1977, jazz fusion Everything on this sounds just fantastic—the violin, the guitar, everything. Just terrific! Good thing it’s not any longer—I’m not sure how much awesomeness I can take at one sitting. burp

youtube

View On WordPress

#1977 #india #jazz fusion #uk #Youtube

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jazzviewswithcjshearn · 4 years ago

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Avishai Cohen: Big Vicious (ECM, 2020)

Note: Jazz Views with CJ Shearn will now have a more detailed sound category offering audiophile insight into recordings as part of review thanks to upgraded equipment.

Key terms:

Sound stage: The audio depiction of the placement of instruments, as if one were to go see a play and see the position of the actors/actresses on stage, when a listener closes their eyes, they can see and hear the placement of the players and instruments. The term stereo image can also be applied.

Stereo imaging refers to the aspect of sound recording and reproduction of stereophonic sound concerning the perceived spatial locations of the sound source(s), both laterally and in depth. (source for stereo image definition: wikipedia)

Avishai Cohen: trumpet, effects, synthesizer; Uzi Ramirez: guitar; Jonathan Albalak: guitar; bass; Aviv Cohen: drums; Ziv Ravitz: drums, live sampling.

Jazz, over the past three decades especially has become a global language. The music by it's very nature is inclusive, taking on elements from all over the world, while maintaining it's core identity. Yet despite this statement, a debate still rages on about what jazz is, for some it may be Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, the acoustic period of Miles Davis. While Miles Davis' electric music, Weather Report, Return to Forever, Bill Frisell, John Abercrombie, John McLaughlin and Pat Metheny among others were all artists that brought something inherently fresh to the table. All these artists were rooted in jazz tradition but not hemmed in. Since Wynton Marsalis arrived on the jazz scene in the late 1970's, and after garnering a major label deal with Columbia in 1981, continuing on to his becoming director of the newly founded Jazz At Lincoln Center in 1987, the age old debates of what jazz is flared up. These debates always existed but began to intensify when record labels, who had been on the cutting edge of recording jazz-funk, jazz-rock and other needlessly coined permutations, suddenly sharply focused on acoustic straight ahead jazz. The music was made by young, primarily African American musicians, and like earlier decades, statements on who they were as players, and their place in society. Many of the musicians from that specific time period of the 80's-90's have had a strong impact on current jazz, and a lot of the musicians who are major figures, like Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Jeff “Tain” Watts, the late Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton and Joshua Redman have been influences on the generations of 20 and 30 somethings who are on the front lines.

Israeli born trumpeter Avishai Cohen is just one of many musicians, who have been influenced by this so called “young lion” period, but has distinctly, like fellow Israeli ECM labelmates Oded Tzur, Anat Fort and Shai Maestro brought forth influences from that country's music but also music across genres that were inspiring. This is the name of the game in jazz now, musicians bringing forth what inspired them, whether it be Nirvana, Radiohead, Boards of Canada, Wu Tang Clan or anything they grew up with.

For the fourth album bearing his name for ECM, Cohen debuts an exciting new quintet project Big Vicious. The quintet, made up of the leader on trumpet, effects and synthesizer, guitarist Uzi Ramirez, guitarist and bassist Jonathan Albalak, and the double drum tandem of Aviv Cohen and Ziv Ravitz on drums and live sampling, an all Israeli group bring a powerful and potent combination... acoustic and electric hybrid music with slamming grooves, textures reaching the cosmos and some tight rope walking improvisation that is a very distinct and personal blend. The group had been playing much of the music on the road for sometime, playing the originals here and covers such as Massive Attack's trip hop classic “Teardrop” part of a stream of music which all had grown up on. The mix of jazz and electronic proclivities is a result of all their collective experience and was tightened in the studio at producer Manfred Eicher's suggestion which distilled the music to it’s essence considerably. Each player in the group brings their experiences of jazz and elsewhere, and the notion of soloing is less important than overall feeling and textures. This practice governed much of Weather Report’s early work as well, but it is only a surface resemblance in this new collection.

Aviv Cohen's fat, thudding kick, and deep, thunderous dead snare set the tone for the sing songy “Honey Fountain” of which the trumpeter's bright tone make the most of. Albalak and Ramirez' guitars and bass are an important component, and Cohen's groove are important because, a variation of the same groove is also found on the penultimate “Teno Neno”. The track is like an movie introduction. “Hidden Chamber” introduces much darker sonic tapestries including a weird, altered pitch underpinning with fuzzy harmonics, somewhat reminiscent of the T-1000 sound effects from Terminator 2. Ravitz's more jazz centric approach tease at some burning swing as things build to a sparkling climax, drummer Cohen more in the pocket over Ravitz' implied swing. The spoken word samples of Einstein and Wayne Shorter are a nice touch as they suggest the infinite nature of space. “King Kutner” is a joyous anthemic blast, Guitar and synth together combine like lovely shining stars.

Three pieces in particular serve as album centerpieces. The group's treatment of “Moonlight Sonata” is breathtaking with Cohen's almost bucolic melodic treatment, the guitars, and electronics stroke bold dark colors on a beautiful canvas. The trumpeter uses the melodic contours for wonderful dynamic exploration, with dark, scratchy guitar again suggesting the beauty of the cosmos. Cohen's trumpet and subtle ad libs are almost operatic in nature, bright like the stars on this wonderful moonlight night. “Fractals” is dark and foreboding, with usage of Israeli scales. The strange, bubbling electronic world at times recalls Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi at their abstract best on the pivotal Crossings (Warner Brothers, 1972). The lengthy treatment of Massive Attack's classic trip hop opus of love and obsession “Teardrop” (also recently covered by Thana Alexa) allows Big Vicious to really stretch in a vast atmosphere. Ravitz' treatment of the iconic beat, gets additional assistance from Aviv Cohen and through improvisation, reversed sounds and distorted, delayed trumpet explore the psychological aspect of obsession and longing. The trumpeter cries out almost in anguish. Whereas Alexa's version faithfully captures the tale of sensuality and obsession, Cohen really plumes the psychological aspect and in his solo really flies in the upper register. “The Cow and The Calf” ends things on a note as cinematic as the album began, Cohen's trumpet states the reflective melody, then contrasts in the bridge section with a quasi boogaloo feel reminiscent of 60's Blue Note classics.

Sound:

Big Vicious' debut is filled with a ton of sonic ear candy and a huge sound stage. The drums of Aviv Cohen and Ziv Ravitz take up the far left, center left, right center and far right of the stereo image. The drums have a real deep percussive snap to them with Cohen often employing effect laden snares with tambourines on the drum heads, and other devices to simulate electronic drums acoustically, much in the domain of Mark Giuliana, Chris Dave, Antonio Sanchez and Eric Harland. There is also a satisfying dead drum sound here recalling that of classic 70's groups like that of The Eagles, or the Alan Parsons Project. A few cool moments appear on “Teardrop” with Ravitz' rim shots trailing off into reverb in the invisible center and stick drags from snare in the left channel translate to reverbed snare hits from Ravitz in the center channel. Odd, at times sinister synthesizers, guitars and effects are present throughout various areas of the sound stage, and Avishai Cohen's trumpet is brilliantly clear and realistic despite both subtle and heavier uses of effects. Manfred Eicher's production with a firm grip of contemporary trends results in a dynamically exciting recording that leaps from the Focal Chorus 716 floor standing speakers with accurately rendered tones.

Final thoughts:

Avishai Cohen with the debut of exciting new band, his golden, singing beautiful trumpet, and a wealth of collective musical experience is what makes Big Vicious a joy to listen to, start to finish. Cohen is a diverse musician that with his fourth ECM recording taps into yet another wellspring for different ideas. With relatively brief catchy tunes, blending the acoustic and electronic, with the current woes of contemporary society in a post COVID-19 world, this is the kind of recording that will appeal to traditionally non jazz listeners, and for some perhaps be a catalyst to dive into the enchanting back catalog of ECM records.

Music rating: 9.5/10

Sound rating: 9.5/10

Equipment used:

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Musicbee library (for digital file playback)

Sony Playstation 3 (for CD playback)

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plusorminuscongress · 5 years ago

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New story in Politics from Time: The ‘Special’ U.S.-U.K. Relationship is Bruised After Trump Officials Didn’t Tell Britain About Plans to Hit Iran

At the Aspen Institute’s annual gathering of national security and foreign policy leaders in July, the former acting CIA director, John McLaughlin, choked up as he recalled how British intelligence chiefs had traversed closed air space from London to Washington to literally embrace their American counterparts after the 9/11 attacks.

McLaughlin and Sir John Scarlett, the former head of Britain’s MI6 spy agency sitting beside him, remembered fondly the “special relationship” the U.S. and U.K. had, a relationship that both agreed is troubled at a time when tension with Iran threatens to break into armed conflict. Britain announced Monday that it would form its own European-led patrol of Persian Gulf waters, where Iran seized a British oil tanker Saturday, rather than join an American-led effort.

This follows the unprecedented decision by the Trump administration to withhold detailed information from Britain ahead of a planned U.S. military strike on Iran, later aborted, following the shooting down of an American drone. Senior administration officials confirm to TIME that they left the Brits out of the planning, conceding that was “unusual” but blaming it on the speed of the response.

“It is not that common for us to execute operations unilaterally without them,” one of the officials said. “But in this case, because of the nature of the incident and the proposed response, it wasn’t an essential element.”

And the Trump White House may act unilaterally without briefing the Brits in detail again, depending on the action needed to respond to Iranian aggression toward U.S. troops or interests in the region, they said, speaking anonymously in order to discuss the sensitive matter.

President Donald Trump ultimately canceled the planned action, but the U.S. decision to withhold information sent a tremor through an alliance at least superficially dented by Trump’s Twitter attacks on outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May, and by his savaging of the former British Ambassador to the U.S. Sir Kim Darroch, whose unflattering assessments of Trump’s administration were leaked in the British media and forced him to resign.

Hasan Shirvani—APA speedboat and a helicopter of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard move around a British-flagged oil tanker MV Stena Impero on July 21, 2019, after it was seized by Iran in the Persian Gulf

“Cowards,” one senior U.S. official said, summing up the Trump administration’s frustration with the Brits’ continued support for the Iran nuclear deal, their reluctance to confront Iran more directly and their attempts to help Iran bypass U.S. sanctions together with other European parties who remain in the nuclear deal.

Former British Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith told the BBC that Theresa May had turned down a U.S. offer of help in the Persian Gulf before Iran seized Britain’s oil tanker, apparently demurring because SHE? it didn’t want to increase the risk of being drawn into an armed conflict.

U.S. officials said Britain’s allegiance to the Iran nuclear deal explains its decision to reject joining “Operation Sentinel,” a fledgling plan by U.S. Central Command to organize an allied patrol of the Gulf waters.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced on Monday that Britain would be forming its own “European-led maritime protection mission to support safe passage of crew and cargo,” after Iran’s seizure of the British-flagged oil tanker MV Stena Impero.

The senior administration officials said they understood that Britain was trying to separate itself from the U.S. maximum pressure campaign on Iran, but that the European-led mission would still need U.S. intelligence and surveillance support, because the Americans have far more military assets in the region.

The chill from Washington toward the Brits has also unnerved others in Europe who rely on Britain as their Trump whisperer. Many Europeans rely on Britain to check Trump’s worst impulses on the international stage — or at least to give them forewarning.

U.S. officials in Europe also admitted they had been slow to share plans of their Iran response, giving what officials called uncharacteristically late notice of the planned strike on Iranian military targets after Tehran shot down a U.S. drone.

Two senior U.S. officials said Acting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper had tried to mollify U.S. allies by explaining the U.S. strategy toward Iran at last month’s NATO summit in Brussels.

But that explanation infuriated Britain even more, in that all NATO members got the same sanitized, okay-for-mass-distribution version, as opposed to the deeply detailed briefings the U.S. usually gives the U.K.

The selection as Britain’s next prime minister of Boris Johnson, who created strong ties with the Trump administration during his time as May’s foreign secretary, may go a long way toward healing the political relationship. “We are eager to start trade negotiations …because we see a huge opportunity to maximize the relationship” once the new UK government settles in, one of the senior U.S. administration officials said.

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But the bewilderment and wariness of British national security officials will likely persist.

Spokesmen in London and at the British embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Dan Kitwood—Getty Images Newly elected Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson outside the Conservative Leadership Headquarters on July 23, 2019 in London after being chosen the country’s next Prime Minister.

At the Aspen Security Forum, held last week, a steady succession of former Bush and Obama officials, as well as some currently serving government officials, made their apologies to the British officials in attendance over Trump’s treatment of Ambassador Darroch. Darroch has himself been getting messages of support from around the world, according to those close to him.

It didn’t help warm the chill when the four-star commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command declared Japan as possibly the top U.S. ally in the world.

“I would say not only is Japan our most important ally in the region, they might be indeed our most important ally on the globe,” Adm. Philip Davidson said to the forum. A British official could be seen having an intense conversation with him after the event.

Republican Congressman Mac Thornberry of Texas, speaking in Aspen, blamed any lack of notice to the U.K. ahead of the potential military strike on the turmoil and imminent leadership turnover of the prime minister’s job. He said he and other Republican and Democratic lawmakers had visited Trump in advance of the potential military strike and urged the president not to allow Iran to divide the U.S. from its allies.

“It is essential that whatever you do about this drone shoot down, that we do it with our allies to prevent them from splitting us,” he said in Aspen, “especially in my opinion, our closest ally around the world, and that’s the U.K.”

Neither McLaughlin nor Scarlett, the former U.S. and British intelligence chiefs, seemed to think the message had gotten through.

“It’s very important that the leadership on all sides understand the value of our…alliance…It’s a deep relationship,” said Scarlett. “Perhaps they didn’t really.”

“I found it appalling that he insulted Theresa May,” McLaughlin said of Trump’s tweets lambasting May after it was revealed that her U.S. ambassador had called the Trump administration inept. “I don’t want to say it’s over because we can’t give up,” said McLaughlin of the U.K.-U.S. relationship. “But if we neglect allies, and we do it long enough, they’ll start to make their own arrangements.”

By Kimberly Dozier / Aspen, Colo. on July 23, 2019 at 12:48PM

#Time #politics #PlusOrMinusCongress #±Congress #Indega±#IndegaPlusOrMinus #TimeMag #TimeMagazine

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